Click to enable or disable the fonts required by files on this CD
In order to make full use of the material on this CD, various pieces of software are required, and we provide as much as we can in order to allow you to use everything without having to buy extra software.
In particular, Ovation Pro is required to view the RISC User magazine files from issue 11:5 onwards. Ovation Pro is also capable of loading Ovation files, and the earlier Ovation format was used for many of Beebug's books and manuals. The version of Ovation Pro on this CD is a demonstration copy which is fully working in every way except for its inability to save files. The necessary extensions to allow it to load Ovation and ArtWorks files have been installed, and the special applets referred to in articles about Ovation Pro in RISC User have also been included. This copy is therefore perfect for viewing most of the documentation on this CD, if you do not own the full package. Note that Ovation Pro is now sold by its author, David Pilling, whose contact details are on the Credits page. A copy of the demo version is run from the CD automatically if needed, but the full demo archive is also provided below, complete with tutorials and other material.
The ArtWorks file viewer application is also provided for people who do not own the full version of ArtWorks. If you need it, click the link below to run it from this page. It is worth noting, though, that Ovation Pro can also display ArtWorks files if you drag them into a document window.
In order to access this CD's many archives from within the HTML pages, a copy of David Pilling's SparkFS is required. A special read-only version for use with this CD only is loaded automatically if you do not possess the full edition.
The various books, manuals and magazine files require use of a variety of fonts. An entire area of the Software section on this CD is devoted to fonts and related utilities, but the fonts needed to view the various files can be run directly from the CD. Click the following link to enable use of the fonts from the CD (remember to click it again when you have finished using them):
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Install/remove resource fonts Click to enable or disable the fonts required by files on this CD |
Finally, the last major component required for using this CD is a suitable Web browser. Further information about Web browsers is provided below.
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Ovation Pro (demonstration version) Note that various extra applets have been pre-installed, and a full tutorial is available in the archive |
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ArtWorks Viewer Display application for ArtWorks files |
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This approach makes use of a set of protocols which only exist on the RISC OS platform, and in a subset of RISC OS browsers. At the time of writing, the browsers which correctly support the protocols are ANT Fresco, Acorn Browse, R-Comp WebsterXL and the freeware ArcWeb (plus the forthcoming Oregano from Castle Technology). However, ArcWeb can be discounted because its handling of frames is very poor and it does not support tables, which means that it is incapable of displaying these pages correctly.
As the other browsers are all commercial products, we are unable to distribute copies on this CD. However, we are most grateful to R-Comp and Andrew Pullan for producing a special copy of the WebsterLT browser, a cut-down version of WebsterXL which can view files on local discs but which cannot connect to the Internet. This browser is run by default if none of the commercial browsers listed above can be found, and it supports everything on these pages except the handful of links to external sites on the Internet. It also fails to support JavaScript, but JavaScript is used for cosmetic effects only on these pages. The full versions of WebsterXL, Fresco and Oregano support JavaScript.
If you choose to view this CD on a non-RISC OS computer then the hot-links will of course fail to work. However, the photographs in the Bonus Items section (plus book and magazine covers) will be accessible. Also note that all archives are in Zip format, decompressors for which exist on virtually all computer systems.
For the sake of interest, we provide a number of Web browsers below, though it is not necessary to run the copy of WebsterLT provided here because it is started up automatically if needed when you run the Nutshell application. WebsterLT is undoubtedly the best overall browser that we are able to distribute on the CD. However, the file-only version of Fresco is provided below for the sake of interest, because it may be faster at rendering the pages on many systems, and it also makes an excellent job of laying them out (the pages were designed mainly using the full version of Fresco). You may like to use it for reading the software manuals.
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WebsterLT version 1.95 This local-disc-only version of WebsterXL is capable of accessing all the resources on this CD via the hot-links, and can also cope with the pages' complex layouts |
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Fresco (file-only version) This local-disc-only version of Fresco makes an excellent job of presenting the pages of this CD, but refuses to allow the special hot-links to function |
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ArcWeb version 1.92 (final release) This freeware browser is capable of using the special hot-links on this CD's pages, but cannot cope with the complex HTML layouts required to view the pages correctly |
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Note that, in the above table, clicking the program links for WebsterLT and Fresco will run special customised versions directly from the CD, whereas the archive links open the archives containing the original, unmodified versions.