Linus Torvalds' 1986 Sinclair QL code listing

Re:Linus Torvalds' 1986 Sinclair QL code listing by pmjordan on Thursday July 17, 2008 @03:09AM (#248304)

Well, according to the first couple lines of the article, GMOVE stands for "Graphic MOVE". Further down it talks about pixels and graphics, x/y coordinates and leveys/korkeus which I take to mean width/height. (I don't speak Suomi, so that's about as far as I got)

Also, in the bold part in the middle of the first column, it gives the calling syntax:

GMOVE (#ch),x1,y1,l,k TO x2,y2

All of this evidence leads me to believe it's a blitting function. As for how it's implemented, I have no idea - looks to me like the DATA statements basically contain Sinclair QL bytecode. Anyone got a disassembler handy for that platform? ;-)

Out of interest, does anyone know what the (#ch) might be? The rest of the parameters are obvious.

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Re:Linus Torvalds' 1986 Sinclair QL code listing by hschenker on Thursday July 17, 2008 @03:28AM (#248308)

> Onko joskus tullut eteen tilanne, jossa olisit halunnut siirtää osan ikkunasta toiseen paikkaan? Homma ei onnistu ilman oheista Basic-laajennusta. Se lisää QL:n käskysvalikoimaan GMOVE-käskyn, jolla voi siirtää grafiikkaa esimerkiksi piirto-ohjelmissa.

Here's one attempt at an awkward translation of the introductory paragraph:

"Have you ever come across a situation in which you would have wanted to move part of a window to another location? Your task won't be successful without expanding the set of Basic instructions. It adds to QL's selection of commands the GMOVE command, with which you can move a graphic, for example, within a drawing program."

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Re:Linus Torvalds' 1986 Sinclair QL code listing by pmjordan on Thursday July 17, 2008 @03:34AM (#248312)

Thanks for that. So it is indeed a blitter routine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitter

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