ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/BLAST10/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, The Next Technology CD ROM Drive
The Next Technology CD ROM Drive
The first CD-ROM drives for RISC OS machines...
Whilst we take CD-ROM and DVD drives as standard these days it wasn't always so. Indeed it wasn't until 1994, when the RiscPC was released, that Acorn supplied a machine with a CD ROM drive as standard. Even then the CD drive was only available on the more expensive machines. CD technology itself had been developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first commercial music CD was pressed on the 17th of August 1982. The format itself had been co-developed by Phillips and Sony with the intention of providing better and more compact music storage.
Unlike all previous methods of string music there was no mechanical contact between the mechanism and the medium itself. So CDs could "never" wear out, unlike tapes and records. Since the format was digital the aim was to remove hiss and other extraneous and unwanted noise from the music. By 1985 CD started appearing that had been produced digitally from start to finish. The method used to record the original performance was digital. All editing and production was done digitally and the final recording was digital. Hence the resulting music played back would be perfect and as intended by the artists. Early adopters of CD players may recall the launch of Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms CD, one of the first DDD (all digital) music CDs to be released.
The format for storing music on a CD was called "Red Book" and had been presented in 1980. The delay between the establishment of the standard and the release of retail CD players was caused by some unforseen problems. Whilst the data on the CD might be digital there were still "analogue" problems that needed to be resolved. For example, discs that didn't spin perfectly true, dust, dirt and even fingerprints. All these introduced noise into the system and forced the developers to come up with some clever methods for "error correction". You may be surprised to know that without such error correction and the clever storage for data defined in the Red Book a CD would have as much, or perhaps even more, hiss than an old cassette tape.
Having resolved the problems of making sure the data could be read accurately from the CD, or that the CD player could accurately "guess" any missing information, the two partners had a "modern" storage system. Having designed CDs to hold music thought then turned to what else they could be used for. The result was the development of the "Yellow Book" standard for storing all sorts of digital data. The problems of accurately storing and retrieving information had been solved, now what could be done with the new format?
In the late 1980's CD ROM drives for computers first appeared. Up until this point PC applications had been supplied on floppy discs. Does anyone remember installing Windows 3.1 from several floppies? The new format with it's huge storage potential was ideally matched to the developing computer industry. Acorn enthusiasts had to wait until 1990 before they could join the CD-ROM revolution. Even then it was at a price.
In 1990 Mike Williams reviewed the Next Technology CD ROM drive for the Archimedes, the first CD drive that could be used with RISC OS...
Next Technology's CD ROM for the Archimedes
Mike Williams previews the latest innovation for the Archimedes in the form of a CD-ROM from Next Technology.
The latest technology to impact on the computer scene is in the area of multi-media systems, and the Archimedes with its sheer power and high performance graphics is ideally placed to exploit such systems. Acorn has already made one foray into this market with interactive video (the Doomsday project), which was perhaps ahead of its time as well as being too expensive to be widely affordable. The latest venture is a collaboration with Cambridge based Next Technology which has developed a CD-ROM unit for the Archimedes.
The Next Technology CD-ROM unit should be available by the time you read this. Our preview is based on experiences with a development system running on pre-release software. But first of all, what is CD-ROM?
Everyone is more or less familiar with audio CD (standing for Compact Disc), small digitally recorded discs read by laser, and claimed to give greater clarity in hi-fi sound than conventional vinyl records. CD-ROM uses the same basic technology to record data (which can replace or supplement audio) on CD. With suitable software, a computer can then read all this information. CD-ROM currently has a capacity of some 600 MBytes - that's equivalent to some 250,000 pages of text, 5000 photographs, 72 minutes of high quality audio, or a combination of all three. However, CDs are read-only, hence the term CD-ROM (CD Read Only Memory).
Next Technology has developed a CD-ROM unit, capable of reading CD-ROMs and feeding the data into the Archimedes. Any audio is output separately, and can be directed to the Archimedes monitor's built in speaker(s), or to any hi-fi amplifier and speaker system. Sensibly, Next has adopted the standard ISO 9660 format (itself derived from the earlier High Sierra standard). This means that the Archimedes can access all other CD-ROMs produced to this standard, and several hundred already exist in the PC world. Next has also produced the software to access CD-ROM in the form of the CDFS (CD Filing System). This is fully compatible with all other Archimedes filing systems.
The Next CD-ROM unit consists of a flat box which sits easily on top of a 400/1 series machine and under the monitor (though it can be used with any Archimedes including an A3000), and is connected to the host system via a SCSI interface (supplied as part of the system). This means that as many as 28 CD-ROM units may be connected via the one SCSI interface providing some 17 gigabytes of information! The data transfer rate is of the order of 150K bytes per second with an average access time of 0.4 seconds. CDs must be enclosed in a protective case or caddy (one is supplied with a sample CD-ROM) for insertion into the CD-ROM unit.
The CDFS icon will appear on the icon bar as a filing system (though this had not been fully implemented on the development system). Clicking on the drive icon, as with any filing system, will open a window to show the contents of the CD-ROM. Using a clip-art CE produced for PCs, opening any of the top level directories revealed hundreds of picture files (in TIFF format). Using the program ChangeFSI (see RISC User Volume 2 Issue 10) it was a trivial matter to select any picture and convert it into an Archimedes sprite (it is likely that the ChangeSFI program will be supplied with the CD-ROM unit, as it can convert a wide variety of screen formats into equivalent Archimedes sprites).
This illustrates one application of CD-ROM, with its huge storage capacity, as a resource system. An Archimedes with CD-ROM unit can be readily connected to an Econet network, allowing the CD-ROM unit to be accessed by all network users, including those with a BBC model B or Master series computer! Because of the way it is implemented, it would be very easy to set up CD-ROM applications accessed using Genesis (see review in RISC User Volume 3 Issue 5).
The data on a CD can be anything (text, pictures, sound, animations etc). It is also possible to included programs, but most suppliers of CD-ROMs will more likely supply any software on a standard computer disc. That way, a CD-ROM can be used on any system; only the software needs customising. Hopefully, that will mean that the Archimedes, with its proprietary operating system RISC OS, will still be able to benefit from most of the CD-ROMs produced.
The CD-ROM unit can also play standard audio CDs, and thus perform as a very high quality CD player. As part of the system, users will be provided with the Audio Panel, window-based software for controlling the playing of audio CDs. This controls all normal functions, such as play, forward, reverse, next track, random play, continuous play etc, and you can also program the sequence in which tracks will be played, although there is no facility at present to save a programmed sequence. Thus Archimedes users buying a CD-ROM unit are also getting a fully fledged audio CD player, and one which can be playing as you use your Archimedes for other work.
Operation of all features is simplicity itself, relying as it does on standard Wimp and filing system conventions. Indeed, it is almost a disappointment that cataloguing a CD-ROM produces a directory viewer much like any other, but that in itself is the benefit of a standardised approach. The results, whether using data, or audio, are certainly impressive.
If schools or any other group want to create their own CD-ROM, then Next have the facilities to do this at a cost of between £200 and £300 per CD. Normally CDs are pressed from a high precision master (which costs £2000 to £3000). So-called recordable CD (also known as Write Once, Read Only) uses a layer of three metals which can be fused to create the CD data bits directly using a laser. The only problem in creating a full capacity CD-ROM is that the data will occupy some 800 floppy discs! However, Next also promises for the future a development system with a high capacity hard disc drive and nine track tape recorder (at a combined cost of the order of £8000).
At the moment, both data and audio can be placed on the same CD, but the controlling software must know the type of signal it expects to receive. Future developments include CD-ROM XA (extended architecture). With this, the decoding hardware can detect whether it is reading data or audio, separate the two and present two signals concurrently,- offering the potential for simultaneous sound and data).
The CD-ROM unit will be marketed and supported by Next Technology, but discussions are taking place with Acorn and other software houses for the development of more CD-ROM based information. For the time being the combination of Archimedes and CD-ROM offers a power and versatility which few other systems are likely to match, certainly not at this price.
Product - CD ROM Unit
Supplier - Next Technology Ltd.
St John's Innovation Centre
Cambridge CB4 4WS
Price - £695 plus VAT including SCSI interface, all connecting leads, sample CD and documentation
Foundation RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/BLAST20/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, Acorn's new machines for October 1992
Acorn's new machines for October 1992
In October 1992 Acorn announced it's biggest ever range of machines.
In Acorn 1992 Acorn released details about it's upcoming line up of new machines. Whilst many of these machines weren't really new, or in one case even really an Acorn, it was the single largest announcement of technology Acorn made in it's near 20 year history. In an article originally published at the time Mark Moxon and Mike Williams took a look at the new line up...
New for '92
Acorn Computers has announced a wealth of new products for the autumn, and while there may be no major surprises or revolutionary developments, the impact of the new product range on the consumer and educational computer markets could be considerable. In this month's five page feature we focus on the more significant of the new releases. We will also be reporting in much more detail on these products in future issues of RISC User.
Foremost among the new products is a range of new A3000 systems: the A3010 targeted firmly at the consumer market, and the A3020 version aimed squarely at educational users, both in a number of different packages. The new A4000 provides similar package to the A3020 but in a three-box A5000 style arrangement. All these systems feature a new ARM250 chip. Acorn has also upgraded the A5000, the present model being replaced by two new versions: the A5000 2MB HD80 and the A5000 4MB HD120, with 80Mb and 120Mb hard discs respectively. The new HD80 version is £100 less than the original A5000, and the HD120 model with 4Mb of RAM weighs in at just £1599 ex. VAT.
All the new systems referred to above come complete with RISC OS 3.10, and this version of RISC OS is now available to all existing Archimedes users as an upgrade. The new style mouse, introduced on the A4, is now standard on all systems.
Acorn has also announced a new networking standard, AUN (Acorn Universal Networking), as part of its move towards adopting the Ethernet standard for all RISC OS systems, while still maintaining compatibility with its own low cost Econet network.
Finally, Acorn has also announced a completely different machine, the Acorn Pocket Book, based substantially on the Psion series 3, but with Acorn specified software. This costs around £200.
Details of all these new releases are covered in the following pages. All new products, including RISC OS 3.10 upgrades, are scheduled to be available from the beginning of September.
Acorn's New A3000 Range and A4000
Amongst the wealth of new products released by Acorn this autumn, the updated, revitalised A3000 series (plus the A4000) must be the most important and significant development. However, the range of new machines may seem confusing at first, so let's see what is happening.
The ARM250
At the heart of the new A3000 range is the ARM250. This is an integrated chip comprising ARM2 processor, VIDC (video controller), MEMC (memory controller), IOC (input/output controller), and PC bus interface (previously a set of four separate chips). The processor operates at 16MHz with a performance of around 7MIPS. ARM Ltd., the designers, claim that the ARM250 offers performance 1.4 times that of a 386DX running at 33MHz. The ARM250 thus clocks in somewhere between the ARMS at 4MIPS and the ARM3 rated at 13MIPS.
The ARM250 is based on four ARM macrocells (ARMS CPU, MEMC1, VIDC1, IOC1) providing a direct interface to DRAM (dynamic RAM) and ROM with support for memory mapping and protection, bitmapped displays with integral palette, and on-board video and stereo sound digital to analogue converters (DACs). ARM Ltd. says that the ARM250 has been developed as a direct response to Acorn's need for a low cost power house for its new machines.
Motherboard
All the new A3000 style systems use the ARM250 mounted on a newly designed and sparsely populated motherboard. The new board design accommodates the power supply as well as all interfaces (including a single mini-expansion slot), and fits in a totally new style of casing (see illustration). All the connections fit along the rear (see fig. 1), with a high density floppy disc drive mounted to the right (seen from the front), and a recessed reset button to the left. The entire system is now fully screened to meet international standards on interference from RF radiation, but this does, of course, add to the weight.
The new ARM250 models
There are essentially three different ARM250 models, with a number of variants in each case. The A3010 and A3020 share the same new style case (combining motherboard and keyboard). The A4000 has the same components but is packaged up as a three box system (similar to the A5000). All models run RISC OS 3.10, and thus provide the same powerful Desktop environment as the A5000.
The A3000 systems
The A3010 is the new consumer model, and is finished in a warm grey case with green function keys - the result, apparently, of Acorn's market research. This model features 1Mb of RAM (upgradable to 2Mb) and comes with twin joystick ports (suitable for standard Commodore and Atari style switch joysticks). The A3010 also has a built-in TV modulator. It has no hard disc interface, but an IDE or SCSI hard drive could be added in conjunction with a suitable interface.
The new A3010 for the consumer market.
This machine is being sold in two packages. The Family Pack comprises an A3010 with software pack including Minerva's Easiword word processor. Quest for Gold (game) and supporting audio cassette tapes at just £499 inc. VAT. The Learning Curve version provides the same machine and software as above, but also adds the Genesis Collection, the PC Emulator (now called PCSoft) and DR DOS 6, together with an Acorn standard colour monitor (with a new tilt and swivel base) all for £799 inc. VAT.
The new A3020 uses the same casing as the A3010, but in cream with red instead of green function keys. It has 2Mb of memory expandable to 4Mb, built in IDE hard disc controller, and a new standard networking socket in place of the twin joystick ports of the A3010. Missing is the TV modulator of the A3010.
The A3020 aimed at education
Acorn says this system has been designed primarily for the needs of the educational market. It will be available in two versions, with and without a 60Mb hard disc drive. It will again be supplied with an Acorn standard monitor, but a multiscan monitor will be an alternative for an extra £50 (plus VAT).
Acorn also says that the existing A3000 will continue to be supplied "while there is demand" (at the new price of £525 ex. VAT), but it seems very likely that the attractions of the new machines will rapidly cause the demise of the old A3000. This system's only merit, in comparison with the new machines, is that it can be upgraded with the faster ARM3 processor, but it doesn't have the high density floppy drive of the new systems, or the new networking capability.
The A4000
The last model to be launched as part of this series (though it is something of a hybrid) is the A4000. This packages an A3020 in a three box configuration, like the A5000. The motherboard fits in a slim height A5000 style case, and has a separate keyboard similar to but not identical to that of the A5000. The A4000 is also supplied with an 80Mb hard drive, instead of the A3020's 60Mb unit.
The A4000 in its Home Office guise
Acorn says that this system is particularly aimed at the needs of secondary schools who prefer the industry standard three box approach to their computing needs, rather than the A3000 style. The A4000 is certainly an attractive and slim looking system, but it has no more expansion capability than the A3020, so no ARM3, and no expansion other than the single mini-expansion slot. There is also an A4000 Home Office package with EasiWriter word processor. Desktop Database and optional inkjet printer.
With five different systems now slotted in below the higher specification A5000, Acorn now has a highly competitive range of 32-bit systems, and should be well placed to attack both its traditional educational and enthusiast market, as well as the mass consumer markets through stores such as Dixons and Argos.
RISC OS 3
The new Acorn operating system, RISC OS 3 version 3.10, is now available for all Acorn RISC machines. For more information on RISC OS 3, we refer you to RISC User Volume 5 Issues 1,2 and 3.
RISC OS 3 version 3.10 does have a few improvements over version 3.00, and a number of bugs have been fixed. The good news for ARMS owners is that the system has been optimised to run much faster, and Acorn say RISC OS 3 should run just as fast as RISC OS 2. The RISC OS 3.10 upgrade is available in four different packages, as follows.
The upgrade kit for RISC OS 2 users officially costs £89 inc. VAT, but will be available at the special price of just £49 inc. VAT until the middle of next year. The kit consists of a new chip set, the new manuals, the RISC OS 3 discs, an audio tape and a set of release notes. The two RISC OS 3 guides are now sandwiched together into one manual, bound conventionally rather than ring bound.
The upgrade kit for A5000 users costs £19 inc. VAT, and simply consists of the new chip set and discs. This price is at cost price to Acorn.
Educational users can buy a bulk upgrade for ten stations for £399 inc. VAT. For this they receive ten chip sets, one set of manuals and one set of discs.
Finally an adaptor set to enable the old A300s and A440s to take the new ROMs is available for £30 inc. VAT and fitting (in addition to the normal upgrade cost). Again, this is at cost price to Acorn.
Acorn has managed to make RISC OS 3 available to existing users much more cheaply than we feared. All users should consider upgrading as soon as possible, and all upgrades are available through dealers (including Beebug, of course).
The Acorn Universal Networking Strategy
The new Acorn A3020 and A4000 computers have a feature that will be of great interest to network users. The old 5- pin DIN Econet socket has disappeared, to be replaced by a new 15-pin D-type socket. The internal network circuitry has also been redesigned to provide a completely new approach to networking, which is all a part of Acorn's new philosophy, the Acorn Universal Network, or AUN for short.
Since the dawn of the BBC micro era, Acorn has promoted its proprietary and economically priced Econet system as the network to use. The main alternative to Econet is the industry standard Ethernet, which is much more expensive, but can carry data at speeds of 10Mbits per second - about 50 times the speed of Econet.
Until now the only way to connect an Acorn RISC machine to an Ethernet was to add a separate Ethernet podule. However, the new internal design of the A3020 and A4000 enables a whole variety of cards to be plugged straight in, permitting connections to all sorts of network. Currently the only cards available are for Econet and Ethernet, but the system is flexible enough to enable cards for any network to be designed. This redesign means that the old Econet cards will not fit the new machines, but the cost of the redesigned Econet upgrade is expected to be the same. Although the network socket is different to the old sockets, a new cable allows connection to an existing Econet network.
As an indication of their commitment to networking. Acorn has also released two A5000 models without hard discs. The A5000 ES (£1299 ex. VAT) has a built-in Econet interface, and the A5000 NS (£1399 ex. VAT) has a built-in Ethernet interface.
So, Acorn machines can now easily be connected to both Econet and Ethernet networks, but there is no comprehensive method for connecting the two different types of network together. This is where AUN comes in.
The first product to include specific AUN software is the AUN Level 4 Fileserver Release 2, costing £399 ex. VAT. This new release of the fileserver software (which simply turns a networked computer into a fileserver without the need for additional hardware) will now allow fileservers to be hooked into a much larger network system, which can contain many different types of network. Fileservers linking Econet and Ethernet networks act as gateways between the two types of network, simply by running AUN.
A complete AUN consists of a main Ethernet backbone network, to which any number of independent network clusters can be connected. Ethernet clusters can be connected to the backbone directly, and Econet clusters are connected via gateway fileservers. The clever part is that every station on every cluster will be able to access every fileserver on every other cluster, and these will appear to the user as normal storage device icons on the icon bar, regardless of whether the fileserver being accessed is on Ethernet or Econet. The system is very simple to use, and all this is done invisibly as far as the user is concerned.
On top of all this. Acorn's TCP/IP software can be installed on any RISC OS machines to allow them to communicate with non-RISC OS based fileservers, such as PCs, Apples or Unix systems. Thus an Econet network can be connected to an Ethernet with Unix fileservers, and all RISC OS computers running TCP/IP on the Econet network will be able to access the Unix fileserver directly.
These exciting developments massively extend the potential connectively of Acorn machines, while retaining compatibility with the older Econet standard.
The Acorn Pocket Book
The Acorn Pocket Book is a very small, hand-held computer, based on the Psion Series 3 portable organiser. The software included in the Pocket Book has been specially created to fit in with Acorn's guidelines, and a link system has been devised to enable the Pocket Book to integrate with the RISC OS Desktop; this means the Pocket Book simply appears as a separate filing system on the hosts's icon bar.
Acorn's new Pocket Book
The resident software that is built in to the Pocket Book consists of Write (a word processor with spelling checker). Abacus (a spreadsheet). Cards (a database). Time (clock and alarm) and Calc (a scientific calculator). The operating system, which is Psion's standard Series 3 OS, is multi-tasking, and allows the user to switch between the various tasks at will. There is 256K of RAM, and so-called Solid State Discs (SSDs) optionally provide up to 4Mb of additional data storage There are two types of SSD that can be used. Flash SSDs require no battery backup, but deleted files still take up memory, and RAM SSDs have their own lithium battery to keep data stored. The two standard AA batteries used by the Pocket Book last for about 80 hours of active computing, or a separate mains adaptor can be used.
There is also a programming language called OPL, which can be used to write applications on the Pocket Book. The OPL editor, used to write OPL programs, is available only as a separate product - just the run-time system is provided as standard.
Acorn hopes the Pocket Book will be bought by schools to enable pupils to collect data out in the field and process it in the classroom. It also hopes that concerned parents will invest in Pocket Books for their children, as at £249.95 inc. VAT (£199 ex. VAT to education) they are quite a lot cheaper than full Acorn RISC computers. We will have to wait and see.
The New Product Range
The following is a list of all new or repriced Acorn computer products, but does not show the whole Acorn range. Prices shown include VAT.
A3000 1Mb FD £525.00
A3010 1Mb FD Family Solution £424.68
Colour monitor for A3010 £220.00
A3010 1Mb FD Learning Curve, inc. colour monitor £680.00
A3010 2Mb FD Colour £749.00
A3010 2Mb FD Multiscan £799.00
A3020 2Mb HD60 Colour £899.00
A3020 2Mb HD60 Multiscan £949.00
A4000 2Mb HD80 Colour £949.00
A4000 2Mb HD80 Multiscan £999.00
A4000 Home Office Colour £999.00
A4000 Home Office Multiscan £1049.00
A5000 2Mb HD80 Multiscan £1399.00
A5000 2Mb HD80 Learning Curve £1445.96
A5000 4Mb HD120 Multiscan £1599.00
A5000 ES (Econet) £1299.00
A5000 NS (Ethernet) £1399.00
A540 4MB HD120 (no monitor) £1995.00
Acorn Pocket Book £212.72
Foundation RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/C32/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, BBC BASIC to C Converter
BBC BASIC to C Converter
Martin Carrudus
!BBC_C translates from Acorn BBC BASIC held in its associated file into Acorn ANSI C in a text file suitable for an Acorn C compiler. This article describes how to use the application, what !BBC_C does and the various options that are presented to the user. Before trying to use !BBC_C you should read the installation notes provided with the software, or it may not work correctly. Please note that !BBC_C is Shareware, registration details can be found in the Registration file inside the archive.
In order to understand the advantage of translation you will need to know something about the difference between compilers and interpreters.
Compiled vs Interpreted
All computer languages need to be translated into the fundamental instructions for the particular computer (machine code). A compiler is presented with the complete program and translates the whole thing into machine code. The machine code is then run on the computer in a separate stage. An interpreter, however, translates the program and executes it as it goes along. The advantage is that you do not need a preceding stage before you run the program. The disadvantage is that, since the whole program has not been 'seen', the final code is usually less efficient and runs more slowly than compiled code. The compiled C that !BBC_C produces seems to run about three times faster than the same interpreted BBC BASIC.
In order for an interpreter to obey the program efficiently, it is usually coded so that it makes it easier to work out parts of the program. The main 'trick' is to code the keywords (words like GOTO, or IF or PRINT) into only a couple of characters (bytes), known as a token. This means that they can be easily recognised every time the interpreter runs across them in the program. There are over 160 different 'tokens' used in BBC BASIC files.
At the beginning of each line of the program, the interpreter will need to know the line number of that line and where the next line is. Both are coded for greater efficiency. Most types of BASIC use an interpreter, with a couple of exceptions such as STOS on the 16bit Atari machines.
Due to the nature of BASIC, it can do things 'on the fly' that a compiled language cannot. Also BBC BASIC was designed without any formal structure (the grammar of the language) in mind, whereas the C language has a formal grammar. In particular, the C language and its compiler are very particular about the mixture of different data types (i.e. storage locations (variables) designated as integer, floating point or character string) whereas BBC BASIC uses these locations interchangeably. For these reasons, you should know something about the C language before using !BBC_C in order to understand any compiler error messages.
Using !BBC_C.
Drag the Application to the Directory you require to use it in.
Ensure you have the latest versions of the Modules required by using !SysMerge with the version of !System supplied. !BBC_C issues a warning message if your modules are out of date. On all modern versions of RISC OS double click on !Boot, this opens the configuration window. Clicking on 'System' then offers you the option of merging the copy of !System supplied with !BBC_C with the !System folder on your computer.
Double click with the mouse on the !BBC_C icon to install it on the icon bar. Click on the !BBC_C iconbar icon to bring up the application's dialogue box. Click the 'menu' button on your mouse on the bar icon for other functions including Info and Help. The Acorn !Help facility gives descriptions of the options available from the main application dialogue box.
You can load a BBC BASIC Program into !BBC_C by typing in the file name, dragging the file icon into the application window, double clicking on the file icon or dragging the file icon onto the bar icon. Choose the options required from the dialogue box presented and click on the 'Run' button. The effect of these options is more fully described below.
The C text file is eventually offered for saving prefixed by a capital 'C'. After checking it, principally for variably dimensioned arrays and undeclared variables (commented out), place it in a directory called 'c' in another directory along with 'h' which contains the files 'leaf' and 'data', and a directory 'o', all of which are needed by the compiler.
Present the C file to the compiler. There may be many messages concerned with incorrect casts as BBC BASIC is not too particular about data types, whereas the C compiler is. The author has attempted to minimise such messages.
A Beta version of 'LeafLib' needs to be included in the directory '$.o'. You also need to include its file name under 'Libraries' off the menu associated with the compiler dialogue box, separated by a comma from the other standard libraries. It is needed during the 'Link' phase of the compilation in order to supply certain routines not given in the Acorn BBC specific library.
Though every attempt has been made to encompass all forms of construct available in BBC BASIC, !BBC_C still sometimes doesn't recover from syntax errors and produces a blank output file.
Additional Notes for Acorn C Compiler Version 5.
For the Acorn C Compiler Version 5 onwards you will also need the non-standard header files 'bbc.h' and 'os.h' in your project 'h' directory and to reference the library 'RISC_OSlib', (Needed during the Link phase) under 'Libraries' option off the main dialogue box. This is in addition to the 'LeafLib' library.
The !BBC_C translator may object to the operator '=' if it is a test for equality. If you mean it to be this enclose it in brackets (e.g. A=(B=C) instead of A=B=C ). Similarly '=' used in FNs to return values must be separated from any preceding expression. Logical expressions after IF, WHILE and UNTIL are taken to be C logical expressions (with '&&', '||', '^^' and '!' for AND, OR, EOR and NOT respectively. If any logical sub-expression is bracketed then it is taken in a bitwise manner with '&','|','^' and '~'. In all other contexts logical expressions are taken to be bitwise.
FNs returning character strings are sometimes taken as returning a numerical value and the Translator grammar objects. You can force such FNs to be character string type by giving them a name postfixed with '$'(e.g. strcat$ ) to indicate that the return value is a character string. Generally the Translator determines the return value of a FN by the context in which it finds the FN.
For the reasons above, a logic expression starting with an FN will be taken to be numeric to start with. If the FN is in fact returning a character string and this is being compared with a string literal e.g FNmess>"Hello" then reversing the expression i.e. "Hello"<FNmess will make !BBC_C take the FN as returning a character string. !BBC_C then does not produce an error message. Also !BBC_C 'remembers' the return value of a FN from above.
Another advantage of translation BBC BASIC to C is that, in theory,C is a portable language and compilers for it exist on other types of computer. In simple cases it is possible to get the translated BBC BASIC program to compile on another computer. However, BBC BASIC in more complicated programs makes use of facilities that only exist on Acorn computers and which are handled differently on other machines. !BBC_C is only designed to produce code intended for use on RISC OS, not on other operating systems.
Two examples are the use of raw Acorn assembler (which is translated directly into the machine code of Acorn computers) and SWIs (SoftWare Interrupts). SWIs are pre-written routines that enable the handling of various Acorn constructs and do not exist on other machines. There are hundreds of SWIs that are available.
Lastly BBC BASIC programs sometimes make calls to the operating system of the Acorn computer and the commands are different on other computers.
Using the !BBC_C Set Up dialogue box.
Input Slot.
The name of the BBC BASIC file to be translated can be typed in here. The name will be inserted if the file concerned is dragged onto the dialogue box or dragged to the !BBC_C icon on the icon bar. The file is 'grabbed' if it is double clicked upon. The !BBC_C program will detect non BBC BASIC files when run.
Run Button.
Runs the !BBC_C BASIC to C translation when clicked upon. Various messages are displayed on the screen to indicate the progress of the translation followed by a message giving the number of identifiers used in the BBC BASIC program. The number of constructs not recognised by the grammar (syntax errors) is also given. Syntax errors result in comments in the generated C and error message dialogue boxes on the screen. These dialogue boxes are usually suppressed. (See below).
The generated C code is offered for saving within the same directory as the source BBC BASIC with the same name prefixed by a capital 'C'. Click on 'OK' or press the Return key if you are satisfied with this, otherwise alter the file name. If you hold down 'Control' and press 'U', the slot is cleared and a new name can be typed in and the icon dragged to the directory of your choice.
Cancel Button.
Clicking here removes the application dialogue box from the screen and returns you to the previous set of options.
Description Button.
Clicking here and selecting 'Run' makes the !BBC_C application present the user with two dialogue boxes giving a description of itself.
Help Button.
Clicking here and selecting 'Run' makes the !BBC_C application present the user with two dialogue boxes giving general help information. 'Description' and 'Help' cannot both be ticked at the same time, because selecting one deselects the other.
Verbose Button.
Clicking here makes !BBC_C output debugging information concerning the process it is going through as it scans the BBC BASIC program i.e. the identifiers, literals and tokens it is encountering. This process considerably slows up the processing, so it is advisable not to turn this feature on unless you really want to see what !BBC_C is doing. At the end of the process, by clicking 'menu' over the window concerned, it is possible to save the diagnostics to a separate text file. Note that by the use of 'menu' it is possible to pause, resume or abort the process. Also note that by clicking 'menu' over the main dialogue box one is able to instigate the options 'Help', 'Debug' or 'Description' from a special menu. The opportunity to alter the command line that controls !BBC_C is also available from this menu.
Indexes Button.
A facility to make FOR loop indexes and the indexes used in array arguments to be taken as integer variables. This facility was introduced in order to overcome the necessity for array arguments to have an integer type within the C language. However the C compiler does not need 'for' loops to use integers and if this option is not chosen, array indexes are still given a cast of 'int' if required.
Choosing this option could cause calculations with the relevant variables in other places to be truncated, so it should be used with caution.
Single Precision Button.
When enabled, this option causes all floating point variables (those holding fractional values) to be made C type 'float'. Otherwise such variables are given the C type 'double', which offers more precision in floating point calculations. For various reasons, this option is best not enabled.
Remove REMs Button.
When enabled, this option prevents BBC BASIC REMs (comments) from being translated into C comments within the translated code. Since one may prevent C compilers from keeping comments in the final compiled code, this option is only included for completeness.
All Lower Case Button.
Problems can be encountered when the translator turns all identifiers to lower case in line with C programming conventions. BBC BASIC identifiers such as 'a%' and 'A%' are quite frequently used and could be confused with each other if they were both converted to lower case. When this option is not enabled it prevents the first character of the identifier from being altered. With most programs you are advised not to convert entirely to lower case.
Integer, String and Float Terminators.
In BBC BASIC, integer variables are terminated by '%' and character string variables by '$', otherwise they are taken as floating point. In the C language all variables must be declared before you use them, so they can have any name you like. These writable slots offer the user an alternative value to % and $, since $ and % cannot appear in C variable names. There should not be any need to alter the default values automatically supplied. If you should alter these values, only alphabetic upper or lower case characters or the underscore character may be entered into these slots.
Note this principal difference between BBC BASIC and the C language, as mentioned above. In BBC BASIC, variable names become available immediately they are mentioned anywhere in the code whereas the C language requires that all variables must be declared before they are used.
FN/PROC Terminators.
BBC BASIC FNs (Functions) and PROCs (Procedures) can have the same name without any conflict arising, but in the C language every identifier must be unique. The two letter terminators are postfixed before any terminator due to data type, so a FN called 'mess%' with the defaults would become 'messfn_i'. .
The BBC BASIC interpreter is also able to cope with such names beginning with numerics and containing keywords in the language. The C compiler requires that identifiers begin with an alphabetical character, so numerics are converted to 'a' - 'i' and 'z' for zero e.g. '1st' becomes 'ast', '0th' becomes 'zth' and a procedure called PROCTO becomes 'procto'.
There should not be any need to alter the default values. As with variable name terminators only up to two upper or lower case characters or the underscore character may be entered in these slots.
Array Terminators.
As with BBC BASIC FNs and PROCs, there is no confusion if an array name is the same as a variable, FN or PROC, but the C compiler requires all identifiers to be unique. A three letter terminator for array variables names in the translated C is made available by this option. This terminator is in addition to any data type terminator, so an array name 'data%' in BBC BASIC would become 'dataarr_i' in the translated C with the defaults supplied.
There should not be any need to alter the default value supplied. As above only upper and lower case characters or the underscore character may be entered in this slot.
DEF Argument Terminators.
It was found that the names of the formal parameters of FNs and PROCs in DEF statements were being confused with the same variable names used elsewhere. These names are purely dummy names, so this facility enables one to give these parameters a terminator that distinguishes them from other variable names. As before this terminator is in addition to the data type terminator and the default value of 'arg' need not be altered.
Should you wish to disable this facility, clear the icon.
Primary and Secondary Indentation.
The single numerics entered in these slots determine the indentation to be applied to the translated C. The primary indentation applies to the whole code and indents each code line within the main program and C functions by the supplied number of spaces, making the code more readable by supplying an initial margin to the code.
The secondary indentation is added to the primary for each programming structure encountered (IF, REPEAT, WHILE, FOR and CASE). It is reduced by the same amount when the structure ends (with ENDIF, UNTIL, ENDWHILE, NEXT or ENDCASE respectively).
This also makes the translated C code more readable. The indentation in no way affects the speed or size of the compiled code, as the compiler ignores any embedded spaces. However the supplied BBC BASIC may have been 'squeezed' to remove spaces, as these do affect the speed of the interpreted BASIC.
Errors:- Quiet Button.
When enabled, this option suppresses the error dialogue boxes generated when a syntax (or parse) error is detected in the BBC BASIC program. As mentioned above, this may not be a fault in the BBC BASIC program, but a deficiency in the grammar that is being used by !BBC_C to parse the program.
Some programs produce many error messages, so this option is enabled by default to avoid constantly having to respond to the error dialogue boxes.
If !BBC_C terminates with a 'Untrapped Parser Error' message, then it has fallen over at some point and the output file will be empty. In any case, the total number of errors is given. Use the tips above to reduce the errors to a minimum.
In some cases, badly bracketed programming structures result in !BBC_C searching for a terminating statement (containing ENDIF, ENDWHILE, UNTIL, NEXT or ENDCASE), which is never found and the program falls over.
!BBC_C does attempt keep track of structures and close higher structures when lower ones close e.g. a WHILE loop within a CASE structure will be closed with an injected ENDWHILE upon encountering a new WHEN or OTHERWISE.
Errors:- Maximum.
!BBC_C will abort if the number of errors exceeds the indicated number. By default this is 300. If you do not wish the program to abort, you should increase this number, but by experience, if a large number of errors are generated then !BBC_C usually falls over and produces a blank output file. Sometimes this is due to not selecting the correct options for your program from the options described above.
Order of Identifier Declarations.
!BBC_C keeps an internal table of all the identifiers (symbol table), which can be kept in different sorted orders. The writable icon can only contain 0, 1 or 2. .
With 0 in it, the identifiers are just added to the end of the list every time a new identifier is encountered, so they are declared at the head of the generated C code in 'As Found' order. With 1 in the icon, the identifiers are kept in alphabetical order and with 2 in the icon, the identifiers are further sorted on their 'type', that is whether they are variables, functions or procedures. The option '2' is selected by default.
It is recommended that you should at least select option '1', or better still '2', because it makes it easier to search for a particular identifier in the declarations at the head of the generated C code. Also with 'As Found' order, the search for new identifiers in the symbol table is less efficient and can slow down !BBC_C.
Keep Separate List of Local Variables.
When this option is enabled, the variables local to a BBC BASIC function or procedure are kept in a separate symbol table, which is renewed for each new function or procedure. This means that variable data types are only determined from their behaviour within the function or procedure and not the behaviour of any global variable with the same name.
Variables local to the function or procedure are their arguments and any variables declared as LOCAL in BBC BASIC within the routine.
This option can often reduce the number of syntax errors and furthermore BBC BASIC functions are often given much more accurate data types for the value that they return. For these reasons, this option is enabled by default. .
Named Wimp Control Blocks.
By default this option is ticked 'Off' and the writable icon is disabled. This option, when enabled, allows you to specify the BBC BASIC names for up to ten variables used as Wimp control blocks. These blocks are used in SWI (SYS) calls, particularly in Wimp applications.
Such names may consist of alphanumeric characters, in both upper and lower case, and also the symbols '%', '$' and underscore. No other characters will be accepted in the writable icon. Each variable name must be separated from the next by a comma, and the whole string of names cannot exceed 100 characters. Such variables are given the data type of a string variable in the generated C code (char *). .
Further Technical Information.
For further information concerning the processing that !BBC_C does with BBC BASIC, consult 'TechNote' which is present within the application. In particular note that variably dimensioned arrays need suitable fixed values for their dimensions to be filled in manually within the generated C code (in #define directives at the head of the code). If this is not done, then C compiler errors will occur.
Certain BBC BASIC constructs were found to be untranslatable into an equivalent construct in the C language. !BBC_C will warn you in the generated C code where this occurs and the supplied 'TechNote' gives a list of those things that !BBC_C is unable to handle. Most of these constructs are only rarely used.
Writable Icons.
Pointing the mouse at a writable icon and clicking 'Select' (left hand key) will insert a red cursor in the icon concerned. The backspace or delete key will delete characters to the left. Type into icons from the keyboard. Those icons with a white background will only accept alphabetic characters from the keyboard, whilst those in light yellow will only accept numeric characters.
If you clear the variable terminator icons to spaces, !BBC_C returns to its default e.g. for the integer variable terminator, it will take the value '_i' if the icon is cleared out. However the other terminator icons can be cleared to a null string. .
Having entered a writable icon, pressing the 'Return' (Enter) key moves the cursor in turn to the next writable icon. Pressing the 'Return' (Enter) key when the final icon has been reached has the effect of running the application. .
StartUp Banner dialogue box.
On double clicking with the left hand mouse button over the !BBC_C Application icon, a banner dialogue box appears giving proprietary information about !BBC_C. At the same time the !BBC_C icon appears on the icon bar. The dialogue box appears for about five seconds, but the dialogue box can be immediately removed from the screen by clicking once over it once with the mouse. The dialogue box only appears once during any one session on the computer. That is, if you quit the !BBC_C application, carry on working without switching off the computer, then start !BBC_C again, then the dialogue box does not reappear.
Description of the Icon Bar Menu.
When the !BBC_C application is run by double-clicking on its icon, the icon is loaded onto the icon bar. Clicking 'Select' on this bar icon gives the 'Set Up' dialogue box described above, but clicking 'Menu' will present the user with the following menu:
Clicking on 'Quit' immediately removes the icon from the icon bar and aborts the application.
Clicking on 'Help' causes a window to appear giving descriptions of the options available from the 'Set Up' dialogue box.
Clicking on 'Save options' will cause the set of options that you have chosen from the 'Set Up' dialogue box, and from this menu, to be permanently saved to a file within !BBC_C. This means that your version of this application will always come up with your set of options rather than default ones every time you run !BBC_C.
Moving right over the arrow besides 'Info' displays an information box:
Principally this will tell you what the version and date of the Translator that you have is .
Moving right over the arrow besides 'Options' will produce a display:
The first set of options you are given is firstly to cause !BBC_C to automatically run when it receives the file name without having to click the 'Run' button - Auto Run. Secondly you can cause the translated C to be automatically saved without having to click 'OK' on the 'Save As' box mentioned above - Auto Save. Both options are enabled by clicking on the menu item which causes it to be ticked on the menu display.
Moving right over the arrow besides 'Display' will produce:
By default when !BBC_C runs it produces textual information. By ticking 'Summary', instead a Summary window is displayed when !BBC_C runs. This looks like this:
The number of lines given is not the number of lines of C code output, but the number of lines of text that would be displayed if the 'Text' option had been chosen. Not both 'Summary' and 'Text' can be chosen at the same time.
All the menu options chosen will be saved when 'Save options' is clicked on.
Tips for avoiding !BBC_C Syntax Errors.
Determining return values of FNs.
As mentioned above, reversing inequalities with FNs in them often avoids syntax errors. Also !BBC_C 'remembers' the return value of a FN that has been previously defined above the point in the code where the FN is being called. FNs returning numerics are taken differently to those returning character strings. .
Bitwise ANDs, ORs, NOTs and EORs.
As mentioned above, expressions after IF, WHILE and UNTIL are taken to be C logical expressions. In all other cases (e.g. in assignments), the expressions are taken to be calculated in a bitwise manner using '&', '|', '~' and '^'. For these purposes, the BBC BASIC construct TRUE is translated to a #define macro _TRUE, which has the value -1. Similarly FALSE becomes _FALSE with the value 0. Note that ANSI C returns the value of +1 in logical expressions that are true, but BBC BASIC returns a value of -1.
Also, where the code is expecting a logical expression, !BBC_C can distinguish between those expressions that require to be taken in a logical or bitwise manner. Mixed expressions will cause !BBC_C to emit syntax error messages.
Badly bracketed programming structures.
!BBC_C attempts to close higher programming structures when lower ones close, but sometimes can't cope. In particular not closing DEF PROC with a final ENDPROC can cause problems. If your program causes !BBC_C to produce a blank output file, then it could be due to bad structure bracketing.
Returning values from FNs.
Returning a value from a FN using '=' via an IF statement can cause problems when the THEN is omitted. The only solution is to insert the THEN into the BBC BASIC code. .
Similarly a test for equality in an IF statement (e.g. IF a%=b% c%+=1) should be bracketed (i.e. IF (a%=b%) c%+=1) because of the same conflict as to whether the '=' is being used as a test for equality or for returning a value from a function.
EVAL, Variable GOTOs and Variable GOSUBs.
!BBC_C is unable to cope with these constructs. EVAL produces an error message in the code. Variable GOTOs and GOSUBs result in meaningless C code. 'Structured Programming' techniques demonstrate that you should be able rewrite your program to avoid these sorts of construct.
Martin Carrudus
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/CEDGE/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, From the Cutting Edge
From the Cutting Edge March 2009
Paul Middleton
The recent RISC OS South West Show should have been a milestone for RISC OS Shows as it was the 11th time that the show had been held at the Webbington Hotel in Loxton, not far from Weston Super Mare.
The event had originally been started as the Acorn Southwest Show by ex-RAF cook John Stonier, who also ran the original Acorn (RISC OS) South East Show.
With the expected release of the Phoebe computer later in 1998, Acorn decided that it would be good to have a show to cover the West of England for people who couldn't easily make it to the Midlands or London, where the major Acorn exhibitions were held at that time. So, in conjunction with the Bristol Acorn Risc User Group and with the support of Acorn Computers and Xemplar the new show was held at the Webbington Hotel, about 9 miles south of Weston Super Mare, on Saturday 7th February 1998.
The list of exhibitors included:
Acor
Xempla
ARM Clu
Look System
TBA Softwar
Spacetec
Shersto
Archimedes Worl
Akala
Yellowston
R Com
Bajorasof
APD
Cambridgeshire Software Hous
HS Softwar
Argo Interactiv
EF
IM
Circle Softwar
Jonathan Duddingto
Datafil
CJE Micro
Acorn Use
iSV Product
Mijas Softwar
Topologik
CTA Direc
Creative Curriculum Softwar
Raspsof
Crow Associate
AAU
Dalriad
Bristol Acorn Risc User Grou
expLA
Micro Laser Design
That's quite a list...
This year CJE Micros and R-Comp were the only companies present at the show who are on this original list.
Some of the companies listed above are still around, but with little, or no, involvement in RISC OS. Some, such as APDL are still very active in the RISC OS world, but weren't able to make it this year for personal reasons.
It is however a good testament to the legacy that Acorn left to us that RISCOS Ltd, which was formed the following year, is still around and was running the show for the second time this year, and that any of those other companies are still active. We had excellent weather and a good turnout from the current RISC OS stalwarts as well as a new exhibitor from Germany.
Michael Gerbracht has set up a new company in Germany called LuaFox which, as the name suggests, is based on developing products using the Lua programming language. Lua is a lightweight scripting language which has many similarities to BASIC, but has many additional features, such as dynamically adjustable arrays. It is an interpreted language which has a reputation as being very fast, with a small footprint suitable for Unix, Windows and "embedded" processors such as ARM. The "World of Warcraft" system for example runs on Lua! So it can also be extended to very large scale applications. Michael has received good support from the German Government and the EU, and it is a pity that the UK government hasn't given the same encouragement to British software development over the past ten years.
How different it would have been if Labour hadn't come to power in 1997 and schools were still buying thousands of British Acorn computers each year!
This year's show was notable however for another much sadder reason, as the news broke the day before the show that Paul Vigay's body had been found on the shoreline in Southsea. Many people didn't get the news until the Saturday morning at the show, and it was subsequently a much quieter day, than might have otherwise been the case.
The positive side of the day, was that there was a good attendance in the theatre presentations and I got to talk to people about what their expectations were for the future of RISC OS Six, and the thorny issue of porting RISC OS to new hardware.
There has been much debate about getting RISC OS to run on the ARM 8 Cortex processors. Work has been started by Jeffrey Lee using the RISC OS Open sources and his progress can be seen at
If he succeeds then the result will be a version of RISC OS 5 running on a Beagle board. It's a shame that it won't be running RISC OS Six. The porting of RISC OS 5 to the Beagle board would be good news if RISCOS Open Ltd had taken advantage of RISCOS Ltd's recent offer of a licence agreement. As it stands the rights to licence and distribute any version of RISC OS for the Beagle board still rest exclusively with RISCOS Ltd so let us all hope that any potential problems can be resolved and don't delay this exciting project.
In the meantime RISCOS Ltd is continuing development of RISC OS Six at full speed. We hope to see everyone at the Wakefield show in just a few weeks time. You never know we might have some exciting new developments on show.
Paul Middleton
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/DFS/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, DFS Discs
DFS Discs
A BBC disc image tool
!DFSdiscs was originally written as a simple tool to write BBC DFS games disc images obtained from sites like Stairway to Hell. These are supplied as either SSD (Single Sided Disc) or DSD (Double Sided Disc) disc image files. This is ideal for emulators but what if you want to use them on a 'real' BBC computer?
In the past it was possible to use various PC programs to write the image to a floppy disc. However the disc controllers used on all modern PCs can't use Single Density discs (SD, MFM encoding), only Double Density (DD, FM encoding). Of course, if you've got a 1770 double density disc filing system on you BBC then you could use DD discs, but there's no real standard DD format for the BBC. Since third party suppliers started selling DD disc upgrades years before Acorn switched there are various systems, some using 16 sectors per track (320K per disc) and some 18 (360K per disc). This is why the only truly universal disc format understood by the whole BBC 'family' of computers is SD, either 40 track (100K) or 80 track (200K), which is why when disc images are available on the web they are invariably SD and can't be put on a disc in DD format
Luckily the Acorn 32 bit computers do use floppy disc controllers which can read and write SD discs, so some time ago I wrote a couple of rather crude programs to convert between these image files and 'real' BBC discs. These were sufficient for my purposes but not really suitable for release, so now I have written !DFSdiscs, which is a rather more sophisticated version of these. It allows you to write .SSD or .DSD disc images to real floppy discs and to create .SSD or .DSD disc image files from actual discs so you can use your old BBC programs in an emulator.
The program is 32 bit compatible, but it obviously can't be used on the A9 as that model doesn't have a floppy drive. Luckily the floppy controller on the Iyonix is not one of the modern ones that can't be used in single density mode.
The main window
Double-click on the program icon and it will install itself on the iconbar in the usual way. If you click SELECT on this icon the window shown below will open.
This picture shows the window with a disc image file loaded. The upper four fields give information about the image file so with no file loaded they will be blank.
At the top is the filename of the image file. If the image was read from a 'real' floppy this will be blank. Below this is the disc name. If the image file is double sided then this will be the name of the primary side of the disc, Drive 0 in BBC terms. Below this is shown the disc type. In this case it's '80 Track SS' where 'SS' means Single Sided and 'DS' means Double Sided.
Below this is an icon which tells you what's happening. In the above picture it says 'Disc image file loaded', which is pretty self-explanatory.
Next there's an icon labelled 'Physical drive' with a couple of bump icons. This is the disc drive that will be used for read and write operations. Most Acorn computers will only have one drive, so it will show '0' and the bump icons will do nothing. However, if you're a real BBC computer enthusiast you might have a 5.25" floppy drive attached as well (tip - the A5000 is brilliant for this) and the bump icons will then let you choose the drive you want to use.
The lower part of the window is divided into two halves. On the left is the Read disc section which creates image files from real floppies and on the right is the Write disc section which writes image files to real discs.
Reading a disc
Place a BBC single-density disc in the drive and click on either the Side 0, Side 2 or Both buttons. This will read the selected side(s) of the disc.
As this relates to the program 'Side 0' would mean the primary side of the disc and 'Side 2' the secondary side. If you understand the BBC DFS system this will be instantly familiar.
At this point I need to include a brief note for people not overly familiar with the BBC DFS disc system. Most discs are double-sided and each side is treated as a separate drive with '0' being the primary drive and '2' the secondary drive. Why not 0 and 1? Well drives 1 and 3 are the drive numbers allocated to the second floppy drive (if one is fitted). This is for historical reasons. The original BBC disc drive was 40 track single sided. Hence if you had two drives the second drive would be drive 1, which made sense. However, with a double sided drive the secondary side had to be two numbers higher than the primary side. This sounds confusing but it's just something we all got used to. Most people thought of drives 0 and 1 as the 'top' sides of a 5.25" disc and drives 2 and 3 as the 'bottom' sides. In fact it's the other way about, but this doesn't matter much in practice.
Whichever you choose the disc will first be checked to make sure it's an appropriate type (see the notes at the end about 40 track discs) and the disc type and name will appear. The chosen side(s) will then be read. Note that if you have chosen Both then both sides must be in the same format, either 40 track or 80 track. If one side is 40 track and the other 80 track then they must be treated as two separate discs.
Don't be surprised if nothing appears in the Disc name field. BBC discs, unlike Archimedes discs, aren't automatically given a name when they're formatted, it has to be done manually later, so most 'home grown' discs don't actually have a name. Similarly you might see some weird characters with foreign accents. These will almost certainly be MODE 7 colour control characters which make the disc name stand out in pretty colours when the disc is catalogued on a BBC computer in MODE 7.
Saving an image file
Now you've got your disc image you can save it to your computer's hard disc. Click on the Save image button and a small Save as window will open, as shown below.
As a default file name this will have the name given to the disc (if there is one) or, if not, 'BBCdisc'. If the button labelled Add dsd or ssd is ticked then the appropriate file extension will be added when the file is saved. This saves you adding the file extension manually if you are intending to transfer the files to a PC.
There are many characters which are permitted in a BBC disc name but which would be illegal in an ADFS file name. For example, '*', '&', a full stop, colon or space. If these are found in the disc name then they will be replaced in the name in the Save window with the underscore character '_'. Don't be surprised if you see a lot of these but the disc name looks OK as spaces were often used to pad BBC disc names. Just delete them in the file name icon before you save the file.
Change the name if you wish and then drag the file icon to a suitable directory window to save it.
Loading an image file
To load a BBC disc image file from your hard drive just drag the file icon to either the !DFSdiscs icon on the iconbar or anywhere in the main window. It will be recognised as an image file either by its filetype, &B21 for a single sided image or &B22 for a double sided image, or if it has an /SSD or /DSD file extension
Once loaded a few basic checks will be carried out to make sure the file is a BBC disc image and the disc name and type will be shown as previously described. In addition the full filename will appear in the top field in the main window.
Writing an image file to disc
As well as creating SSD and DSD image files from a floppy disc !DFSdiscs can copy disc image files to a floppy disc for use on a 'real' BBC computer.
The program will write to either the standard 3.5" Acorn floppy drive or a 5.25" drive if you have one. You can use 3.5" DFS discs with any BBC computer but you will need an appropriate drive. Most modern hi-density drives aren't really suitable for the BBC or Master disc interface but the older double-density drives normally do work OK, that is, Acorn 800K drives as used on the A300, A400 and A3000 computers or PC 720MB drives.
At present before you can use the disc it will need to be formatted. This can by using the format option in !DFSDiscs, or on a BBC itself. I have found that a lot of hi-density 3.5" drives will work with a BBC computer if they are used only to read data and are never written to, which would make it possible to temporarily connect a hi-density 3.5" drive to transfer data to a 5.25" drive.
With the image you want to write loaded and an appropriate formatted disc in the drive click on the Write disc button. If the image file is single sided then you can choose whether to write to Side 0 or Side 2 of the disc by clicking on the appropriate radio button. This lets you write two single sided images to the two sides of a double sided disc. If it's a double sided disc image then these radio buttons will have no effect.
If the Verify button is ticked then the disc will be verified after writing.
When writing to a disc if there are unused tracks at the end of the image file these are not written or verified. This makes the writing and verifying process quicker which can save quite a bit of time as the structure of DFS discs makes them very slow compared with a modern ADFS disc.
Similarly when saving a disc image to your hard drive only the used portion of the disc image is saved. This reduces the file size. It follows that if you are intending to convert a DFS disc to an image file it is best to Compact it first if you still have access to a BBC computer and disc drive.
The main menu
If you click MENU over either the main window or the iconbar icon a menu will appear.
The first item is Info and this leads to the usual program info window.
Next is Name disc. This leads to the window shown below.
This enables you to alter the disc name of an image file. If it is a double sided disc then the name of both sides can be changed. Just enter the name(s) and click on the Name disc button or press RETURN with the caret in the second writable icon and the name(s) will be changed.
Note that this only alters the names in the image file loaded into the program, not an image file stored on disc or the actual floppy disc.
The third item is Make 80 trk.
When writing an image file to a floppy disc the floppy disc must have the same format as the image file. If your disc image is only 40 track and your BBC computer uses 80 track drives then this would mean you would need to format a disc to only 40 tracks, which would be rather wasteful. As you might expect, if you select Make 80 trk. with a 40 track image file loaded it will be converted into an 80 track image. You can then write it to a disc formatted to 80 tracks, leaving half the disc empty so you can add more files later.
As the standard for SSD and DSD disc image files are 80 track if you are intending to use the image with an emulator it would probably be best to convert them to 80 track first.
The next item is Format which leads to a window which will be described later.
The next item is Clear. This just removes the current disc image and clears the main window.
The final item is Quit, and this does exactly what you'd expect.
Formatting discs
The Format item on the main menu leads to the window shown below.
This offers the option to format either Side 0, Side 2 or both sides of the current drive with 40 or 80 tracks. You can also verify either or both sides of the disc.
Choose whether you wish to format the disc with 40 or 80 tracks and then just click on either the Side 0, Side 2 or Both buttons to format the disc. Once you have done this the Confirm button will become active and you should click on this to format selected side(s) of the current drive.
As you might expect clicking on the equivalent Verify buttons will verify the disc. As this is non destructive it doesn't require confirmation. You can, of course, do this at any time and not just after formatting.
APDL and Foundation RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/DISC/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, DiscWorld
DiscWorld
Aaron Timbrell rounds up the software directory
Welcome to this issue's DiscWorld column. This issue we are keeping with our "serious" software policy and are delighted to present a free copy of FontFiend, the most powerful RISC OS font editor, free for all subscribers. This also provides an excellent opportunity to answer the question that literally nobody has ever asked, "Why call it 'The Fiendish Font Editor'?". The answer is simple, take the title letters and read them backwards. What do you get? The answer is EFF, which is short for the Electronic Font Foundry. Why? Well I used to work there in the early 90's. On leaving I decided that I needed a font editor of my own and that's how the FontFiend project was started. It was never designed to be a commercial product. I wrote it for myself to edit and design fonts for sale under the iSV Products banner.
When the market for RISC OS fonts finally dried up in the late 90's I decided that since I wouldn't be using FontFiend myself I might as well tidy it up a little and sell it so others could take advantage of the features (which at the time were well ahead of equivalent applications on other platforms). Now you too can have a play. As one final note as far as I am aware FontFiend holds the record for the RISC OS application that can handle the most number of simultaneous windows, almost 600 at once. You have been warned!
FontFiend - the Fiendish Font Editor rrp £29
FontFiend is the intelligent font designer. FontFiend can make fonts with Latin 1,2,3 or 4 character sets. Automatically make accented letters and symbols in your font. Worried about the "black arts" of hinting a font. FontFiend can do this for you automatically.
FontFiend can also repair damaged fonts that won't load into FontED as well as loading many fonts that FontED cannot cope with. Supplied with a comprehensive printed manual and full on-line help FontFiend is the professional font designer.
Requires RiscPC with minimum 8Mb of RAM
FontFiend is the font editor the Acorn community has been waiting for. Some of its hundreds of features include:
Fully illustrated manual with examples and tutorial sections
Supports interactive help
Full time context sensitive on-line help system on the FontFiend button bar. This can be disabled if the user wishes
Loads Risc OS 2, Risc OS 3 and Base 0 Acorn outline fonts
Saves out in Risc OS 2 or Risc Os 3 format, Risc OS 3 fonts can include kerning and misc data areas
Can also load Kerning files, AFM files, Skeletons, Scaffolds and Composites from other fonts
Can import and export draw files and incorporate them in existing or new fonts
Automatic character builder. FontFiend can make accented letters, daggers, brackets and a number of symbols automatically
Automatic scaffold models including Serif and SansSerif
Encoding based, so FontFiend can handle Latin 1,2,3 and 4 fonts as well as custom encoding files
Automatic skeleton routines
Intelligent routines that understand fonts and are able to draw new characters in the style/weight of the existing font
Accent auto-centering system so that FontFiend can automatically add accents to oblique/italic fonts
Transformation system to make new weights from existing fonts. When transforming FontFiend will also shift composite characters, correct accents, move scaffolds and skeletons as well as disconnecting any scaffolds that are no longer valid
Edit a fonts misc data area including underline position and thickness
Real time dragging of composites using the mouse
Offers the same main table features as FontED including copy characters, insert composites and copy scaffolds.
Can hint a font in under 20 seconds, including producing a proper scaffold tree.
Automatic scaffolding systems allows both global scaffolds and linear linking to improve quality
Can repair damaged fonts that will not work or load into FontED
Can load fonts that FontED cannot. For example fonts with "Cyclic Scaffold Link" errors
Save out Kerning, Scaffolds or Skeletons and reuse them on another font. Loaded files are automatically scaled to fit the font being edited
Can convert Base 0 fonts to any latin encoding
Display both outline and filled versions of characters
Can save out protected fonts that cannot be examined by a user
Convert composite characters to real outlines and skeletons
Full manual and automatic scaffolding control
Can delete defective scaffolds or skeletons
Includes special filters to clean excess control points, grid lock characters e.t.c
Flip characters either horizontally or vertically
This is only a small list of the hundreds of features offered by FontFiend.
Comments
"It's excellent!" Kevin Simpson a trained typographe
"...an excellent piece of software...a must for anyone at all interested in font design." Toby Richards Dalmatio
"...should be called fontfriend...meets my needs for latin3 fonts very well." Mr M. Omag
"...a truly awesome program." Keith Parke
"...I was really impressed." Mr P Fareha
"Excellent product...certainly allows much easier manipulation of fonts." Mr D Strou
FontFiend is StrongARM compatible and is suitable for all 26bit and 32bit versions of RISC OS.
The complete DiscWorld line up
As per usual we have our collections of the latest RISC OS applications, as well as support files for this issues articles:
C32
BBC BASIC to C converter.
DFS
Exclusive Foundation RISCWorld DFS disc reader.
FontFiend
Full version of FontFiend, the RISC OS font editor.
Iyonix
Software featured in the Iyonix column.
Letters
Software covered in the letters column.
ToolBox
This contains two sets of Toolbox Modules. The Castle archive contains the latest 26/32 bit neutral system components, required if you want to run a lot of new software releases on 26bit machines. The RISCOS Ltd archive contains later and improved versions of a number of modules and is suitable for all versions of RISC OS from 3.1 onwards. We have also included copies of SharedUnixLib and UnixHome as these are needed by some programs.
VA
Support files for the VirtualAcorn technical support article.
Wake2008
Wakefield 2008 show photos by Colin Sutton.
WimpProg
Programming examples from our latest book serialisation.
I debated about changing the heading of this section this time round. Mainly because it's not a rant as such, rather it's more of a long deep sigh of sadness. Why? Well because it's very difficult for me to write anything that isn't about the untimely death of Paul Vigay. Whilst I knew Paul well enough to speak to him at shows I didn't have any real direct dealings with him. In addition I didn't, or couldn't, agree with many of the things he said. Paul was well known as one who fervently believed in a number of more outlandish things. Crop circles, Diana conspiracies, Castle selling 4000 Iyonix's. The list is quite long. However despite not agreeing with him I couldn't have ever really had a disagreement with him as such, since he was such a nice chap.
Matt Thompson has written an obituary for Paul that's in this issue and I'm not going to retread the same ground. Instead I want to focus on the huge hole that Paul's death has left behind. For a start Paul was the face of Orpheus internet and was the driving force behind the only "RISC OS friendly" ISP. Mere weeks after his death Orpheus customers are already starting to grow concerned about lack of support and services that have disappeared. But what other holes has Paul left behind? Well he was the one who managed and published the RISC OS F.A.Q's that appeared on the newsgroups each month. Will someone else step forward to take them over?
How about RISCOS Now magazine? That was published by Louie Smith, but Paul was the main force behind the magazine and wrote a lot of the content. Will that continue? I doubt it. What about the huge resources on the
RISC OS is small arena. Losing a key man like Paul is a very serious matter, not just for his friends and family, but for all RISC OS users. Another important part of RISC OS has gone. How many more parts have to go before the whole lot goes with it?
Finally, and despite what I said earlier about changing the heading for this section, perhaps there is still room for a quick rant. As Paul was one who believed in any number of conspiracy theories I was a little concerned that one would surface in the RISC OS community that related to his death. Initially I was very pleased to see that everyone had more than enough common sense to desist from any such hurtful nonsense.
My pleasure didn't last too long. Just before Paul's funeral such nonsense appeared. Whilst I don't want to name the inconsiderate moron responsible (although the name John Nolan wouldn't be too far off the mark) I found the post(s) in especially bad taste. Just to really hammer home the "conspiracy" nonsense home this individual even claimed that by mentioning something he "could be putting his own life in danger". Indeed. I am quite sure I am not the only RISC OS user who would happily "put this persons life in danger" for the upset he could cause to Paul's relatives. Luckily maturity came to the fore and he was told by a number of people to either go the the Police if he had something important, or to just go away if he didn't.
We need people like Paul Vigay, but nobody needs people who want to make up stories about his tragic death.
The following is about the vehicular faith, not specifically about computing.
Since last issue I have only attempted a couple of automotive jobs. The first involved walking into Halfords and purchasing a new oil filter and a tin of engine flush for the Matiz. Having picked up the items I paid, then walked out. Job done. Of course I haven't got round to actually flushing the old oil, draining it, replacing the filter and then topping the oil up. However I can say, without contradiction, that so far the job is going swimmingly.
With a recent attack of nice weather I have been able to drop the hood on the Saab and go for a couple of nice drives with sunglasses and warm pullover. Warm because of the heated seats, which are a must in any convertible. Before taking the Saab out I did spend two days giving it a through spring clean. This involved hoovering out the inside (which wasn't dirty), then polishing the interior (which wasn't dusty) and of course feeding the leather seats (which weren't very hungry). I then turned my attention to the outside and soaked the bodywork before attacking it with a washing brush and car wash (which unlike washing up liquid doesnt contain salt). Then when I had dried it I went round dealing with any new stone chips before giving it two coats of wax.
So that's two unexciting vehicular events in one issue, surely something must have gone wrong somewhere?
You might remember that in the last issue I said that the Matiz had a slow puncture, but that before getting the type replaced I wanted to remove the old tyre and clean up the alloy wheel. Well...the last time I removed a tyre by hand was on a Rover 100. Not a Metro with a silly badge, a proper Rover 100, 2.6 litre, nearly 2 tons and with a proper bench seat. Anyway one of the more important differences between a car built in the 1950s and one made almost 50 years later relates to the interface between the car and the ground. The tyres. The Rover 100 had nice Avon squeal-a-matic crossply tyres. These can be removed from the wheel rims with a medium strength cough. The Matiz has tiny 13" tyres, not the huge ones on the Rover. So they must be easier to remove. Musn't they?
I'll give you a clue, the answer rhymes with "ho" and has only two letters. The difference between the two is that the Matiz has radial tyres. Now I am sure that most of you know that radial tyres offer better road holding. Whilst this is in some part due to the improvements in the design of the tyre treads it's mainly to do with the design, size and stiffness of the tyre sidewalls. The result being that whilst you can remove a large 1950's crossply tyre with a couple of tyre levers in a few minutes one cannot do the same with a modern 13" radial tyre. Indeed I am now happy to confirm that the only way to remove a 13" radial tyre is to gradually cut it up whilst it's still attached to the wheel. For this you will need a sharp thick knife. You will also need a set of strong tin snips, several screwdrivers, the two tyre levers you gave up on several hours ago and a complete free weekend.
With these simple tools it's a matter of a mere 36 hours before the tyre will finally part company with the wheel. Even better you will then discover that with all the levering and banging, the soft alloy wheel has been damaged and is probably scrap.
So you may well wonder why one wouldn't simply shove the wheel and tyre in the boot and take it to the local tyre fitters and ask them to take the tyre off. Well that's a very good question. When I've come up with an answer I will let you know. In the meantime does anyone have a spare Matiz alloy wheel they want to sell? Preferably one in good condition with a new tyre fitted?
Printing Foundation RISCWorld
The new look of Foundation RISCWorld means that you will no longer get the yellow background when printing articles. However you will still get the blue border on the left unless you turn off the printing of background images. The example below shows the print dialogue box from Fresco.
As you can see the option "No Background" is ticked. If you want to print out any of the RISCWorld pages and don't want to waste ink on a blue border then make sure you have clicked a similar option in your browser.
Aaron Timbrell
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/FERMAT/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, Fermat's Last Theorem
Fermat's Last Theorem
Martin Carrudus on the Proof of 'Fermat's Last Theorem'
Fermat was a 17th Century mathematician, who made many 'conjectures', but rarely provided actual proofs of them. One such conjecture was that whole numbers of the form 22^n+1 i.e. 2 raised to the power 2 raised to the power n, with a 1 added to the whole lot, were always prime for all whole numbers (integers), n. This was eventually disproved by an 18th Century mathematician, Euler, for the case n=5, i.e. 22^5+1 can be factorised, and it is now thought that, to the contrary, that these so-called 'Fermat Numbers' are, in fact, all factorisable for n greater than 5.
Note that a 'prime' number is a whole number that has no 'factors' other than one, and itself. For example, the first prime number is 3, since it can only be divided by 1, or by itself. The opposite of a prime is a 'composite'. This is a number that is divisible by some number less than itself and not one. For example the number 4 can be divided by itself, by 1 and also by 2. The 'Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic', states that all whole numbers are either prime or expressible as unique product (multiplied together) of primes less than it, some of which may be raised to certain powers. This may seem obvious, (really? -ED) but there are certain domains of 'number like' objects that do not have this property i.e. you can get the same result by 'multiplying together' two entirely different pairs of 'numbers'.
'Fermat's Last Theorem' was a conjecture that Fermat made. It was not the last he made, it is just the last that remained either to be proved or disproved. These 'conjectures' were in the field of 'Number Theory', where we are dealing with the properties of the whole numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, ...
For these purposes, zero is not considered to be a true 'whole' number.
Equations that are to be solved with all whole numbers in them are called 'Diophantine' Equations, after Diophantus, a Greek mathematician, of the 3rd Century A.D., who first wrote down results concerning such equations.
Around 1637, Fermat was studying a Latin translation of Arithmetica, by Diophantus, where Diophantus was trying to separate the square of a whole number into the sum of the squares of two other whole numbers. In Latin in the margin of the book Fermat wrote:
'On the other hand, it is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a biquadrate into two biquadrates, or generally any power except a square into two powers with the same exponent. I have discovered a truly marvellous proof of this, which, however, the margin is not large enough to contain.'.
What Fermat was saying was that you can't find whole numbers, x, y and z, such that:-.
xn + yn = zn, for any n greater than 2.
This, so simply stated, is 'Fermat's Last Theorem', and its proof has baffled some of the best mathematical brains for over 400 years!
The equation above IS soluble in the trivial case where the x or y is zero, and, also when n=2, it amounts (remember Pythagorus, from your school days!) to finding a right angled triangle with all whole number sides. You are also probably familiar with the 3, 4, 5 triangle, because 32+42=52, but, in fact, there are a countably infinite number of solutions. The 'trick' is to choose any two (whole) numbers, m and n, then, if you let:-.
x = m2 - n2
y = 2.m.n
and
z = m2 + n2
THEN
x2 + y2 = z2 ALWAYS!
E.g. Letting m=3 and n=2, leads to x=5, y=12 and z=13, and 52 + 122 = 132.
This is not the only result to do with the sum of powers of whole numbers e.g.
33 + 43 + 53 = 63 and 182 + 262 = 1000 = 103 and many other amazing results!
As you probably guessed, Fermat's proof of the Theorem was never found.
One infuriated mathematician even sent someone to search Fermat's house, after Fermat's death, in order to find the proof! In the 1840's a German mathematician, called Kummer did a lot of work on the Theorem and established an over-riding theory, called the 'Theory of Ideals'. Certain numbers, in his theory, are 'ideal'.
Up until 1988, the Theorem had been proved for all exponents up to 125,000, and, if there was indeed a solution to Fermat's equation, it would involve numbers in the excess of 125,000125,000, or, with over a million digits in them!
Perhaps the greatest mathematician of them all, Gauss, refused to work on it, saying that it would drop out as a side-result of a much larger theorem. He proved to be right.
The theorem involved is the so-called 'Taniyama-Shimura' or 'Shimura- Taniyama' Conjecture. This concerns 'elliptic curves', which are curves in 2D in x and y co-ordinates, which obey the equation y2=a.x3+b.x2+c.x+d, where the a, b, c and d are rational constants i.e. they are fractions formed by the division of one whole number into another. The circle is a special form of elliptic curve. There are also functions (calculations with numbers that result in another number) called 'modular forms' that have special properties.
The 'modular form' associated with the circle are the trigonometric functions sine and cosine.
The 'Shimura-Taniyama' Conjecture, was that EVERY elliptic curve has an associated 'modular form'.
In 1984, a mathematician called 'Gerhard Frey', at a conference in the Black Forest, made a 'joke' assertion that, if there were a solution to Fermat's equation, it would lead to an elliptic curve that could not possibly have an associated modular form. But another mathematician, Ken Ribet, managed, amazingly, to show that Frey's 'joke', was, in fact true!
A Cambridge Mathematician, Andrew Wiles, who had dreamed of solving Fermat's Last Theorem, saw his chance. Prove the 'Taniyama-Shimura' Conjecture, and there could be no solution to Fermat's equation, since this would lead to an elliptic curve without a modular form, which was impossible.
Wiles' work was simplified by the fact that the class of elliptic curves involved, was a subset of all the curves, called semi-stable.
Wiles started with a technique called 'Horizontal Iwasawa' Theory, but found it only applied in a limited set of circumstances. He returned to the mathematical community for ideas.
Then Wiles heard that a young student mathematician, Matthias Flach, had found a way of numbering the elliptic curves, using some earlier work by a Russian mathematician, Kolyvagin. The so-called Flach-Kolyvagin numbering. Wiles now saw the method, which is called induction. Show that if an elliptic curve numbered 'n' has an associated modular form, then it follows that the elliptic curve numbered 'n+1' ALSO has an associated modular form. Then prove it for n=1, and you have proved it for all n. Like knocking over an infinite line of balanced dominoes by knocking the first.
Wiles spent the next seven years secretly working on the problem. Whenever he got stuck, he quietly approached friends for help. He likened it to entering a dark room, bumping over the furniture in the dark, until he found the light switch, then entering another dark room, and doing the same thing, until, finally, the whole house was lit.
What Wiles was doing, in effect, was running through all the contingencies that could arise, and eliminating them one by one.
In May 1993, Wiles overcame one final hurdle, and he had a proof. All 200 pages of it. He presented it in the June at a Conference on Number Theory at Cambridge. The leading experts in Number Theory studied the proof - and found a flaw in it!
Wiles went to ground again for a whole year. It was like he was trying to cover a floor with a carpet with a hole in it. No matter how he shifted the carpet around, he couldn't get rid of the hole!
He was just giving up, when, on Monday, September 19th 1994, he thought he would write down the exact conditions under which his proof was failing. With a blinding flash, he saw these conditions were EXACTLY the ones under which Horizontal Iwasawa Theory applied. It was the extra piece of carpet he needed! He couldn't believe what he'd written down. He had to go away for an hour, and then study it again to see if it was true.
And it was just such a neat result, it was so beautiful that it made him weep.
Wiles' work was built on the backs of centuries of work by other mathematicians. It was a triumph of 20th Century Mathematics. Many of the techniques involved just didn't exist in other centuries before. We now believe that Fermat thought up a proof that he thought he could generalise to higher powers, without realising that, in these number systems, you lost the 'unique factorisation' property. Probably one of the greatest Mathematical 'jokes' of all time, the way it perplexed generations of Mathematicians to come!
Postscript...
What are the practical results of the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem? It is only of interest to Mathematicians! There is one 'interesting' result. The symbol |x| or, the modulus of x, is x with the sign taken out - e.g.
|-2| = 2.
If we consider curves in x and y of the form: |x|n + |y|n = 1, for n greater than 2, the so-called called 'hyper ellipses', then they pass through no point where both x and y (the co-ordinates) are rational, except where x=0 or y=0. The method of proof, as used in the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, is to assume the opposite of what you are trying to prove, and show this leads to an absurdity. So-called reductio ad absurdum proof.
Suppose, then, that we can have both (positive) rational x and y in |x|n + |y|n = 1.
We can always reduce two rationals to a 'common denominator', by multiplying them on the top and bottom by appropriate numbers.
Suppose this is 'd' and the rationals are a/d and b/d, where a, b and d are whole numbers. Then (a/d)n + (b/d)n = 1, or, multiplying on both sides by dn, we get an + bn = dn, which is impossible for whole numbers a, b and d, and n>2 according to Fermat's Last Theorem. This is an absurdity, which has arisen by assuming we can have both co-ordinates rational. We conclude that we can't have both co-ordinates (the x and y) being rational.
Reductio ad Absurdum!
Martin Carrudus
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/FFIEND/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, FontFiend - a Foundation RISCWorld exclusive
FontFiend
The complete manual for them most advanced Font Editor for RISC OS.
All rights reserved. This program is licensed for use on a single computer by a single user.
This version is supplied for the use of RISC World subscribers only.
Contents
What is a font?
Acorn format fonts
Font Components
Composites
Skeletons
Widths
Scaffolds
Bounding Boxes
Kerning
Misc Data
Getting Started
Setting up Memory
Loading FontFiend
Loading a Font
Looking at characters
Filled character windows
The FontFiend main menu
Character menus
Filled character windows (2)
The Icon bar menu
Getting started summary
FontFiend Tutorial
Loading the Example font
Adding the missing letters
Adding Skeletons
Adding Scaffolds
Scaffolding the entire font
Saving the finished font
Making a bolder version
FontFiend Main table
Dragging with Select
Dragging with Adjust
Exporting characters as drawfiles
Importing characters as drawfiles
Importing other files
Importing AFM files
Importing Encoding files
Transformations
FontFiend Main Menu
The Misc submenu
The Bounding sub menu
The characters sub menu
Transform
Transformation examples
The Composites sub menu
The Save sub menu
The Outlines sub menu
FX Process Sub Menu
SpecialFX
The Kerning sub menu
The kern pairs menu
The Scaffolds sub menu
The skeleton sub menu
The widths sub menu
FontFiend outline character windows
Bounding Boxes
Composites
Scaffolds
Outlines
Skeletons
The currently selected character
FontFiend Character Menus
Bounding sub menu
Composites sub menu
Outlines sub menu
Scaffolds sub menu
Zoom sub menu
The preferences window
Appendix 1 - Glossary of terms
Appendix 2 - Font Problem Solving
Appendix 3 - Encoding tables
Appendix 4 - Loading Base0 fonts
APDL and Foundation RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/HUGHJ/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, The Hugh Jampton Experience
The Hugh Jampton Experience
The end of an era, so sanity is getting...nearer...
Well here we all are again. Lurking around the bottom (Ohhhhh! - ED) of Foundation RISCWorld. There are actually going to be a few changes in this issue's column. I know I have been saying that for ages, but this time I really almost mean it. One of these changes is that a goodly part of this issues "magnum arsus" has been written by our looney (surely, loyal? - ED) readers. This helps me a great deal. Someone else does all the work and I keep the money. Perhaps I should get a job in a bank? Just call me Fred Jampton from now on.
Anyway before we get to take a look at the stunningly tedious changes that have been made we do need to revisit one old faithful. The much despised and derided Hugh Jamptom Caption Competition. or to give it it's full technical title ONNTRA. As we all know this is short for "Oh no not that rubbish again". Well tough, lets get on with that rubbish...
The caption competition
As your meals on wheel lady should be able to remind you I published this in the previous column:
I then asked all you readers to come up with a suitable caption that was fit to actually be published. So what submissions did we receive?
"When Chesley Sullenberger III landed his there was water in it!"
John Bryan
So there you have it. One entry received. As you can imagine this made choosing the winner somewhat easier. So after careful deliberation we have decided that John is a narrow winner. He will be sent one of the special APDL £10 discount vouchers which will allow him to either obtain any APDL, iSV Products or Proaction software title up to the value of £10. Or he can choose to use the voucher towards the purchase of a more expensive software title. John should be receiving his voucher any month soon. In keeping with the APDL security policy the voucher will be hand delivered by hand in a specially designed second hand dog eared envelope. All vouchers expire the day before they are received.
Now do you remember the start of this article? No. Well then I will remind you. I said that there would be some changes. The first of these is that we are finally putting the Caption Competition out of it's misery. Yes it's no more. The vet did his best, but in the end it was the only sensible thing to do.
So what's going to take it's place? Well I'm not sure. For this issue, though, I will be printing all the rubbish that's been sent in by my usually sedated readers. starting with something from Chris Newman...
Dear Hugh
Thought this might amuse.....
How to complain to the police
This is a genuine complaint to Devon & Cornwall Police Force from an angry member of the public A true email sent to the force, lengthy but brilliantl
Having spent the past twenty minutes waiting for someone at Bodmin police station to pick up a telephone I have decided to abandon the idea and try e-mailing you instead.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to pass this message on to your colleagues in Bodmin, by means of smoke signal, carrier pigeon or Ouija board.
As I'm writing this e-mail there are eleven failed medical experiments (I think you call them youths) in St Mary's Crescent, which is just off St Mary's Road in Bodmin.
Six of them seem happy enough to play a game which involves kicking a football against an iron gate with the force of a meteorite. This causes an earth shattering CLANG! which rings throughout the entire building.
This game is now in its third week and as I am unsure how the scoring system works, I have no idea if it will end any time soon.
The remaining five failed-abortions are happily rummaging through several bags of rubbish and items of furniture that someone has so thoughtfully dumped beside the wheelie bins. One of them has found a saw and is setting about a discarded chair like a beaver on ecstasy pills.
I fear that it's only a matter of time before they turn their limited attention to the caravan gas bottle that is lying on its side between the tw
bins.
If they could be relied on to only blow their own arms and legs off then I would happily leave them to it. I would even go so far as to lend them the matches.
Unfortunately they are far more likely to blow up half the street with them and I've just finished decorating the kitchen.
What I suggest is this - after replying to this e-mail with worthless assurances that the matter is being looked into and will be dealt with, why not leave it until the one night of the year (probably bath night) when there are no mutants around then drive up the street in a Panda car before doing a three point turn and disappearing again. This will of course serve no other purpose than to remind us what policemen actually look like.
I trust that when I take a claw hammer to the skull of one of these throwbacks you'll do me the same courtesy of giving me a four month head start before coming to arrest me.
I remain your obedient servant
Yours Mr ??????"
"Dear Mr ??????,
I have read your e-mail and understand your frustration at the problems caused by youths playing in the area and the problems you have encountered in trying to contact the police.
As the Community Beat Officer for your street I would like to extend an offer of discussing the matter fully with you.
Should you wish to discuss the matter, please provide contact details (address / telephone number) and when may be suitable.
Regards PC ??????
Community Beat Officer"
"Dear PC ???????
First of all I would like to thank you for the speedy response to my original e-mail.
16 hours and 38 minutes must be a personal record for Bodmin Police Station, and rest assured that I will forward these details to Norris McWhirter for inclusion in his next Guinness book.
Secondly I was delighted to hear that our street has its own Community Beat Officer.
May I be the first to congratulate you on your covert skills? In the five or so years I have lived in St Mary's Crescent , I have never seen you. Do you hide up a tree or have you gone deep undercover and infiltrated the gang itself? Are you the one with the acne and the moustache on his forehead or the one with a chin like a wash hand basin? It's surely only a matter of time before you are head-hunted by MI5 to look for Osama.
Whilst I realise that there may be far more serious crimes taking place in Bodmin, such as smoking in a public place or being Christian without due care and attention, is it too much to ask for a policeman to explain (using words of no more than two syllables at a time) to these twats that they might want to play their strange football game elsewhere.
The pitch on Fairpark Road , or the one at Priory Park are both within spitting distance as is the bottom of the Par Dock, the latter being the preferred option especially if the tide is in.
Should you wish to discuss these matters further you should feel free to contact me on . If after 25 minutes I have still failed to answer, I'll buy you a large one in the Cat and Fiddle Pub.
Regards ?????????
P.S If you think that this is sarcasm, think yourself lucky that you don't work for the sewerage department with whom I am also in contact!!!"
Yes, well that's pretty good. I wonder if it worked? Somehow I doubt it. For those that aren't aware the Police are immune to sarcasm. Indeed you could even argue that they are immune to prosecution!
As well as receiving the letter from Chris Newman, TOMS also wrote to me...
Dear Hugh
I don't know where the attached newspaper headline came from, they were forwarded by a contact.
Are they of any interest?
Regards
T.O.M.S.
Oh yes, they certainly are of interest. Would you, the reader, like to see these real headlines? Oh, alright, here you go...
Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says
Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers
Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
Miners Refuse to Work after Death
Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
War Dims Hope for Peace
If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile
Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures
Enfield ( London ) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide
Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges
Man Struck By Lightning: Faces Battery Charge
New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft
Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half
Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors
Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead
As well as TOMS and Chris Newman I also got a letter from someone calling themselves Robin Barnyard, sorry Bernard, Bernard Barnyard...
Dear Hugh,
Yes I know It's me again and while I shudder at the thought at what the poor readers of this column may think, of what, are now my frequent contributions, I must nevertheless set some records straight.
As you will remember I took some delight in mentioning how some companies, particularly RISCOS Ltd, still had not got with the times and sold through the internet and that RISCOS Ltd would only take an order via fax.
And where may you ask did I get this 100% set in stone concrete verified fact from?
Yes, you guessed it - that selfsame Internet.
Because, shame upon shame, I read the RISCOS Ltd web site and assumed (more on this later) that just because it had a PDF to fax as the only visible method of ordering that this was the only way of ordering.
Of course I could have completely avoided any embarrassment for myself, no matter how much I may deserve it by simply dropping RISCOS Ltd a line.
And of course after sending off my rather vitriolic email to you, I sent a much more conventional one to them and of course, absolutely no prizes for guessing that they would take credit card orders over the phone, well of course I made my order and everything - but that is not the point.
The point is I made a wild and unverified assumption on the basis of what I saw on the internet.
Oh yes what a paragon of virtue and fact the internet is. Oh indeed how I worship the church of wikipedia the font and source of all worthwhile knowledge.
And to add insult to injury I had the temerity to make my wild and unverified assumption in such a manner that I am sure not only has the bridge been burned but there is also absolutely no chance of it being built again.
So what can I say, that I was young, that I was foolish, that I was old that I was tired?
No - I was an ass and I am sorry to say Hugh that I made a ass out of you and me - you see thats where "assume" comes from.
So sorry for that and sorry to RISCOS Ltd as well - I therefore nominate myself for "worst customer of the bi-month" and "the biggest tool in the box"
As for the rest, yes I'd only be too delighted to send you in a witty caption every month, perhaps that would be better. I am sorry to hear that no-one else wants to write in, but maybe my last letter might have changed that and you have been met by some compliant readers
And honestly you must know the first rule of secret initiations is to not talk about secret initiations (or was that "fight club"?) so by having mentioned what the initiation is it obviously cant be that or it would not be a secret would it - its far better just to mention there is one and whoever will find out the hard way what it is
Anyway here we go with my one and only attempt at a caption this time, in a vain attempt to try and regain some measure of respectability I have injected it with too much wordiness and pseudo intellectual stuff.
"After nearly 5 years and several million pounds over budget the first day at Heathrows new runway does not exactly start off in the best way"
That's it for now - I just have to stand in a corner and say around 10,000 hail marys now...
Maybe the next issue of FRISCWORLD will be out by the time I finish...
Robin Barnard
Yes...perhaps this issue will come out by the time you have finished. (As an additional penance I have forced Robin, at twiglet point, to wright an article for this issue - ED). Out of interest did you bother to actually complete your secret initiation, as suggested in last issue. To remind you it was to run into a lamppost 50 times shouting "Where's my copy of Qercus". I should point out that this wasn't a genuine secret initiation ceremony. I just wanted to see what a real twit looked like.
Anyway the simple point is that you can't believe everything you read on the Internet. Let me rephrase that. You can't believe anything you read on the Internet, unless you wrote it yourself, or you know the person well enough that they can brush their teeth in the bathroom whilst you are on the toilet. Even then you need to take it with a pinch of salt (Ouch - ED).
Right, that's the lot. Oh, not quite. I have one last change to announce in this column...
I can't be bothered to do the photo bit. Bye!
All complaints about the Hugh Jampton column should be sent to the CJE Micros overcharging unit..
Here we are again with another column. I was starting to wonder if there was going to be any news to report this month as it's all seemed very quiet for a while. Thankfully, and as if by magic, lots of news all appeared together and out of nowhere. So let's see what has happened since last time...
Quantum Software
Vince Hudd of Softrock Software has recently made available a number of titles which were previously published by Quantum Software. An announcement was made in 2006 that due to the illness of Stuart Halliday Quantum Software would be shutting down. Thanks to the work of Vince Hudd a number of the old Quantum titles, such as !Blinds, are once again available online.
The titles which are available are those that were written by Stuart Halliday himself. They are all Iyonix compatible and can be downloaded from
Magic Mushrooms
Anyone who used to play games on the BBC Micro will remember this Acornsoft classic. It's now been updated to run on the next generation machines. Magic Mushrooms is a platform game, and the object is to collect up all the mushrooms on each of the levels and then head for the way out.
To collect up all the mushrooms you'll need to work out the correct route through the level. There are a number of hazards thrown in to make your task a bit more tricky, such as disappearing blocks, conveyor belts and one way ladders. You will lose a life if you fall too far or run out of time.
This is a pretty good update of a classic old BBC game, and considering it is a freebie, you really can't complain. It can be downloaded from
Also included in the game is a level editor, so should you wish to create your own levels you can. If you want to revisit the original BBC version it can be downloaded from
Invaders
Not one, but two, new retro styled games have arrived this month. The other title is Space Invaders. Whilst this is not an update of a particular old Acorn game, it does remind me a lot of Electron Invaders on, funnily enough the Acorn Electron! Invaders was written by Gareth Lock and started as a project to learn how to write a computer game using BBC BASIC.
Invaders looks and plays like a standard Space Invaders game should. Your ship is at the bottom of the screen, and you destroy endless waves of alien spacecraft. You can shoot the mothership for bonus points, but don't shoot your defensive bases which protect your ship, they can take 10 shots before they disappear, so be warned.
Invaders is another free game and if you like games of the shoot-em-up genre, then this is certainly worth downloading and playing. Visit
Safestore
Safestore is a backup system for use with RISC OS machines. Safestore was launched last year by R-Comp, and this is a piece of software which has filled a gap in the market, rather than being a variation on an existing theme.
The recent South West show saw V1.10 of the program released. This includes a number of significant updates. It's a free update for existing users of Safestore and should have been sent to all registered users by now. If not then give R-Comp a call.
As I don't have Safestore I can't really write about the changes that have been made since the previous version, but the press release mentions the following changes and improvements in this update.
Data can now be backed up in various compressed formats (Tar, Spark or Zip) each offering different combinations of performance vs compression. This is ideal for backing up to systems which might otherwise lose filetype or filename information, as well as compressing things if space is at a premium
Includes improved error handling, and adds the ability to retry a backup at the click of a button if it fails for any reason (eg. the network destination machine isn't turned on!)
Aware of the various "bugs/issues" found with Acorn's ShareFS (Access) networking, we have added specific code in v1.10 to throttle connections to ensure that backups are successful and don't suffer the dreaded "red hourglass" effect. On our test setup, over which ShareFS couldn't successfully copy a 1Mb file normally, SafeStore backed up 250Mb of data without issue
The major performance improvements of 1.03 are carried forwards, and as usual various tweaks, bug fixes and other bits and bobs are included
Software backup is an important issue in everyday computing, and Safestore seems to be a very useful program which helps take care of the job. For more information or to buy Safestore, see the R-Comp website at
USB Messageboard
!Msgboard is the latest in a long line of applications from Dave Higton,which allow USB devices to work with the Iyonix. Previously we have had missile launchers, radios and a hamster in a wheel, now you can have a USB LED message board on your desktop!
This program is designed to work with the Dream Cheeky USB LED Message board, which was recently being sold by Maplin (stock number N88GA) and I would imagine it should be available from other on-line retailers.
Using the USB message board is simple. The application should run automatically when the message board is plugged into the computer. The supplied instructions say that a famous quotation will scroll across the messageboard when it starts up. What that is I don't know as I haven't yet got one of these devices, but I am very tempted.
The application can be customised to change the message and other settings by editing the applications !Run file. !MsgBoard is a free program and can be downloaded from
MathMagical
A new version of the MathMagical Software suite was launched recently at the RISC OS South West show. This suite of programs contains 6 applications; ArtGraph Film Studio, Mandelbrot Movie Maker, QuickGraph (Graph Plotter), MathBox (Maths Activites) SuDoku and TurtleChalk (Logo Turtle graphics).
This is a major update which adds many new features, fixes all the known bugs, and brings the suite of programs up to date. The cost of the suite is £65 but there is an introductory offer currently running until 1st June 2009 which reduces the cost to £45. Also included is a new multi-media desktop player plus three films, and a mathematical slideshow. The software is supplied on CD-ROM and includes printed user guides.
Existing users of the software suite can upgrade for £25.00. For more information, or to order/upgrade see the MathMagical Software Company's website at
Organizer
Organizer, the personal information manager program for RISC OS, hasn't had any development done for nearly 6 years. The latest version is dated 2003, however it's now on the road to making a comeback.
Last year it was announced that development would be taken over from the original author, Chris Morison, and it would now be developed and published by North One Communications Ltd. Programming is being done by Martin Avison who is the author of a number of well known RISC OS applications.
At the time of writing there has not yet been a new release. The current version still stands at 1.57. However Organizer is certainly worth investing in, especially if you have an older version. An update costs a very reasonable £10.00 and works fine on the Iyonix, some of the older versions didn't.
A recent announcement about Organizer states that many users have responded to the request to re-register as an Organizer user, but many email addresses were no longer valid. So if there are any Organizer users who did not receive the email asking for them to re-register, could they send their details - Name, Address, Phone Number, Email Address, RISC OS platform(s) being used and which version of Organizer being used to
It is worth doing as it will make registered users eligible for discount on the new version when it is released, as are any new purchasers who buy the current 1.57 version.
The Organizer website can be found at
KinoAmp
Finally for this month is an update which just missed last months deadline. KinoAmp is a well used and very easy to use program for playing MPEG movies on the RISC OS desktop. This latest release is V0.40 and it includes a number of new changes, of which the main ones are:
Added support for 64K colour modes as supported by RISC OS 6.14 or late
Fixed crash when switching from colour to monochrome with OSD volume bar visible
Fixed sound becoming muted when looping (AMplayer only)
Ensure logging is off by default to allow for multiple windows
Kinoamp is a free program and the latest version and also the program source code can be downloaded from
RISC OS 5.14
Unfortunately the recently announced RISC OS 5.14 release still doesn't seems to be forthcoming. I can only hope that it's being tested and going through quality control and that it's not too far off release. The Wakefield show often throws up significant new releases so maybe it will be scheduled for release at the show itself?
So there we go, the end of this months column, as ever if there are any comments, hints & tips, product placement, or just anything remotely Iyonix related in the slightest feel free to drop me a line.
What a lorra lorra letters, shame the grammars got no betters...
For the first time in as long as I can remember (about 15 minutes) we have had a huge number of letters sent in to Foundation RISCWorld Towers for inclusion in this issue. Indeed we have had so many that some of my answers will have to be a little brief. Either that or I'll never get the column finished in time to get the magazine out to you subscribers and we can't have that can we. A RISC OS magazine that's late, who's ever heard of such a thing?
Anyway with the excuse for the brevity of some of my replies over with, lets get on with our subscribers latest thoughts. Starting with a response to a comment I made last issue...
Dear Editor,
"So what does any of this have to do with RISC OS? Nothing, but it's damn site better use of your time than reading the rubbish on Drobe."
I couldn't agree more. I always read the "Vehicular Faith" column for the entertainment value, but I almost never read Drobe, 'cos it's mostly totally boring.
Cheers
Michael
I am glad you find the "Vehicular Faith" part of my editorials entertaining. Doing these silly vehicle based jobs often keeps me "entertained" for hours on end, as do the range of minor injuries I receive for my pains. My objection to Drobe is not related to any level of boredom that it introduces, but is purely related to the harm that the frequent inaccuracies can cause to the RISC OS market. I've said in the past that most of the errors in Drobe articles could easily be caught by the minimum of basic research. Given that the man force behind Drobe, Chris Williams, actually works as a journalist full time I find this amazing. OK, I accept that he is a very junior hack on an obscure local paper and seems to have set his sights on a career in the gutter of tabloid journalism. Even so I would have thought that a "professional" would be able to make a better job of it.
Now that Drobe has been "slimmed down" (Are you sure you meant to spell that with two m's? DH) and only carries short snippets the main problems seem to have been sorted out. If each "article" is only a few sentences then it's almost impossible to cram in many mistakes, which is good news. It also reduces the common Drobe problem of opinion and speculation being presented as fact. I very rarely look at Drobe any more. I've little interest in the content and even less interest in the comments on the forums, especially given the "interesting" pruning that takes place to remove any comments that "Drobe staff" might not agree with.
Now it's time for another Foundation RISCWorld regular contributor...
Hi Aaron,
Two (newish) applications for your amusement. !Elizabet2 is a slightly improved version of my original !Elizabeth calculator.
!ValJive is a whole different can of fish. Translates Text to 'Valley' (Hippy) slang, or 'Jive' slang/speak. The lexical analysers used here were originally supplied as 'demos' with the GNU 'Flex', and are not my work. NOT to be taken seriously, or ANY offence taken to it, I hope!
However the user can opt not to translate the Text, but have it spoken back to them. The Accent, Speed, Pitch (Frequency) and Volume (Amplitude) of the Speech is selectable.
This might have a PRACTICAL outcome for those wishing to read Text Files under RISCOS, who are visually impaired.
Since I have, in effect, used GNU software, I have, in turn, supplied my source C code in a directory 'c' within !ValJive. A rather 'cobbled together' thing, as I have melded together two separate Flex generated lexical analysers. I was VERY surprised when it compiled and worked with very little trouble.
Regards, and Good Night,
Martin Carrudus
Thanks very much for these two. I've included both of these in the Letters directory in the Software section of this issue. !ValJive in particular is well froody dude...
Now another happy customer. As Basil Fawlty said, "perhaps we should get him stuffed"..
Hi Aaron,
Received Foundation RISCWorld 9/5 today, and from that I've just installed the new fix update on my install of VRPC AdjustSA and thought it worth a mention
that printing is now okay.
Thanks
Dave
I am pleased that the update sorted the printing problems. I've had a number of other e-mails saying similar, that problems with printouts not appearing has been resolved. So we at VirtualAcorn are fairly happy that we have finally correctly tracked down and fixed the problems for good.
Whilst we are on the subject of VirtualAcorn...
Dear Aaron Timbrell,
I am a subscriber to RISC World and would be grateful if you will give me some advice.
I have an A6 PC loaded with Virtual RPC - Adjust software. I use the Windows side mainly for the internet and the RISC platform for most other things. I have an HP 5550 printer which I bought some years ago because at the time I was told it was one of the few printers for which a RISC printer driver was available. The system has worked well but the printer is now causing some problems and I would like to buy a new printer/scanner. However, I do not know what machines are available for which I can obtain a RISC OS printer driver and would be pleased if you can help me.
Peter Wotton
You have raised an interesting point or two here. Firstly as you are using a VirtualRPC the same rules as for a "real" RISC OS machine don't necessarily apply. Firstly with regard to a scanner, you won't have any success using a scanner directly with VirtualRPC using a RISC OS driver as scanners are not supported. So you might consider scanning under Windows and then transferring the resulting image over to RISC OS.
Lets now move on to the printers. The number of machines with a RISC OS driver has increased significantly over the last couple of years. This may come as rather a surprise but allow me to explain. Firstly you could take a look at
The other alternative is UniPrint from
So to sum up. It's possible to buy almost anything and get it to work on RISC OS running on a VirtualRPC. This is a rather different scenario to a few years ago when hardly anything worked. The only caveat is that you will need to buy UniPrint/UniScan or Gutenprint, they aren't free. However the cost is more than offset by the low cost printers that can now be used.
Aaron
I recently received the latest RISCWorld cd and I was instantly drawn to your 2009 predictions.
I must say that I think you may be on to a looser with the one about RISC OS shows as MUG have already started planning for this years MUG Xmas Show which will be on 5th December at the Guild of Students University of Birmingham again. Indeed we announced at last years show that we would be doing one again and it will be the second show entirely run and organised by MUG.
Finally thanks for another cracking read and Foundation RISCWorld seems to be getting better each issue.
Doug Webb
That's excellent news. I am very pleased that the MUG Xmas show is going ahead despite the stratospheric collapse of the Arm Club which had in previous years co-hosted the show. I was also concerned that the unannounced closure of the Arm Club might have had a knock on effect in other areas. However it seems that my concerns were unfounded and that things are carrying on as normal. Good news indeed
Thanks for the kind words about the magazine. We do try very hard to keep the magazine fresh and to come up with a broad range of content so that there will always be something for everyone in each issue. Hopefully we succeed most of the time.
Dear Aaron,
Do you or any of RW's members know of any RISC software which would display a virtual [music] keyboard [3 or 4 octaves would be enough] on the monitor which would allow the mouse to 'press' keys and produce the corresponding valued note via the computers speaker? I have a Wersi Verona electronic organ here and I often come across pieces of CD/DVD music for which the printed sheet music is not available for some reason [foreign, old, obscure et al...].
It would be nice to be able to tap it on the screen to construct the tune [by ear] then transcribe it using Maestro, or Rhapsody etc. for printout. I have tried this manually, but the organ is in the lounge and the Acorn is in the bedroom....tricky eh? It doesn't need to be all that sophisticated, just allow for messing about and 'noting the notes' either by hand or it may somehow record the key presses used.
Surely there are others out there who could use this?
Thomas Shevels
Thanks for the letter. I can fully understand the need for such an application for RISC OS. So I went and asked the expert on all things Public Domain, Dave Holden. He then went through his database of RISC OS PD applications and came up with !KeyBoard. Then he also came up with !Piano. A quick test showed that !KeyBoard seemed to work fine on RISC OS 6 but that !Piano didn't. So I am including a copy of !Keyboard in the Letters section of the Software directory on this CD. I hope it fits the bill.
Finally the ever prolific Martin Carrudus is back again...
Hi Aaron,
Please find attached, zipped, my Q Basic to BBC Basic Translator, !Q_BBC, Version 4.00, with further improvements. See the text file 'ReadMe1st' within the zipped file for more info on changes.
In particular, the grammar I developed for Q Basic has been made more comprehensive!
I had put a 'trap' within my previous versions, that kept a hidden count of the number of usages in the user's !Scrap directory, and crippled the executable after a certain number of times.
Two people were complaining over the Internet that their copy of !Q_BBC was no longer working, not realising that this had happened, because they were failing to cough up for it! They were totally ignoring messages that told them to do that every time they used !Q_BBC!
I have removed the trap from the attached version, because once they have paid up, they want it to do additional things on top, and it's simply not worth the hassle for the money involved.
In the hopes it be useful to, at least, someone,
Regards,
Martin.
Thanks for yet another submission. As always I have included this latest version in the Software directory. I am sorry to hear about the problem of people moaning about software that they haven't paid for not working. I am not sure what can be done with some people. The "everything should be free" attitude seems to be spreading in the RISC OS community. Whilst having things for free is great people need to realise that somewhere in the chain someone needs to be paid for their work. My view is that if RISC OS had been free it would have died years ago.
P.S. perhaps we should rename the letters page the Carrudus Corner?
Well that's the end for the issue's letters page. To contact the RISCWorld letters page please e-mail us using the following
Aaron Timbrell
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/NEON/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, Creating a 3D Effect with a Neon Star
Creating a 3D Effect with a Neon Star
Richard Ashbery shows more Artworks techniques.
Introduction
I was going to start this tutorial off with a graphic based on perspective and 3D but changed my mind after looking at a shape that produced an excellent rendition of a star with a neon glow. What surprised me is that with a bit of effort ArtWorks makes a very good attempt at producing a realistic 3D effect and this is mainly attributed to the blend tool. A highlight can be added using the Intersect utility to complete the project.
Getting Started
Add the following colours to the colour bar(figure 1).
Fig 1
The Five Pointed Star
Create a 5 pointed star with the parameters shown in figure 2.
Fig 2
Apply a fill colour of None
Adjust-click over the pink icon on colour bar
Use CTRL-F4 to set a width of 5 point
Clone star (CTRL-K) and colour its outline magenta. Set width to 20 point. Set to back (CTRL-B)
Clone twice dragging one of the copies to one side for later use (this will be used in the section..... "Creating a Shadow")
Re-select the other magenta clone, colour it purple, set width to 40 point and set to back
Clone the purple star setting colour to dark-blue and its width to 60 point, remembering to set it to back (figure 3)
Fig 3
Adding blends
Select the Blend tool and create a 10 step blend between each section as indicated by the arrows in the highly magnified illustration shown in figure 4.
Fig 4
Fig 5
Creating a Shadow
A clever graphic designer realised that a highlight can be derived from a shadow. Firstly we need to create two outlines from the star, produce the shadow and then use the Intersect tool to cut-out the shadow sections. It sounds complicated but in reality is quite simple.
Clone the magenta star (the one retained in figure 3) and make its outline colour black (Adjust-click on the colour black)
Set its width to 0.25
With the Scale tool selected, drag any control point and resize to approximately follow the outer edge of the magenta star
Clone again and drag outline this time to approximately follow the inner edge of the magenta star (figure 6 - A)
We have no further use for the magenta star so delete it
Select the two star outline shapes and join them using CTRL-I (figure 6 - B)
Select-click on any colour to signify the new shape (coloured red in the illustration....... figure 6 - C). Set its outline to none by Adjust-clicking the None colour bar icon
Clone the new shape and Select-click on say a light grey to signify a shadow
Move the grey coloured clone to position shown (figure 6 - D) and press CTRL-B to send to back (figure 6 - E)
Fig 6 Shadow sequence
Creating the Highlight
Draw a rectangle to cover the star and its shadow. The illustration shows it coloured black but any colour will do (figure 7 - B)
Select all three shape and join them (CTRL-I) (figure 7 - C)
Clone the result
Drag a selection box over the existing shape and clone (ensure the information bar reports that two shapes are selected in foreground) (figure 7 - D)
Invoke "Intersect all" by pressing CTRL-W
Press CTRL-L to break the shapes (figure 7 - E)
Delete the rectangle to reveal the intersects (figure 7 - F)
Fig 7 Highlight sequence
Selecting and Grouping the Highlight Sections
Select the first shadow section with the 'Select mouse button' followed by subsequent 'Adjust-clicks' on the other 4 sections. Press CTRL-G to group them (figure 8)
Drag shadow section over the main drawing, change colour to white, resize if necessary and arrange to achieve a realistic highlight
Fig 8 Select shadow/highlight sections
Finally
Draw a circle around the graphic applying a radial fill from purple to dark-blue. This will make the neon star really stand out emphasising the 3D effect as you can see in figure 9.
Fig 9
Richard Ashbery
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/NEWS/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, News
News
The latest news to land on the RISCWorld editorial desk...
RISCWorld's pick of the news from the last couple of months...
CashBook 1.15
After a long delay, and an over-optimistic preview at the Midlands Show, I'm pleased to finally be able to announce that a new version of CashBook is available in beta form for testing. The release contains a number of minor tweaks, along with a major new feature of transaction presets. These allow frequently used transactions, or parts of transactions, to be set up as templates and quickly entered into the transaction window at a press of a key or a click of the mouse.
Please be aware that this version is of beta quality. While I am not aware of any bugs, there may still be problems present and I would ask that users do not upgrade unless willing to assist with tracking down any problems that do come to light.
For those unfamiliar with it, CashBook is a home accounts application offering multiple accounts, regular transactions, budgeting with multiple analysis headings, and extensive reporting options. It is released as Freeware; more detailed information, and downloads, can be found at:
For the time being, copies of the current stable version, 1.11, also remain available for download until a new stable release comes out.
Steve Fryatt
News from Knightsfield School
Knightsfield School is pleased to announce that we have yet again gained the ICT Quality Mark. The school, which has over 40 RISC PCs, was described as "very well resourced and well equipped". "The students interviewed were enthusiastic about ICT and they all enjoyed using it. The older students discussed their use of ICT and felt they had access to a wide range of resources." Work the pupils do was considered to be innovative and of high quality.
We are extremely pleased with the report and proud of our achievement.
We are again advertising for a maths teacher, as the one we appointed a few years ago is now retiring. Knightsfield is a great place to work and I am sure that there must be a maths teacher out there who is also a RISC OS user.
The link to the full details is as
Sharon Pointeer
Surftec DigiFlash
Partis Computing is happy to announce that they have taken over further development of Surftec's DigiFlash Products. These products consist of :
DigiFlash (Parallel Port) Compact Flash Reader
DigiFlash (Parallel Port) Smart Media Reader
Partis Computing originally developed this products for Surftec in 2001/2002, thus are best placed for continued development. Existing users of these products may acquire the latest versions of these, by completing the registration form at:
New software will be emailed within a couple of days free of charge, once registration is verified.
Gary Partis
Technical support for Orpheus internet users
In a small effort to ease the difficult situation brought about by last week's tragic news, R-Comp is offering free network/software technical support services to Orpheus Internet users to help fill the void during this uncertain time.
Whilst we cannot currently help with "backbone" type problems (ie. if the fault lies outside of your home), we can cover all the day to day difficulties (eg. router problems, networking, software configuration, filter problems and so forth), as well as "being here" as a full-time RISC OS company.
Andrew Rawnsley commented, "It is a difficult time for all Orpheus users, and since my day-to-day work involves providing RISC OS users with technical support, it seems an obvious way to help. It is a logical fit with what we already do. It's a free service, and I'll try and resist any salesman urges!"
Andrew added, "Paul was the paragon of what we all strive for as RISC OS enthusiasts, and is greatly missed. I see providing technical support to Orpheus users as one small way of paying tribute to his work over so many years".
R-Comp can be contacted on 01925 755043. We prefer calls after 11am, and are usually available till around 6pm in the evening. If telephoning for help, please quote your Orpheus user name.
We ask that people be aware that this is a free service, so please be considerate when calling.
R-Comp has specialised in RISC OS networking/broadband since the 1990s, and we have always backed this up with comprehensive printed manuals, documentation and support. Since many Orpheus users already run R-Comp software, we have always fielded questions from Orpheus users as a matter of course.
Andrew Rawnsley
New VNC server front end for RISC OS 6
I've just released a new version of my VNC Server front end application. This had been enhanced with a new feature for RISC OS 6.14 users. VNC is a network application that allows remote viewing and control of one computer from another. My front end application makes it a little easier for people to set up and use the RISC OS VNC Server module without needing to worry about some of the finer details.
The new version of the front end is now able to temporarily remove the RISC OS Pinboard's backdrop picture and any graduated fill, when it detects a client connection. This can help save network bandwidth.
The front end is available from:
Steve Potts
RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/SSDRIVES/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, Using Solid State drives
Using Solid State drives
Dave Holden shows how to use the latest technology in a RiscPC...
The overall price of solid state or flash drives, as they are often called, has been falling steadily for some time whilst the size of drives available at a reasonable cost has been increasing. The main reason for this is their now almost universal use in digital cameras. As usually happens with computer related items the bigger the number manufactured the lower the price becomes and as the size of images has increased (10 mega-pixel is now common) so the size of the storage media has had to increase to accommodate them.
These cards are designed, via a suitable interface, to look and behave like a conventional hard drive. They are normally supplied with a DOS format but can be readily re-formatted with an Acorn format so that they can be used just like a normal hard drive.
For the purposes of this article I'm not concerned with using them as data transfer devices, either between camera and computer or between two computers. Instead this article concerns using SSD as replacements for conventional mechanical hard disc drives. For the same reason I'm not dealing with USB devices or adaptors but only with devices connected to the machine's internal IDE bus.
Types of card
There are two main types of drive in common use Compact Flash or CF and Secure Digital or SD. There is also Mini SD which, as it's name suggests, is a smaller version of the standard SD card. You can purchase a low cost adaptor for these which allows it to be plugged into a standard SD card reader and other than its physical size it's just like a normal SD card.
As the picture below shows SD cards are smaller and usually, size for size, cheaper than CF. However, they use a serial rather than parallel interface so the adaptor to connect them to an IDE bus is more complex and hence more expensive.
The next picture shows three adaptors. On the left is a 44 pin IDE to SD, in the centre a 44 pin IDE to CF and on the right a 40 pin IDE to CF. 44 pin IDE is used where the computer uses a 2.5" drive, 40 pin is used where the computer uses 3.5" drives.
You can see from this picture how much more complex the SD adaptor is than the CF. It makes sense to use a more complex and expensive adaptor and a simpler and cheaper memory card when you have multiple memory cards, as might be the case with a digital camera. However, if you are just replacing a mechanical drive with a solid state drive then the extra cost isn't really justified.
As the 44 pin IDE cable also carries power to the drive there is no need for a separate power supply with this type of adaptor. However when using a 40 pin adaptor a power supply is required. This is normally provided by a floppy disc type connector on the card. This isn't visible in the above picture of the 40 pin adaptor as it's on the reverse side of the card.
Usually a 40 pin adaptor has a jumper which enables you to select whether the drive will appear as a Master or Slave. Most 44 pin adaptors are 'Master only'.
Adaptors which take two CF cards are also available. These act like two hard drives with one being the Slave and the other the Master.
Advantages of solid state drives
The most obvious advantage is that they are silent and use a lot less power than mechanical drives, typically less than 0.5 watts which is up to one twentieth of the power used by a conventional drive. Low power consumption is a big advantage with older machines, especially the 'single box' models like the A3000, A3010 and A3020 where the fact that they effectively generate no heat is also a big plus. For the RiscPC with its bigger power supply it's not so important. Similarly the lack of noise is not so so important on the RiscPC but is significant on machines which don't have a fan or which, like the A7000, A300 or A400, can operate happily without one if they have no power-hungry internal accessories.
For RISC OS 3.1 machines using 2.5" drives there's another point to consider. The maximum drive size supported with RISC OS 3.1 is 512 MB and although many interfaces allow drives to be partitioned this still means that the maximum storage capacity can't exceed 2GB (or 4GB with some interfaces). Since the smallest drive currently available is 40GB that means you'll be paying for a lot of drive space you can't use.
The following picture shows a typical IDE interface for the A3000 and A3010 models fitted with a CF drive instead of the usual 2.5" mechanical drive.
Obviously this type of drive is far more rugged than a conventional hard drive. For a desktop computer this isn't likely to be an issue but for a laptop or a machine which is subject to rough handling it can be a big advantage. For example, I use a flash drive in the computer I take to RISC OS shows.
Since the card just plugs in to the interface you could, if the adaptor was made accessible from the outside of the computer, use it like a removable media drive as a backup device. You can obtain adaptors which are the same physical size as a 3.5" floppy drive for this purpose. Although now these almost all have a USB interface IDE versions are available.
Disadvantages of solid state drives
Although in theory a solid state device should be faster than a mechanical drive in practice this may not be the case. Most conventional hard drives have a cache which buffers data being written to the drive and which tries to anticipate and 'look ahead' so that data being read from the drive is also buffered. See the next section for more information on speeds.
There may also be compatibility problems. Firstly the original specifications for flash drives only applied up to 4 GB. This means that drives above this size may not work on certain interfaces. This isn't a major problem as flash drives above 4GB in size tend to be high speed devices intended for professional use and start to get expensive so an 8GB CF card would probably cost about as much as a 40GB conventional hard disc drive. No doubt these prices will come down as camera pixel sizes increase. See also the later section if you have an A3020 or A4000. However it's a point to bear in mind if you want to replace the main hard drive on a RiscPC with a large flash drive.
Speed
The speed of solid state drives in defined by a multiplier. This is identical to the system used for CD ROM drives where '1x' is equal to 150 kilobytes per second. The following table gives the theoretical speeds for most common multipliers.
RatingSpeed (MB/s)
6x 0.9
12x 1.8
32x 4.8
40x 6.0
66x10.0
100x15.0
133x20.0
150x22.5
200x30.0
266x40.0
300x45.0
As you can see from this anything above roughly 12x will be faster than a RiscPC's IDE interface and certainly much faster than the IDE interface on earlier machines; where a few hundred kilobytes a second was typical. Cards up to 40x speed are now readily available at fairly low cost and these are more than adequate for all but the very fastest of IDE cards on a RiscPC.
In practice I've found that using a 40x CF card as the main hard drive on a RiscPC does feel slightly slower than a conventional hard drive. Speed tests with !HDspeed showed that the flash drives were slower when reading or writing small or very large files or writing single bytes to a file. Presumably this is because they are optimised for the sort of files used in cameras, which is their most common use. In addition the lack of a cache may well be a factor.
Compatibility
The problems with cards over 4GB have already been mentioned. I suspect that these problems will disappear as prices fall and these sizes become more popular in older cameras. Generally it is best to avoid cards which are advertised as being for a particular make of camera. This may mean that they're not particularly universal. Of course, it might just mean that the make of camera mentioned is rather fussy and this card is known to work on it.
In my experience most CF or SD cards will work perfectly on a RiscPC, A7000 or A5000 either on the motherboard IDE interface or with all the IDE cards I've tried them with. These include IDE cards from APDL (including older cards labelled 'Baildon Electronics), Simtec, Unipod, HCCS, Watford Electronics, and Risc Developments. The problems are likely to arise with high speed cards, but then, as the table above shows, it is pointless paying the extra cost of these as the Acorn IDE interface simply isn't fast enough to take advantage of them.
I had previously successfully used CF drives on the A3020 but I recently found that they no longer seemed to work. Presumably the manufacturers have made some subtle changes. I've tried three different brands and found the same problem. It seems to be related to the machines which use the ARM250 processor and Acorn's IDE interface, so this means the A3020 and A4000 models. Fortunately although CF seems to have ceased to work on these models SD is fine, although this does add to the cost as IDE to SD adaptors are much more expensive than IDE to CF.
I see no reason why flash drives wouldn't work with the Castle interface for the A3000 and A3010 but actually mounting the flash drive adaptor would be more complicated with these as they don't have the normal large PCB but instead the 2.5" drive is bolted between the two halves of the interface. Similarly as the Castle interface for these models just replaces the 'missing' hardware and uses ADFS it is possible that they might suffer from the same problems with CD drives mentioned above.
Installation
You will need an adaptor with either a 44 pin connector if you're replacing a 2.5" drive or a 40 pin connector if you're replacing a 3.5" drive.
The interface board will normally also require power, although only 5 volts and at very low current. With a 44 pin version the power is supplied to the drive via the ribbon cable, so this also supplies the adaptor. With a 40 pin power is via a separate 3.5" disc drive connector so power needs to be supplied to the adaptor by other means. Normally this is using the same sort of connector as used by a floppy drive. If you are handy with a soldering iron you could just change the connector on your power supply lead, but cheap adaptors are available which plug into the 3.5" drive power connector and convert it to a floppy drive type connector.
Some adaptor cards have pre-drilled holes for mounting, but as they are very light it's normally much simpler to just use a few sticky pads to fasten them to a convenient flat surface.
Once the adaptor card is fitted and connected up it's just a matter of initialising the drive using !HForm or, if it's connected to a 3rd party IDE interface the appropriate formatting program for the interface.
Remember that if you are fitting a drive bigger than 512MB in a RISC OS 3.1 machine you will need to make sure that you format it to less than this size. If your IDE interface supports partitioning then you can just create a partition of less than 512 MB. If you are connecting the drive to the Acorn interface and using !HForm then the best way to do this is reduce the number of cylinders indicated by !HForm. As each sector is 512 bytes the formula for calculating this is -
Drive size in MB = (heads x sectors per track x cylinders) divided by 2
Availability
You can buy CF adaptors from various suppliers at prices starting at around £5. SC adaptors are rather more expensive, and you should expect to pay at least £15. If you shop around you should be able to get 1GB CF cards for less than £7 and slightly less for SD. In larger sizes SD tends to be significantly cheaper than CF, although this will be more than offset by the higher cost of the adaptor.
APDL can supply complete kits for the most popular models of Acorn machines. The advantage of buying a compete package rather than a series of 'bits' is that the drive will be supplied already initialised and RISC OS formatted, so it should just be a matter of plugging it in and switching on. Individual components are also available from APDL although these aren't all listed on the web site. Contact APDL if you have specific requirements.
Conclusions
I think this is an ideal solution for older models, particularly those such as the A3000, A3010 and A3020 where power consumption is an issue but you are unlikely to need high speed or large capacity. With the RiscPC it very much depends upon your requirements. Standard 3.5" hard drives are now so cheap and even a modest, say, 8GB, flash drive and adaptor could cost as as much as an 80GB conventional drive.
As for longevity the jury is still out. There is a definite limit to the number of read/write operations that these devices are rated for (remember they were originally intended for use in things like cameras, not computers). This isn't likely to be of significance on older models of Acorn computers because these probably won't make intensive use of the drive, however it might become relevant on a RiscPC running programs which do make extensive use of the hard drive. Time will tell.
Dave Holden
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/THEEND/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, The End
The End
Aaron's final Foundation RISCWorld words...
Normally the final article of the final issue of a volume would see me appealing (I don't think so - DH) for money (Ahh - DH). However you won't find any such appeal this time. Why? Simply because after nine years and 55 issues we have taken the reluctant decision to cease publication of Foundation RISCWorld. This issue will be the final one.
This may come as a surprise, but I did make a prediction last issue that at least one RISC OS magazine would cease publication, and it's this one, so at least I can claim one bonus point for accuracy. However nonsense aside why have we taken this decision? There are a number of factors involved and it's not been a decision that's been taken lightly. Of the fifty five issues of Foundation RISCWorld I have edited all but the first three. Editing a magazine is not an easy task, just ask anyone who has tried it. Each issue contains roughly 20 articles, these vary in size from a few hundred words upwards. Let's say an average of 1000 words per article, that's 1000x20, or 20,000 words an issue. Making 120,000 words a volume. Although in one particular case an issue was nearly 120,000 words on it's own, but lets not let the facts get in the way of the math. If you add this up across the 52 issues that I have edited then the total is well over one million words, that equals a lot of spelling mistakes.
Each issue takes, on average, three weeks of editorial time to assemble. This time includes writing my own articles, editing other submissions and laying out the HTML. This doesn't include time spent on research, updating the
You might well ask why if I have been doing this for the last nine years can't I continue? Well, you asked...
As some readers know my health isn't great and over the last couple of years I've found editing the magazine increasingly difficult. The amount of time I can spend working has now become limited, with the result that I can't carry on doing all the jobs that I am contracted to do. Something has got to give. I've restructured my time on several occasions and cut down various parts of my work load. If I hadn't then Foundation RISCWorld would have disappeared a couple of years ago. As it stands it takes longer to edit each issue than the time I have available. The result has been that other projects I want to work on have had to go on the back burner.
In addition both Dave Holden and myself are heartily sick of the abuse directed at us from some sections of the RISC OS "community". Both of us have worked incredibly hard to keep RISC OS afloat over the years and to constantly be attacked by some "RISC OS users" wears one down over time. Despite the best efforts RISC OS still seems to be polarized around two camps. It's ridiculous. Fighting each other will only end one way, with everyone dead. Attempts to reconcile the situation always get sabotaged sooner or later. So, frankly, stuff it. We are both going to carry on doing our own things. Life is too short to try to convince idiots who don't rely on RISC OS to stop shouting and start thinking.
Ceasing publication of Foundation RISCWorld means that I will have more time to work on VirtualAcorn and some of my other non RISC OS projects. There's a lot of stuff that I haven't had time to do and when you can only work for a few hours a day, rather than the 12+ hours I used to work, it's a bit annoying not being able to find the time to work on things. Now I will be able to.
One other question you might ask, is why can't someone else take over as editor? Simply put, we can't find anyone who has the time or is prepared to make the long term commitment required. We have been quietly asking around for some time with no real joy. A couple of people did seem to be interested, until they discovered the amount of work involved, then their interest seemingly evaporated. So it's time to close down Foundation RISCWorld. I could try to carry on, but the quality of the magazine would suffer and we don't want that to happen. It's better to go out on a high than suffer a long decline.
The final Foundation RISCWorld CD and DVD
Normally in the final issue of a volume you will find a slip with a renewal offer and the option to purchase the updated Foundation RISCWorld DVD or the "Just the Words" CD for a discounted price. As there will no no more issues we haven't included a slip this time. Instead we have placed a
This special area is protected and you will need to login using the following details:
Username : subscriber
Password : vidc20
These are case sensitive, so make sure you type them correctly or you won't get in. As a subscriber to volume 9 of Foundation RISCWorld you will be able to purchase the final versions of "Just the Words" and the full Foundation RISCWorld DVD for half price:
Foundation RISCWorld DVD subscriber price £14.90 (normally £29.90)
Foundation RISCWorld Just the Words CD subscriber price £4.90 (normally £10.00
All details will be checked against the subscriber database, so any non subscribers trying to take advantage of this offer will be out of luck.
A few final words
On an almost final note both Dave and myself want to thanks all of the authors who have contributed to the magazine over the last nine years. The list is too long to name everyone, but you know who you are and you all have our thanks.
So there you have it, this is the last paragraph of the last ever issue of Foundation RISCWorld. Perhaps I should end it with some deeply meaningful insight into RISC OS? But then again, perhaps not, someone would be bound to argue about it...
Aaron Timbrell
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/VA/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, VirtualAcorn Tech Support
VirtualAcorn Tech Support
More from Aaron's tech support notebook
One of things I have been asked a number of times recently is "can you write CD's using VirtualRPC?". The answer is no, you can't write a CD using any VirtualRPC. However this 'no' isn't quite a clear cut as it looks. Whilst you can't write a CD, you can certainly make a CD image and then write that image using CD writing software running on Windows or Mac Os X. The result will be a "real" RISC OS CD with all the extra RISC OS extensions. A CD that will work correctly in a "real" RISC OS machine. Let me explain how..
Writing CDs on VirtualRPC
The process of producing a CD takes a number of steps. For our purposes we are only concerned with two parts of this process. Creating the image of the data that we want to be stored on the CD and physically burning the data to the CD. In order to produce the CD we will need to perform one part on RISC OS and the other on the host operating system. This host operating system can be either Windows or Mac OS X, the principles are identical.
The first step, producing the image of the data, needs to be performed on RISC OS. For this we need an application that can generate this image. Luckily in 1994 Acorn released an application designed just for this purpose. The application is called !ISOForm. It's thus named because it generates an ISO (International Standards Organisation) 9660 image file. This ISO 9660 standard defines a standard that can be used by any operating system. Thus if we can generate the ISO 9660 image on one operating system, this image can be burnt to a CD using any other operating system. This is because all applications designed to burn CDs understand any file in ISO 9660. This standard is often referred to as the "Red Book" standard.
So, if all machines understand ISO 9660 why can't we generate a "RISC OS Format" CD on an other operating system? The answer is that in their "wisdom" Acorn decided that they wanted to all some special extensions to the ISO 9660 standard. These extensions related to the way filetypes would be stored. On other operating systems the file type of the file is stored with the file itself. For example, Windows knows that a file called "Picture.jpg" is a JPEG image because the type of the file is stored in the file name. RISC OS works differently. The information relating to the file types of files in a directory isn't stored in the name, but in an extra block of directory data.
The result is that in order to generate an "Acorn ISO 9660" image we need an application that understands these extensions and can generated an image file with these included. The only applications that can do this run on RISC OS. Most of the ones that have been released are designed to both generate the image and to physically burn it to the CD. Examples include !CDBurn, !CDVDBurn from Stephan Huber and !EX_atapi from Eesox. These are all commercial packages. For our purposes we don't need both facilities, we only need to generate the image file itself. Although !ISOForm is 15 years old the CD format has not changed in this time, so it will still do the job perfectly.
Using !ISOForm
I have included a copy of !ISOForm in the VA section of the Software directory on this issue. To load it simply double click on its icon and !ISOForm will appear on the iconbar. Clicking Select on the !ISOForm iconbar icon will open the main window:
So what do we do next?
Firstly you need to prepare the files and directories that will be written to the CD. You need to assemble everything that you want to go on the CD in a directory. What you see in this directory will be duplicated on the finished CD. For example here is the directory for this issue of Foundation RISCWorld:
As you can see from the title bar of this window this directory "lives" on a HostFS mount. In this case it's a few directories down on the main VirtualRPC "Harddisc4". The directory that we want to write to the CD can be anywhere, it does not have to be on the top level of a disc.
Having prepared all the data in the directory we need to drag this to the main !ISOForm window. However we cannot just drop it anywhere in the window. The directory must be dropped in the writable Root Directory icon. For example:
You can see the path of the directory showing in the Root Directory icon. In addition a couple of other changes need to be made before we can produce our CD image. As you can see in the illustration above the Write image to file option button has been ticked. In addition we have written in the name of the file that we wish to save our image to.
There are a couple of things we need to check before going ahead. Firstly double check that the name you want to use for the image file has been correctly typed in. If it has been mistyped then things may well go wrong. Secondly we need to make sure that there is enough free space on the harddisc that will be holding the image file. When using HostFS on VirtualRPC you are very unlikely to have any problems with lack of space. However it's worth repeating the warning just in case. For our "trick" with writing Acorn format CDs you must save the CDimage to a HostFS drive. If you save it to an ADFS drive then the Host operating system (Windows or Mac OS X) won't be able to find the image and burn it.
Having double checked everything all we need now do is click on the Run button. You will see a window that look like the one below appear:
This window gives a full report on the process of making the image. There may be a number of errors reported. We can see some of these in the example above. Generally if the errors are "non fatal" then !ISOForm will just carry on. In the examples above you can see that the main "errors" relate to file names. Whilst these may look a little worrying they are perfectly normal. All !ISOForm is telling us is that any files with a "/htm" extension stored in our folder will have their names changed to ".htm" when they are encoded in the image. This means that any file with an extension on the end of it's name will be translated so that it can be understood by both RISC OS and other operating systems. Clever.
On a "real" RISC OS machine you would often have to leave !ISOForm running for some time before the image file would be completed. On a VirtualRPC, due to the much higher disc transfer speeds, a file that would take 20 minutes on a RiscPC can be written in around 40 seconds!
Once the process is completed there will a complete ISO 9660 CD image file, with RISC OS extensions, ready to be burnt to a CD.
The next step is to quit VirtualRPC and return to the host operating system on your computer. For this example I am using Windows and Nero. The actual steps you will need to take will depend on the Operating system you are using and the CD writing software you have.
Firstly we need to go and locate the image file under our Host Operating System:
This is our CDimage file for this issue of Foundation RISCWorld as seen by Windows. As you can see the file itself has no Windows file extension. Hence Windows doesn't know what to do with it. So we need to rename the file slightly. In the example above I renamed the file, under Windows, from CDImage,ffd to CDImage.iso. What I have done is simply removed the ,ffd from the end of the file name and replace it with .iso.
With a little bit of luck the icon Windows uses for the file may now change. If not, and when using Nero it probably won't, then don't worry, it doesn't matter.
Now we have one final step. This will depend on the Operating System being used and the CD writing software available, but the basics are all the same.
Launch your CD writing software and then tell it you want to Burn a CD Image (the wording may vary slightly depending on the package used). Now your CD writing package will ask for the image file you want to burn. Go and load the file that we created using !ISOForm. Now go and burn the CD. Congratulations you have just produced a RISC OS format CD using VirtualRPC.
Just like many things, there is a way to do it if you know how. Have fun.
Aaron
x
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/VIGAY/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, A Tribute to Paul Vigay
A Tribute to Paul Vigay
Matthew Thompson
Paul Vigay, a Gentleman, and RISC OS Legend
The recent announcement of the sudden and unexpected death of Paul Vigay brought shock and sadness to the entire RISC OS community. To many people he could almost be referred to as Mr RISC OS. He was one of the biggest supporters of the platform, constantly campaigning for it and endlessly writing new pieces of software for us to use. He would never ever give up on RISC OS and jump ship and use Windows PC's like so many others did.
However he wasn't just known for his involvement in RISC OS computing, he was also involved in Crop Circle groups, protecting peoples privacy, online security and very interested in conspiracy theories in general. He also ran his own internet company - Orpheus Internet. He was known throughout the world, within many groups of different subjects and was everybody's friend.
He always there to help and advise people with their computing problems, whatever they might be; he was always there on the newsgroups or emailing you with help, solutions and comments.
Everybody will have their own memories and experiences with Paul, I would just like to mention some of mine here. I never met him, but emailed him often and spoke to him on the phone a few times.
It wasn't until I upgraded from my BBC Micro, to the A3000 that I became aware of Paul. I'm sure if I dug out old copies of Acorn User and other old Acorn magazines that I would find his name mentioned. It was when I started collecting public domain software that I became fully aware of Paul, and discovered the many programs he had written, games, useful applications, desktop sillies, and he even wrote a virus to prove that it could done, the infamous VigayVirus!
My first main dealing with Paul was, as I am sure would be the case for many others, when I went online with Argonet. I chose Argonet because of Paul. IT was then an easy choice to switch to Orpheus Internet, because I knew the support and service would be first class, and indeed it was. I knew that if I had a problem there would be someone at the end of the phone (not just a call centre dummy) who knew what RISC OS was and they would be able to help me.
When I made the change from DialUp to Broadband, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when setting up account details and was got myself in a right old mess. Paul was more than happy for me to ring him up, out of office hours and during the evening (more than once) and help me along the way. With his guidance I got online with Orpheus Internet and I still use Orpheus to this day.
When I had some internet connection problems at home I would often email him from work at 7.30AM and within half an hour there would be a reply my inbox offering help and advice. Often there was an offer to give him a call when I got home if I still had a problem. This was absolutely first class support, with Paul going that extra mile every single time.
He was always interested in chatting about anything, although the initial email would be related to RISC OS it would often go off in different directions, with all manner of subjects discussed.
One day online I found an anti Microsoft website, and I knew straight away who was behind that, I emailed him and he said, "Yep that's me, just haven't decided what to with it yet!"
If I ever had anything interesting to with RISC OS I always emailed him to tell him about it. He was always interested and pleased to hear about it. For example; when I managed to get Manic Miner running on the Iyonix after obtaining the source code and giving it to Alan Buckley, who made the changes, it was made a RISC World exclusive. I then told Paul what was happening as I knew he didn't subscribe as he had said that he didn't like CD magazines and preferred the printed version. So I said I could send it on to him anyway, which I did and he was very appreciative of it.
I also bought a fair few old Acorn games off him too, from one of his many website clearouts of old software. Unfortunately one of them had the disc missing, he promised he would look in the attic to find the disc, he never found it, but neither of us expected it to appear, but we both still went with it for quite a while before we gave up!
My final piece on Paul shows what a kind, helpful person he was. A few years ago I was asked by Richard Hanson of Superior Software, if I still had a BBC Micro with 5.25" disc drive or did I know anyone who did. The reason was that one of their level designers had hundreds of Repton levels from the BBC days on disc and they wanted to get them up and running again and use them in the new PC versions.
Unfortunately I couldn't help, as the disc drive which I thought was in my loft, was no longer to be found. So I asked around via the newsgroups and eventually I asked Paul if he was able to help. He replied saying that he would be happy to help as he still had the relevant equipment in the loft.
So I sent him the discs. Unfortunately he was unable to get them transferred largely due to ancient failing BBC hardware, I think one machine actually blew up on him (BBC B's can do this - ED). So the discs came back to me in the end, thankfully Alan Griffin was able to help out and over 200 levels were recovered.
It all shows the sort of person Paul was. He was willing to give up his time, locate ancient computer equipment to help out with a project that wasn't of any use to him, and all for a game that he was unlikely to play as these levels were designed to be used on a Windows version of Repton.
I am sure many more stories could be added by the RISC OS community about Paul giving up his time to help others out. I have nothing but thanks and praise for such a genuinely nice and decent person. The comments about him in the online book of condolence at
Thank you for everything Paul, rest in peace.
(I can only echo Matt's words. Paul's untimely death has left a huge hole. Paul's Funeral took place on Monday the 16th of March. Paul's family asked that instead of flowers could mourners please make a suitable donations to the
Matthew Thompson
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/VRPCEEE/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, VirtualRPC on the Asus Eee
VirtualRPC on the Asus Eee
Robin Barnard on his Eee PC odyssey, or running Virtual Acorn on a SCC
A considered purchase?
Some of you may wonder why would I buy what is known as a Small Cheap Computer (SCC) or a "netbook" on the basis of making it my primary RISCOS machine?
Well there was one main reason. I am quite like Stephen Fry in that its very hard for me to resist buying a new bit of technology, and the SCC in question was tantalising me in all the windows of the many, many branches of the Carphone Warehouse as being ridiculously cheap. The machine concerned was the Asus Eee PC 701SD at around £154.
To justify my purchase before I made it I determined to find out the specification of the computer and compare it to Virtual Acorn's system requirements. It took some research to eventually find out the CPU is a Intel Celeron 900mhz cpu. On some lower specifications of the Asus Eee the CPU is underclocked to around 600Mhz. However on the 701SD model the processor can be run at the genuine 900Mhz. The memory was already known to be a rather tight 512mb and the hard drive was a on board Solid State Drive of only 8GB.
While knowing the above would be unworkable for anything too demanding, it looked like a good fit for my Virtual Acorn (VirtualRPC-AdjustSA) and so I went ahead and got a USB CD ROM drive for good measure!
*TRANSFER
Having already purchased VirtualRPC and installed it on another PC a short while ago I was not too sure if I would to have to buy another copy of VirtualRPC , but luckily enough if you ask VirtualAcorn nicely you can transfer to another computer as long as you remove the software from the previous machine and promise not to use the unlock code for that machine again. So I copied across my VirtualRPC folder entire to my Eee...
Registration
On starting it up I had to get a new unlock code to run the VirtualRPC on the Eee. This was not a problem and with the unlock code entered the VirtualRPC sprang to life. Now that I had RISC OS running on the Eee it was time to start experimenting...
!BOOT
The first proper Boot of my VirtualRPC brought several issues to light. My VirtualRPC that I had transferred had 256mb of RAM configured and was set to tun in a 1024 x 768 screen mode with a large full colour picture of a RiscPC on the pinboard. My poor Eee kicked into overdrive with the fans full on. Being a hard bitten Windows user at work I already had the Windows Task manager running so I took a peak and saw that VirtualRPC was using almost all the CPU and more than what physical RAM was available or should I say thats what it should have been doing!
I found out that by default Windows running on the Eee did not have a paging file configured, so there was no extra capacity beyond the somewhat miserable 512Mb of RAM on the machine! So, after closing down my VirtualRPC somewhat ungracefully (I didn't have much choice as the poor Eee had hung), I decided to make some adjustments.
*CONFIG
Firstly I set the Windows paging file to be 800mb. I figured that should be enough to cater for the shortfall in physical RAM as provided in the Eee (you do this via Control Panel, System, Advanced, Settings button in the Performance section at the top, Advanced tab, Change button at the bottom in the Virtual memory section from her you can chose a system managed page file (which is probably best ) or a custom one of your own choice - I tend to set mine to start about 1 and half times physical RAM minimum and maximum to be twice the previous figure and then click set and OK - windows will probably ask to reboot for this!).
If, like me, you have increased the RAM in your VirtualRPC then it will need to be set back to 32Mb.
Open the model.cfg file found normally in C:\Program Files\VirtualAcorn \VirtualRPC-xxx\Models\(Arm7 RISCOS Adjust (jit), Arm7500 RISC OS Adjust (Jit), or StrongArm RISC OS Adjust (Jit) using Notepad. To do this right click on the Model.cfg file then chose Open. In the dialog box that appears, chose Open using a program selected from a list, then scroll through the list of applications that appear and click on Notepad. It's also worth making sure that the Always use the selected program to open this kind of file is ticked then click OK.
Once the Model.cfg file is open just scroll down to the section that starts [Ram] and make sure it says:
base = 0x1000000
size = 32Mb
and save the changes
Of course you could neatly avoid any of this by getting a 2GB RAM upgrade for the eee, which of course comes entirely recommended. A 2gb SODIMM memory upgrade is available from places like
My next Boot of my VirtualRPC was a bit more successful but still I was not out of the woods yet as the pinboard picture was literally filling itself in as if it was downloading from the internet and the VirtualRPC was running painfully slow. In addition there also appeared to be two pointers in full screen mode and yes the other one was the Windows one.
I had enabled LCD compression on my Eee (from the Eee PC tray utility in the system tray area). This allows you to actually see the whole screen area physically on the screen for any resolution higher than 800 x 480, which is the resolution of the LCD panel. Of course my VirtualRPC was on 1024 x 768 which is a high as the Eee can go on its own screen.
It did not take me long to guess that the Eee was struggling to compress the image on the fly and a fair bit of processing power was being wasted. So I configured my VirtualRPC down to 800 x 600 and set that in !Boot. I also thought I was reasonable to go into the Display tab of the VirtualRPC options and switch off Auto window resize , enabled Start in full screen mode, made sure that Hardware scale was off, and switched off Allow windows to change mode.
This time on Booting it was much better with no crawl of the pinboard image at all and the Eee was now much happier. System performance was now much more reasonable. But there was still those two pointers even with VirtualRPC running in full screen mode.
So I decided to take this to the furthest degree and set the Eee itself to the default 800x480 and to set RISC OS to the same resolution via !Boot. Hooray, there was only 1 pointer. So its only if LCD compress Mode is enabled on the Eee that you end up with two pointers. You can still have a larger screen resolution if you do not mind having to scroll around to see the missing parts of the screen, or you reenable the Hardware scaling option in VirtualRPC.
So now having a fairly responsive VirtualRPC running of course I am off and clicking on things. Although there is some odd things you can do with the trackpad software included (such as double tap the actual track pad to do a double click) you can disable all of this from the mouse part of the Windows control panel. However I did not find this to be much of a problem. The default VirtualRPC settings work fine with the touchpad, the two touchpad buttons are Select and Adjust. RISC OS menus can be opened using the Menu key on the keyboard.
To CD or not to CD that is the question...
So all was now going pretty well. VirtualRPC was running quite nicely and was ticking away using little CPU cycles when not directly being used. So I figure it was time to install some software. So I plugged in my USB CD ROM drive and started up my VirtualRPC. Bang! It refused to start and wanted to send a report to Microsoft (what they will do with this is anyone's guess -probably laugh!).
I had a look at this and Windows was complaining about the atapicd.dll plugin used by VirtualRPC. I fired off another of my seemingly endless emails to VirtualAcorn support (who have provided all the fixes in this article and unbelievably excellent customer service as well!) who confirmed the problem and pointed me to an
Sure enough once the changes has been made VirtualRPC started, but minus a CD drive as accessible via the icon bar. However all was not lost as you can get to the drive via !DrivePop and the VirtualRPC treats it as a MS-DOS (or Windows if you prefer) drive. For anything you want to run or install you need to copy the entire folder for the Application in question to the HostFS hard drive in the VirtualRPC by drag and drop and then start !TypeFind (found in the Filing folder on HostFS::HardDisc4) and drag the whole application to this and keep accepting its default guesses as to the filetypes of the files concerned (just press enter to OK each suggestion). Once !TypeFind has finished you can run the application as normal. This solution is not too bad, all things considered - so now it was time to play Dune II...
*BYE
So finally, after some work, I had my VirtualRPC running well on what could be considered a rather low spec machine. Sure there was a few bumps on the road but I take this to be part of the journey, or indeed the challenge, having driven down the road I can now share the experience with you all, and maybe your journey will be easier as a result!
As one final note, what is VirtualRPC like on the Eee? Well it's like having a mini-StrongARM RiscPC you can take anywhere, for a little of £200. Which is exactly what I wanted.
Robin Barnard
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/WAKE/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, Wakefield 2009
Wakefield 2009
Previewing the biggest show of the year...
The Wakefield 2009 Show, taking place on the 25th April, is now almost fully booked. There are just a couple of stands left to be filled. So if you are considering exhibiting at the show you need to get in contact with the show organisers at once, or it might be too late.
The current and fully up to date list of exhibitors is available on the show website at
A selection of the exhibitors attending include:
RISCOS Lt
APD
RISC OS Open Lt
R-Com
Advantage
CJE Micro
The Netsurf Developer
and many more..
As a special bonus the Centre for Computing History will be attending the show this year. They have a very interesting display planned, but we don't want to tell you what it is in case it ruins the surprise. In addition Joel Rowbottom will have a range of 8 bit computers, hopefully networked, with a variety of other interesting Acorn related things for visitors to see.
Once again there is a small developers area, sponsored by both Advantage 6 and WROCC, with exhibitors such as The RISC OS Packaging project, to name but one.
The popular show theatre will once again be in the room downstairs from the main show. The fully booked program of talks looks like this:
10:30 7th Software - Steve Revill
11:15 RISCOS Ltd
12:00 RISC OS Connect
14:00 Martin Wuerthne
14:45 RISCOS Ope
15:30 Qercus - John Cartmel
As usual the clubs traditional Charity stall will be present raising money for the Wakefield Hospice. The charity stand will also be accepting used inkjet cartridges for recycling. Money from these will also be donated to the Wakefield Hospice, who will receive cash for each cartridge that gets recycled. In addition the club will also be collecting any unwanted mobile phones for recycling for the Hospice. Although do remember to remove your SIMM card first.
There will be a Mini-Bus operating between Wakefield Westgate Station and the show venue, the Cedar Court Hotel just off junction 39 of the M1, throughout the day. The first bus will leave the station at around 9:30. Trips will continue until about 5 pm. Please note there will only be one mini-bus this year and not two in the morning as per last year. This is to reduce costs.
This year the show is supported and sponsored by Advantage 6 and M W Software. In addition all the RISC OS magazine are running features about the show during the build up.
Public opening times for the show are 10 am to 5 pm. Entrance costs £5, tickets are only available on the door and cannot be pre-booked.
Don't forget to check
Foundation RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/WAKE2008/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, Wakefield 2008 - Show Photos
Wakefield 2008
A special set of exclusive photos from last years show...
Last year, at the Wakefield 2008 show, I took a number of photographs. These are intended to be part of the WROCC 25th year celebration. This must make WROCC one of the longest running computer clubs in the country.
Included with this issue of Foundation RISCWorld you will find a set of 80 images, at a maximum resolution of 600 x 600 pixels. I have also produced a rolling slideshow designed to be run on Windows machines. This is also included in the Wake2008 directory that can be found inside the Software directory on the root of this Foundation RISCWorld CD along with the photos themselves. All the photos are in JPEG format can be viewed on any modern RISC OS machine.
Auto-slideshow application
The WROCC_Show_2008.exe program is an executable application for use on PCs running either Windows XP or Windows Vista. It's designed so that any PC owning friends can see what they have been missing out on. Hopefully this will widen interest in a RISCOS event across another computer platform. The filesize is 21 Mbyte.
To run the slideshow simply double-click on the Show 2008 icon. The slideshow then runs automatically for 11 minutes. Once it has finished it will automatically return to the Windows Desktop. It does not install anything on your machine or alter the Windows Registry. Pressing ESC at any time will Quit and return to Desktop. The slideshow sequence is complete with titling, rolling end-credits plus transitions, zoom and also pan effects.
Additionally, if you wish to view images at either a slower or faster rate, either forwards or backwards, then simply press the Pause key and use the left and right cursor keys to move throw the photographs at your own speed. The special effects, eg. transitions, are cancelled during manual operation. Pressing Pause again will cancel this manual control and return to the automatic slideshow.
The slideshow images are designed for a full screen display that can support a resolution of 1024x768 pixels. So users will need to have a machine that support this resolution or better to use the slideshow.
The photographs
As I said earlier there is a copy of all these photographs on the CD, but I thought I would show you a few examples in this little article:
Spot the Foundation RISCWorld editor.
And here's the ever cheerful publisher.
The "Spot the Looney" even was very popular.
The ARM Club have a pre-closure clearout.
Dr Wimp will see you now.
Last minute preparations on the M W Software stand.
Archive editors old and new.
The sadly missed Paul Vigay with Louie Smith.
Scowling at it won't help.
Why use ordinary detergent...
When I nod my head...
Acknowledgements
My thanks go to the Wakefield RISCOS Computer Club (WROCC), the Show Exhibitors and also to the people appearing in the photographs. The success of ay RISCOS Show is not just about hardware or new products. It is as much about the people behind them and the valuable support they give to the RISC OS community.
In 2008 the Wakefield RISCOS Computer Club celebrated its 25th anniversary from its BBC micro start. The WROCC Show 2008 was voted Best Show of the Year 2008 by the readers of
All images and the auto slideshow compilation are copyright (c)2008 Colin Sutton.
Colin Sutton
ÿÿÿÿISSUE6/WIMPPROG/INDEX.HTM Issue 6, Beginner's Guide to WIMP Programming
Beginner's Guide to WIMP Programming
Everything you need to know to start writing your own applications.
A Beginner's Guide to Wimp Programming on RISC OS Computers (Second Edition)
