ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/AALP/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, ARM Assembly language Programming
ARM Assembly language Programming
Alligata Media
Contents
Chapter 5 : Assembly programming principles
Chapter 6 : Data structures
Alligata Media
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/ARM/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, ARM development systems
ARM development systems
Dave Holden
This article began when I decided to try to find out what development boards with ARM processors were available. In this context 'ARM' means a RISC processor which uses the normal ARM instruction set that is used for RISC OS, so processors designed or manufactured by other companies such as Intel, Samsung, etc. would be included. The main idea was to discover how much hardware already existed in the 'real world', who was actually producing it and whether any of it could be suitable for use with RISC OS.
I was also interested in what devices were already available using ARM processors where RISC OS might be used.
Note that in neither case was I particularly concerned with the practicality of actually getting RISC OS to run on any of these devices. I was only concerned with whether there was any potential opportunity for promoting RISC OS as an operating system on them and whether this could open up any new niche markets.
Where are they used?
It soon became obvious that ARM processors are used almost exclusively in embedded systems and portable handheld devices. Here their low power consumption, low cost and ease of programming give them an advantage over CISC devices such as the Intel xx86 range.
We are probably all aware that ARM processors are widely used in things like laser printers, network devices and mobile phones. However, there's not much of a market opportunity for RISC OS in this type of device. One of the great strengths of RISC OS is its user interface and WIMP, and this isn't really suitable for very small screens. Even if it were possible to get RISC OS running on some of these devices there would be little point in doing so as the normal user interface for them is a series of text menus, which is much more practicable with such small screens.
The older type of small PDA, such as those pioneered by Psion, has now almost vanished as their functionality (and much more) has been absorbed into mobile phones. However, there are quite a few larger handheld devices with bigger screens where RISC OS might be used to advantage.
Moving up slightly in size we come to what are normally referred to as sub-notebooks. This looks more interesting. Their screens are large enough for the RISC OS WIMP to work reasonably well and they normally have processors with enough power to enable it to run at usable speed. However, because they are normally regarded by users as a 'small computer' people expect them to operate smoothly and seamlessly as a portable extension of their desktop computer. That would be fine if their desktop computer was also running RISC OS, but since it's far more likely to be using Windows or Mac OS we're back to the old problem of compatibility. Yes, there is potential in this area, but it would require a lot of work to persuade customers that they should pay the inevitable premium for running a 'foreign' operating system when the standard version of these machines will already come with most of the software they would normally need.
Development systems
Having had a (very) brief look at where ARM processors are used in consumer devices we now come to development systems. These systems allow a developer to test basic functionality and algorithms before committing to the design and building of an actual prototype. Many of them are also intended to be used in actual production systems where the numbers involved are too small to make it worthwhile to produce a dedicated board. This is extremely interesting, because it indicates where the industry itself expects the processors to be used. By looking at the systems that are offered, and the numbers of them in use for development it is possible to get some idea of the type of devices that companies are working on.
I'm not going to give a whole list of web sites and describe dozens of devices, you could easily find them for yourself. However, a good starting point is the UK site Direct Insight. Here you will find a number of development boards and other software and hardware tools, plus links to many other suppliers in the same field.
An example of what is available is the ADI Engineering 80200EVB. This uses the Intel 80200 733 Mhz XScale processor on a small board with various I/O and on board FPGA SDRAM and 4Mb of flash RAM, and all for around £400.
The ADI section of this site also shows the Tungsten development board, which is essentially Castle's Iyonix mother board. Unfortunately I couldn't find any prices and when I went to the actual ADI web site I couldn't find any mention of it.
Another useful site is Innovate Solutions. They show a number of interesting devices including the Tungsten board but the link to the datasheet appears to be broken and, once again, no prices.
One very interesting device shown is the Accelent Devkit from Vibren Technology which uses a 400 Mhz Intel PXA255 XScale processor. This is intended as a development board for small handheld devices and comes with a variety of I/O ports and a 7.7 inch full colour VGA LCD touch screen and a keyboard. The info for this says
"The Accelent DevkitIDP can be used to develop personal assistants (PDA), wireless web pads, set-top boxes, Internet audio and video devices, kiosks, point-of-sale (POS) products, hand-held devices and a wide variety of vertical market devices."
This is a very useful looking kit. It's the only one I've found where I got the feeling that if RISC OS were running on it there ought to be a niche market somewhere for it. The data sheet was available as a PDF file so I have included this in the Software directory for this issue.
Cogent Computer Systems are another company that supplies a number of development boards for ARM 7, ARM 9 and X-Scale processors. They specialise in small boards for embedded systems, one of which is the CSB226 which also has a 400 Mhz PXA255 X-Scale. There are all the usual input/output facilities and it also has an on board 800 x 600 LCD controller and, like the Accelent DevkitIDP, has facilities for direct connection to a 640 x 480 colour TFT touch screen. Prices for these boards are around £500, and others start at less than £150 one off.
Conclusions
It seems that no-one is contemplating using ARM processors for the sort of devices which would equate to a modern desktop computer. This is partly because even the fastest and most powerful processors just can't compete in raw power with the Intel and AMD processors designed specifically for that purpose. However, it has to be said that the people like Intel, Samsung, etc. that make ARM processors have almost certainly realised that the main strengths of this type of architecture doesn't lie in this area. The real market for these chips, and it's a huge market, is for the type of portable device already described, and here low cost and low power consumption are more important than processing 'grunt'.
There is a potential market for RISC OS in this area, but probably not for the sort of RISC OS we are familiar with. These devices would require a lot of 'under the bonnet' work to produce a new and more modular RISC OS. Acorn foresaw this many years ago with their Galileo project, but this never really got off the ground and now that there are so many other small, lean operating systems designed especially for this field and Unix derivatives ready to step in where a more 'computer like' system is required I wonder if it's going to be too late for RISC OS to compete.
Not so long ago the idea of having a dedicated computer to control a light display or model railway would have been quite impractical with a computer costing towards a thousand pounds.
However, you don't need a Pentium 4 or Omega to do a job like that as the amount of computing power required is quite limited. An A5000, A7000 or even an A4000 would be perfectly adequate for the job. In fact even older machines could be used but if lacking a hard disc or high density floppy drive (or serial port as in the case of the A3000) they tend to be a bit inconvenient. The real advantage of using these older Acorns is that with the operating system in ROM you can just turn them on and off you go.
You could use an old PC but anyone who has ever had to restore on old 486 will know that you normally have to install MS-DOS (or some other DOS; where DOS could stand for "dreadful old slop") from floppy followed by a million floppies for a tatty version of Windoze and then you have to locate all the necessary drivers for the video card, network card, sound card and so on and you can still expect it to die at regular intervals. So turning an A5000, say, on and having it ready almost instantly would seem a good bit better!
As you can now pick up an A3020, A4000 or A5000 for next to nothing (e.g. advertise on the Cybervillage notice board) then suddenly having a dedicated computer to do a simple job is very affordable if not free.
If you want to use the computer to control some external devices, though, you will need some extra equipment and some software to run it.
The extra equipment you will need is mainly a thing called a "buffer box" which can handle input devices such as switches and sensors and output devices such as motors, lights, buzzers etc. An old buffer box, such as the Deltronics Control IT box for the BBC micro can often be picked up cheaply if a school is disposing of them and be connected to the serial port of an Arc courtesy of the Deltronics (www.deltronics.co.uk) serial adaptor. Alternatively it could be connected to the printer port and a user port but to get a user port means you would need to source a podule which has one on. If you can find one it may well be free but I suspect many have been lost to local tips in the last few years. You will need to be careful that the buffer box you use can handle the voltage you want. Typically they are 12 volt or 6 volt or both but a Fischertechnik one may be 9 volts. In this article, for controlling motorised models a 12 volt supply is needed.
Hence you are probably better off using the serial adaptor with a second hand buffer box meaning you have a connection set up as shown in Figure 1 (though relative sizes are not correct obviously!) However if you are lucky enough to source a box that is designed to connect to a serial port this adaptor will not be necessary, though this type tend to be pricey.
The last piece of the jigsaw is software to drive the buffer box. There have been a number of these available but my particular favourite is Flowol 2 from K.I.T.E. (Keep IT easy) and marketed by Data Harvest. This software is still available for RISC Os computers as well as for PC and Mac users. Flowol works on a flowchart basis and is therefore very visual in terms of seeing what your program does whereas ones which work from lines of code are less easily checked and interpreted. While it tends to be marketed for education it is nonetheless a powerful piece of control software that will work with a wide variety of different interfaces and buffer boxes.
It is up to the individual imagination as to what you may wish to automate but I am going to give examples for controlling electrified models. In the examples given there would be various switches or sensors that constitute the "inputs" and other items such as railway points or signals could constitute the "outputs". Usually a buffer box has motor outputs too though it will depend on the box what power can be delivered to a motor.
In this example input 1 is a pressure pad switch located under the track of a motorised model London tube train (available from www.metromodels.net) and outputs 1 and 2 are a set of red and green signal lights. A simple automation would have the signal green for a train in the station, then when the train pulls out it would wait for the pressure switch to be turned off (when the train has gone) and turn the signal to red for a set length of time. A simulated picture of this is shown below.
The Flowol 2 flowchart for this is shown below (note how Flowol allows you to annotate your chart to help make it easier to follow.
The second example is to change the points so alternately a model goes one route and then another. Outputs 1 and 2 operate the points switch and the inputs are magnetic proximity switches where a magnetic disc on the base of the model passes over a sensor inlaid on the route in an appropriate location.
Flowol has a range of commands and a number of flowcharts (20) can be running simultaneously. It allows you to simulate the chart on screen to check it works. If the buffer box supports it, Flowol can respond to both digital and analogue inputs.
There are various inputs that can be attached to buffer boxes, such as push switches, light switches, magnetic proximity switches, tilt switches and pressure pad switches. They can be bought from a variety of suppliers including Deltronics (www.deltronics.co.uk) and Commotion (www.commotiongroup.co.uk). You can connect a variety of outputs as long as they suit the output voltage. What you actually want to automate is then up to your imagination.
The examples here are just to give a taste and very sophisticated "programs" can be set up to control complex operations. The flowchart elements are like building blocks and you can use just a few for a simple operation or far more for a set of inter-dependent complex operations. A tutorial is downloadable from the
Mike Battersby
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/BUSNSS/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, In business with RISC OS
In business with RISC OS
Dave Bradforth
With our DTP item coming to a close, David Bradforth asked the next question: how many of you use RISC OS in a business environment? Again, his inbox was overflowing...
One of my favourite parts of Acorn Publisher were the case studies Mike Williams would write. Identifying the ways in which different industries make a commercial use of RISC OS, these features would certainly inspire those of us using the machines at home to look at commercial uses for our favourite machines.
It was, while reading these back issues, that I started to wonder how people made use of RISC OS in a business sense. Hence, early in February, I posted the following to comp.sys.acorn.apps.
From: david.bradforth@alligatagroup.co.uk
Date: 10 Feb 2005 05:10:52 -0800
Local: Thurs, Feb 10 2005 5:10 am
Subject: In business with RISC OS
Hi,
I'm preparing an article looking at the different options for those looking to run a business with RISC OS, and am thus opening the floor to those with experience in such matters.
Which software applications do you use on a daily basis, and why?
Why RISC OS above Windows or Mac OS?
Any difficulties experienced, and how you got over them?
That sort of thing.
I'm going to provide an overview of the applications available, both freeware and commercial, and hopefully sort out some deals so anybody who needs that sort of thing can get them a little cheaper (for a limited period, of course).
If you've got screenshots/illustrations, more the better - don't leave any personal business data on the screen though... sharing your bank details with hundreds of other users is never a good idea.
Dave Bradforth
After posting this, I went to sleep expecting that, within a few hours, I'd have a couple of responses. As it turned out, the couple of responses became 20 or so via email, and the beginnings of a 400+ comment newsgroup posting that is still going as I write today.
This time, we'll focus on the replies that came directly to my email, if there's suitable interest next time we'll dig through the newsgroup chain and highlight any other points that have yet to be made here.
The first response came from Russell Hafter.
Russell runs a holiday company, the main thrust of which seems to be walking holidays in and around Germany.
Key applications he makes use of include EasiWriter, Pipedream, Pluto, Masterfile (even though it crashes far too often) and ArcFax. Given that Masterfile is now (even in its most recent form) eleven years old, we're inclined to believe it's amazing that it works at all, and would recommend an alternative database such as DataPower for business use.
When updating websites, Russell makes use of things like ChangeFSI and InterGIF which is quite understandable. ChangeFSI and InterGIF both give you immediate access to the settings necessary on images allowing you to easily alter the dimensions, save the file in various different formats and generally provide the functionality they do without any thrills. If all you need is a quick job, you often appreciate the tools that let you do it quickly rather than requiring multiple mouse clicks.
Russell continues to make use of a number of program he wrote in BASIC or COMAL (on the BBC B) for processing holiday bookings, and producing VAT records. The ability of BBC BASIC has never been in dispute for the ease at which you can produce complex utilities without fuss; but nowadays there seems to be a certain snob value attached to the use of it. Given that more software than you'd think is written in BASIC, there really should be no such snob value.
One area that Russell has given up on RISC OS is web browsing. He says, 'I have largely given up on RISC OS for web browsing - I need to access far too many sites that use lots of Javascript, Java, weird framesets and so on. I also use Windows for all Internet banking - in the UK, Germany, France, Belgium and Switzerland'. Unfortunately, I'd have to agree. If in a business sense you need to make daily use of the Internet, you'd probably have difficulty catering for all of your needs with RISC OS software.
Russell makes use of Acrobat in preference to !PDF or RiScript, though he does make use of RiScript for producing PDF versions of documents such as booking forms, that people can then download from the various websites.
He continues to use RISC OS as his main work machine because of the programs written in BBC BASIC, and that he didn't want to have to start all over again. While his web browsing is on the PC, his email goes through RISC OS - and as a result he needs not worry about Windows e-mail viruses.
As for coping with Word and Excel documents, these days EasiWriter copes with 99% of the former; and ViewXLS deals with the majority of the latter.
The next response came from Chris Bell at Highpath Engineering.
Chris Bell runs Highpath Engineering, a company that from the sound of its name you'd think runs TurboCAD on a PC. His software of choice, ProCAD - every aspect of his business is run using RISC OS software; from manufacture (ProCAD+, ProCAM and EGGrings (custom software) to publicity (Impression, WebWonder, et al); internet (Fresco, Pluto et al) to accounts (Resultz) and more besides.
Why? Simply because everything does the job and, in the business sense, that's pretty much what you're looking for. The best tool, for the best job.
We've had many similar comments, so we're going to continue through them in the next issue of RISCWorld. Some of them have scope for on-site visits so we can see the RISC OS use in action, and that will certainly aid to the visual element of a RISCWorld article.
In the meantime, contact us with your own RISC OS in business experiences.
Dave Bradforth
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/BUSNSS2/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, In business with RISC OS
In business with RISC OS
Business software for RISC OS users
If you'd like to run a business using RISC OS computers, you'll need to find software to help run the business. In the first of a two-part piece, David Bradforth identifies a number of potential candidates.
It doesn't matter which computer you're using within a business, you'll always need certain types of software to ensure that you're able to cope with your day to day needs. Whether it's sending letters, receiving emails, producing product, or what have you, we're lucky in that many users are still finding ways to make RISC OS meet the majority of their business needs and hence keep a commercial market open for such products.
In this article, I'm going to identify a selection of programs that we currently have, then expand it to cover those that would be a nice addition to the RISC OS platform (in one form or other). The aim is simply to provide a roundup of essential business applications; if I've missed anything I do apologise, but then the aim of this piece will have been met - you're looking out for yourself.
Business Accounts
Whichever form of business you're in, you'll need to complete accounts otherwise there's certain people who will pretty much take what they believe they're owed.
For RISC OS users, there are two choices. Enterprise and Prophet.
Industrial Logic presents Enterprise Accounts. Note the URL for the website - it won't work otherwise.
Enterprise, originally released by ACP in 1995 and currently available through Industrial Logic, is a suite of utilities that compliment each other with the aim of making the management of your business accounts as trouble free as possible.
It features integrated Sales, Purchase and Nominal Ledgers; prints reports, invoices, mailing labels and even goes so far as to provide Stock Control and Payroll facilities albeit only in a Professional edition (and so not supplied in the standard version).
We've not seen the program ourselves, but would welcome comment on it from users - anything useful will make its way into the next issue of RISC World. At £150 or £200, the features of the program may go some way towards justifying the cost but it's a lot of money to spend on a program that's not seen active development for some years. Further details are available at
Accountz.com - evolving into the PC market but still supporting RISC OS
Prophet Professional 3+, on the other hand, has seen development and is actively supported by its author despite the company having moved on to produce PC and Mac software (which is obviously worth a little more money to them at the end of the day).
Legendary for the clarity of its documentation, Prophet is the no-nonsense way to complete accounts on a RISC OS computer without having to worry about complications due to technology; and we'd recommend its purchase in seconds. Visit
For comprehensive payroll, HardCash exists but we cannot at present find the website (which used to be hosted on ArgoNet). Are any RISC World readers aware of the current state of play with this product? If so, let us know so we can pass the detail on to others
Word Processing
Rather an essential requirement for anyone. If you're in business, you'll be writing letters, proposal and pretty much anything that requires formal communication or contracts signing will require the input of a word processor at one point or other. So how do you deal with the task of opening Word documents within RISC OS
Icon Technology: publishers of EasiWriter and TechWriter
Look no further than EasiWriter or TechWriter. Published by Icon Technology, these programs benefited from the publishers' contract to produced an NC word processor that opened Word files and gained the functionality themselves.
They're not perfect by any means, and while some people swear by them I personally find EasiWriter a pain to use at times but there's no doubt that these are your best options for opening foreign files within the RISC OS environment.
Further details are available at
Spreadsheets
If you've got numbers to crunch, then you'll need a spreadsheet with which to crunch them. For a long time, Eureka from Logotron was favoured as it supported the direct import and export of Excel files. Okay, it was Excel 4 and the program isn't available anymore but it was starting to show signs of being a true crowd pleaser of a spreadsheet.
The situation today is much less straightforward. Schema II is currently under an extensive program of development, with the aim of adding direct file support for Excel files without the need to use the HTML converter. This will make things easier for those files that didn't co-operate properly with the HTML export and in a business sense simplicity is pretty much key. Visit
The Abacus Training website. Find a price... bet you can't...
As supplied with the Iyonix PC, Fireworkz Pro is still available. Since being taken on by Gerald Fitton, FireWorkz has continued to evolve and today offers a very good spreadsheet and word processor all in one. Unfortunately, the database portion was a variant of DataPower and I understand it has since been withdrawn. For further details, but unfortunately not a price, visit
Finally, ViewXLS is an essential addition to the RISC OS based business; as it allows you to view Excel spreadsheets. Hopefully this can one day be incorporated into another spreadsheet with the effect that we can both save and edit Excel files in their current form. We shall see.
Next time...
We'll conclude next time with a look at software for email and the Internet, and databases. If there's a demand for us to do so, we'll also take a look at recommended hardware to help you get the most of a RISC OS based business, whether it be scanners, memory upgrades or anything else.
If you've got any comments or points to make, please email me -
Dave Bradforth
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/COMPO/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, Competion
Competion
Win copies of the latest books from Alligata media
WIN COPIES OF ALLIGATA's NEW BOOKS
Alligata has copies of Basic V: A Dabhand Guide and The ARM Assembly guide up for grabs.
To celebrate the launch of Basic V: A Dabhand Guide, we've got a copy of this and the previous guide to ARM Assembly up for grabs. Basic V was serialised in RISC World during volume 4, and we're currently updating it again to be relevant to BBC BASIC for Windows as well as Basic VI; while the ARM Assembly guide is being serialised at present.
To be in with a chance of winning, simply name the author of Basic V: A Dabhand Guide, who was formerly the editor of Acorn Publisher magazine.
Send your answer to editor@riscworld.co.uk.
The first correct entry out of the bag will win the prize. The editors decision is final and no further correspondence will be entered into. Final closing date for entries is the 15th of April 2005. Employees of APDL and contributors to RISCWorld are excluded from entry. Copies of the books will be mailed directly by Alligata Media to the luck winner.
All rights reserved. This program is licensed for use on a single computer by a single user.
This version is supplied for the use of RISCWorld subscribers only.
FontFX was conceived and written by David Coronel, based on certai
ideas and coding examples from Acorn Computers' 'RISC OS Programmer'
Reference Manual' and Computer Concepts' 'FontDraw' application supplie
with their 'Impression' Document Processor.
FontFX has its own full HTML manual and has a shorted text only on-lin
manual. To get the on-line manual whilst FontFX is running, bring up its ico
bar menu and slide across the first option ('Info') - an 'Info box
will appear, giving the name and purpose of the application, a copyrigh
message and the date and version number. In the top right hand corner i
an icon that looks like the letter 'i': if you click on this icon, th
on-line manual will appear. For more details about the facilities withi
the on-line manual program, read its own on-line manual - you can d
that right now if you wish! Just click MENU on top of this text, an
slide across 'Info', then click on the 'On-line manual' icon at th
bottom of the info box.
What's New in FontFX 6
For those who may have owned earlier versions of the program, here is a list of the new features in version 6.
New effects:
Border effect - gives characters a separated outline (as opposed to the integral outline defined by outline colour and width
Rainbow effect - fills each character in turn with a different colour. The sequence can be from 2 to 16 colours long
3D shadow effect - gives characters a 3D look
Grow/Shrink effect - makes the characters bigger or smaller within the string
Enhanced effects:
Colours - can now be chosen from a colour picker box giving 16 million possibilities instead of 16
Shadows - can now have their length and direction freely defined. Also, the effect of shadow + arc or circle has been improved
Improved operation:
A toolbox makes creation, saving and resetting easier to achieve
Compass controls make angle and direction settings simpler to change.
Example window helps visualise rotate/slope/lean settings
Swap case, create/save and save settings keyboard shortcuts are available
Many 'under-the-skin' improvements to make the program slicker, smoother and more compatible with other products
History of FontFX6 Versions
v.6.00:
First release
v.6.01:
A small problem with colour picker windows was corrected. If you selected a
outline colour, but no fill colour, then switched on rainbow effec
(i.e. selecting valid fill colours), and then tried to switch off th
outline colour, it wouldn't (because the last fill colour was 'none')
Now you can select no outline colour if rainbow is on and the las
fill was 'none'. If you do this, and then switch off rainbow, fil
colour will revert to the last valid fill colour before 'none' wa
selected.
Fixed a bug in colour picker windows. If you tried to change the R, G or
values by typing in a value, the computer would hang. Should have rea
PRM page 5-243 more carefully...!
Fixed bug when using Bi-directional Circle with leading or trailin
(multiple) spaces.
New in V.6.02:
Bug fixes:
If a colour in the rainbow sequence was white, and you switched on th
border effect with no separate outline colour, those letters which wer
white would be invisible. The 'gap colour' should be black in thos
cases: this is now so!
If you saved a default choices file that switched on rotate, slope o
lean, FontFX would crash, because it would try to display the exampl
for these facilities before the main window was open. The opening of th
example pane is now only actioned if the main window is already open.
New features/cosmetic changes:
Border effect now obeys the outline width setting, to get thicker borders. Outline width and its arrow icons are therefore ungreyed when the Border effect is selected, even if outline colour is none
The colour of the gap between the border and the character can now be specified by the user, using the normal colour-picker window method. If the same colour is selected for the gap as the fill colour of the characters, FontFX will automatically choose an alternative gap colour (the normal gap colour EORed), which is shown as a small triangular flash across the icon showing the selected gap colour. The BE script command now takes the gap colour as a suffix, e.g. \BE &FFFFFF00
The amount by which the text grows and shrinks can now be specified as a percentage for the Grow/Shrink facilities. The script language stores the value as part of the command, e.g. \GR 4
Arc/Circle direction and internal shape settings are now displayed as textual descriptions, and are altered using the menu button method, as with stencil size. As a result, the sprites for these settings have been removed from the Sprites and Sprites22 files
Rotate/Slope/Lean have now moved above Arc/Circle (with which they were mutually incompatible in any case). The Rotate/Slope/Lean example window still appears over the Arc/Circle settings as before
The text start point for the Circle effect can now be set using the angle compass. The old \CI script command is therefore replaced by new commands \CA, \CB and \CC + , akin to the \AA and \AC commands. Script files containing \CI commands will still be understood
Because of the increased use of the angle compass, FontFX now remembers separate angle values for each of Rotate/Slope/Lean, Clockwise Arc, Anti-clockwise Arc, Clockwise Circle, Anti-clockwise Circle and Bi-directional Circle. When you switch effect, the last angle setting for that particular effect is restored
New in V.6.03
A small number of fonts exist which do not have real spaces: that is
the space character contains visual data. Previous versions of FontFX
could not cope with this, believing all space characters to be blank
Version 6.03 now checks for visual spaces, and converts them correctly.
In order to provide a free 'sampler' program called FontFX6 Lite, th
structure of the program has altered to make it easy to update bot
versions simultaneously.
The complete DiscWorld line up
As per usual we have our collections of the latest RISC OS games and applications, as well as support files for this issues articles. So the full DiscWorld line up looks something like this:
DevBoard
Support files for our ARM board article.
DWorks
DrawWorks support files from the DrawWorks article.
FontFX
A full free version of FontFX for RISCWorld subscribers.
Games
All the games from this issues games world column.
Iyonix
Software from the Iyonix column
PD
All the latest PD, shareware and freeware releases from the PD column.
RiscCAD
Demo version of RiscCAD.
VICE
A copy of VICE (Versatile Commodore Emulator) Version 1.16 (32bit clean)
ToolBox
This contains two sets of Toolbox Modules. The Castle archive contains the latest 26/32 bit neutral system components, required if you want to run a lot of new software releases on 26bit machines (ie. anything that isn't an Iyonix). The RISCOS Ltd archive contains later and improved versions of a number of modules and is suitable for all versions of RISC OS from 3.1 onwards.
Aaron Timbrell
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/DTP1/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, DTP Bitmaps
DTP Bitmaps
Dave Bradforth
With the age of the digital camera well and truly upon us, David Bradforth takes a look at the options available in terms of bitmap graphics creation and editing; and provides an update on the situation of a leading RISC OS design program.
Last time we took a look at the options available in terms of page layout software and discovered that the leading program - Ovation Pro - is still very much a favourite for those actively using RISC OS computers; but then so is Impression. Although news on Impression-X has been slim to date, we're told that an update is due shortly - if we've got it, more news will follow next time.
News update
Since the last issue, the Cerilica Limited website has disappeared from the Internet. Visitors to
It's a shame as, so far as these projects go, Vantage had a lot of potential. It suffered more from the point of view of overhype - what it should be able to do; rather than what it could. Yes, the colour preparation system is unique and actually very good, but the user interface certainly lacked the key requirement of being intuitive and magazines have featured the program in terms of starting new articles only to cease almost immediately resulting in little in the way of supporting documentation.
It's the hope of this writer - and, indeed, of the rest of the RISCWorld team - that the RISC OS market doesn't gain further products in this fashion. With the size of our market at the moment that would be truly disappointing.
Anyway, moving on from this let's take a look at bitmap graphics software available for RISC OS. Never before has the launch of a computer resulted in so much new graphic design software than with the launch of the RiscPC series in 1994. For the first time, Acorn had produced a computer that was capable of creating true-colour (24-bit) graphics, and the developers were more than eager to do their bit in supporting it.
Much of this is still available, although by no means all of it. Here we're presenting a summary of the best out there.
DA's Picture (originally from Digital Arts, Germany)
DA's Picture was a relative latecomer into the RISC OS graphic design arena. Released by German company Digital Arts, and distributed by CGS Computerbild, it brought essentially the majority of the features of the Atari ST/Falcon version of the program to the RISC OS platform.
Located on the arcsite.de domain, instructions are available for DA's Picture in English and German.
With a wealth of features including filters, textures, colour blends and much; much more this program certainly is worth experimenting with - especially if you've got lots of RAM. Simply put, the more memory you've got in your computer, the better and faster it will be at editing digital images.
DA's Picture is available now, from
Photodesk
Long regarded as a market leader for RISC OS bitmap graphics packages, Photodesk Olympic is the latest and seemingly greatest version of the package. Boasting many key features expected from the likes of Photoshop, such as layers, filters and a wide variety of tools, the latest version works with the Iyonix PC thanks to the efforts of David Ruck.
To quote directly from the CJE Micros website:
PHOTODESK OLYMPIC is a bitmap editing package on the Acorn platform that has been favourably compared with industry standard graphic tools. True studio quality is available with enhanced quality tools and effects with extensive calibration, accuracy and previewing giving much improved productivity for the professional user.
Virtual memory is highly optimised for bitmap graphic processing and extensive hardware support is provided. A great deal of development effort has gone into ensuring that this truly professional solution retains ease of use, productivity and quality. Even small but thoughtful touches, such as the provision of left - handed tools have been implemented. The professional graphics designer as well as the enthusiastic dabbler will feel equally at home with this package.
PHOTODESK OLYMPIC is the professional version, which allows your work to be assembled in LAYERS. This means that the master image can be made up of individual pictures consisting of layers of colour and transparency - very like layers of acetate or film on a light box or overhead projector. The ability to layer work means that the functionality of the software is multiplied many times. PHOTODESK OLYMPIC also includes a sophisticated Colour Management System that enables the full-time graphics professional to properly handle colour separations (CMYK).
PHOTODESK OLYMPIC is now available at less than half the price of previous versions of Photodesk, the only difference being that it is on CD-ROM with an on-line manual. It is hoped in the near future to provide a printed manual as an optional extra. What is more, the new version includes all currently published Plug-ins at no extra cost.
Plug-ins (supplied FREE with PHOTODESK OLYMPIC):
Collection FX1 contains 10 plug-in applets that perform the following tasks: * Zoom blur * 3D ripple * Diffuse Map * Lens Map * Edge sharpen * Hatch stylise * Pixelise * Crackle * Outline glow * Spin Blur
Collection FX2 contains 10 plug-in applets that perform the following tasks: * Chrome * Posterise * Colour Contour * Twirl * Glaze * Raindrops * Dimple * Channel map * Median filter * Crystallise
Yes you read that correctly - Chris 'We have it in stock' Evans has taken over distribution of the Photodesk Ltd product range. This is to allow Chris at Photodesk to focus on his other business interests. While this could be a negative sign of development for the product going into a permanent hibernation, at least it does guarantee continued availability for the range.
Photodesk Olympic is £84 from CJE Micros.
The other two titles available are Studio 24 Pro, which has a lot to offer albeit with a complex user interface (£49) and Pro Artisan 24, which does away with the concept of complexity and aims for a clear and easy to understand user interface for the very reasonable price of £39.
Both of these are described in the APDL advert on this disc.
Dave Bradforth
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/DWORKS/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, A Secret History of DrawWorks
A Secret History of DrawWorks Part 2
Aaron
Last issue the DrawWorks story had reached the point where work was being undertaken on DrawWorks Designer, which was similar to DrawWorks2 but had a much improved user interface.
DrawWorks Designer
DrawWorks Designer took the idea, from the PC application I mentioned last time, of having two rows of tools, with the tools being shown on the bottom row determined by which tool was selected from the top row.
DrawWorks Designer
DrawWorks Designer provided a much simpler and more elegant user interface, and also presented the opportunity to fix a number of long standing issues with DrawWorks2. It also solved the problem of how to add new features to DrawWorks, as now there could be as many buttons as I liked. Among the new features were the PureTint colour pickers, which allowed the user to select from hundreds of in-built colours and to be sure that if they chose the same colour for two different objects they would match. At this point I approached Pantone about licensing the Pantone colour library, they were certainly interested, but I wasn't, mainly due to the massive licensing fees involved. So in the end we found a freely available colour system that was similar to the Pantone colours, but not quite the same.
At this time the idea of adding named colours also arrived. I was working on a number of designs for a customer and they all had the same basic colour scheme, and it wasn't in the PureTint range. So I decided that the best idea would be to allow DrawWorks to store a set of named colours so the user could choose them easily and quickly, but how to add the colour in the first place? The eventual solution was to take an existing draw object, in my case one of the logos I was working on, and get DrawWorks to extract the correct colour from the object and then store it.
This threw up another problem, how could you tell what named colour, or indeed PureTint colour matched the object? If you have a similar range of shades trying to guess on screen from a non colour calibrated monitor would be next to useless. So I also wrote code that could extract an existing draw object, and compare the colours in it to the named or PureTint colours and tell the user which one it was. DrawWorks Designer was starting to get quite complex and was ending up being a lot more than a visual overhaul of DrawWorks2.
Lots more new features were added over the coming weeks with an eventual release date decided by the date of the Acorn World Show. At the same time we were also working on other DTP related applicationsand one day I had a clever idea. Why not link the applications together? We were considering writing a simple clip art manager for DrawWorks, but we already had a full clip art manager by the name of Mr Clippy. Why not simply add a button to DrawWorks that allowed it to interface with clips stored in Mr Clippy. This line of thinking would greatly influence DrawWorks development in the future.
With Acorn World fast approaching a problem started to appear, the new DrawWorks was too big! It had to be usable on old RISC OS 3.1 machines, and so had to fit on an 800K floppy disc. We tried various different routines to pack the data, but it still wouldn't fit. In the end each file was gone through by hand removing any extra data that could be got rid of, then the whole application, with it's new on-line manual (based on our InformED manual generator) was compressed as heavily as possible. In the end we got it to fit in 799,186 bytes, which is a pretty full 800K disc!
So with Acorn World 97 upon us it was time to launch DrawWorks Designer. We took out full page, full colour adverts in the Acorn press in the hope we would get a few upgrades at the show, that was a bit of an underestimate. Within minutes of the show opening we were swamped with DrawWorks2 discs being returned for an upgrade. So far so good. DrawWorks Designer was on constant demo, until it crashed! Argh! Even though it had been through 3 months of beta testing with dozens of users a semi-fatal bug was still in place. It was quickly found after the show and an updated issued on the iSV products website, but it still really annoyed me.
As is often the case more minor problems started appearing and required fixing. Whilst digging around my old work files during the writing of this article I came upon the list of bug fixes and changes made up until the final DrawWorks Designer version 1.13:
Bugs fixed in version 1.11
Problem of extra copies of main toolbar appearing on screen tracked down to loaddwd_prefs
It re-loads a new template file and the old window gets stuck on screen - patched by closing old window first!
New mould finally added for 3DDesktop - used for DWD box cover drawing of the drawing board
Bugs fixed in version 1.12
Nasty bug - syntax error in filter library : caused by missing : ! - only effects some objects!
Problem of pressing cursor keys in path moulder fixed - pressing cursor caused moulder to start
Now only loads one copy of Draw with DrawWorks
Doesn't try and re-load templates after cancel in DWD prefs window - gets rid of "Not enough memory to create window"
Show print borders from prefs window now works correctly (button wasn't even checked!)
Grid lock button now works correctly (lock actually works but button did not come on)!
Floating tool bar no longer jumps in front of menus
Bugs fixed in version 1.13
Removing kerning from text with no kerning no longer causes text to vanish
pptr_menu strings added to toolbar buttons on all three user levels
ptr_menu sprites added to !sprites and !sprites22 files
No longer get black line at bottom of anti-aliased sprites/Giffs - problem was height being an odd number!
Font used menu from draw info now doesn't crash at odd times - fault was because the newfile% data block was getting discarded after opening the window!
Spelling mistakes removed from manual
Shared tools save box altered so text doesn't overlap using outline fonts
iKick application changed because logo got left on screen due to new window manager now the window is shut and a force_redraw is issued to clear the area.
Which only goes to prove that no matter how much work and testing you do, the only way some bugs surface is when a customer actually gets a product in their hands.
Work was started on a new version of DrawWorks Designer called Version 1.40, but I kept adding more and more features and making more and more changes. At the same time work was taking place on Typography 2100, our new font CD, and on a new copy of Mr Clippy, as well as on other DTP related applications. In the end so much had been changed that I decided that the only sensible thing was to release a new version of DrawWorks. This would no longer be on floppy discs but would be on CD, with lots of extras, the name would be DrawWorks Millennium. We had good reason for wanting a CD version with everything included, we knew that Vantage was being developed and wanted to make sure we could complete. I will cover DrawWorks Millennium development next time.
I have dug out a version of DrawWorks Designer V 1.13 and put it in the software directory in this issue, so you can see how DrawWorks had progressed from the DrawWorks2 we included last issue.
Aaron
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/EBAY/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, How to get the best deals on eBay
How to get the best deals on eBay
RISCWorld
Do you ever get frustrated when you don't win items in an eBay auction, or perhaps find that items sell for less than you wanted? David Bradforth offers some practical advice on getting more from eBay; in the way you want.
The key thing to remember with eBay is that it's an Internet Auction site and, as in a live auction, you have buyers looking for the best deals and sellers hoping for a bidding war to begin and hence the price of items to be driven up. There are ways for both sellers and buyers to get exactly what they want from eBay and, this month in RISCWorld, we'll aim to take a look at a few of them.
There's nothing fancy here at all - everything we've suggested needs no special software beyond your web browser and a little time to experiment.
Sellers
As an eBay seller, you are putting an advertisement out in the world. Just as it would in a newspaper, this advertisement needs to give a reasonably detailed account of what the product is you're selling, what you'll need to make use of it, any comments about the state of it and the price you're looking for.
Should it be an auction, or fixed price? You decide
If you're selling RISC OS related items, you're generally selling to people who know what they're talking about and are simply looking for a bargain.
Hence a listing that includes INTEL, SUPER CHEAP or BARGAIN in the title is likely to get less interest than one that simply explains the nature of the product you're trying to sell. For hardware, you should state the machine model (e.g. Acorn Risc PC 700), memory (32Mb + 2Mb VRAM) and hard disc space; then add '+ Extras' to add interest for the prospective purchase and make them read more of the listing.
Photographs will always help your items to sell - particularly hardware. It gives purchasers a chance to see the quality of the item before they actually place a bid on it; which will help increase the amount people are prepared to bid on high-value items. People need a chance to have some reassurance that they're not going to end up with something that should have been junked years earlier.
eBay does state during its registration process 'Caveat Emptor' - let the buyer beware. Which basically means that buyers need to make sure they're actually getting worthwhile product through eBay in general and they need to keep an eye out for worthwhile dealers who treat their customers correctly and offer responsible terms.
Buyers
For Buyers, eBay really is their market. As a buyer, when bidding on an item you should enter the maximum amount you're prepared to bid and go no higher.
Check the specifications of any item before you buy it. If you need any clarification about an item, email the seller before buying.
If you do come across an item that reminds you perhaps of something in your childhood, it can be difficult to resist the temptation to just buy it for the sake of childhood memories and nostalgia will often make us spend more than we should on items that perhaps do not warrant it.
Be strong; keep to your initial assessment of what it's worth and if you lose the bid don't worry - sooner or later the same item or similar will be back on eBay, and you may end up paying less than you would have done otherwise.
One thing you do not to be careful of on eBay is the authenticity of items; particularly with major film releases such as Star Wars III just around the corner. Interest is peaking again in Star Wars-related merchandise, to such an extent that replica light sabres from the first two films are fetching close to £1,000 on auction and have truly ridiculous buy-it-now prices.
They key term in that was replica - these are items that any fan can buy from a model shop for £50 or so at any time, and just because they were authorised by Lucasfilm it doesn't justify the phenomenal prices being asked.
It is very much a buyers market on eBay - sellers will only sell their products for the amounts that buyers are prepared to pay; and the key to success here is to be realistic about an items value. If you'd not have paid a certain amount for the item when it was new, why pay the same for it now?
Hopes for the future
There are a number of very useful utilities to make listing items on eBay easier; but none are available for RISC OS users and the web browser support could do with being stronger. We'd like to see RISC OS equivalents of the turbo listing tools; something that can make those of us using RISC OS have the same ease as our PC-owning friends.
We can but hope...
In the meantime here are my top tips for getting the best price if you are selling on eBay:
Set your auction to end in the evening, not in the day, often 11:45 at night works well
Think about your description, if you sell a RiscPC make sure the advert says Acorn RiscPC, it will be easier for people to find
Include a photograph
Answer any questions promptly and politely
Finally when you send the item to the winner bidder package it properly
..and for buyers:
Find auctions that finish when people are at work
Increase your bids by small amounts - you might only be £1 off being the winner
Don't bother with the buy now button unless you know it's a bargain
Don't just hunt in the correct groups, do a search from the main page. e.g. for Acorn
Keep looking, just like buses another similar item will be along in a minute
There was a discussion recently on Archive Online which related to !Dict, the dictionary program for RISC OS. The question was, was this an application that only ran on RISC OS, and was something that Windows PCs simply couldn't do. The short answer was no. PCs running Windows were just as capable of using a similar dictionary program, which provided similar functionality. This got me thinking, was there anything that RISC OS could do that the PC couldn't?
In the end I couldn't come up with very much; indeed many of the things I do now can't even be done on RISC OS, this editorial being an example. So why couldn't this be done on RISC OS? I'll tell you why, it's because I'm not typing it. Instead I am dictating this article to the PC using Dragon Naturally Speaking. I purchased a copy on eBay for the princely sum of eight pounds, complete with a headset. Okay it's not the latest version but it still does the job very well. I simply sit in front of the PC and instead of typing I just say what I like and the PC types it for me. Speaking to the computer is a bit strange. I remember playing with early voice recognition software under Windows 95 almost ten years ago. It was awful and made numerous mistakes and it was actually quicker for even a slow typist to type by hand rather than to use the program.
The lack of voice recognition for RISC OS isn't a fault of the operating system, it's simply that developing voice recognition is expensive and the small size of the RISC OS market means it isn't economically viable. It's a great shame as I'd much prefer to be dictating into OvationPro then into WordPad. There are other areas where RISC OS lags behind windows and other operating systems, for example browsers. Many sites on the Internet now simply don't work properly with RISC OS browsers. Again this isn't a fault of the operating system itself but simply an indication of the small size of the RISC OS market. What we really need is for someone to make a success of RISC OS outside the traditional desktop market and to be able to feed back development into desktop versions of RISC OS. As an example many mobile phones now support voice recognition, indeed a £49 phone I bought recently supports voice recognition for ten numbers. If RISC OS is going to succeed in new markets then it's going to need that type of functionality.
There are a number of things RISC OS does very well. In my view it has some killer applications. I'm thinking in particular of things like ArtWorks2, TechWriter, OvationPro and recently RiscCAD. The point is that although the things RISC OS does it does very well, there are too many things it can't do. If anyone is to make a success of RISC OS outside the existing desktop market then they going to need to address these deficiencies, unless there is a big market for RISC OS powered washing machines or toasters of course.
Editors Rant of the month
The following is about the vehicular faith, not specifically about computing.
What can I find to rant about this month? Well, to be honest, it's difficult to find very much. I had to buy four new tyres for the Shogun, and although they aren't small, they are quite cheap, coming in at just under £200 for the four including all the extras. They were fitted the day after they were ordered by a local tyre fitters who were quick, polite and helpful. The only thing I can really complain about is a long running electrical gremlin.
For some time now the Shogun has been getting increasingly difficult to start in the mornings. The battery is fully charged and the starter motor spins away, but the V6 just won't have it. The normal way for me to get the vehicle to go is to pop the bonnet and fiddle with the wires on the water temperate sensor, provided the ignition is switched on there will usually be a click, then the vehicle will start. Why fiddling with the temperature sensor made the vehicle start was always a mystery, but what the hell, as long as it worked.
Recently this trick has stopped working. Despite waggling the wires in the vain hope of success there was no click sound. The Shogun has a complex multipoint fuel injection system with a myriad of sensors, so in the end I had to dig out the wiring diagram, which showed no logical reason why the temperature sensor waggling should work. So I delved deeper into the Haynes manual to find out what was supposed to go click when the ignition was turned on. After half an hour if intense reading the answer was revealed, a servo mounted underneath the throttle body. I removed the nasty multiplug that connects the wiring loom to the servo and, oh look, the wiring is wrapped in the same section of loom as the temperature sensor, so if you pull the wires at the front the multiplug moves slightly. Inside the multiplug was a lovely collection of corroded contacts, which responded well to a quick attack of emery paper. I then reassembled it all, turned the ignition on and got a nice click and the Shogun started first time.
Next morning it wouldn't start. I will have another stab at it this weekend, but it teaches me one thing - electrical systems are very complex and finding the fault can be very time consuming. Even if the fault can be found, can it be fixed? Who knows, I don't, it's just a shame you can't fit a couple of SU's and ditch the fuel injection.
Printing RISC World
The new look of RISC World means that you will no longer get the yellow background when printing articles from RISCWorld. However you will still get the blue border on the left unless you turn off the printing of background images. The example below shows the print dialogue box from Fresco.
As you can see the option "No Background" is ticked. If you want to print out any of the RISCWorld pages and don't want to waste ink on a blue border then make sure you have clicked a similar option in your browser.
Aaron Timbrell
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/EXPO2005/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, Expo 2005
Expo 2004
The mainland Europe Expo 2005 previewed by RISCWorld
Once again the Big Ben club in the Netherlands is organising it's regular RISC OS show on Saturday the 18th of June 2005. As RISC OS enthusiasts in mainland Europe will know this is the only RISC OS show that takes place outside the UK. The Big Ben Club is the nationwide Dutch Acorn User Group and is very active in RISC OS circles.
The show will be held at the Expohall, Hotel Mercure, Buizerdlaan 10, Nieuwegein (near the city of Utrecht) and is open from 10 in the morning until 5 in the evening.
Map of the show venue
The Show offers exhibitions and promotions by various companies, including Dutch, German and British RISC OS dealers. A number of club members will also be on hand to offer demonstrations. This is an excellent opportunity for European customers to meet with companies based in the UK, as well as an ideal time for UK companies to be able to demonstrate their products face to face.
It's hoped that there will be a show theatre, although at the time of writing a list of speakers was not available. However the latest information can always be found on the club website at
The Expo 2005 offers a great chance for UK dealers to see their European customers, and for RISC OS users living in mainland Europe to try a wide range of RISC OS product before parting with any hard earned money.
All rights reserved. This program is licensed for use on a single computer by a single user.
This version is supplied for the use of RISC World subscribers only.
Introduction
How it works
How to use FontFX
Fonts
Font Size
Outline and Fill Colours and the Rainbow Effect
Outline Width
FontFX Special Effects
Shadow and Border Effects
Stencil Effect
Ripple and Jiggle
Column
Circle
Arc
Rotate, Slope and Lean
Grow and Shrink
Customising FontFX Start-Up Settings
ScriptFiles
Preparing Script Files for FontFX
The FontFX Command language
Layout of a script file
Summary
RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/GAMES/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, Games World
Games World
Paul Brett with the latest gaming news.
You may remember from the last issue that I said that the number of new RISC OS games was increasing. Well it's the same for this issue as we have a number of new games to tempt all RISC OS games, so what do we have new to look at this time?
BombScare - Andrew Clover
Andrew has recently released this as freeware on his website. To run BombScare, double-click on it. Alternatively, double-click on the levels directory, and double-click on any level set inside it. BombScare needs to save the highscores in the levels directory, so it's best to de-archive it first. To do this, simply drag !BombScare from the archive to a normal directory viewer.
BombScare
There are sixteen levels in each set. You must complete each in turn, by collecting all the bombs on it, before the time limit runs out and they all blow up. Before each level, you get shown a map and told a password. Press Return to skip through this, or Space on the map screen to start immediately. Remember the password for each level, and you can return to it without having to play earlier levels. To do this, press P on the main menu screen and type a password. To start at the first level, press Return.
For more details have a look at the !Help file supplied.
Inform
Inform is an Interactive Fiction (text adventure) game compiler, it takes source code you write and turns it into a game data file which is then played using an 'interpreter'. There are several interpreters available which can play Inform games on different machines. This is the latest 32bit clean version of Inform and will should run on all modern machines. You can find out more about Interactive Fiction from the
Jump'n'Bump - Really Small Software Company
This is a port of Jump n Bump. This is a fun multi player game for the whole family. You are cute fluffy little bunnies and hop on the other bunnies' heads. At the beginning you are in the menu, where you have to jump over the tree trunk if you want to play and walk right. Then you'll enter the arena. The aim is to jump on the other bunnies' heads.
Jump'n'Bump
Full source is included. Note that long filename support is required, although the game will run from the Archive.
The controls are:
a,w,d to steer Dott
arrows to steer Jiffy
j,i,l to steer Fizz
4,8,6 to steer Mijji (on the numeric pad)
Super Methane Brothers - Mark Paige
This is an updated RISC OS version of the Super Methane Brothers game. Puff and Blow each have a Methane Gas Gun which fires a cloud of immobilising gas. If this comes into contact with a bad guy he will be absorbed into the gas and then float around the screen for a limited time. Bad guys are harmless in this state. Puff and Blow must suck the floating gas clouds into their guns and blast them out against a vertical surface. Bad guys then turn into bonuses which can be collected. Be warned! - the gas cloud dissolves with time after which baddies become active again and extremely annoyed.
Super Methane Bros
The source code is provided. The GNU General Public License V2 applies to this game. The controls are shown on screen.
Battle for Wesnoth - Unix Porting Project
The Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy game with a fantasy theme. Players need to build up a great army, gradually turning raw recruits into hardened veterans. In later games, you can recall your toughest warriors and form a deadly host against whom none can stand! Choose units from a large pool of specialists, and hand-pick a force with the right strengths to fight well on different terrains against all manner of opposition.
The plot relates to your fight to regain the throne of Wesnoth, of which you are the legitimate heir, or you can use your dread power over the Undead to dominate the land of mortals, or lead your glorious Orcish tribe to victory against the humans who dared despoil your lands. Wesnoth has many different sagas waiting to be played out. You can create your own custom units, and write your own scenarios, or even full-blown campaigns. You can also challenge your friends, or strangers and fight multi-player epic fantasy battles.
Wesnoth
Build up a formidable fighting force, starting from a single leader and a small amount of gold.
Over 200 unit types in six major factions, all with distinctive abilities, weapons and spells.
Several multi-player options available, including internet play.
Scores of different custom-designed maps, and unlimited random maps.
Hundreds of campaign scenarios available for download via a simple in-game procedure.
That's all we have space for this issue, but we plan to have even more gaming delights next time.
Paul Brett
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/HUGHJ/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, The Hugh Jampton Experience
The Hugh Jampton Experience
Standing proud for the downtrodden masses..it's...Hedge Jumpedon
Thanks you...thank you...you're too kind, in accepting this award I feel it's only fair to thank my mother, father, brother and...oh, no award? Oh well, I suppose that means it must be time for Hugh's Caption Conundrum!
The caption competition
Last issue we published the following and asked our keen eyed readers to come up with a suitable caption...
So what was in my mail box this time?
"I thought you said Bach"
Alan Dawes
"My, that's a good face lift Rod. (Stewart)"
Alan Shooter
"I was doing this Office Works course & my I.T. instructor told me I needed to practice my keyboard skills"
Chris Newman
"Is this music badly printed or do I need glasses?"
Chris Newman
"I refuse to play "Kitten on the Keys"
Chris Newman
"It's Bach, silly. Not woof woof."
Laurence Simmonds
"It's woof woof, silly. Not Bach."
Laurence Simmonds
"It's the moonlight bone-ata"
Laurence Simmonds
"Don't shoot me, I'm the piano player!"
Laurence Simmonds
"The BBC announced cut backs in its music department earlier today."
Laurence Simmonds
"I can't really play the piano, Hugh Jampton made me do it!"
Laurence Simmonds
"You hum it, I'll play it."
Laurence Simmonds
"I prefer to stand, it's the only way I can reach the high notes."
Laurence Simmonds
"That dog is a real cool cat."
Laurence Simmonds
"And now some Bach (Bark)"
Matt Thompson
"I only do classical"
Harry Smith
However in the opinion of the judges there was only one entry that was destined to win...
"I've only started singing falsetto since the operation."
Chris Newman
So congratulations to Chris, absolutely nothing at all won't be winging it's way in the post.
Anyway keeping the doggy theme (based on the fact that I get more responses with cute animal pics) here is this issue's picture, can anyone think of a suitable caption?
Send your entries to HughJ@riscworld.co.uk and you too could become the envy of tramps everywhere.
Hugh's letterbox
Hello Hugh.
Hope you are good as our American friends might say. What about a competition on "Why I would like to win Hugh's caption competition".
Best regards
Harry Smith
What an excellent idea, so why don't we have two competitions this time, our usual caption competition and a second competition on why you would like to win the first competition. Points will be awarded for the silliest reason, so get writing! If we have enough entries then it will save me the effort of knocking out a column for the next issue, and I will still get paid! So email your entries to HughJ@riscworld.co.uk.
Hugh's picture gallery
Moving quickly on lets see what other fun packed pictures have been e-mailed to me recently...
Firstly one for cat lovers.
And now many a true word said in jest...
It's no good I am going to have to put in another cat picture...
A logo you won't be seeing round here...
Although I can suggest the ideal OS to run on it..
That's all from me for this issue, see you again in May.
Mark Rowan, our Iyonix columnist, has been ill recently and has been unable to write a column, so instead we are having a quick run down of news for Iyonix owners.
There have been two major releases of note for Iyonix owners recently, the first was that Castle finally announced the long anticipated upgrade to USB2 for all existing Iyonix computers. To quote the Castle press release:
Castle is pleased to announce that an upgrade to USB2 is now available for all IYONIX pc users. USB2 offers an underlying bit transfer rate of 480 Megabits per second (USB1 runs at 1.2 or 12.0 Megabits per second). Overheads and other limits in the system (and in the attached USB peripheral) mean that the throughput achieved for a given USB device will not usually be as high as the full 480 Megabits per second specification. Typical improvements in speed for USB2 devices (memory devices, scanners etc) attached to an upgraded IYONIX pc will be variable depending on a number of factors.
The USB2 upgrade is a software upgrade that runs on existing USB cards as fitted to all IYONIX pcs. The upgrade can be ordered on line for just £29.95 (delivery of the upgrade is supplied from our secure server and therefore an internet connection is required). Price includes VAT.
All new IYONIX pcs ordered on or after the 1st of February 2005 will be shipped with a full implementation of USB2. For further information please see:
!DRU-R100 released by Dave Higton
!DRU-R100 is an application to control a D-Link DRU-R100 radio. This is a small USB powered radio the plugs into the USB sockets on an Iyonix. !DRU-R100 will let you tune the radio, either in MHz or by station name, turn it on and off, and watch the stereo status.
You will have to input the station names yourself but !DRU-R100 makes it easy. If you put the app somewhere that is "seen" (booted) by RISC OS, then it should start up automatically if you have a DRU-R100 radio on your USB anywhere. It will also quit if the radio is unplugged, and start again automatically if the radio is plugged in again. The application is tested and working on an Iyonix, but should also work on any computer with a Castle USB expansion card.
You will need FilerHRun, which can be found in the Iyonix Software Directory on this issue of RISCWorld. Make sure you install FilerHRun where the author suggests.
!DRU-R100 is freeware, and is released under the GPL. This means that you are free, not only to use it, but to alter it if you wish. Please consult the file "gpl" inside the application, which details the terms of the license.
It's still getting smaller...oh nuts to rhyming it...
So lets start with more on the VirtualGolf competition saga...
Hi,
I have just been reading the new edition of RISCWorld. It has occurred to me that I have not received the copy of Virtual Golf which I understand I won in the competition from the previous issue. Could you please advise if it has been sent?
Thanks for continuing to publish an interesting magazine - I look forward to each new issue.
Kind regards,
Julian Benton
Ah, well you are asking the wrong person, although I edit the magazine I don't handle any production or dispatch of issues or prizes. I have forwarded your enquiry to a Mr D Holden in our complaints department who will be delighted to assist in any way that doesn't actually involve doing anything. After being poked with a fully charged cattle prod he has promised to e-mail you directly. It seems we have the games, but not the instructions, with a bit of luck this will be sorted out by the time this issue arrives.
I'm glad you enjoy RISCWorld, don't forget to renew your subscription for the action packed volume 6, coming soon to a wastebasket near you.
Now it's a response to our VirtualAcorn problem solving article.
VA and Disappearing directories,
I bought a RiscBook+SE at the Guildford Show from RComp. One objective was to use it to show slideshows produced on the KineticRPC. The images I get from my Olympus C920Z using the SmartMedia card. The RiscBook has a built in card reader. I also bought a USB plug-in floppy disc drive for transferring stuff from the KRPC.
As a totally non-MSPC user I have problems with Windows in any case, but in trying to transfer images from the SM card directly into VirtualRPC, files / directories were lost when I went back into Windows so that I could experiment with the picture display methods in there. My wife did a "search" and found them in very odd places. I am not now sure that I did not have oddities also when using the floppy drive.
On shutting down and starting in Windows and going to HardDisc4 there were the directories and images as originally set up in VRPC. This carried on as a mystery, but we decided to shut down the laptop every time instead of going back into Windows.
My wife decided to change the Windows background to something she liked better and one thing was immediately obvious. If turning on and going straight into VRPC to work, when shutting down to revert to Windows the background screen that appears is the original as set up by RComp. It is in here that the odd things seemed to happen. We now always open in Windows -the new background - then VRPC. When going back into Windows it is to the new screen and everything seems to be where expected.
We have not done recently the sort of investigations we did to start with so this may all be irrelevant!
Another small detail I have just become aware of is my tendancy to turn on and when the initial choice of screens comes up, to immediately select on VRPC to get it to load, which it does with varying levels of flashing screens. What I have been doing is to beat Windows being loaded properly, especially as the signs for this are not very obvious. From now on I must be more patient. I dont know if any of this is significant.
Eric Dobson
PS I have more major problems which I am raising on Archive-on-line.
Dealing with the problems in turn. If you or your wife finds a directory in an odd place then it's there because you put it there. I have seen this happen with laptop users who are not familiar with Windows on countless occasions. The first thing to do is buy a mouse and stop using the touchpad. What many users don't realise is the the surface of a touchpad not only acts as a mousing surface but also as a button. So you move the mouse around with the touchpad and can easily accidentally end up clicking on something and dragging it around. This is where the second problem kicks in; if you drag a directory from one place to another Windows doesn't copy it, like RISC OS does, it moves it from one place to another. My advice is get a mouse and I bet the problem will go away.
With regard to changing the Windows backdrop, your wife only changed the backdrop on one user account, which is why the other user account kept the original backdrop. As for "beating" Windows that isn't the problem. Most likely Windows is loading all sorts of stuff as well as VirtualAcorn, but you will need to ask R-Comp as they set up the machine.
Now moving on...
Dear Aaron,
In your rant, you connected two paragraphs with 'however'. Were the two events connected in some way? Is there something missing? Or are you trying to say that although it's easy to fit a new seat belt, the radiator can sometimes spring a leak? Or was it an 'act of God'? (I think we should be told.) By the way "Editors Corner" should have an apostrophe. The corner of the editor? Or the corner of editors? In which case there should be more than one editor in the corner. Otherwise it's "Editor's Corner".
Sorry.
Regards
A P Dant
(Aka Lol Simmonds)
Sorry, you are wrong. I've gone back and re-read the article and the "however" refers to the vehicle passing its MOT at the first attempt, seemingly providing some degree of reliability, and then going wrong shortly afterwards. I do however accept the comment about Editor's Corner, after all it's possessive, so I have corrected it for this issue, but reserve the right to mess it up again at some unspecified future point.
Dear Sirs,
I am running OS 4.02 on a Risc PC with 42MB RAM with Oregano and Webster and having difficulty accessing a number of websites, for example the Consumer magazine 'Which' website and the mobile phone operator O2. They throw up the statement that the browser is out of date and needs updating. I had a long argument with the Information Typist at 'Which' who said I should download all sorts of browsers for Windows and Macs but had not heard about RISC based computers - she knew nothing about them - and that I should upgrade.
Can you suggest how I can access these sites that do not follow the protocols of the WWW? Additionally I find eBay is incredibly slow to load and operate; suggestions please on how to improve the load up speed.
Regards
Nigel Price
Yes, I can make a recommendation - buy a PC and run FireFox. For those that don't like this suggestion then you do have a couple of RISC OS alternatives. Have you tried NetSurf? It's free and exceptionally good. Or you could upgrade what sounds like Oregano 1 to Oregano 2, although this will cost money. My bottom line advice though would remain to buy a cheap secondhand PC for a hundred pounds or so and use that. As for the speed of eBay this depends on your connection speed. I find eBay very fast, but then I am on broadband and am just over 40 feet from the local exchange.
Dear Aaron,
I agree wholeheartedly with James Regan's comments at the end of "DTP Experiences", although I'm not so sure about the cocoa. Tea is much better.
Regards
A T Drinker
(Aka Lol Simmonds)
Thank you, I think the point about cocoa is that it's a sleeping aid. I don't think Tea is, unless you get hit by the urn of course.
That seems to be it for this issues letters column. So to avoid this column being rather short next time why not write in to us what you would do with any well known RISC OS figure of your own choosing, a stake, a shovel, a crossroads and six months of spare time.
Aaron Timbrell
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/NEWS/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, News
News
The latest news from the RISC OS world
Foundation RISC User DVD Edition
Launched to coincide with issue 16 of the regular CD edition o
Foundation RISC User, the new DVD-ROM contains absolutely everythin
that Foundation RISC User has ever published, right back to issue 1
that's five full years' worth of magazines in total.
What's more, all of this material is comprehensively combined an
cross-referenced within a single attractive and very easy-to-us
HTML-based 'Web site format' magazine. The combined edition is mor
than just sixteen separate magazines on one disc; it's a carefull
integrated and indexed compilation of all the material in a singl
highly organised entity with multiple ways of accessing the articles.
Of course, the DVD edition continues to support Foundation RISC User'
unique and pioneering interactive presentation, in which a click on
special link within an article can cause software to launch from th
disc (so that, for example, clicking on an illustration of a Draw fil
causes the original vector graphic to be loaded immediately by Draw).
What do you get?
The Foundation RISC User DVD is packaged very attractively in a blac
plastic DVD library case with a full-colour disc label and sleev
insert; its front cover features a collage of the cover artwork fro
the sixteen constituent issues, and it will grace any RISC OS user'
software shelf!
As for the magazine content, Foundation RISC User has a tradition o
publishing particularly lengthy, detailed and authoritative article
of lasting interest and usefulness on a very wide range of topics
Subjects have included programming articles (for all levels o
expertise), graphics tutorials, behind-the-scenes guides to RISC O
software and hardware, plus fascinating special features on unusua
subjects, and the magazine has even published enhanced editions o
entire books.
All in all, there's a vast amount of material on the DVD: in storag
terms, there's well over a Gigabyte of data (and all of the softwar
is stored in compressed archives); in article terms, there are severa
hundred lengthy feature articles comprising well over a million words
Existing subscribers already know the value of the magazine, and ca
now get all of its previous content combined on one convenient dis
with enhanced indexing; non-members can now find out what they've bee
missing, even if it means that they have several months of readin
ahead of them!
Aside from all the articles, the Foundation RISC User DVD als
contains lots of other useful information, including a large archiv
of the best and most useful RISC OS free software, a database sectio
with many details about user groups, developers and products, and
comprehensive news section that contains a very complete record o
announcements, shows and user group events since the year 2000.
The news section and other time-based aspects of the DVD go up to th
end of the year 2004; as with all CD editions of the magazine, th
date on the disc indicates the latest date of the material containe
on it, which is why the disc is labelled "Christmas 2004" (rather tha
the launch date of February 2005). The FRU DVD is a five-year slice o
history which runs up to the end of the year 2004; but, of course, th
bulk of the material on the disc will be of interest and value for
very long time to come.
Who can buy it?
For the first time, as a special spin-off product from the regula
magazine, the Foundation RISC User DVD is being made available t
everyone, not just to members of the Foundation.
However, to be as fair as possible and to reduce the price t
Foundation members who have some or all of the material on the DV
already, a scale of charges is being implemented, so that the longe
you have been a Foundation member, the more cheaply you can buy th
DVD. No matter how much you have to pay for it, though, the DV
represents the equivalent of five years' worth of Foundatio
subscriptions, and is therefore tremendous value!
The prices have been set as follows (including VAT and UK postage):
Prices to Foundation members - The price decreases depending on the length of your membership:
1 year: £36.25
2 years: £29.20
3 years: £22.15
4 years: £15.10
5 years: £8.05
Price to Select members - £25.00*
Price to non-members of Foundation/Select - £43.30*
Also available are several hardware and software bundles whic
include the Foundation RISC User DVD:
DVD + 1 year's new Foundation membership: £70.50 * [save £12
DVD + 1 year's new Select subscription: £175.00 * [save £25
DVD + Adjust ROM set: £131.00 ** [save £27
DVD + 16x DVD-ROM drive: £73.00 **
DVD + 16x DVD-ROM drive + Adjust ROM set: £200.00 ***
Overseas postage
All of the above-quoted prices are fully inclusive of VAT and postag
to addresses in the UK. However, if you live overseas, please ad
postage according to your location and the number of asterisks agains
the price of the product you wish to buy:
EU
* 50
** £5.0
*** £9.7
**** £10.5
Zone 1 (USA, Israel)
* £2.2
** £6.1
*** £14.7
**** £15.0
Zone 2 (Australia, New Zealand)
* £2.5
** £6.1
*** £14.7
**** £15.7
Who can use it?
The Foundation RISC User DVD is a genuine milestone for the RISC O
platform, being the first native DVD-ROM. (The magazine's interactiv
features will only operate under RISC OS, though you can read th
articles on any DVD-equipped PC or Mac.)
An unfortunate side-effect of ploughing a new furrow such as this i
that not all current hardware is capable of reading the DVD. In basi
terms, you will need one of the following systems in order to mak
direct use of the Foundation RISC User DVD:
- A Risc PC with a DVD drive, running RISC OS Select or Adjust;
- Virtual Risc PC running on a PC with a DVD drive, running RISC O
Select or Adjust.
Other RISC OS computers fitted with DVD drives (and running a suitabl
version of RISC OS) may be able to use this DVD, but the above tw
systems have been tested successfully by RISCOS Ltd.
At present, the elements required to use a DVD-ROM disc under RISC O
are as follows:
1. A DVD drive to physically read the disc;
2. A version of RISC OS capable of supporting DVD drives. At presen
this means either RISC OS Select or RISC OS Adjust. RISC OS 4.0
and RISC OS 5.0x do not support DVDs.
Some Risc PCs supplied by Castle Technology included DVD drives fo
use as CD drives; if any such machine is upgraded with Select o
Adjust, it should be able to use this DVD.
Any machine that already runs Select or Adjust, but has only a C
drive, should be able to use this DVD if it is upgraded with a DV
drive.
For any users who wish to upgrade their computers with RISC OS Selec
or Adjust and/or a DVD drive, RISCOS Ltd is offering various hand
upgrade bundles; see above.
Ironically (given that the DVD was actually created on an Iyonix, an
is compatible with it in software terms), it is not currently possibl
to use this DVD on an Iyonix PC because RISC OS 5 cannot read DVDs
In the future, however, this is likely to change: once DVD-handlin
capabilities have been added (either by a future RISC OS upgrade o
via the forthcoming third-party Cino product), the FRU DVD will wor
very nicely on the Iyonix.
If you wish to use the Foundation RISC User DVD but do not want t
upgrade your computer, or you have an Iyonix, there are still othe
alternatives: if your computer is on a network with a PC or Mac, an
you are prepared to devote 1GB of hard drive space to the magazine
you can simply copy the entire contents of the DVD across your networ
and then run it locally from your RISC OS computer. This will provid
the most efficient performance in any case. The magazine itself ca
also, of course, be read on a Mac or PC; you will simply lose th
ability to use the RISC OS-only interactive features which involv
launching software from the DVD.
Richard Hallas, Editor, Foundation RISC User, RISCOS Ltd
RiscCAD price crash!
The latest version of
David Buck
Dobella Cottage
Station Road
Rawcliffe
East Yorks
DN14 8QT
Price £15.00
Note that this is the full version of RiscCAD and not a cut down, time
limited or restricted version. It is supplied with all the original
utilities, symbols, fills etc. This product originally retailed for £250.
There are minor additions to the version supplied by APDL/ProAction.
The main difference being the increased speed and a few bug fixes.
Due to the minimal cost, there is no upgrade path for previous users.
Users who require an upgrade should purchase the product again, probably
excluding the manuals.
It has been tested on Virtual Acorn, using RISC OS 4, and will work on
the Iyonix (with minor screen redraw limitations).
This is a single-user licence, users who require a multi-user licence
should contact the above for prices.
Payment
Payment is by cheque, PayPal or PO, made payable to David Buck.
Please send the user name and address when ordering, as RiscCAD will
be pre-installed before issue.
Delivery
Supply may be via an email archive, or floppy disk by post.
Customers who request it will be sent the email archive after receipt
of their payment.
Documentation
Please note, due to the offer price of RiscCAD, it is supplied with
NO DOCUMENTATION. The original Impression manuals can be supplied as
an archive via email or on disk for an additional £5. They cannot be
issued as printed bound manuals.
Support
Due to the low supply cost, no support can be offered.
A 12 month support contract may be purchased for £10.00
This will provide support via email.
Brief Overview
For users unfamiliar with RiscCAD, below is a list of the main features.
Fully window and toolbox driven 2D CAD system.
Large range of construction methods and object snaps.
Multiple drawings in memory.
Wide range of print options, including tiling.
Support for virtually any plotter via script driven output driver.
Rip-up-and-retry pattern filling. Unlimited hatches and patterns. Can
cope with multiple and nested islands, and trims patterns EXACTLY to
object boundaries.
Symbol viewer and managed symbol libraries (each symbol is loaded into
the drawing, not the whole library).
Drawing manager with drawing preview. Save directly to drawing store
from within RiscCAD. No need to drag-and-drop.
Automatic dimensions.
Area stretch, results shown dynamically as mouse is moved. Dimensions
updated after stretch - no re-dimensioning required
Press Comments
'The redraw speed of RiscCAD is remarkably swift...The software is reliable, throughout Acorn User's comprehensive three-month testing, RiscCAD did not crash or go wrong in any way.' - Acorn User
'What is so impressive with RiscCAD is not only the wide variety of drawing options available but the overall consistency with which all these features are implemented...As I have already indicated I am very impressed with the way in which RiscCAD has been implemented and with the wealth of features and functions available...if you are seeking the means to create highly accurate scaled drawings then I can recommend it without reservation.' - Acorn Publisher
A demo version of RiscCAD is in the software directory of this very issue, and RISCWorld urges you to try it as it really is an absolute bargain.
Aaron with some details of what's coming along in the next volume of RISCWorld.
Yes, once again it's time for me to write an end of volume, get your wallet out, preview piece for the next volume of RISCWorld. The next volume will mark the 6th year of RISCWorld, and all but three of the 31 issues so far (including this one) have been edited by my own fair (calloused - HJ) hands. So it's time for us to do our regular bid for your subscription funds.
Let us first of all see how we did with our election promises from last year. For those of you who remember we said we were going to do the following:
More Iyonix coverage
Publish more full commercial software
Publish commercial software not owned by APDL
Feature more reviews
Well we now run a regular Iyonix column every issue and we have also published a full commercial product with every single issue. On the surface we haven't done so well on publishing non APDL software, that's until you realise that APDL has been buying up software rights, just to give the products away with RISCWorld! This year we have given away WebFx3d, FontFX6, Rhapsody 3, Dr Fonty and TypeStudio. Three of these titles were not just part of the APDL back catalogue but purchased just for you, the RISCWorld readers.
Moving on to the reviews well it would be great to publish more reviews, but to review things we have to have a review copy. If we aren't sent a review copy, then we can't do a review and publish it. So, if you would like something reviewed in RISCWorld let us know and send us a (legitimate) copy, please no e-mails with "This is really cool, you should review it" with a commercial program attached.
We had a number of products we wanted to see 12 months ago, and a number of them have become realities, including RISC OS Adjust (the ROM based version of Select), the full release of GIMP Print and a new browser in the shape of NetSurf. Some things that we had hoped for, such as an X-Scale Omega, Impression X and an Iyonix II haven't appeared, but hopefully they will over the next year.
So anyway what have we planned for the next 12 months? Well lets see...
Introduction to RISC OS Adjust
From next issue we will be starting a series on RISC OS Adjust. The lack of a full user guide for the latest versions of RISC OS has been bought up frequently in other magazines and on-line, so we are going to try to do something about it and fill in the gaps.
Site Writer
We were hoping to publish this during this volume, but had so much software that in the end we decided to move it into the next volume, actually the next issue. Originally sold for nigh on £60 Site Writer is a super WYSIWYG HTML editor and webs site designer.
A mystery commercial game
Were in the negotiating stage with this one and hope to get the right to publish this on RISCWorld very soon, as for which game, I can't really say at the moment, but it will be worth the subscription price on it's own!
More real life case studies
Dave Bradforth has been out and about knocking on the doors of companies that rely on RISC OS. We will be publishing full case studies starting from the next issue.
A Secret History of VirtualAcorn
Want to know all the details about the story behind VirtualAcorn? Well in a short series next volume I will be spilling some of the beans on the history of VirtualAcorn, right back to 1998 when the idea for the project first formed.
Of course we will continue with our host of regular columns covering all aspects of RISC OS, we will carry on including the latest freeware and PD programs and games on each issue and we will carry on making RISCWorld even better.
We also have a potential new series, the draft of which I must admit made me laugh a great deal, but might upset a few people. The name of this potential new series is "The High Jampton Interview", a series of spoof interviews with the best known characters in the RISC OS market. With some toning down it might be possible to publish it, but I'm not sure, let us know what you think.
Finally for those that are interested, this issue is actually the biggest one yet, consisting of over 8Mb of article content.
Get your subscription in now
We have done our budget forecasting for the next year and have decided to keep the subscription rate the same as it has been for this year. So you can get an action packed bulging collection of six RISCWorld CDs for the lowly sum of £21.90 in the UK and £24.50 overseas. To renew your subscription by cheque credit card or debit card contact APDL.
By Post
RISC World Subscriptions, c/o APDL, 39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London SE26 5RN, United Kingdom
By phone
You can ring APDL on 0208 778 2659 (+44 208 778 2659 outside the UK).
By fax
0208 488 0487 (+44 208 488 0487 outside the UK).
By e-mail
By e-mail to subscriptions@riscworld.co.uk.
At a Show
APDL will be exhibiting at all the major UK shows this year, including Wakefield 2005 in May, although you will most likely have missed another issue of RISCWorld by then!
I hope to see you all again for Volume 6 Issue 1.
As a final threat, if you don't re-subscribe I will publish the photo of Dave Bradforth at the special Rocky Horror film screening, so you have been warned!
Aaron
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/PD/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, PD World
PD World
Paul Brett with the latest freeware and PD releases for RISC OS.
After last issue, where I covered some of the bigger freely available applications I thought that in this issue I would take a look at some of the recently updated or newly released utilities for RISC OS users.
GedText - Rob Hemmings
GedText is an application which produces a full report (in the form of a text file) of the entire contents of a Gedcom (family history) file. It was written to work with the files generated by the !Family application on RISC OS but should work with a standard Gedcom file produced by any family history application.
The most recent changes to GedText are described in a Changes file inside the application but are mostly bug fixes and improvements to the number of Gedcom tags handled. There is also some tidying up of the order of the output for each individual in the file. GedText is freeware but if you find it useful it would be nice if you could let Rob know. Suggestions for future changes are welcome and may even get implemented - depending on his available time.
GedText
SwiftJPEG - Andrew Hodgkinson
SwiftJPEG is a JPEG viewer for RISC OS and runs on RISC OS 3.1 through to RISC OS 5. To run on RISC OS versions 3.5 and earlier you have to load some support modules, as described in the manual. RISC OS 3.6 and later need no additional software.
SwiftJPEG provides a fast and convenient way to view JPEG images without using a lot of the computer's memory. On a RISC OS 3.1 machine with the relevant modules loaded, SwiftJPEG provides a chance to view images that would normally be far too large to fit in memory using the conventional mechanism of decompressing the image using something like ChangeFSI. On RISC OS 3.6 upwards, the Draw and Paint applications can both read JPEGs directly. Draw keeps the image as a JPEG, but Paint decompresses the image completely, which means a large JPEG can require a very large amount of RAM to be viewed. Neither application is designed purely as a viewer for images; both are designed as editors for other kinds of material. SwiftJPEG fills this gap.
SwiftJPEG
TVGuide - Jaffa Software
TVGuide comes from Jaffa Software, the developers of WimpWorks. The program logs onto the bleb.org/tv/ website which contains UK television listings for all major channels and radio stations. The resulting TV guide can then be displayed in a desktop window. Users will need the AcornURI modules, which are available from
TVGuide
ViNCe - Vincent Lefèvre
This is the latest version of the VNC client originally ported to RISC OS by Henrik Bjerregaard Pedersen. VNC allows you to see the display of, and operate, a remote computer over a network. I strongly recommend that users read the !Help file supplied as ViNCe needs to be used either from the command line, or using set up using custom written Obey files.
Wibli - Stewart Brookes
Wibli is an application designed to add extra toolbars to either EasiWriter or TechWriter. Wibli comes in two parts, the !ButtonBar application and the !Wibli application. In order to load the version of Wibli you want you need to double click on the correct !ButtonBar application first, then double click on the !Wibli application. Stewart warns users that if this is done in the wrong order things can go wrong!
When WIBLI is active, two buttonbars will appear when you open an EasiWriter/TechWriter document:
The Mini Bar (bottom left, sitting on the horizontal scroll bar
The Side Bar (running down the right-hand side of the screen)
Wibli and TechWriter
If your EasiWriter document is fully-maximised (i.e. fills the whole of your desktop), then the Side Bar may not be visible. If that's the case, then click with Select on the Green button on the Mini Bar, and the Block Bar will appear within your document. The Side Bar and the Block Bar are functionally the same. Clicking with Adjust on the Blue button on the Mini Bar will cause the Block Bar to close and the Side Bar to open.
The Blue, Red, and Green buttons on the Mini Bar perform the following functions:
Blu
Select: Open Find Ba
Adjust: Open Side Bar and close Block Ba
Red
Select: Open Table Editor Ba
Adjust: Open Function Keys Ba
Gree
Select: Open Block Ba
Adjust: Remove all open Bars *except* the Mini Ba
The 'WIBLIguide' provides a key to the functions of all the buttons and buttonbars, and explains how to customise what opens and when. Interactive Help is also supported.
LaBella - Ray Favre
We covered LaBella in the last issue, however there have been a couple of further updates and a new version (4.10) is now available. I have put a copy in this issue's software directory.
That is all we have time for this issue, see you for the first issue of the next volume!
Paul Brett
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/RISCCAD/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, A quick introduction to RiscCAD
A quick introduction to RiscCAD
Aaron gives a brief introduction to RiscCAD
I was going to review RiscCAD for this issue of RISCWorld, but now I am not. Why? Well that's an excellent question so let me attempt to answer it. David Buck has recently released a new demo version of RiscCAD, having taken over the sales from APDL, along with some updates to the full versions, he has also slashed the price down from £59 (which is the price APDL used to charge) to just £15. That's right just £15; as a friend of mine would say.
So can I, in all honesty, review a full featured CAD package that you can buy for well under £20? What could I possibly say? Is it worth the money? Of course it's worth the money, it's a steal at this price, even if you don't every do any CAD work. Sorry? Even if you don't do any CAD work? Yes, because after you have user RiscCAD you will want to do some, even if it's just "playing" with possible designs for a new bathroom, or in my case garage.
Anyway back to the story, I have been e-mailing David Buck over the last few weeks and one of my first questions was "could we put the demo version on RISCWorld?", he would be delighted. So I downloaded the new demo version and hit a couple of small snags. Firstly I tried to select a drawing tool, and I couldn't, surely the demo can't be that restrictive? Well it isn't, what I needed to do was click inside the new blank drawing window to bring up the crosshairs, then I could select tools to my hearts content.
RISCWorld gets the measure of RiscCAD
The next snag came when I wanted to actually start drawing. I clicked on the circle tool, positioned the centre and held down to drag, but nothing was happening. When I let go a circle appeared in the wrong place, help! Actually what I should have done was clicked once to set the center of the circle, moved the mouse and then clicked a second time to draw the circle. This set me thinking, if I am having these problems surely some other trying the demo will also have similar problems.
So I e-mailed David Buck again and asked him about documentation. He replied that the demo comes without a manual, but supported Interactive Help, which indeed it does. This set me thinking, I knew that APDL had HTML manuals for a number of packages, did they have one for RiscCAD that had never been released? The answer was yes. It would need some tidying up but we could certainly include it in RISCWorld, provided David Buck didn't mind. So I asked him.
No, he didn't mind at all. So here we have it. A full HTML version of the RiscCAD manual along with a demo version of the program to try out. So why aren't I going to review it? Well in my view I simply don't need to. Try the demo version yourself and I am totally convinced that you will be hooked and want to get the full version, so to sum up...
So here's why you should try RiscCAD.
It's in the software directory in this issue
we have supplied a complete manual and a technical reference guide
It's the best RISC OS application I have seen in quite some time
After you have played with the demo here is why I think you should buy a copy.
It's a fully featured CAD package
It is packed with useful features
It's being actively updated and supported
It's an excellent package that gives a lot of much more expensive software on other platforms a run for their money
You won't be able to live without i
If I was reviewing it it would get six out of five. Oh, and of course it's only £15, did I mention that?
A full single user version of RiscCAD can be purchased for £15 from
An Impression copy of this manual can also be obtained for only £5 at the time of ordering.
Postal Address for ordering is:
David Buck
Dobella Cottage
Station Road
Rawcliffe
East Yorks
DN14 8QT
Email :
If paying by cheque please make cheques payable to David Buck.
RiscCAD Reference Manual
Drawing tools
Main toolbox
Point Toolbox
Line Toolbox
Circle Toolbox
Arc Toolbox
Text Toolbox
Symbol
Dimension Toolbox
Enquire Toolbox
Editing Tools
Stretch tool
Trim tool
Fillet tool
Chamfer tool
Join tool
Object Snap toolbox
Choosing an object snap
Overriding an object snap
Object snaps in detail
None
The Main Menu
The Drawing submenu
The Style submenu
The Style submenu
The Select submenu
The Transform submenu
The Windows submenu
The Utilities submenu
The Program Menu
The Help window
The Layer dialogue box
Layer translation
Layer style and thickness
Editing objects
Redrawing layers
Choosing a new working layer
The Display Control dialogue
The Line Style dialogue box
Symbol and template management
The Library dialogue box
Creating symbols
Creating templates
Browser limitations
Page rulers
Appendix 1 - Output drivers
What is an output driver
Loading an output driver
Creating a default driver
Script file overview
Script commands
Keywords and variables
Conditional operators
Programming examples
Appendix 2 - RiscDXF
About DXF files
Converting RiscCAD files to DXF
Converting DXF files to RiscCAD
Batch processing
Notes on converting DXF files
Importing RiscDXF files into Draw
Appendix 3 - RiscDRAW
Appendix 3 - RiscDRAW
Converting Draw files to RiscCAD
Batch processing
Notes on converting Draw files
Appendix 4 - Other ancillary applications
!Drivers
!Settings
!Plotters
!Library
!Templates
!Patterns
Keyboard short-cuts
RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/SW2005/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, RISCOS SouthWest Show
RISCOS SouthWest Show
Aaron's action packed show report live from the day of the show at the Webbington Hotel...
Those of you who remember my show report from last year will recall that on the morning of the show everything was covered in snow, well this year it was different. On the morning before the show Bracknell was covered in snow. While the rest of the country had been freezing we had been quite nice and warm thank you, however the fiendish British weather must have noticed that we had got away with it so far and decided to dump all the remaining snow on us. Luckily by lunchtime the roads were clearing, although the snow was still falling. So would it be safe to venture down the motorway? Well I had just had four new tyres fitted to the Shogun to replace the Goodyear racing slicks that had just scraped through an MOT. Plus, of course, if I didn't go I would still have to pay for the hotel room, and the stand....no it's too much. I will have to go.
So off I went, and within 10 miles the snow had stopped and there wasn't a trace of it on the ground, the roads were dry and the sun was shining. I carried on down the M4 only getting slightly delayed by a gritting lorry. Presumably the road was being gritted now because there was no chance of all the high quality grit being washed away by any snow. So just over two hours later I pulled into the Webbington Hotel and immediately parked round the back in the loading bay, which was suspiciously empty. Where was everyone? The tables were arranged but of exhibitors there was no sign. I checked in. "Yes Mr Holden has already checked in." And then gone to bed I assume. I found my room, which was number 2, which my tiny little mind found rather amusing. Even more amusing, Dave Holden was number 1.
Having had time to be organised this year I had bought my floor plan so I knew where my stand was. But wait? What's this crappy old wobbly table doing here? I deftly swapped it for one on someone else's stand. Having all but set up Dave Holden finally appeared sans floorplan. Well he's always next to me, since we both know what the other sells we can cover each others stands when one of us needs to get a coffee. So Dave sets up APDL next to me. Just as he finishes John Stonier the show organiser appears. "Dave your stand is over there! What are you doing here?" I hide behind a pillar whilst it's sorted out. Dave wins by playing the "ell I've set up now" card and keeps his stand. I now come out from hiding and watch as all the other tables are re-arranged to sort out my mistake. Oh look, the bar's open.
Over the course of the evening a number of exhibitors arrive and set up. An interesting rumour starts, apparently "someone from the health and safety people will be coming round to see if any second hand computers being sold have a valid test certificate". I'm not convinced. Dave Holden isn't convinced. In the end after a long discussion nobody is convinced. After all who could possibly benefit from there being no secondhand computers on sale? Of course I'm not selling any second hand computers but that doesn't stop me getting my 25 quids worth in. Finally the noise in the bar gets too much and I head for bed.
Luckily this year my room is at the end of a corridor and I don't get woken by any ARM Club drunks during the night. Next morning dawns clear but cold, just like the tea I have tried to make, yes the kettle doesn't work. Luckily the shower is also a matching accessory and offers a fine choice of cold water. I have a bath and head for breakfast. Ah that's better, it's self service, I cram a plate full of sausage, egg, bacon, sausage, bacon, mushroom, egg and sausage and sit down opposite Paul Beverley. We discover that we both drink Earl Grey tea, I protect my teapot like a crouching tiger, but no, he has to go and finish setting up. I return to the self service breakfast, my tea safe, I can see the worried faces, will I leave any food for anyone else?
I check out of my room, "Did you have the prawn salad last night?" Yes, surely you don't want it back? No, it's just they mixed up all the dinner bills and tried to charge Dave Holden for everything. I thank the receptionist for her attempt to lower my bill and head into the show. I set up the laptop and arrange the stock and then have half an hour to wander around before the customers are allowed in. At this point I discover that there seem to be customers in already. "Those are just helpers", well they seem to be helping themselves to the prime stuff from the charity stall, oh well.
By 10 o'clock I have another "Is the show open yet?" moment. "Yes", says a passing customer, and he was right as within minutes I am inundated and have a very busy morning. Annoyingly I miss the first talk from Castle Technology, called Castle Matters. "Oh look they've missed out the doesn't" quips an unnamed exhibitor. It's such a good gag I recycle it myself later. I collar a keen looking customer as he leaves the lecture theatre, was the Castle talk interesting? "No". Before I can get an expanded answer he wanders off. Oh well thanks for your help sir, I was only trying to get information for a show report. Now I'll have to wait for the report on
Peter Naulls
At this point I would normally go through the automatically generated show text, something along the lines of "<name of exhibitor> had a crowded stand and was demonstrating the latest version of <name of product> to excited customers". However I can't be bothered. So instead here are some pictures.
RComp busily selling the latest upgrade or something
CJE Micros.....kitchen sink
You'd like to buy an Iyonix sir?
It's Geminus Jim.
The most interesting new item on display was the latest version of TechWriter from Icon Technology which did look quite funky with it's new macro scripting language. APDL have now started bundling sets of Fourth Dimension games together and have a flight simulators CD. Whilst Dave is away getting a coffee I swipe a copy, install it on my laptop and just manage to get the CD back in the rack before he returns.
After the busy morning the afternoon is very quiet, I get a brief flurry of orders just after Paul Middleton has finished his talk and then it goes a bit quiet again. By four o'clock it's getting very quiet, and rather like a recent poll on the Iconbar there seem to be as many exhibitors as customers, I decide to pack up. The benefits of travelling light show themselves again as before most people have started packing up I have loaded up and have got back to the bar for a shandy before going home. As usual I get one final order after I have packed up, but it's OK as it's Chris Evans, so I return to the Shogun and grab the stuff he wants.
Then I make a couple of phone calls and start heading home. Was it a good show? Yes it certainly was and was well worth attending. It was slow in the afternoon, but quite manic in the morning and I have a nice pile of credit card slips to process. I finally get home about half past seven just in time to be told everyone is going to the pub. I suffer a crisis. Do I go to the pub? Or do I process all the credit card orders, add the customers to the database and then issue any unlock code requests? I decide to do the latter and having done that decide that I ought to write a show report whilst it's still fresh in my memory. The time is now 10:40 in the evening, good night.
Aaron
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/TECH1/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, Tech Support - the answerphone mystery
Tech Support - the answerphone mystery
Aaron investigates...
Today I want to talk to you about answerphones. As I am sure you are aware the answerphone is a great gadget that allows people to leave messages when no one is available to answer the phone. In an ideal world an answerphone wouldn't be necessary as there would always be someone available to answer the phone. Unfortunately I run a business which means that I have to spend some time each day out of the office. I could be going to the bank, going to the post office, fixing a customer's machine on site or doing quite a few work related activities that mean I can't be in the office. I could try diverting calls to a mobile, but if it's a call from someone wanting an unlock code it's not much help. Talking to them whilst I am 20 miles from the office is pointless, as the database will therefore be 20 miles away, so we have an answerphone.
It's a dead easy system to use, instead of a human answering the phone a machine does it, plays a brief pre-recorded message and allows the person making the call to leave a short message, normally with their phone number and a few details. Once I come back in the office I can write down the messages on the machine and call people back, what could possibly go wrong? Well let's find out....
Click....brrrrrrrrrr.....
This is a reasonably common occurrence. I go out for a few minutes, come back and they message light is flashing. On playing the message back I get a click of the receiver being hung up followed by a brrr. Now I quite understand that some people don't like answerphones, that's fine, but with our answerphone if you hang up before the outgoing message has finished the machine just stops and doesn't record anything. If there is a click this means that someone has listened to the message all the way through, paused for a second, then in the moment of crisis been unable to get their speaking apparatus into gear and put the phone down. This guaranties the call won't get returned as no contact details have been left.
As an extra treat sometimes the caller leaves a huff before the click and the brrr, which is nice.
Office hours
Our outgoing answerphone message tells callers what times we are open, typically between 10 and 4. Of course we can't always be here. Very occasionally, perhaps once every six to eight months we get a short message along the lines of "Well I am calling in office hours" followed by the phone being put down. This at least is a step forward from the click brrr caller as a message has been left. Of course the message doesn't contain any contact details. So even if I come back into the office two minutes later I still can't return the call as I don't know who rang.
Speakingveryquickly
An unusual problem, but one that does occur from time to time. The customer speaks so quickly that it's impossible to work out what they are saying and also impossible to work out what the phone number they have left is. Despite listening to the message many times over it's still not possible to work out what number has been left. Very occasionally the customer starts slowly and accelerates as they approach the phone number. "Ah, this...is...Mr....smith....I...need...an unlock...code...my number...is...(deep breath)...ohonefourtwoninefourfiveseven...". Again if we can't understand the message we can't return the call.
A short message
Most answerphones only record a short message, typically 1 minute. If a customer talks for over a minute then they will hear a beep and the machine will stop recording. One of the most annoying messages we get is a long waffle followed by "my phone number is 01...(beep)". This is why we ask people to leave their name, phone number and a short message. If the customer leaves their name and then a long message it's quite unlikely that there will be time for them to leave their phone number, and as we know, no phone number, no call back.
And now my personal favourites...
The wrong phone number
I have had two of these in the last couple of months. In the first instance a customer rang from Germany and left their phone number. The message was clear and concise and easy to understand (the person in question wanted to make a couple of enquiries and then possibly place an order). So I rang back, and this is where it went wrong, the person who answered the phone had never heard of the person who left the message. I tried 4 times, at different hours of the day, but no, nobody had ever heard of the person in question. In the old days before the data protection act I could have rung up a few other dealers to see if anyone recognised the name and had an e-mail address or a postal address. I can still ask, but other dealers can't tell me. So, the customer didn't get a return call.
Sometimes we get customers who aren't sure what their phone number is and leave a non existent number. Again if the number's unknown they aren't going to get a return phone call.
The switched off mobile
This has only happened very recently, and only once in as long as I can remember. The customer rung up and left a short message with a mobile phone number. That was on Monday this week, today is Friday, I have called the mobile twice a day for the last four days, and every time it's switched off, with no option to leave a message. What on earth is the point? If you need to be called back, why leave a number you can't be called back on?
Doing it properly
As a conclusion I would like to say that the vast majority (95 percent or more) of our customers have no problem at all with the answerphone, they leave a concise message, I call them back. Job done. They are happy and I am happy. So please remember if you do encounter an answerphone just follow these rules:
Speak clearly
Leave your name first
Leave your phone number second, speaking slowly and repeat the number
If you are only available for certain times of the day say when
Now explain the nature of your call e.g. "Could you please cal me back as I need some tech support"
Hang up
If you leave messages this way then you are guaranteed to be called back. Well at least you will be called back by me, I can't speak for other companies. If on the other hand you use an answerphone like some of those featured earlier in this article don't be at all surprised if you never get a call back, after all if you can't leave your details, someone can't call you back.
And finally if you don't get called back within 24 hours, why not try ringing again?
Aaron
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/VICE/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, VICE
VICE
Matt Thompson looks at the Versatile Commodore Emulator.
VICE
Back in the 1980s when most of us reading this (I would imagine) were using BBC Micros or Acorn Electrons, and when the computer market was far more competitive and interesting, one of the major home computer manufacturers was a company by the name of Commodore. They produced one of the most successful 8bit home computers, the Commodore 64, and later on the 16bit Amiga, both of which were big competition for Acorn. Commodore also produced other lesser machines such as the VIC 20 and C16.
VICE is a collection of emulators of the various Commodore machines, the Commodore 64, 128, Vic 20, Pet, C16, C16 Plus4 and also and emulator of the SID sound chip to play Commodore music files.
VICE is freeware and is an ongoing development and is available on a number of platforms, the RISC OS version is developed by Andreas Dehmel, and the latest version is V1.16 and which was released in January 2005.
VICE is very easy to set up, create a directory on your hard-disc and then de-archive the contents of the VICE archive into this directory and thats all there is to it, make sure you have the VICE resources (!ViceRsrc) otherwise it won't work, next double click on the required emulator and you should then see something like this:-
The emulator is now running, there will also be a VICE log window now open which shows what is happening within VICE, you can keep this open or close it if you wish, by clicking the mouse menu button over the main window you can select options for VICE, which include sound on or off, pause the emulator, make screengrabs of games and make snapshots of the games so they can be loaded easily next time. Although this option currently doesn't work with the Plus4 VICE at the moment, it is a known issue and will be fixed in the future. The 'JOYSTICKS' option from the menu which lets you set which keys you use to emulate joysticks, as many Commodore games were joystick only, games which use the keyboard work as you would expect them to, there are other configuration options from the menu which go further into configuring VICE, but they shouldn't be needed for general game playing. I certainly didn't need to use them.
There is another menu available by clicking the mouse menu button over the icon on the iconbar, this gives the same configuration options as the other menu plus, licence and warranty details and also whether you want to run VICE in the desktop or in full screen mode. It doesn't seem to fill the screen with the display on my machine more of a window on a black background, as shown below (unfortunately the colour isn't quite correct in this screengrab for some reason, but it looks right when you use it).
VICE In Action
Below are some screengrabs of VICE in action, showing how it displays the games, the screengrabs are taken from the C64, C16 plus 4 and VIC 20 versions of VICE.
Commodore 64
Bombjack
Boulderdash
Jet Set Willy
Repton 3 - He looks familiar from somewhere!
Commodore 16 plus 4
Exorcist
Icicle Works.
Booty.
VIC 20
Perils.
-----
The Perils of Willy , Manic Miner couldn't be made to run on the VIC 20 so they had this instead, and it was a VIC20 exclusive, and wasn't that good either.
Loading games into Vice is very easy, when you download a Commodore game you need to make sure the filetype is "Data" and the filename needs to a have "PRG" extension, for example Chuckie Egg would be ChuckieEgg/prg with a filetype Data, files which are like this can simply be dragged into the VICE window and the program will load automatically, if it doesn't work then the filetype needs to be changed to the above. For example I downloaded a game from
Another type of file which there is is the "TAP" file, this is effectively the original cassette tape of the game, it can be loaded into VICE but not by the normal methods, to load a "TAP" file into VICE first type LOAD (with Caps Lock off)into VICE and press return, it will say "Press Play On Tape" now go to the icon bar menu and select Configure tapes and the following window will appear.
Now drag the "TAP" file onto the tape player panel,then click on the ">" Play button and the game will now load in, as this a cassette it will take a while to do this, as cassette games used to do, when the game has loaded, it is highly advisable to make a snapshot of the game, so you can then just drag it straight into VICE next time and it will load instantly.
One of the features of the Commodore 64 was the SID (Sound Interface Design) Chip which was used to create all the sounds and tunes, and it seems that it was very good at it too, there are numerous websites which contain SID tunes, and many old C64 game tunes have been remixed by Commodore enthusiasts and are available to download or on CD, websites
As you would expect the internet is a very good resource for obtaining Commodore games, sites worth a visit include
VICE is an excellent emulator, and recreates the Commodore range of computers very well, with both sound and graphics. It is responsive and the games play well on it, VICE is highly recommended to anyone who likes playing Retro games, as Commodore games are worth checking out as it was a big market back in the 80s and there were some great games, and VICE gives those of us that didn't have Commodore machines back then they chance to see what it was all about.
VICE is freeware and will run on RISC PCs with StrongARMs onwards with a recommended minimum of 16MB RAM, VICE is also fully Iyonix compatible as well, and the help I received from the author of RISC OS VICE, Andreas Dehmel to get some games working was excellent, he was very helpful, and the advice (no pun intended!) given was easy to understand and he was quick to reply as well.
Overall VICE is highly recommended and if you like game playing then I can't think of any reason not to have VICE installed on your machine,the latest version of VICE can be found in the software directory on this issue!
It's the biggest show of the year, RISCWorld has the details.
We covered the Wakefield show in the last issue, but as it's so important we are going to cover it again.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Wakefield Show, it hardly seems 10 years ago that everyone was crammed into the Cedar Court Hotel, for what was supposed to be a little show, but ended up taking over nearly an entire wing of the hotel. This year the show will one again be taking place at it's regular venue, the Thornes Park Athletics Stadium. The show will be open for two days over the weekend of the 21st and 22nd of May. On Saturday the show will open at 10am and close at 5pm, on Sunday doors will be flung open at 10:30am and close at 3:30p
The Thornes Park Athletics Stadium is very easy to find, by foot and by car, and has ample parking. For those coming by train a free minibus service will operate from Wakefield Westgate station to the show.
This years show has been sponsored by APDL, Stuart Tyrell Developments, Richard Hallas, MW Software, Spellings Computer Services and VirtualAcorn.
Tickets
Due to popular demand the Advance tickets facility will be returning for the show. Advance tickets will be available from March 2005.
Ticket prices
5's and under Free
Advance tickets £
On the day rates
Saturday £6.0
Sunday £6.00
To request your advance tickets by post (from March 2005) send a cheque or postal order made out to 'WROCC Show' to :
Wakefield Show 2004
3 Riverdale Avenue
Stanley
WAKEFIELD
West Yorks
WF3 4LF
The show website (
Exhibitors and more
The current list of confirmed exhibitors is APDL, Archive Publications, ARM Club, CJE Micros, EFF, JGH BBC Software, M W Software, Qercus, OreganoUK Ltd, R-Comp, Spellings Computer Services, Advantage Six and VirtualAcorn. Further exhibitor details are expected to be announced shortly.
It would not be a Wakefield show without the usual Show Theatre and Charity Stall, which will again be raising money for Wakefield Hospice.
Advertising
All of the RISC OS press will be running adverts for the show (designed by Richard Hallas), a sample of one of the adverts, which have been produced in a number of sizes is shown below.
Organisers
The show is once again being coordinated by Chris Hughes, who has organised all the previous Wakefield shows. The show is organised on behalf of the Wakefield RISCOS Computer Club one of the longest running Acorn/RISCOS computer clubs in the UK.
