News
The latest news from the RISC OS world
Advantage Six Confirm the A9home will be at Wakefield 2005
As has been suggested by recent rumours, the A9home will be one of the distinct machines in the A9 series that Advantage Six will have at this year's Wakefield Show. We are also pleased to confirm that the A9home qualifies as a potential grand prize in the show draw. The retailer who is involved with the A9home will also be attending the show and will be making an announcement. Come along to be one of the first to experience the new machine. Wear your lucky pants/socks/baseball cap and you could be walking away with a new machine.
Hope to see you at the show - The Advantage Six Team
Advantage Six Ltd
email: info@advantagesix.com
tel: 01706 848 600 fax: 0870 164 1604
MW Software at the Wakefield Show
As previously announced, MW Software will be exhibiting at this weekend's Wakefield Show, and as usual, I will take the opportunity to release a brand new version of ArtWorks at the Show. With more than 40 improvements made since the previous version, the new version 2.4 of ArtWorks is yet another major step forward for RISC OS vector graphics. The official feature list can be found at http://www.mw-software.com/software/artworks/aw2features7.html A full changes list can be found at http://www.mw-software.com/software/artworks/aw2changes.html At 2pm on Saturday, I will be giving a talk on "Graphical effects using ArtWorks 2", which will show off some of the new features while working through a real-world graphics design example. In addition to ArtWorks, I will be happy to advise on high-quality photo-realistic printing using Gimp-Print for RISC OS.
hubersn Software at the Wakefield Show
hubersn Software is pleased to announce that the long-awaited DVD writing software solution for RISC OS is finally "ready to burn". Based on the successful CDBurn CD writing software, the new package called "CDVDBurn" adds writing capability of DVD+RW, DVD+R and DVD-RW media (DVD-R and double layer media will follow shortly), while continuing to include all the CD-related features that made CDBurn the most popular CD writing software on RISC OS. The resulting DVDs are readable on RISC OS, PCs and Macs. And if you put your whole MP3 collection onto one DVD, you might even be able to play them back on your DVD video player! Please visit us at stand 30 to find out what CDVDBurn can do for you. If you want to upgrade from CDBurn to CDVDBurn, please bring your CDBurn floppy disc with you.
Icon Technology will be launching version 8.40 of EasiWriter and TechWriter at Wakefield:
It has Keyboard macros - keystrokes can be assigned to a menu item and abbreviation and replayed. i.e. 'itl' can be expanded to 'Icon Technology Limited'. Macros can be saved with the application or the document. Improvements to the Word import means you can optionally view hidden text and revisions. USA language property can be automatically converted to UK. Thanks to various bug-fixes many Word documents that caused problems with earlier versions of the application now import successfully Improvements have been made to the automatic document repair mechanism, unused Picture blocks can be removed and a sequential document naming system has been introduced for auto-generated emergency backups. HTML improvements include support for importing Hexadecimal and Unicode character entities and exporting optional lower case tags. General improvements include a revised Button bar, much easier control over Choices using !Confix, speedier and 32 bit compatible OLE, more Footnote choices (Letter and Roman), User upgrading from version 7.11 and earlier will also benefit from Auto-save, Artworks compatibility, 26/32 bit compatibility and a free copy of !Citation.
Icon Technology Limited
Church House, Church Street, Carlby, Lincs, UK, PE9 4NB
Authors of EasiWriter & TechWriter
www.icontechnology.co.uk 01778 590 563
News from R-Comp
We are pleased to announce that the Wakefield show marks the release of various upgrades and products that we have been working on over the winter.
The most significant releases are new DialUp3 and NetFetch 2 versions - 3.1 and 2.1 respectively. The .1 versions contain significant enhancements to both the programs, and particularly the Hermes mail transfer software that powers them.
The new version of Hermes has a number of major new features:
Handling RSS news headlines
Have you ever visited news websites, such as
View your email online without the need to download it all. Sometimes you don't want to download all your email, but you want to see if particular messages are waiting, or you want to manage your mail without downloading (eg. delete spam). Hermes will now do this, listing the mail, allowing you to process it, fetch/delete messages and so on. How difficult is it? You just click the "View messages on server" menu option!
Choose what to do with large messages Imagine you're on a modem DialUp connection, and you have 30 large emails appear in your mailbox. Do you want to download them at peak rate (especially as they may be spam)? Hermes now allows you to set a maximum size for messages, and if a message (or multiple messages) exceeds this size, you'll see it listed (just like viewing the mail on the server, above). Once such messages have been listed, you can choose to ignore them, fetch them, or delete them. You can also choose to download large emails at certain times only. When this facility is first enabled, we set the maximum size to quite a low value, which is designed to help you combat spam. Since many of the most troublesome spam messages are a little larger than average, you'll see messages listed before you have to download them, and you can choose what to do with them.
Of course, there are other enhancements too, such as much improved problem/error reporting, alternate ways to deal with deleting messages (some mail servers can be more finickity than others) and a new look to the setup windows, for a less cluttered display. Existing DialUp3 and NetFetch2 users will be pleased to hear that they will receive all this extra functionality for free! Upgrades will be sent out after the show.
If you're not already running DialUp3 or NetFetch2, what are you waiting for?
New UniPrint upgrade
We have released a small upgrade to the various editions of UniPrint
(version 1.53). The changes to this are primarily to do with handling
of shared network printers (improving UniPrint's ability to deal with
such devices). We have also tweaked and improved the Virtual Acorn
mode. Existing 1.50 users will receive the upgrade shortly. Users of
1.40 or earlier will need to make the chargable 1.5x upgrade which was
released this time last year.
Grapevine 2
Grapevine 2, our program allowing internet users to communicate with
each other when online, receives constant tweaks and enhancements, and
the Wakefield show marks yet another upgrade adding features/fixes to
all the different modes (as requested by various users).
RISCBooks at the show
OK, this announcement isn't software news, but we'll have a wide
assortment of RISCBook models at the show, all at very special prices.
There will be machines appropriate to all levels of user, from
affordable entry level units, to ultra high resolution systems. If
you're interested in RISC OS on the move, or just a second machine, be
sure to come and check the RISCBooks out - you'll be amazed at the
speed and value.
R-Comp
22 Robert Moffat, High Legh, Knutsford, Cheshire WA16 6PS
Tel: (+44) 01925 755043 Fax: (+44) 01925 757377
www.rcomp.co.uk