|-------------------------- Acorn News Service --------------------------|
| http://www.acornusers.org/ans/ |
| ISSUE 54 2 April 2000 |
| |
| An independent fortnightly newsletter for the Acorn world. |
| Send your news items or comments to ans@acornusers.org. |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Featured site this issue: http://www.acornusers.org/education/ |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
Contents
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1) General News
2) Commercial News
3) PD/Shareware News
4) Club News
5) ANS information
General News
------------
1) RISC OS in education mailing list
A new mailing list has been created to enable discussion of the use of
RISC OS systems in education. To join the list send an email to:
teach-request@rougol.jellybaby.net with "subscribe teach" in the body
of your message.
Commercial News
---------------
1) HTMLPro Demo available for download
A demo of Levens Software's HTMLPro is available from
http://www.levens-software.co.uk/software/projects/htmlpro/demo/.
HTMLPro allows HTML to be created with OvationPro, and costs GBP29.95 inc
VAT and P&P for a single user, or GBP49.95 for a site licence. It copes
with all styles and text effects in OvationPro as well as all currently
recognised graphics formats in OvationPro.
Also Levens Software are offering OvationPro for GBP135 inc VAT to
existing Impression users who want to upgrade, a GBP15 discount. Anyone
purchasing OvationPro from Levens Software also receives HTMLPro.
http://www.levens-software.co.uk/
2) Kiyeko and the Lost Night
Kiyeko is the lead character in this eco-friendly electronic story book
brought to RISC OS by Interconnex, featuring 8000 original illustrations
over 220 on screen interactions, and 45 minutes of original music.
Supplied on a CD-ROM, with a RISC OS driver disc, Kiyeko is unique to the
Acorn platform in that it is in five languages, so may also form a part of
a combined studies of Amazonia, Modern Languages and more.
Kiyeko and the Lost Night is available for GBP15 plus VAT and postage from
Tau Press Ltd. http://www.acornuser.com/kiyeko/.
3) DrawWorks Millennium only GBP16.50
For a limited time only iSV Products is selling DrawWorks Millennium
at the reduced price of GBP16.50 for a single user version, and GBP31.50
for a site licence version.
DrawWorks is the award winning vector and bitmap graphics package, and
also includes over 2100 fonts and 1000 clips, as well as Mr Clippy, the
clip art manager, and a host of other DTP related applications.
http://www.isvproducts.co.uk/.
PD/Shareware News
-----------------
1) Isparpsoft
Isparpsoft is a small software company writing software for RISC OS
computers, and is now fully online at:
http://www.isparp.freeserve.co.uk/isparpsoft.html
Software available for download on the site includes:
* Misnomer 2.06, a combination utility with a font manager, menubar,
screensaver, backdrop changer, character set, clock and more...
Further details are available on the website.
* PPCD, a CD Player program, storing disc titles, artistes, track
names, etc. with all the usual shuffle, program, repeat options.
* Timer, a phone call timer intended for calculating costs of Internet
calls, allows use of different call bands, and informs you when the
minimum call cost has been exceeded so you can make use of those
minutes you've already paid for.
* Multi-ISP, a utility to allow you to set up many different ISPs when
using ANT's Internet Suite and switch easily between them. Gives
independent selection of the ISP to dial into and that to fetch mail
from.
2) New software summary
* CleanJPEG, desktop version of jpegtran
Optimises, cleans and repairs JPEGs.
http://www.sliced.co.uk/software/cleanjpeg/
* Draw2eps, convert Acorn Drawfiles to EPS
A freeware command line program that produces Encapsulated Postscript
files from Drawfiles for import into StarOffice, LaTeX etc. Platform
independent source code and RISC OS, Microsoft Windows, and ARMLinux
versions are available.
http://www.ee.ed.ac.uk/~pmh/ART/Draw.html
* FullNames, RISC OS 4 Filer extension
Display the full name of any files which have had their long file name
truncated by the new RISC OS 4 filer, just by moving the mouse pointer
over the icon.
http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~ajb121/fnames
* Jclean, lossless JPEG transformations
Desktop front end for the command line utilities, jpegtran and wrjpgcom.
http://www.dacha.freeuk.com/free/
* Jsize, JPEG information
Displays the pixel size, pixel density (ie probably scanned resolution)
and size in inches and centimetres of any JPEG dropped on it.
http://www.dacha.freeuk.com/free/
* PrivateEye, image viewer
Image viewer for Sprites, DrawFiles, JPEGs, ArtWorks and GIFs, which can
view any number of images simultaneously, and supports drag-box zooming.
http://www.sliced.co.uk/software/privateeye/
* Shanghai, classic game
A freeware desktop version of the classic Chinese game of patience. You
must remove pairs of tiles in order to clear the whole board in the
quickest possible time.
http://www.vigay.com/riscos/games.html#shanghai
* Table UI handler
A pre-beta of a GPL licensed Table UI handler for RISC OS. Source code
and a precompiled demo is available from:
http://www.ribby.cwc.net/planetrib/stpr.htm
* TBase, database engine
A database engine disguised as a C library, which can handle very large
databases. Retrieval of data is very quick due to the efficient usage of
indexes. The library is supplied with documentation, example programs
and all (extensively documented) sources.
http://topix.student.utwente.nl/beta/tbase/
http://www.dse.nl/~topix/
* Transient, temporary storage directory
Provides an icon on the icon bar to which you can drag objects for
storage. A new directory is created every day. Source included.
http://www.sliced.co.uk/software/transient/
3) Updated software summary
* ASM v4.06
A freeware ARM assembler. This version fixes a bug and includes a minor
enhancement to allow constants to be redefined.
http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/tigger/programs/misc.html
* FTPc v1.27
Freeware Internet File Transfer Protocol client. Fix bug from v1.25.
http://www.c-granville.freeserve.co.uk/
* Packdisc v0.12b
A small utility which tries to increase the amount of free space on your
harddisc by rearranging some files in a certain directory. New frontend.
http://members.tripod.de/mortara/comp/packdisc.htm
* Png2Spr v1.32
Convert PNG to/from Acorn Sprites. Better handling of sprites without
palettes, and addition of command line interface.
http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/ttehtann/
* RiscPCB v0.42
Freeware printed circuit board designer. This upgrade fixes a few bugs,
and adds initial support for gerber RS-274 X.
http://www.idealist.demon.co.uk/soft.htm
* SESType v2.01
A freeware typing course. Bug fix.
http://www.ee.ed.ac.uk/~pmh/ART/Type.html
Club News
---------
1) Upcoming meetings
* Suffolk Acorn Risc Club, 5th April - AGM
http://www.archipel.demon.co.uk/SARC/
* Derbyshire Acorn Risc Club, Monday 10th April - RiscStation
http://homepages.enterprise.net/julianp/darc/
* Southampton Acorn Users Group, Monday 10th April - Mijas Software
davehigton@FreeNet.co.uk
* Essex Acorn User Group, Tuesday 11th April - FireWorkz Pro
http://www.wattys.fsnet.co.uk/eaug.html
* German Archimedes Group, 6th & 7th May
http://www.gag.de/
ANS Information
---------------
1) Contact ANS
Editor - James Sears - james@ans.acornusers.org
Webmaster - Stephen Courtney - stephen@ans.acornusers.org
Translator - Michael Gerbracht - michael@ans.acornusers.org
Founder - Eytan Abrahams - eytan@ans.acornusers.org
Life-Webmaster - Richard Hesketh - richard@ans.acornusers.org
ADL Moderator - Paul Johnson - paul@ans.acornusers.org
2) How to send in news
To send in your news items simply e-mail ans@acornusers.org, or use the
form on the ANS website http://www.acornusers.org/ans/newsdesk.html.
Also if you have an Acorn related announcements mailing list, feel free
to subscribe ans@acornusers.org.
3) How to subscribe to ANS
If you are reading this on the ANS web site, or have received a forwarded
copy of ANS and would like to subscribe to the mailing list, simply send
any e-mail to ans-subscribe@ans.acornusers.org. Alternatively use the form
on the ANS web site at http://www.acornusers.org/ans/subscribe.html.
For details of other commands e-mail ans-help@ans.acornusers.org.
4) Fetching web pages via e-mail
If you do not have web access you can fetch any URL referenced in ANS by
using the KFS web by e-mail service. To use this free service send an
e-mail to www@kfs.org with the subject header "send ". For example to
fetch the web by e-mail service information page send an e-mail like this:
From: youraddress@example.com
To: www@kfs.org
Subject: send http://www.kfs.org/web-by-mail.html
------------ Acorn News Service, http://www.acornusers.org/ans/ ------------