Counting on QL Abacus

ZX Computing

J.W. Penfold Bernard Babani Books £2.50 The books published by this company are many and varied, all small in size and low on price, and Mr. Penfold is their pet QL writer having also produced Into the QL Archive, An Introduction to Programming the Sinclair QL and An Introduction to QL Machine Code. Plus sundry other works of note. So the author knows his stuff, but how does he communicate it in his book? Well first of all it is worth looking at who he has written it for, and a good indication for things to come is that he tells us without any delay in his preface. "This book is designed to introduce the complete beginner to the use of spreadsheets in general and Abacus on the QL in particular." Well, I may not be an expert, but neither can I be classed as a complete beginner, so after reading the book I let a friend who qualifies as a complete beginner read it. From my point of view it was very easy to read, demonstrations and examples were well chosen and helped to clarify the text. Added to this, the straightforward, factual approach did not make me feel that the author was talking down to me. The book consists of seven chapters and a two page appendix which covers the version two amendments. The chapters are pretty clear from their headings: What is a Spreadsheet?, First Practical Example, Mathematics Cut Down To Size, Accounting Examples, Technical Examples, Using Printers and Import and Export, The last being a brief explanation of how to use data with the other Psion programs. There are a couple of interesting practical examples, eg. a credit card calculator and a monthly cash account, and each is developed in a step by step fashion with detailed explanation all the way. So how did my friend get on? Well, he came back and proudly showed me his masterpiece created on Abacus, he had found no problems getting to grips with the book and was quite enthusiastic. Up till now he hadn't bothered with Abacus because he didn't see any point to it in relation to his own needs. Now he claimed he had a few ideas on how he could make use of the program and his first effort, which he was stuffing under my nose for approval, was a printout of his school timetable (he is a teacher). Perhaps not the use envisaged by either the program authors or Mr. Penfold, but perfectly valid. If you have difficulty getting to grips with the QL Abacus manual then this is a superb introduction, though it you have already mastered the basics of Abacus then the book may not provide anything new.