Disc World

David Bradforth and Aaron Timbrell on this months DISCWorld

This months DISC World roundup

Welcome to the final issue of RISC World's second volume. Looking back over the last year, we've not only delivered upon our promise to provide commercial software with every issue, we've gone above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that you'll always get the best from your machine. With highlights over the last year including exclusive software formerly from Fabis, Beebug and others, you can be certain that in the next volume we'll continue to offer more of the same and hopefully improve upon our already impressive track record.

Now let's see what is in the software directory this issue...

Games

All the games mentioned in the GamesWorld column, including NetChess, and all of Paul Johnson's ports of Unix adventure games. Oh yes, plus a copy of the classic Super Methane Brothers platformer. Enough to keep most gamers happy until TEK comes out.

Getting into Ovation - original rrp £4.95

A complete book, supporting Ovation DTP. Getting into Ovation provides the complete introduction and comprehensive overview to the use of the Ovation DTP package, published by APDL/ProAction. This is one of the foremost DTP applications for Acorn's 32-bit series of computer systems, and it is widely used by home users, by teachers and children in schools. Ovation is also used by professional and business users, including those who work in typesetting and graphic design.

This book complements the official Ovation Manual, but provides a simplified introduction, particularly useful to the new user of Ovation, while covering all the main features of Ovation in an easy to understand way which may even help the more experienced Ovation user.

Getting into Ovation also covers the use of the Desktop Thesaurus and TypeStudio applications, both of which augment the desktop publishing capabilities of Ovation.

Well that's what the back of the book said, and given the heritage of the author it was quite right. Roger Amos, who wrote Getting into Ovation, was also the author of DABS Press' Graphics on the ARM machines and ArtWorks Made Easy (copies of which may still be available from APDL). The style is friendly yet concise, guiding the new (or accomplished) user of Ovation towards features they may have missed before or a comprehensive introduction to the package itself.

Insignia

All the examples from Geoffrey Deans Insignia review, plus a demo version of Insignia that you can try out on your own computer. Cerilca will shortly be launching an updated version of Insignia with even more features, so make sure you pop along to the Cerilica website to keep up to date with all the news.

Modules

All the programs, and sources, from Brian Pickard's module writing series.

Ovation DTP - original rrp £116

Full professional desktop publishing package. When released by BEEBUG in the early 1990's, Ovation was acclaimed as bearing more than a passing similarity to Quark X Press. For those not in the know, Quark X Press is the market-leading desktop publishing package within the Macintosh market, and it's pretty much getting there within the Windows market too. It's used within most publishing companies (UK and abroad) and is extremely expensive.

Ovation, on the other hand, was launched at £99 + VAT; written by David Pilling and backed by what at the time was a huge technical support department to ensure that every user of the package was able to get up and running with the minimum of fuss. There were some features promised at the time that ultimately didn't make it into the package - colour separation for instance was left for Ovation Pro - but it's a solid desktop publishing package; an excellent word processor and completely free with this issue of RISC World.

We'll happily supply copies of the printed manual and/or site licences. The printed manual will cost £7.50 including carriage; and should you wish to run Ovation on more than one machine a site licence will cost just £29.50 covering any number of machines. For further details, please contact APDL on 020 8778 2659 or by email to APDL Ovation Offer.

PRO CAD+

The latest evaluation version of PROCAD+, from David Snell. If you are thinking of getting a CAD package then you really should try this demo version, and of course read Robert Richards review in this issue.

PD

All the programs from Paul Bretts PD column.

VirtualA5000

The latest demo version of VirtualA5000 for Microsoft Windows. This is faster than the demo version published in the last issue of RISC World. This demo expires at the end of July 2002.

Utilities

This CD-ROM contains a number of utilities and pieces of software to accompany the articles in the magazine. The magazine now uses GIF and JPEG images rather than having two versions, one with Sprites and one with GIF. The magazine can be found in the HTML directory from the root of the CD.

There are three utilities to help you read this disc (RISC OS users only). These can be found hidden inside the !RiscWorld application in the UTILITIES directory (The !RiscWorld application automatically uses these utilities if they are required):

A file-only copy of Fresco, to display the HTML. This will only run if you don't already have a copy of Fresco installed, so that it won't overwrite your cache.
ArcFS, which can be used to read some of the archived software on the disc.
SparkPlug, an alternative de-archiver which can also read Zip files.

Usenet archive

Also included on the disc is an archive of the comp.sys.acorn.* newsgroups since early Feb 2002. These are stored in a special read-only version of Messenger Pro which will allow you to view the messages, but nothing more complicated. The archive is presented 'as is', and RISC World doesn't make any guarantee about the usefulness, relevance or acceptability of any information contained in it.