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by which they should be submitted.
PD/Shareware News
-----------------
1) New releases form Skullsoft
* New Version of Nomen
Nomen is a filename tidying program. It can tidy file names so that, for example, 'nOMen' becomes 'Nomen' etc. It can also optionally strip
filename extensions. The new version (1.03) fixes several bugs that were present in the last version. http://www.eganc.demon.co.uk/skullsoft/ for downloads.
* Partial solutions for 'Arya: The Dragon's Quest'
'Arya: The Dragon's Quest' is Skullsoft's shareware text adventure. It
has lots of digitised graphics, interactive puzzles, people you can talk to and much more. See http://www.eganc.demon.co.uk/skullsoft/arya.htm
for details.
A partial solution for the unregistered version is available from
Xenocide is a shareware upwards scrolling shoot'em up. It can be
downloaded from http://www.eganc.demon.co.uk/skullsoft/
2) Web site management utilities
Updates to local website management utilities:
* Validator v0.37
Easy to use "Linter" for checking web pages for embarrassing HTML
errors, locally before uploading. Now generates "Throwbacks" (to eg Zap; if you have DDEUtils).
* LinkCheck v1.29
Checks all links and references within (the local copy of) a website.
Originally devised for a "modest" site (eg, < 100 pages, plus a couple
of hundred other files); but an editable "!Choices" file enables this
limit to be extended to a few hundred HTML pages and a few thousand
total files.
* CopyAfter v0.08 (new addition)
Originally devised as a sort of "Copy if newer" backup utility but with
greater flexibility on choice of "borderline" date; this is particularly suitable for creating an "incremental upload" from the latest changes to (the local copy of) a site.
These, and other utilities by John Alldred, are freeware available from:
http://www.protovale.co.uk/john/
3) Announcing Wimp2, a preemptor for RISC OS
Niall Douglas has announced that the first release of the preemptive
multitasker for RISC OS, Wimp2, should be available on 20th January 1999.
This module permits the construction of preemptively multitasked programs
for the Acorn RISC OS desktop and is fully compatible with the existing
cooperative multitasker present in RISC OS.
Wimp2 is fully compatible with all versions of RISC OS from RO2 to RO3.8
(the forthcoming RO4), and existing cooperative applications can be ported to the new preemptive multitasker usually without much difficulty.
Also included in the release is a patch for normal Wimp calls, making them call the preemptive multitasker SWIs instead. This allows a minority of
existing unmodified applications to be preemptively multitasked.
4) FreeTime V1.10 released
Version 1.10 of FreeTime, a small program that will connect to an Internet time server and then set your computer's clock to the correct time, is now available.
The main changes since the last version are support for autosetting the
GMT/BST flag, a StrongHelp manual, better accuracy over slow connections,
There is also a companion module available that can act as a server for
FreeTime - useful for running on the gateway machine between the Internet
and your internal network, to serve FreeTime clients on the rest of the
network. This is called 'Tserver', and is unchanged from the first release (0.01 / 26-10-97), except that the archive now includes the source code as well.
Both of these, and other programs, are available from:
<http://www.ping.demon.co.uk/acorn/download.html>
5) New BBC Emulator released
BeebIt, a new BBC Model B Micro Computer emulator for RISC OS, has been
released. It can be downloaded from <http://www.voyager.co.nz/~mikef/> -
just follow the BBC Emulator link.
Being a first release, this is intended to show what work has been done on it so far, and what it will be able to do in the future. It is by no means complete but will run a good many BBC games, even Elite. So far it has
only been tested on a RiscPC with StrongARM processor.
Any feedback on the emulator would be appreciated. You can contact the
author at <mikef@voyager.co.nz>.
6) WritableUtils version 0.23
WritableUtils version 0.23 is now available at
http://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~rav21/writable/
WritableUtils is a module which provides two features to writable icons
under RISC OS.
The first is that it allows keys to be remapped - particularly useful for
those who sometimes use other operating systems in which the roles of
'delete' and 'end' are significantly different. Much software allows the
function of each key to be defined, and Olly Betts' LineEditor allows this for the command line. This module allows it for writable icons.
The second is that it provides an interface to the global clipboard, so
text may be copied to and from other compliant applications such as Zap.
This is a beta release and the author <rav21@cam.ac.uk> would be very
grateful for feedback on it.
7) AutoFocus, TitleMenu, Nice, ShiftResize and other utilities
Here is the current status of some of Vincent Lefevre's patches/utilities
(and a description, for those who do not know them), all available from
No need to click on windows any more to get the focus! This module has a special support for panes, dialogue boxes (with writable icons) and
block selection.
* TitleMenu 2.05 (22 Nov 1998)
This utility allows you to bring up a menu consisting of a directory and its ancestors by clicking on the title bar of a window with the Menu
button. The leaf directory is either given by the window title (filer
window or an editor window) or the application directory; in the latter
case, the Help file is added to the menu if there is one, to get help on the application.
* Nice 1.00 (24 Nov 1998)
Nice is a small utility that provides a very simple priority system on
Wimp tasks, a bit like under Unix. Written because the RC5DES client was slowing down the author's machine, and Nice solves this problem quite
well.
* ShiftResize 2.00 (07 Sep 1998)
If you click on the toggle size icon while the shift key is pressed, the icon bar will not be obscured. A bit of the CMOS memory allows to invert this behaviour. This patch allows to change this bit and extends this
feature to any kind of resize.
* WatchTV 1.03 (22 Aug 1997)
A small application allowing to watch TV (or, more generally, video
images) full screen for the owners of an Eagle M2 card (and a TVtuner).
Miller's algorithm (Siggraph 84) is used to improve the image quality.
* DMPatch (08 Aug 1997)
Patch for RISC OS 3.7 that allows you to choose the frame rate from the
Display Manager.
* TopIconBar (10 Aug 1997)
Allows to bring the icon bar to the foreground with the mouse.
* Other utilities
rbd (random backdrops), crc (16-bit CRC of files), logring (logs the
phone ringings if you have a modem), accounter 1.03 (system usage
accounting utility).
All the programs are distributed with their ARM source. They have been
written for RISC OS 3 (and optimized for RISC OS 4), but some of them
should work (or partly work) under RISC OS 2.
8) Socketeer 0.14 beta
There is a new release of Socketeer, the Internet dialler, for those who
are not on the mailing list. For details and to download see
