The nqtspss options described above can be specified in three different ways:

Command line options are prefixed with a hyphen (–) and consist of a single identifier letter and, where applicable, an option value.

You can negate boolean command line options by appending a hyphen to the option. For example, to retain the original codes which correspond to the element’s position in the axis, use the –c option. To negate this property, thereby not retaining the original codes of the element, use –c–.

Options specified using the QTSPSSRC environment variable have a similar format to command line options. The difference is that you use semicolons to separate the options rather than spaces. Also, you do not need to enter a hyphen preceding the option.

For example, on UNIX running the Bourne shell, you could add the following line to the profile file:

On Windows, you could add the following line to the autoexec.bat file:

Options specified in an options file have the same format as those specified using the QTSPSSRC environment variable. The advantage of using an options file, however, is that the file can contain multiple lines, each of which can be up to 127 characters (any characters that exceed this length are ignored).

Quantum processes these options in the following order:

nqtspss takes the last specification of an option letter, or, if none are specified, the default. For example, if an option on the command line contradicts an option in an earlier-specified options file, nqtspss processes the command line option and ignores the one in the options file.