q-lang-users — general discussion, questions, suggestions, etc.

Re: [q-lang-users] Compiling Q on Mac OS X

[Ryan S. <q-l...@ry...>]

On Dec 19, 2007, at 03:16, Tim Haynes wrote:

> Albert Graef writes:
>
>> Well, different programmers need different things, but most  
>> programmers
>> want XML and databases nowadays, so for a start you could add the xml
>> and sqlite3 modules, maybe also the ODBC interface.
>
> Definitely maybe the ODBC interface, please :)
>
> Pleased to see MacPorts has included Q. If it helps, the things I  
> usually
> enable are:
>
>     ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/stow/q \
>       --with-{x,gmp,rl,pthread,curl,gdbm,magick,xml}

I'll see what I can do!

Re: [q-lang-users] Compiling Q on Mac OS X

[Tim H. <q...@st...>]

Albert Graef <Dr....@t-...> writes:

[snip]
> Well, different programmers need different things, but most programmers
> want XML and databases nowadays, so for a start you could add the xml
> and sqlite3 modules, maybe also the ODBC interface. 

Definitely maybe the ODBC interface, please :)

Pleased to see MacPorts has included Q. If it helps, the things I usually
enable are:

    ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/stow/q \
      --with-{x,gmp,rl,pthread,curl,gdbm,magick,xml} 

~Tim
-- 
<http://spodzone.org.uk/>

Re: [q-lang-users] Compiling Q on Mac OS X

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> Super! I think MacPorts is the easiest way to install software that's  
> distributed in source form on a Mac, so a pointer on your web site  
> would be great.

Done.

> I don't use Q myself, so I'm not familiar with what all would be  
> appropriate to add.

Well, different programmers need different things, but most programmers
want XML and databases nowadays, so for a start you could add the xml
and sqlite3 modules, maybe also the ODBC interface. And then there's the
Qt/Q module (GUI programming) and Q-OpenGL (also useful in conjunction
with Qt/Q since it allows you to draw 3D graphics in a Qt window).

There's also a Qt application called QCalc which provides a spreadsheet
as an alternative frontend to the Q interpreter, which makes it easy to
learn Q and use it as a sophisticated kind of desktop calculator. This
should be easy to install once Qt/Q is working, since it's just a Q
script, nothing to compile.

These are just some ideas what could be useful and fun...

Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

Re: [q-lang-users] ANN: Q 7.10 available

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> The q port in MacPorts has been updated to 7.10 and will be available  
> within 12 hours via the usual "sudo port selfupdate" method.

Great, many thanks. I'm sure that the Mac users here will appreciate it.

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

[q-lang-users] Infixed Ternary Operators?

[Rob H. <hub...@gm...>]

Dear Albert,

I think the answer to this question will be "no", but I thought I'd ask 
it anyway (just in case).

It is possible to define a ternary infix operator? For example, suppose 
the operator is called f, and takes three arguments
    public f P X Y;

I'd like to write
    X (f 13) Y
rather than
    f 13 X Y

In other words, I'd like the partial application
    f 13
to yield a ('specialised') infix operator.

If it can't be done, then I don't consider it important enough (or even 
necessarily desirable) to implement. I just wondered whether there might 
be some kind of Q trick I'd not thought of.

Thanks,
Rob.

Re: [q-lang-users] ANN: Q 7.10 available

[Ryan S. <q-l...@ry...>]

On Dec 17, 2007, at 17:51, Albert Graef wrote:

> Ryan, I hope that you have some time to update the MacPort once  
> more. :)

The q port in MacPorts has been updated to 7.10 and will be available  
within 12 hours via the usual "sudo port selfupdate" method.

We have a feature in MacPorts (called livecheck) whereby port authors  
can check if newer versions of ports they maintain have been  
released. I use this regularly, so I will fairly quickly see when a  
new version of q has been released, and will update the port  
accordingly.

Re: [q-lang-users] Compiling Q on Mac OS X

[Ryan S. <q-l...@ry...>]

On Dec 16, 2007, at 13:37, Albert Graef wrote:

> Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>
>> Yes, apparently the last update to the Q port in MacPorts was 3 years
>> ago. The maintainer seems to have disappeared. So I'll take it over
>> and can hopefully keep it better maintained from now on.
>
> That's *very* good news. I'll update our website so that it points to
> MacPorts asap.

Super! I think MacPorts is the easiest way to install software that's  
distributed in source form on a Mac, so a pointer on your web site  
would be great.


>> I'll keep them for now. In the portfiles we like to be a bit more
>> explicit about dependencies, and not let configure pick up whatever
>> it finds.
>
> Ok, I see. Do you plan to support any of the other addons in the  
> future?
> Q has interfaces to some pretty nice 3rd party libraries, and  
> AFAICT the
> necessary dependencies are all readily available in MacPorts.

I don't use Q myself, so I'm not familiar with what all would be  
appropriate to add. Certainly I can add variants to the portfile that  
bring in additional dependencies and features. If users (or you) note  
anything that's missing, they can file enhancement requests in our  
issue tracker and assign them to me, and I'll be happy to see what  
needs to be done.

[q-lang-users] ANN: Q 7.10 available

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Ok, I decided to do another official bugfix release, 7.10, so that all
the different packages are in sync again.

This fixes the bug in clib.c reported by Ryan Schmidt, and also moves
the SCHED* and SIG* constants from system.q back to clib.q where they
belong. The Windows package has been updated, too, and RPMs for OpenSUSE
10.3 are now available. (The latter come with Q-OpenAL 1.4 which adds
support for OpenAL 1.1.)

Ryan, I hope that you have some time to update the MacPort once more. :)

As soon as I'm finished uploading, the new release will be available here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=96881&package_id=103965&release_id=562359

(Currently I'm watching the bytes trickle, that's what T-Online calls
"broadband" in a small village. ;-) So please give it one more hour or
so before you try.)

SUSE 10.3 RPMS for the various dependencies (GGI, Gnuplot, MidiShare,
PortAudio) are already in the "deps" section. (Note that I don't provide
RPMs for Faust, Pd and SuperCollider anymore since these are now readily
available from http://packman.links2linux.org/. OTOH, I do still provide
a PortAudio package which can be used as a drop-in replacement for the
SUSE 10.3 PortAudio package, which still has issues with Jack.) You can
find that stuff here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=96881&package_id=106009&release_id=233262

As usual, the website hasn't been updated yet ;-), but I hope that I
have some time to fix that tomorrow.

Enjoy :)
Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

Re: [q-lang-users] Compiling Q on Mac OS X

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> Yes, apparently the last update to the Q port in MacPorts was 3 years  
> ago. The maintainer seems to have disappeared. So I'll take it over  
> and can hopefully keep it better maintained from now on.

That's *very* good news. I'll update our website so that it points to
MacPorts asap.

> I'll keep them for now. In the portfiles we like to be a bit more  
> explicit about dependencies, and not let configure pick up whatever  
> it finds.

Ok, I see. Do you plan to support any of the other addons in the future?
Q has interfaces to some pretty nice 3rd party libraries, and AFAICT the
necessary dependencies are all readily available in MacPorts.

> Super! It builds just fine now. Vielen Dank!

Bitte schoen. :)

Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

Re: [q-lang-users] Compiling Q on Mac OS X

[Ryan S. <q-l...@ry...>]

On Dec 16, 2007, at 04:17, Albert Graef wrote:

> Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>
>> Hi there. I come to you from the MacPorts project [1].
>
> Welcome Ryan, and thanks for taking care of the MacPorts Q package.

Yes, apparently the last update to the Q port in MacPorts was 3 years  
ago. The maintainer seems to have disappeared. So I'll take it over  
and can hopefully keep it better maintained from now on.

>> This is the same configure line that our Q 6.0 port used. Maybe some
>> options have changed since then?
>
> No, the options should be fine (although you could probably get rid of
> most if not all --with/without options).

I'll keep them for now. In the portfiles we like to be a bit more  
explicit about dependencies, and not let configure pick up whatever  
it finds. The idea is that Q (and other ports) should build  
identically on every user's system, regardless of what other ports  
they might already have installed which Q might otherwise optionally  
make use of.

>> /usr/bin/gcc-4.0  -o .libs/system.so -bundle  .libs/system.o  -L/opt/
>> local/lib ../../libq/.libs/libq.dylib /opt/local/lib/libgmp.dylib -
>> lpthread -lreadline /opt/local/lib/libintl.dylib -lc /opt/local/lib/
>> libiconv.dylib -lm -Wl,-framework -Wl,CoreFoundation -Wl,-framework -
>> Wl,CoreFoundation
>> /usr/bin/ld: Undefined symbols:
>> _coerce_float
>
> This should be fixed in cvs now. I also uploaded a new tarball
> (q-7.9-2.tar.gz). Thanks for reporting! Please let me know if you run
> into any other problems.

Super! It builds just fine now. Vielen Dank!

Re: [q-lang-users] Compiling Q on Mac OS X

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> Hi there. I come to you from the MacPorts project [1].

Welcome Ryan, and thanks for taking care of the MacPorts Q package.

> This is the same configure line that our Q 6.0 port used. Maybe some  
> options have changed since then?

No, the options should be fine (although you could probably get rid of
most if not all --with/without options).

> /usr/bin/gcc-4.0  -o .libs/system.so -bundle  .libs/system.o  -L/opt/ 
> local/lib ../../libq/.libs/libq.dylib /opt/local/lib/libgmp.dylib - 
> lpthread -lreadline /opt/local/lib/libintl.dylib -lc /opt/local/lib/ 
> libiconv.dylib -lm -Wl,-framework -Wl,CoreFoundation -Wl,-framework - 
> Wl,CoreFoundation
> /usr/bin/ld: Undefined symbols:
> _coerce_float

This should be fixed in cvs now. I also uploaded a new tarball
(q-7.9-2.tar.gz). Thanks for reporting! Please let me know if you run
into any other problems.

Cheers,
Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

[q-lang-users] Compiling Q on Mac OS X

[Ryan S. <q-l...@ry...>]

Hi there. I come to you from the MacPorts project [1]. MacPorts is  
one of the two package managers available for Mac OS X. (Fink is the  
other.)

We have a port for Q in MacPorts, but it's for version 6.0, and it's  
been pointed out [2] that this is ancient and moreover does not  
compile for some (or possibly all) our users. Who knows whether this  
is because of Macs using Intel processors now, or because of updates  
in the OS or the compiler.

I attempted to update the port to Q 7.9 but that doesn't compile  
either; I get "/usr/bin/ld: Undefined symbols: _coerce_float" (full  
error output copied below). I tried 7.8 and the error is the same. I  
also tried 7.7 and the error is different: "curl.c:467: error:  
'CURLOPT_PASSWDFUNCTION' undeclared here (not in a function)". Any  
idea how I can get Q 7.9 to compile here? I'm using Mac OS X 10.4.11  
with Xcode 2.4.1 on a MacBookPro3,1. The versions of the dependencies  
are:

curl 7.17.1 with ssl support
gmp 4.2.2
ncurses 5.6
ncursesw 5.6
openssl 0.9.8g
readline 5.2.007
zlib 1.2.3

The configure line I used for Q 7.9 is:

./configure --prefix=/opt/local --mandir=/opt/local/share/man -- 
infodir=/opt/local/share/info --with-gmp --with-rl --with-pthread -- 
with-curl --without-gdbm --without-x --without-ggi --without-ft2 -- 
without-magick --without-odbc --without-tk --without-xml --without- 
dxl --without-dmalloc

This is the same configure line that our Q 6.0 port used. Maybe some  
options have changed since then?

Here's the full error output from trying to build Q 7.9; thanks for  
any help you can provide:

$ sudo port build
--->  Fetching q
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for q
--->  Extracting q
--->  Configuring q
--->  Building q with target all
Error: Target org.macports.build returned: shell command " cd "/opt/ 
local/var/macports/build/_Users_rschmidt_macports_dports_lang_q/work/ 
q-7.9" && make all " returned error 2
Command output: clib.c: In function 'icfromwcs':
clib.c:586: warning: passing argument 2 of 'libiconv' from  
incompatible pointer type
  /usr/bin/gcc-4.0 -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I../.. -I../../libq -I/opt/ 
local/include -O2 -MT clib.lo -MD -MP -MF .deps/clib.Tpo -c clib.c -o  
clib.o >/dev/null 2>&1
mv -f .deps/clib.Tpo .deps/clib.Plo
/bin/sh ../../libtool --tag=CC   --mode=link /usr/bin/gcc-4.0  -O2 - 
no-undefined -module -avoid-version -L/opt/local/lib -o clib.la - 
rpath /opt/local/lib/q clib.lo ../../libq/libq.la -L/opt/local/lib - 
lintl -L/opt/local/lib -liconv -lc -R/opt/local/lib -Wl,-framework - 
Wl,CoreFoundation -L/opt/local/lib -liconv -R/opt/local/lib -lgmp - 
lpthread  -L/opt/local/lib -lintl -L/opt/local/lib -liconv -lc -R/opt/ 
local/lib -Wl,-framework -Wl,CoreFoundation -L/opt/local/lib -liconv - 
R/opt/local/lib -lm
/usr/bin/gcc-4.0  -o .libs/clib.so -bundle  .libs/clib.o  -L/opt/ 
local/lib ../../libq/.libs/libq.dylib /opt/local/lib/libgmp.dylib - 
lpthread /opt/local/lib/libintl.dylib -lc /opt/local/lib/ 
libiconv.dylib -lm -Wl,-framework -Wl,CoreFoundation -Wl,-framework - 
Wl,CoreFoundation
ar cru .libs/clib.a  clib.o
ranlib .libs/clib.a
creating clib.la
(cd .libs && rm -f clib.la && ln -s ../clib.la clib.la)
/bin/sh ../../libtool --tag=CC   --mode=compile /usr/bin/gcc-4.0 - 
DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I../.. -I../../libq  -I/opt/local/include  -O2 - 
MT system.lo -MD -MP -MF .deps/system.Tpo -c -o system.lo system.c
  /usr/bin/gcc-4.0 -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I../.. -I../../libq -I/opt/ 
local/include -O2 -MT system.lo -MD -MP -MF .deps/system.Tpo -c  
system.c  -fno-common -DPIC -o .libs/system.o
system.c: In function 'ictowcs':
system.c:766: warning: passing argument 2 of 'libiconv' from  
incompatible pointer type
system.c: In function 'icfromwcs':
system.c:787: warning: passing argument 2 of 'libiconv' from  
incompatible pointer type
system.c: In function '__F__system_iconv':
system.c:6198: warning: passing argument 2 of 'libiconv' from  
incompatible pointer type
  /usr/bin/gcc-4.0 -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I../.. -I../../libq -I/opt/ 
local/include -O2 -MT system.lo -MD -MP -MF .deps/system.Tpo -c  
system.c -o system.o >/dev/null 2>&1
mv -f .deps/system.Tpo .deps/system.Plo
/bin/sh ../../libtool --tag=CC   --mode=link /usr/bin/gcc-4.0  -O2 - 
no-undefined -module -avoid-version -L/opt/local/lib -o system.la - 
rpath /opt/local/lib/q system.lo ../../libq/libq.la -L/opt/local/lib - 
lintl -L/opt/local/lib -liconv -lc -R/opt/local/lib -Wl,-framework - 
Wl,CoreFoundation -L/opt/local/lib -liconv -R/opt/local/lib -lgmp - 
lpthread -lreadline  -L/opt/local/lib -lintl -L/opt/local/lib -liconv  
-lc -R/opt/local/lib -Wl,-framework -Wl,CoreFoundation -L/opt/local/ 
lib -liconv -R/opt/local/lib -lm
/usr/bin/gcc-4.0  -o .libs/system.so -bundle  .libs/system.o  -L/opt/ 
local/lib ../../libq/.libs/libq.dylib /opt/local/lib/libgmp.dylib - 
lpthread -lreadline /opt/local/lib/libintl.dylib -lc /opt/local/lib/ 
libiconv.dylib -lm -Wl,-framework -Wl,CoreFoundation -Wl,-framework - 
Wl,CoreFoundation
/usr/bin/ld: Undefined symbols:
_coerce_float
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[4]: *** [system.la] Error 1
make[3]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 2

Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.
$


[1] http://www.macports.org/

[2] http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/ticket/12268

Re: [q-lang-users] Q 7.9 + QCalc 1.0

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

> A preliminary Windows build is now available. Note that this doesn't
> include Qt/Q yet.

... And probably won't for quite a while. I've just taken a closer look
at Qt4, and it breaks backward-compatibility in a thousand places. I
already found a version of SmokeQt which works with Qt4, but a major
overhaul of the Qt/Q module itself is in order, too. :(

Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

Re: [q-lang-users] Q 7.9 + QCalc 1.0

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Albert Graef wrote:
> No Windows build yet, I first want to see whether I can port the Qt/Q
> module. :)

A preliminary Windows build is now available. Note that this doesn't
include Qt/Q yet.

GQBuilder and the Gnocl interface are included in the Windows package
now and seem to work fine so far, although Gnocl itself still seems to
have some issues on Windows. Note that if you want to use this, you'll
need the Windows GTK+ libraries and the Windows version of Gnocl
installed, and TclTk 8.4, of course. Detailed instructions can be found
in the Windows Gnocl package available at http://gnocl.sf.net/.

I've given up on the Windows port of the ncurses module for now. Does
anyone need it?? The only ncurses-alike library on Windows that I could
find, pdcurses, still lacks the menu and form libraries, so I'd rather
spend my time porting Qt/Q instead. If anyone else manages to get the
ncurses module working on Windows then please let me have the patches so
that I can include them in the next release.

Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

[q-lang-users] Q 7.9 + QCalc 1.0

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Hi all,

I have just released Q 7.9. Bugfixes only. The official 1.0 release of
QCalc, a spreadsheet frontend to the Q interpreter, is now also
available (and included in the "all-in-one" Q package).

No Windows build yet, I first want to see whether I can port the Qt/Q
module. :)

The website hasn't been updated yet, but you can get the new stuff
already in the download area at sf.net:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=96881

Enjoy!
Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

Re: [q-lang-users] Q/Qpad 7.8 bug with Unicode on Windows?

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Albert Graef wrote:
> This is the real issue here, thanks for reporting. Apparently the Q 7.8
> lexer loops when it tries to read past an illegal UTF-8 character near
> eof. I'll fix this asap.

This is fixed in cvs now.

I'm currently putting together a bugfix release (Q 7.9), did anyone
notice any other things to be addressed in this release?

Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

Re: [q-lang-users] ANN: QCalc

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

RC8 is out now. This candidate is now feature-complete and is slated to
become the official 1.0 version soon.

RC8 has the following new features:

- Shift-F3 now opens a multiline cell editor. Handy for complicated
formulas.

- The new task window element allows you to render graphics and
animations inside a table cell. I also added a convenience function to
plot diagrams from spreadsheet data using gnuplot
(http://www.gnuplot.info/).

Please refer to the QCalc manual for details. In particular, the new
gnuplot interface is described here:

http://q-lang.sourceforge.net/qcalc/qcalc.html#gnuplot

And here's the link where you can download the sources again:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=96881&package_id=251927

Note that to make the gnuplot interface work, you'll need the very
latest cvs version of gnuplot, available from
http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=2055. For your convenience, I've
also made rpms for this version available, you can find these as
gnuplot-4.3-1*.rpm here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=96881&package_id=106009

Also, to make the mplayer.qcalc example work, you'll need the very
latest cvs version of the Q interpreter which fixes a bug in the
interpreter's atfork handler. I've also uploaded new rpms as
q-7.8-7*.rpm which have been built from this version; you can find these
here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=96881&package_id=103965

Cheers,
Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

Re: [q-lang-users] ANN: QCalc

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

RC7 now fixes an annoying segfault in the cell editor routine, and adds
two new passive GUI elements to display formatted text and pixmaps.

>> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=96881&package_id=251927

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

Re: [q-lang-users] ANN: QCalc

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

I've just uploaded RC6, which has a bunch of additional bugfixes. I also
added a new "browse" mode which makes it much easier to browse the table
and make selections when there are editable GUI elements like comboboxes
and spinboxes, and the MIDI I/O example is now more or less finished.

If anyone noticed any bugs which are still in the latest candidate, then
please let me know asap so that I can try to fix them before the final
1.0 release. TIA.

> http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=96881&package_id=251927

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

Re: [q-lang-users] Q/Qpad 7.8 bug with Unicode on Windows?

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Dear Rob,

> the Unicode support on Windows XP seems to be broken. I've tried using a 
> Unicode source file, but Q will not import it.

That's correct, usage of the BOM (byte order mark) at the beginning of
an UTF-8 file is not portable, and in fact for good reasons many
Unix-compatible tools will choke on it. To quote from the "byte order
mark" Wikipedia article:

"While UTF-8 does not have byte order issues, a BOM encoded in UTF-8 may
be used to mark text as UTF-8. It only identifies a file as UTF-8 and
does not state anything about byte order.[1] Quite a lot of Windows
software (including Windows Notepad) adds one to UTF-8 files. However in
Unix-like systems (which make heavy use of text files for configuration)
this practice is not recommended, as it will interfere with correct
processing of important codes such as the hash-bang at the start of an
interpreted script. It may also interfere with source for programming
languages that don't recognise it."

Maybe there's some option to turn the BOM off in notepad? I haven't checked.

> I've tried Q7.7, and upgraded to Q7.8. The latter behaves slightly 
> worse, as it hangs.

This is the real issue here, thanks for reporting. Apparently the Q 7.8
lexer loops when it tries to read past an illegal UTF-8 character near
eof. I'll fix this asap.

> Qpad doesn't like Unicode files either, but shows the files as 8-bit. (I 
> assume Qpad doesn't support Unicode yet.)

That's also true, and it probably never will (Qpad uses the simple MFC
editor widget which is rather limited and only supports ASCII). As soon
as Qt/Q has been ported to Windows, the current Qpad will probably be
replaced by something portable and much nicer. :)

Thanks,
Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

[q-lang-users] Q/Qpad 7.8 bug with Unicode on Windows?

[Rob H. <hub...@gm...>]

Dear Albert,

the Unicode support on Windows XP seems to be broken. I've tried using a 
Unicode source file, but Q will not import it.

I've tried Q7.7, and upgraded to Q7.8. The latter behaves slightly 
worse, as it hangs.

I've not tried this before, so I don't know if it was broken in earlier 
versions. I've tried running in Cygwin/Bash as usual, but also in a 
plain DOS box; the behaviour is the same.

I've appended the outputs from the runs below.

Qpad doesn't like Unicode files either, but shows the files as 8-bit. (I 
assume Qpad doesn't support Unicode yet.)

[This problem is *not* urgent for me. I just thought I'd try it out of 
curiosity.]

Best wishes,
Rob.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In DOS or Cygwin/Bash with Q7.7:

$ q
  ____
 / __ \    Q interpreter version 7.7 (i386-pc-mingw32)
/ /_/ /    Copyright (c) 1991-2007 by Albert Graef
\___\_\    http://q-lang.sourceforge.net

This software is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
License version 2 or later; type `copying' for details.

==> import empty_Unicode
Error empty_Unicode.q, line 1: parse error at or near symbol `+'
! Error compiling script

==> import empty
Error empty_Unicode.q, line 1: parse error at or near symbol `+'
! Error compiling script

==>

[where the `+' is shown in a DOS box *like* a "Box Drawings Double Down 
And Left" U+2557; that's probably just one of the DOS/Windows-specific 
characters from the non-7-bit (non-ASCII) part of the set.]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In DOS or Cygwin/Bash with Q7.8:

D:\q\Unicode> q
  ____
 / __ \    Q interpreter version 7.8 (i386-pc-mingw32)
/ /_/ /    Copyright (c) 1991-2007 by Albert Graef
\___\_\    http://q-lang.sourceforge.net

This software is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public
License version 2 or later; type `copying' for details.

==> import empty_Unicode
Error empty_Unicode.q, line 1: parse error at or near symbol `+'

[note the hang.]

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The <empty_Unicode.q> file contains the following hex bytes, 
representing a UTF-8 header and a newline.

EF BB BF 0D 0A

Re: [q-lang-users] ANN: QCalc

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

RC5 is out now, featuring more bugfixes and optimizations. Bulk updates
with calclib::matrix and friends are *much* faster and smoother now, and
I also improved the handling of asynchronous messages in realtime
applications.

For those interested in realtime applications using qcalc, I also added
a new example midiio.qcalc which illustrates asynchronous MIDI I/O with
qcalc. (This is still preliminary and only does MIDI input right now.
Also note that you'll need MidiShare and the Q midi module to make this
example work.)

Here's the download link again:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=96881&package_id=251927

Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

Re: [q-lang-users] ANN: QCalc

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Albert Graef wrote:
>> For your convenience, I've also uploaded a current cvs snapshot. You can
>> find that here:

... and RC4 is out now. More bugfixes, two new active GUI elements, and
I also updated the documentation and added a chapter on the programming
interface. See:

http://q-lang.sourceforge.net/qcalc/qcalc.html

As before, the latest cvs snapshot is available here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=96881&package_id=251927

With the new task button element, it's now really easy to set up
background processing for bulk updates of table cells, as illustrated in
calendar.q, and in fact you can do *any* kind of asynchronous processing
with or without user interaction quite easily (a simple example showing
this is the "countdown" button in guiexamples.q).

In addition, the action buttons allow you to set up any kind of custom
action to be executed just by clicking on the button. The result
returned by the Q expression associated with the button becomes the
value of the cell containing the button. guiexamples.q contains two
simple examples for this, a button which produces random numbers when
clicked, and an "open file" button which invokes the Qt file open dialog
to obtain a filename from the user.

Enjoy! :)
Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

Re: [q-lang-users] q-lang-users Digest, Vol 18, Issue 1

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Hi Koray,

and to everyone else who wants/needs Qt/Q and QCalc on Windows...

> That QCalc things, ahem, looks so cool my brain went into a kind of paralysis for a minute as I skimmed the "preliminary documentation" page. When do we, Windows XP suckers, get it? :)

Well, unless some kind soul ports Qt/Q to Windoze for me, it'll probably
take a while before that happens. :( My current TODO list looks like this:

1. Do some cool computer music stuff with QCalc. (I want to show this at
the Linux Audio Conference early next year.)

2. Port Qt/Q and the applications including QCalc to Qt4 on Linux. (I
don't expect major obstacles with this, but it probably won't happen
before Xmas.)

3. Port Qt/Q and the applications to Windows (using the Windows GPL
version of Qt4).

4. Port the Q core and as many of the modules and applications as
possible to 64 bit systems. My current plans are to do that some time in
Spring next year, and I expect this to take a few weeks at least.

(4) is *really* important for Q's future development, now that Q is
being picked up by distro maintainers, so it might even happen before
(3). It all depends on how quickly I can finish (2). While I don't use
Windows myself for anything else than porting Q, I do see the need for
(3), since alas many ppl can't or don't want to kiss Windows good-bye
yet. I think that the Windows port of Q is actually pretty decent
already, but obviously having Qt/Q and QCalc work there would make Q a
real killer scripting language for Windows, so I'll make sure that this
happens in the not-too-distant future. (If anyone wants to give a
helping hand in porting Qt/Q to Windows, please get in touch, that would
be greatly appreciated. ;-)

Cheers,
Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag

Re: [q-lang-users] ANN: QCalc

[Albert G. <Dr....@t-...>]

Rob Hubbard wrote:
> As you know, with me being a lazy Windoze user, I tend to wait for the
> pre-built Windows installer to be made available.

That could still take a little while. :( First I need to port Qt/Q to
Windows, and then QCalc needs to be ported to Qt4 (which is the only
recent Qt version available as OSS on Windows).

> Is there any draft documentation I could read yet, or a rough spec of
> what is required?

Well, I still need to write a section on the programming interface for
the QCalc manual, but for the time being the QCalc API is documented
quite extensively in calclib.q itself.

I'm also not sure yet what would be nice to have concerning better
integration of qcalc and the ratutils/polynomial stuff, or if we need
anything along these lines at all. But for some of the more advanced
functions of these modules, which require a bunch of parameters, it
might be nice to provide some simplified convenience functions to make
them easier to use inside a spreadsheet.

Cheers,
Albert

-- 
Dr. Albert Gr"af
Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany
Email:  Dr....@t-..., ag...@mu...
WWW:    http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag