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Letters Page

The answers might be short, but that's the way I was ...er....taught!

Well we have another bulging postbag this issue. And first out of the sack is Andrew Harmsworth...

Dear Aaron,
I note that the contacts page for issue 9 has reverted to .com e-mail
addresses and web address - which don't exist, yes? Yours
Andrew Harmsworth

Well, you know what he is quite right. And its all Aarons fault (Lies - ED). However as we said last time it won't happen again. We now have a definitive and correct set of page templates, and the old ones with .com domain names have all been deleted. The contacts page in this issue is now correct. Still many thanks to Andrew for pointing this out.

However Andrew isn't the only one with a small complaint as John Cartmell and Steve Fryatt will testify in an e-mail exchange with David Bradforth....

You don't read RiscWorld, do you? They're currently beating AU hands
down in the grammatical mistakes department
Steve Fryatt

What? Beating AU in grammatical mistakes are we, have you read the new TAU Press mission statement? Well we are trying to improve the standards of grammar, indeed there should be fewer and fewer mistakes in each issue (but probably aren't). At least we are now using a spell checker (it props up David Bradforths desk).

Still John Cartmell did respond...

My only complaint is with their ultra-short responses to letters...
..from me!
John Cartmell

There could be all manner of reasons for their ultra-short responses to letters from you... perhaps it's due to Aaron's dogs needing a walk at the exact time he's constructing a response to your letter, maybe it's down to the never-ending barrage of e mails from companies offering their software products for review, possibly it's down to Aaron's other job as an international man of mystery...(Ha - Hugh)

There will always be people who have a few moments to sit at the computer, writing what constitutes a response to a newsgroup posting when he really should be working on the articles for the next issue of RISC World, and is actively on deadline with PC Home and Windows Made Easy...

Perhaps at some point in the future, somebody would like to reply to my letter... I think, though, Acorn User has had some bad luck over the last couple of years. Over recent months, some of the articles have gotten considerably better, but the layout omissions - for instance not noticing the 'Main Feature' heading on the graphics page a couple of months ago before the thing was sent to the printers - really shouldn't happen.

Of course, having just sent a recent project to the printers, I'm tempting fate now by saying this... ;-)
How's that for a reply? (David Bradforth)

Thank you David, see we can reply to letters when there isn't anything good on telly. Now a slightly odd letter...

Hello,
I am looking for an assembler for ARM but can not find IT ALL OVER
THE NET ,Could You please help me to get it in any way?
Best regards,Maxim (max-rfon@carrier.kiev.ua)

Well that is a question, the problem is what machine do you want to run the Assembler on? If it is a RISC OS machine then of course BASIC comes with a built in assembler. However I have a sneaking idea that you might be running on a PC, either under Windows or Linux. Aaron thinks he remembers seeing a free download of an ARM development environment for Windows but true to form cannot remember where.

Luckily Paul Brett has his head screwed on straight, if you check out his PD column this issue you may well find just what you were after, a full 32 bit ARM software development suite for Windows, wow!

And here is an example of one of our readers helping out after a request.

David Bradforth asks in 'Questions and Answers' (RISCWORLD_2_2)
Has anybody written a utility to automate the conversion of smart quotes
into unsmart quotes?
Yes, '!Text2Html' and '!DDF2Html' by John Alldred.
These and several other useful programs like '!Validator' you can find
on his website.
Ed van der Meulen

And finally Mike Wilson has a question.

This morning I received a very nice, card backed envelope with a
beautifully printed label which proudly proclaimed: 'There are five
more issues remaining on your subscription'.
Sadly when I opened the envelope it contained nothing but sod all.
Or has Paul Middleton persuaded you to excommunicate me?
Mike Wilson

Having had a chat with Dave Holden the answer is clear, we have absolutely no idea. Dave did say it was because he may have put the wrong label on the envelope, however that doesn't explain why it was empty, perhaps poltergeist activity?

Well that's it for this issues letters page, remember if your mansion house needs haunting call.....

Hugh Jampton and David Bradforth