ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/BELLS/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, Ringing Bells on RISC OS
Ringing Bells on RISC OS
Kate Crennell
Introduction
This article describes RISC OS programs for church bell ringing. There are multi-media presentations describing bell ringing for school children or the general public, as well as those for beginner ringers and those who have advanced to the more complicated methods of change ringing. Bells well rung well are a joy to listen to, but it takes some time for beginners to learn the art so they are usually only allowed short practice sessions on real bells in a tower, otherwise the neighbours start complaining. Using these computer programs you can learn the theory of bell ringing in your own home, then all you need is practice. All the programs can run on PCs which have the 'VirtualA5000' package loaded.
Introduction to bell ringing
Church bells have been rung in England for almost 1000 years to remind parishioners that it was time to get ready to come to the church service.
Originally churches had just one bell, probably rung by the priest who conducted the service. In time more bells were bought and rung. The ringers were paid for their efforts and so there were lots of people who wanted to become ringers. Most people were agricultural labourers and had few holidays so that a day spent ringing was like an extra day of holiday. Their masters were persuaded by the parish priest that it was their duty to release their workers to ring for special church services for funerals or weddings or State Occasions such as the death of a Monarch, a Coronation or a Jubilee.
Most ringers will also ring at midnight on 31 December, to 'Ring out the Old, Ring in the new', but this seems to be a relic of pagan times.
A hundred years ago many people were keen to learn to ring; often whole families would ring, even today there are villages where all the ringers belong to several generations of the same family. Traditionally people were taught to ring by the band of ringers in their church. It is much like riding a bicycle, it seems impossible at first but when you have mastered the knack it becomes easy and you remember how to do it even if you have not done it for years. When you have learned the technique it needs little effort because although bells are heavy, they swing round because of their weight and you only need a little effort to keep them swinging.
Following the industrial revolution many people moved to the towns and it became more difficult to recruit new ringers. Today it is even more difficult because there are plenty of other spare time activities such as watching TV, surfing the Internet or programming.
Anne Parmenter's '!Bells', an introduction to bells and bell ringing.
Anne Parmenter came up against this problem in her Wiltshire village around the time of the recent millennium celebrations so she wrote the application !Bells ('Bells and Bellringing'); this is a multi-media presentation with pictures and sound which tries to explain how and why bells are rung, who rings them and how they are made. This is an ideal program for schools or for having on display in 'Open Tower' days. It uses !TeView which is a freely distributable utility part of the 'TextEase' suite of RISCOS programs.
!Bells can be downloaded from our
Starting !Bells
Double click on the !Bells icon. This should show you an introductory window with two icons at the lower right corner, 'Finish' and 'Contents'. Clicking with the 'Select' mouse button over 'Contents' produces a whole screen window with 8 options each with a small bell beside them. The options are:
A How did bell ringing begin?
B How are bells made?
C Where do you find bells?
D How are bells hung?
E How are bells rung?
F When are bells rung?
G What is change ringing?
H Who rings bells?
On the right is the message 'Click on a bell to make your choice' at bottom left is a 'Back' icon and bottom right an 'Index'. All the windows have navigation buttons like this at the bottom of the screen. There is usually a picture illustrating the text; some topics such as 'When are bells rung' have several screens. You can look at the screens in whatever order you like, and return to this Contents window at any time from the other screens.
There are also 'Back' and 'next' icons to move through the story. These take you on to the next screen in the story, or back to the previous one in the order of the story. They do not work like the 'Back' button on a web browser which goes back to the last screen you looked at.
To stop the program quickly just click on the normal 'close' icon (X) at the top left of the screen. It will leave TeView on the icon bar which you can close in the usual way. Alternatively, return to the 'Contents' page and click 'Back' this takes you to the initial screen where you click on 'Finish'.
Index of terms
Bell ringing has its own jargon, to help you understand this !Bells has an 'index' page listing some of the words; when you click on a word you are taken to a screen where that word is explained. For example, the word 'stay' is not a command, but describes a piece of wood on which the bell can rest safely in the 'up' position. Bells are heavy, often very heavy, some weigh over a ton. If they swing down unexpectedly they can cause injuries. To avoid this the bells are left in the 'down' position when ringers are not in the tower. .
Where to get information about bell ringing and software.
There are several ways you can find out how to learn to ring bells. One traditional way is to find a church where bells are ringing and look in the porch or on the church notice board where you may find a poster telling you the ringing times, who the Tower Captain is, and on which night the ringers practice. It is best to contact the Tower Captain in advance to find out the times when beginners are welcome. Many towers will set aside the first half an hour of their practice evening to teach complete beginners and will ring more complicated methods afterwards. You will be welcome to watch the ringing, but you should be careful only to enter or leave the ringing chamber when ringing has stopped so that you do not accidentally get entangled in the moving ropes.
If you cannot find a notice in the church porch you can try asking one of the Church Wardens whose names are usually posted on the notice board.
Using the internet Ringers have created societies to help with social events or teaching beginners. These are usually formed from ringers in towers near to one another. Since ringing started for church services, these societies are often based on the Church Diocese for the area. All these Societies have joined together to form the 'Central Council of Church Bell Ringers' whose web site home page is at
The Guilds run training courses in their area and maintain lists of software of all kinds. You can find educational programs or CD-ROMs giving access to all the information about the bells with photos of the church towers. You can even buy jigsaws showing historical bell ringers in action.
Bells and Bell ringing links
Central Council for Church
Bell ringing look at Publications and Education
Roger Bailey's
Ringing resources
John Sturdy's educational pages
Learning To Ring an
A Glossary
Call Changes list maintained by Michael Williams
Change Ringing Webring
Ringing World the weekl
newspaper for bell ringer
Software catalogue
Bell Founders, Hangers and Physics
The
Whitechapel Bell foundry
Whites of Appleton, church bellhanger
The Keltec Trust describes the
Physics of Bells how the soun
is made and bells are tuned, and finds a home for redundant bells
Ringing Call Changes
The image above shows a bell being rung. When the beginner has learnt to handle the bell safely by themselves, the next step is to ring with other people. The bells are not usually all rung at the same time, that makes a jangling noise and creates a great strain on the structure of the tower. Instead bells are rung in a sequence from the smallest to the largest, from higher to lower notes. This is known as 'rounds' because the bell ropes are usually arranged in a circle so that each ringer can see when the others are pulling on their ropes, and can adjust the time when they ring their bell so that the notes made by the bells are struck evenly which is more pleasant for the neighbours.
'Rounds' gets boring after a while so the next thing a beginner learns is 'Call Changes'. One ringer calls out which bells are to change, and the ringers then change the order of their pulling on the ropes to sound the bells in the new order.
!CallChnge
The application !CallChnge simulates this process, except that the user clicks with a mouse between bells instead of calling out which bells to change.
Click on the icon !CallChnge to load the icon on to the icon bar, click with 'menu' button to see the options Info, Help, or Quit. Help displays the !Help file with running instructions. A simple explanation of how bells are rung is stored in the Docs.Intro which also explains the usual sequence of words used by the person ringing the lightest bell, the treble, to call the ringers to order in the tower, 'Look To', when the ringers put their hands ready to start pulling,'Treble's Going', as the treble bell is pulled to the point where it is ready to fall off the balance and 'Treble's gone' as it starts to swing down.
Click the 'Select' mouse button to start the application. This makes a selection window where you can choose the parameters for this run, the number of bells, the key of the tenor, how loud you want the sound, the length of the open lead (the time after one round finishes before the next one begins) and how fast you want the bells to ring. You may want to click over the 'Try Tenor' icon to test the volume and pitch of the note.
You can run without sound if you just want to watch how the ropes move.
The pitch may vary slightly depending on the computer you are using, especially if you are using !CallChnge on a PC running 'Virtual A5000'.
This usually only bothers people who have perfect pitch. Instructions for varying the pitch are in the file Docs.Pitch within the application.
Ringing rounds on 8 bells
Click over the 'LookTo' icon to see the main ringing window which has just a 'Close' icon. This window cannot be moved in the usual way because !CallChnge has taken all of the 'Wimp' time for itself so that the bells ring evenly. The bell 'places' are the numbers at the top, above each bell, with it's ringer below. Below them is a 'command line' with bell numbers separated by * and the word 'Stand' at the right hand end. The mouse arrow is constrained to move only within this line. Instructions are given in white text on the black background area below. After a short time the ringers start ringing rounds, they do this for two rounds to simulate the way ringers in a tower start ringing and then adjust the time and force of their pull to ring evenly. In the tower the 'caller' has to warn the ringers they are to change the order on the next time they pull. The change does not happen at once because the ringers have to know how to vary the pull depending on which way in the sequence they have to move. So after you click on the * between the numbers nothing happens until the ringers are starting their next sequence.
Some sequences sound more musical than others and have been given names. For example try to move 6 bells into the sequence 1 3 5 2 4 6. This is called 'Queens' because it is said that Queen Elizabeth I heard it on one of her royal tours around England and said how much she liked it.
To stop the ringing click over the word 'Stand'. When this is called in the tower the ringers carefully pull their bells in such a way that they are balanced resting gently against the 'stay' ready to be pulled off to ring again.
Then you find that the mouse pointer moves to the 'close' icon so that you can close the window after you have inspected the ringers if you want to.
Notice that the 'parameters' window no longer has 'greyed out' icons 'Replay' and 'Save Changes'. Click on 'Replay' then on 'LookTo' and the sequence of changes you made last is replayed for you. Clicking on 'Save Changes' brings up a 'Save Window' containing a the filename 'Change' where you can save your sequence to replay later. Dragging such a saved sequence file to the application will prepare it to ring it again.
The file 'Docs.Trythese' has instructions and suggestions for other changes to try.
The directory 'Examples' has some 'saved' files already set up for you to try. Notice that all of these take you to the named 'tune' and then take the bells back into ringing rounds. This is a convention adopted in most towers.
Michael Williams maintains a web site (see the section of Bell ringing links) where you can find lots more suggested sequences such as 'Pop goes the weasel' or the sequence being played on Bow Bells which Dick Whittington heard which made him return to London to make his fortune.
What else can you use !CallChnge for?
1. Your local tower may have only 6 bells, but with !CallChange you can try as many as 12 or 16 and hear bells rung as if you were in a cathedral.
2. You can invent your own sequence of changes, save it to a file, print it and take it with you to 'call' in the tower.
3.You can use the program to decide in which order the bells ring by watching the sallies (the thicker fluffy sections on the rope) and trying to decide the sequence without looking at the command line. This is important in a tower because you need to watch the person ringing in front of you and pull your bell at the correct time after theirs.
Change Ringing Methods
Ringers start by ringing in rounds, the sequence from highest to the lowest note, usually written out as line of numbers for example: 1 2 3 4 5 6.
About 400 years ago the idea of changing the order of the bells was suggested. Bells are heavy, often very heavy, and a ringer can only make a small alteration to the swing of a bell when it is in motion. However, late in the 16th century, developments in bell hanging made it possible for two bells to change places. The one earlier in the order holds their bell up a little to allow the following bell to ring before it. The one later in the order catches the rope earlier, so that the bell swings down sooner.
There are two ways of pulling the rope, as shown in the picture above, these are called a 'handstroke', when the ringer has both hands pulling on the sally (the fluffy part woven into the rope to make it easier to grasp), and the other is the 'backstroke' when both hands are at the 'tail end'. In both cases the bell sounds when the ringers hands are level with their faces.
At first a conductor called the 'changes' to tell the ringers which pair of bells were to swap. 'Call Changes' are still rung in most church towers from time to time and are often the first thing a beginner learns after 'rounds'.
However, early in the 17th century 'methods' began to be developed where the order of the bells was changed according to a pattern memorised by the ringers. Popular patterns are given names and are called 'methods'.
Some methods have a 'covering' bell, this means that the tenor (the deepest bell) rings last at the end of each row; these are usually those rung on odd numbers of changing bells. Methods rung on an even numbers of bells are usually rung without a covering bell. Towers with more bells can ring more complicated methods.
There are some basic rules for constructing methods:
No bell may move more than one place at a time in the orde
No bell may stay in the same place for more than two change
no change may be repeated.
Method names have two parts, the first describes the method (e.g. 'Plain Bob') and the second describes the number of bells:
3 Singles
4 Minimus
5 Doubles
6 Minor
7 Triples
8 Major
9 Caters
10 Royal
11 Cinques
12 Maximus
So 'Plain Bob Major' means the Plain Bob method rung on 8 bells.
Diagrams
The instructions for a method can be written out in lines giving the order of the bells to ring this time. This starts with rounds and returns to rounds and is called a 'Diagram' as in the one above which shows 'Plain Hunt Doubles', in which the bells start from 'rounds' and return to 'rounds' after 10 rows of 'changes'. The line drawn under the last line but one shows you when the treble has returned to 'leading', that is, reached the position on the row when they ring first.
The column on the left B or H tells you whether you ring Back or Hand Stroke. The column on the right is always 6 because this is a 'Cover tenor' which rings in the same place every time and makes it easier for ringers to know where they are.
The path of the 1st bell (treble) is drawn in red to show the way that bell moves. The 'blue line' is the path of some other bell, in this case chosen to be the third one. In the plain hunt method all the bells follow the same path but start at different places on it.
!Methods is a RISC OS program with over 150 methods stored in a simple text file which you can edit to add more methods. The 'Demo' version on this RISC World CD can only ring two methods, Grandsire Doubles and Bob Minor.
Click on !Methods to load the 'ringer and rope' icon on to the icon bar.
Clicking MENU shows you the usual, Info, Help and Quit options. The Help option shows you the running instructions, which are similar to those of !CallChnge, in that you have a 'Parameter window' to set up the number of bells etc to use this run; when you click on the 'LookTo' icon you see the main 'Ringing Window'. .
For detailed running instructions read the !Help file in the application.
An icon in the 'Ringing methods' window allows you to 'Save Diagram'; the icon is greyed out until you have chosen a method. After clicking on 'Save Diagram' you get another 'SaveAs:' window with options to control the items you want printed in the 'Diagram' for this method. (see the section on 'Diagrams' above for details). There is the usual savebox 'draw' icon and the name of the file to store it in. You do not have to store it you can just drop in on to !Draw and print it from there.
Click on the 'Look To' icon to start the animation. This takes place in a special ringing window which cannot be moved; it takes all the Wimp time so that the ringing speed is not affected by other Wimp activities which might be taking place. The mouse movement is confined to the part of the window in which you can click.
Instructions telling you how to start and stop the method are at the bottom of the green ringing window. There are two lines of 'Calls' you can make by clicking on the black words, greyed out ones are either not used in this method, or should not be called at this time.
Ringing Bob Doubles
At the top of the window you see your ringers ready to start ringing rounds; this animation is closer to the view a ringer has in the tower, the bell ropes just vanish through a hole in the ceiling, their bell is not visible.
The ringing starts a second after this ringing window is set up. They ring one round (two strokes) before you can start the method. This simulates the time needed in a tower for the ringers to correct their striking. The ringing order is shown in the small scrolling window at bottom right; the number appears as the bell sounds.
Click over the "Go xxx" (where xxx is the method) to start the animation of your selected method. You can pause the ringing at any time by pressing the 'P' key; to continue ringing press the 'C'. This is very useful for students who initially find it almost impossible to tell the sequence in which the bells ring, and hence which one they should follow next. They can try ringing the bells more slowly but even so it is much easier to see the order if you temporarily pause the program.
The method repeats until you click on "That's All" to return to rounds or "Stand" to stop the ringing. When all the graphics and sound have stopped you can click on the 'Close' icon in this ringing window.
Press <Escape> in an emergency and the ringing window will immediately disappear.
!Methods will just ring the 'Plain' method if left to itself but this can be extended to a 'Touch', for those methods where it is possible, by clicking on the words 'Bob' or 'Single' when they turn black. Details of what this means can be found in any book on change ringing such as 'Change Ringing.
The Art and Science of Change Ringing on Church and Hand Bells' by Wilfred G.Wilson 1st published in 1965 by Faber and Faber.
Many more ringing books can be found in the bibliography on the Website of the Central Council of Church Bell ringers (see section on useful web links).
Computer simulators used with real bells.
There is little user interaction in the programs described so far. Computer simulators allow the user to choose 'their' bell, and then they ring the method automatically on all except the users bell. In a tower, the bell's clapper can be tied so that it makes no sound when pulled by a ringer.
This allows the learner to feel how and when to pull the bell without annoying the neighbours. A detector can be fitted to the bell wheel to detect its position which is transmitted electronically to the simulator program which makes the sound. In this way the learner has a set of perfect companions (simulated by the computer) to ring the method and it is much easier to hear when you are not ringing at the right time. However, it does require a skilled person trusted by the Tower Captain to 'tie' the bell safely. Usually this will be the Tower Captain who may be too busy to do this whenever you feel like practising. We know of no programs for RISCOS which have the associated electronics to be used with a real bell. There were several written for the BBC-B which are still in active use today some twenty years later.
Details of these can be found by contacting:.
Other RISCOS programs.
!Strike has been designed to help develop ringing listening skills by deciding which of the bells is not being rung evenly in time with the others. Some people find it hard to decide which bell in the ring is not being rung at the right time just by listening. You might find a set of ringers who were able to ring badly to order, unlike our tower, a set of beginners, who rarely ring evenly. It is easier to use a program like !Strike which has a set of parameters which can be changed to set up particular errors in the ringing sequence, which is called 'bad striking'. Good striking is when the bells are all rung evenly after one another. !Strike is a desktop program which can be used by a teacher who turns off the display showing what error is being demonstrated this time and expects the student to decide where the error is just by listening. Alternatively, a student can leave the display on and learn to listen to what the error sounds like.
!Stringing is a program which can give you practice in 'ringing your bell' in the correct sequence by pressing the space bar on the keyboard at the correct time. It can play over 100 of the more common methods. !Stringing is not a Desktop program, but it does show you the 'diagram' while it is ringing. You can also 'splice' different methods together to test which ones you may want to ring in a peal. You can enter a new method from the keyboard using the 'Place Notation'. This is a set of stored commands, much like a computer program, which defines how the bells are to ring in a more compact way than using a diagram. Details of how to get a copy of !Stringing are given at the end of this article.
Where to get the programs.
!Bells and the !Methods demo are both in the software directory on this issue of RISC World.
Later versions can be downloaded from the Internet at.
'Fortran Friends', P.O.Box 64, Didcot, Oxon, OX11 0TH details email: fortran@argonet.co.uk or a S.A.E. to the postal address.
Both !Strike and !Stringing are supplied on a single floppy disc with a paper manual. Details are available by email or by sending a stamped addressed envelope to the authors by post. Both authors donate the profits from sales to local funds for bell restoration.
!Strike costs £15 from:
John Harrison, 2 Murdoch Road, Wokingham, Berks, RG40 2DA details email: harrison@eurobell.co.uk or a S.A.E. to the postal address.
!Stringing costs £10 from:
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/CDWRITING/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, Creating CDs using RISC OS
Creating CDs using RISC OS
Part 2 - Audio CDs - Dave Holden
In the first part I dealt with the creation and burning of data CDs, that is, CDs containing programs and other computer data such as JPEG images etc. In this part I shall describe how you can create audio or music CDs.
Note that using these techniques it is possible to make copies of commercial music CDs or to download copyright music files from the internet and put them onto a CD. This may be permitted for your own personal use but it will certainly be an infringement of copyright if you were to make a copy of, for example, a commercial music CD and pass it on to a friend. The publishers of RISC World do not condone the use of a CD writer for this purpose, and nothing in this article should be taken as suggesting that you should copy commercial CDs.
First there is an operation which is common to both audio and data CDs, that is extracting a track from a CD. Whether this is a data or music CD the operation is similar.
Extracting a single track
Click on CD Tools on the CDburn Control Window and the Toolbox window will open.
With the CD you wish to copy tracks from in the drive click on Grab on the left hand side of the window. A small SaveAs window will open. If the CD is a data CD then there will probably only be one track and the name offered in this window will be 'Untitled'. You can alter the name to something appropriate and drag it to a directory viewer on your hard drive and the track will be extracted. Remember to check that you have plenty of free space first as a full CD can take up to 700 Mb. It can also take quite a while, especially if your CD drive is connected to a slow interface like the motherboard IDE.
If you have extracted a data track from a single track CD then what you have will be an ISO image. This can then be written directly to a CDR or CDR/W disc as previously described to make an exact copy of the CD. In fact, this is by far the best way to copy a CD, as even if you have two CD ROM drives and could copy directly from one to the other, this method is much less prone to error and a lot quicker if you are making more than one copy.
An audio CD is slightly different. Firstly there will almost certainly be several tracks. These can be extracted individually, which explains the 'bump' icons beside the 'Track number' icon in the window. Normally you would create a directory with a name that describes the CD and increment the track number as you extract each one, placing them in the directory. Beware if you just add a number to the name AudioTrack if you're not running RISC OS 4. As the word already has 10 letters the numbers will be 'cut off' and every track will be saved with the same name, that is, each track will overwrite the previous one. So make sure you change the name, for example, Track01, Track02, etc.
Extracting multiple audio tracks
Luckily you don't need to go to all this trouble, there's a much easier way to extract a number of tracks from an audio CD.
If you click on Create Audio CD on CDburn's Control Window the audio read/write window will open.
Now place an audio CD in the drive and click on the left hand button, the one marked '+ CD'. The track data for all the tracks will be read and the window shown below will open with information about them.
You now need to choose which tracks you want to extract. Click on the number of each track you want to extract with ADJUST. If you use SELECT the window will close and you'll have to click on '+ CD' again to open it, that is, it acts like a RISC OS menu. If, as would normally be the case, you want to extract all the tracks then click on 'All'.
When you select the tracks their details are transferred to the Audio Layout window. Clicking on 'All' will transfer all the tracks. Assuming you'd clicked on 'All' in the above example the Audio Layout window should now look something like this;
Although you have a list of tracks they are still on the original CD, so you now need to 'grab' the tracks from the CD onto your hard drive.
As you click SELECT over each track it will become 'selected' and inverted. To select all the tracks click on the second button (the black/white bisected square) and to de-select them click on the third button (the red cross).
If you click MENU with the mouse pointer anywhere over the Audio Layout window this menu will appear.
Note that until you have selected some tracks 'Delete track' and 'Sample track' will be 'greyed out'.
'Select all' and 'Clear selection' have the same effect as the buttons previously described. 'New audio layout' will delete all the information from the Layout window so you can start again with another CD.
'Add track' will re-sample the CD and open the 'Add track' window ready for you to transfer another track to the Layout window. You could use this if you wanted to create a compilation CD.
'Delete track' will remove any selected track(s) from the Layout window.
'Export audio layout' and 'Save audio layout' will save the contents of the Layout window as a CSV or Text file respectively. This can then be dragged back to the Layout window at a later date if you want to make another copy of the CD without needing to start again from scratch. You would normally use this with tracks which have been previously extracted and placed on your hard drive.
Once you have chosen some or all of the tracks select 'Sample track' and a SaveAs window will open. If you have selected just a single track then this will contain the name of the track, if you have selected several tracks then it will be a directory into which they will be placed. In either case you can change the name before Saving.
In this Save window there are two 'radio' buttons marked 'CD' and 'WAV'. If you select WAV then as the files are extracted they are converted to WAV format. If you are going to burn the tracks back onto an audio CD you would not want to do this, especially as they can become much bigger when you do. However WAV files can be listened to and edited on a computer, so you may want to convert them. If you intend to put the track back onto an audio CD then make sure 'CD' is selected, as it is by default.
Once everything is set the way you want it drag the icon to a suitable place on your hard drive and CDburn will extract the track(s).
Making an audio CD
Once all the tracks have been extracted you will want to write the CD.
Normally to write an audio CD you would open the Audio Layout window and drag the tracks you want to place on the CD to the window. They will then appear there in the order in which they arrived. If you want to change the order that they will appear on the CD, and this applies when you've just sampled the CD as well, you can just drag them up and down the window to alter the order.
To write this CD all you have to do is click on the CD icon on the right and the 'ready to write' window will open.
This is similar to the window used to write data CDs, but there are a couple of points that need to be explained.
Track-at-once and Disc-at-once set the way that the CD is written. Track-at-once will write one track at a time leaving a two second gap between each track, exactly as is done with conventional music CDs. Disc-at-once will write the entire CD in one go with no gap between tracks. This should not be done with 'normal' music CDs where each track is a separate entity, but is used for 'live' recordings where the applause at the end of one track is blended into the applause before the next to give the impression of a continuous performance. At present Disc-at-once normally only works with SCSI CD writers, so you don't have a choice if you're using CDburn with IDE, but this is being worked on so it may be available soon.
For the moment make sure that 'Prepare for CD extra' and 'don't fixate' are not ticked (we'll come to these later). 'Simulate writing' can be used to make sure that everything is working OK without actually writing a CD, just as it can with data CDs.
When everything is ready click on 'Write' to produce your audio CD.
Using WAV files
If you have downloaded some WAV files and want to create a music CD then CDburn can do this for you. Just drag them to the Audio Layout window in the usual way. However, before CDburn can deal with them they must be in the required format. This is 44.1 Khz little endian stereo 16 bit signed linear. Don't worry if you don't know what this means, there's an application called !WAVcheck on the CDburn distribution disc in the ExtraUtils archive which will check it for you, although if the file is in the wrong format it can't correct it.
MPEG files
CDburn can't deal directly with MP3 files, but luckily help is at hand in the form of the freeware program AMPlayer. This will convert MP3 files to WAV, which CDburn can deal with. For your convenience we have included a copy of AMPlayer in the SOFTWARE directory on the CD.
Normally AMPlayer is a command line program, but luckily there's a desktop front end available and we've included this as well.
You'll find full instructions in the form of text files inside the application archives.
In the next session we'll wind up with a look at mixed audio and data CDs.
Dave Holden
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/COMPO/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, The Competition Page
The RISC World competition page
Win stuff with RISCWorld!
Win one of two copies of the latest DrawWorks
This month we have a nice simple competition for you. APDL have just launched a new version of DrawWorks, as well as working on all versions of RISC OS from 3.10 onwards the new DrawWorks can also be used with the latest versions of !Draw as supplied by RISC OS Ltd. So the question is quite simple.
What is the latest version of DrawWorks called?
Once you have come up with your answer send the
ClipArt set winners
As I am sure you will remember from the last issue Focus Multimedia have kindly donated three of the 20,000 Photos, 5,000 Cartoon Clipart Images, 100,000 Web Graphics and 25,000 Animated Web Graphics CD-ROMs. So we had three sets of clip art up for grabs. As you may recall in order to one one you needed to enter the BogoMips Challenge....
The BogoMips Challenge
As I am sure you recall we had a copy of the BogoMips application on the last issue. All you had to do was run it and try and get either the fastest or slowest figure possible, or, to give everyone an even break, tell us what computer produced the BogoMips figure below.
So on the fastest RISC OS computer (the highest BogoMips figure). Regretfully no one was able to beat our figure, but we will come back to that in a minute, so the highest figure we received was.....
From Darren Northcott, who used an Overclocked Revision S StrongArm and RISC OS 4.02. At this point I should point out that we did get one higher entry form a chap called David Atkins, who apparently tried it on a computer called an "Omega" (Never heard of it - DB), however I am going to disqualify him as his computer wasn't quite finished at the time.
The slowest figure received was also from Darren, using the same machine with the StrongArm clocked down to its normal speed and all the caches turned off, however he isn't going to get two prizes, so the next lowest was from Brian Tunbridge with an A5000.
Which of course only leaves us with one more prize to award, but not a single reader got it right. Some suggested it was from an APDL Turbo card, others a Kinetic, some even suggested a Kinetic and the latest ViewFinder. All wrong, very wrong, very very wrong. The top figure of 156.97 was generated by.......VirtualA5000! For the technically minded it was VirtualA5000 V1.20, running on a 1.7Ghz P4, with WindowsXP and a 64Mb Geforce2MX graphics card. I must say this was a bit of a surprise myself as I figured a Kinetic would beat this (but then I don't have one). The figure was obtained running in 800x600 256 colours.
Want to win!
The only way to win with RISC World is to enter the competition. So in order to stand a chance of winning you will need to send us an e-mail with your answer, and please don't forget to include your full name and address.
Hugh Jampton has been pretending to be Matthew Kelly
RULES: Staff of RISC World and anybody else involved with this promotion may not enter. The editor's decision is final, and no correspondence will be entered into. There is no cash alternative to any of the prizes on offer. Winners names will be published within the editorial of the next issue. The closing date is 21st August 2002 - all entries arriving after that date will be re-cycled and turned into box covers for AOL CDs.
This issue we have a couple of cracking full commercial products for you to play with, Phantasm and FasterPC
Faster PC - original rrp £19.90
FasterPC was originally developed by Dave Lawrence 10 years ago, and was designed with the simple aim of running DOS and DOS based programs as fast as possible. At the time Acorn had their own PC-Em package that would emulate a PC, but it wasn't that quick. FasterPC was faster and cheaper than the Acorn emulator, although at the time the Acorn emulator did also come bundled with a copy of DR-DOS.
The version of FasterPC supplied with RISCWorld comes complete with a 10Mb DOS partition with the FasterPC utilities disc pre-installed and a copy of
We have also included a DOS tutorial program called DosEA which may prove very useful for those who have never used DOS before. To run the tutorial load !FasterPC and then click SELECT on its icon on the icon bar. DOS Will then start, once the DOS prompt has appeared type
cd dosea
This will change the Current Directory (hence the CD command) to the DOSEA directory. Now type
dosea1
The DOS tutorial will now start. And one final thing, to get back to RISC OS hold down the ALT key and click MENU on the mouse.
Phantasm - original rrp £14.90
Before Martin Würthner released his amazing transparency add-on for Artworks there was only one way you do do transparent effects using ArtWorks, Phantasm. Originally published by the same people who are behind Cerilica Vantage, Phantasm allows you do perform all sorts of amazing colour effects with Artworks. Included is the full add-on (a copy of ArtWorks is required to run it) and some example files. We have also included a couple of Martin's tools for ArtWorks users who don't have them.
So the complete DiscWorld contents looks rather like this....
Bells
Copies of !CallChnage and !Methods to accompany Kate Crennel's Bell ringing article.
CDWriting
A copy of the AMPlayer program to accompany Dave Holden's article.
EasyC
The example files that we forgot to put on the last issue.
FasterPC
A full version of the PC Emulator for RISC OS including an installation of FreeDOS.
Games
A copy of the Football Manager game featured in Paul Johnson's article.
Mandel
The mandelbrot generator as covered in the Letters Page.
Modules
All the source code, and the executables from Brian Pickard's series.
PD
All the latest PD, shareware and freeware releases from the PD column.
There have been some very interesting behind the scenes manoeuvres going on in the RISC OS community over the last few months. So interesting in fact that I couldn't bring myself to publish the Insider article that was prepared for the last issue in case its content damaged some of the deals going on out of the public gaze. This issue sees the return of Insider, and very interesting reading it makes (unless I have edited it heavily after having written this).
We have lost a few readers over the last couple of issues, and if you check out the letters page you will find out why. Regretfully people are leaving the RISC OS market and the delay in producing announced products does not help. Still on a brighter note RISC World welcomes a number of brand new subscribers with this issue.
Anyway moving on, we have another action packed issue for you this time (gosh - I almost sound like a real editor), with some quite different articles. Feedback on this issue would be most appreciated as I am seriously considering doing more experimentation with RISC World, but only provided you, the reader, agrees!
Editors Rant of the month
Barclays. Pure and simple this months rant is Barclays. Barclays. Since we started shipping VirtualAcorn CDs in January we have been trying to get a credit card machine. My business bank account has been with Barclays for some time, so there shouldn't be too much of a problem. Ahhh, but the name on the account changed after I handed over iSV Products to APDL. This is obviously too difficult for Barclays to deal with. The nature of the business is the same, we develop software, we produce all the stock in house, and then we sell it mail order. "You will have to go to our new business department", but I am not new business, I have been with you for years. So I decide to go through my business manager, who although she is very nice, is about as effective as an ashtray on a motorbike. Result? Barclays want a years trading figures, fine have them. Ahh, but the name is different. Yes that's right the name of the business has changed, so they won't give us a credit card machine. Yes, but its the same account. Oh OK then, we will lodge an appeal on your behalf.
Now the story gets muddy as my Business Manager then vanished for 6 weeks, presumably to have an official company lobotomy. When she finally gets back the appeal has been rejected, why wasn't I told? Well she has been away. So, does Barclays not have any other staff?. I gave up and decided to sort it out myself.
As many people might realise as far as I am concerned "No" is not an answer. So how to get a card machine? Simple deal with Barclays Merchant Services directly. The only problem is that the only phone numbers you can get hold of put you through to previous sucsesful graduates of the Barclays lobotomy training program. I need to speak to those who actually make a decision, but no one will let me. The solution is simply ring up (having done a 141 first in case they track phone numbers) claim to be someone in Barclays in Bracknell and ask for a direct number. Hey presto. Excellent security from Barclays there. Now having got a phone number, all I have to do is ring up, then get the name of the person I am talking to. After all I cannot be a customer as I have the direct phone number. By luck I not only get the persons name, but also her boses name, and his extension number....he he he.....
So I plagued the poor man, every day I would ring. I also started e-mailing after I got his e-mail address as well. And for the next two weeks I drove him potty. In the end he gave in and we now have a merchant services account, so we can take credit cards. The funny thing is the reason that our original request had been declined was that Barclays just didn't understand what we were doing. I had to explain repeatedly that not all websites were on-line stores, that not everyone who sold computer software did so at a 5% margin and that what we did just didn't fit into their nice neat business models.
So does this story have a moral, I don't know. However I figured telling you this was better than complaining that the engine in my little Lotus 7 replica has just gone bang.
Printing RISC World
The new look of RISC World means that when you want to print an article on your printer it will have the light yellow background. However most web browsers allow you to turn off the background images when printing. 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 RISC World pages then make sure you have clicked a similar option in your browser.
Aaron Timbrell
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/EDUC1/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, The Education Column
The Education Column
Andrew Harmsworth introduces a new series
This article appeared in the last issue, however a link to it from the main contents page didn't. So although it was on the CD most readers didn't see it, so we are running it again - ED.
Greetings one and all! This is to be the first of many regular education-related columns that I will be writing. Don't click off now, though! What I hope to be able to do is cover projects that will be of interest to most RISC OS users, and definitely to those of us lucky enough to reside in education.
This month I'm going to talk about two educational websites that I've helped set-up. The first is my new pet project: www.gcse.com. The second, Paul Vigay's RISC OS Schools Webring.
Just for good measure, there's a little more news about the RiscStaton laptop - and a tantalising new photo.
GCSE.com: Millions of hits to a RISC OS Project
A couple of years ago, I came by a site on the web called GCSE Answers at www.gcse.com. It sported some excellent pages on English, as well as some fine tutorials on Maths. I teach Physics, so I emailed the editor to ask why they didn't support other subjects. He got back to me to say that they were looking at expanding, and would I like to produce some Physics content. Payment would be made from banner click earnings, at a percentage.
So, until December last year, I happily wrote the occasional document (in TechWriter) and emailed it in as a Word document. The editor then played with the files for some time, converting them to HTML, and uploading them for me to check. The whole process took a considerable length of time - sometimes months going by between submission and publication.
The Physics Department didn't grow as fast as it could have, and to cut a long story short, by Christmas the site was losing money fast. Being a Limited Company is expensive. The site was closed down, and a single page saying "This service is terminated" was presented to the many thousands of visitors who continued to visit daily.
Between then and now I managed to acquire the domain name from the owner at a fair price. They also returned to me the physics materials I had written. Since then I have spent perhaps a couple of handfuls of hours re-branding the pages (temporarily), and writing new material - including graphics. The new "thumbs up" logo - above - was a Drawfile re-coloured!
This has all been done on my 6 year old StrongARM RISCPC. Just over a week ago I re-launched the site, solely Physics based. This confuses lots of visitors, because most search engines still think it includes English, Maths and French! But they are finding it useful - just read the comments on the visitors' page.
Re-Coding
The original pages had been coded by hand on a PC (not by me) and one of the reasons why it was so slow was that adding headers and footers was done manually. Eventually I pointed the editor at !Webchange, although the PC version. This had increased productivity, but sadly not enough to save the site.
I've used !StrongED for many years now, and can't see any reason to change to !Zap, unless anyone wants to show me why I should. In re-coding www.gcse.com I have had to master some of the ways in which global search and replace works, including some very specific criteria.
Firstly, all references to "GCSE Answers" had to be replaced with something else. This is easily done across the many hundreds of HTML pages. All one has to do is:
drag-load all the HTML pages into !StrongE
Shift-F4 calls up search & replace
Change the Search TEXT box to ALL
Enter what you want changed, and to
Click GO
This is great, but are you not then left with hundreds of files that you need to save? Yes! But fortunately !StrongED's List of Texts button (second from left):
...gives you the ability to save changed files, and close others. It will show a list like this:
Like many other people, I had previously not known of this method. But clicking on hundreds of close file icons, then clicking save as necessary was not something I was willing to put up with. Clicking MENU over the text list gives you all the options you could desire:
If you regularly edit more than one file at once using !StrongED, this little tip could save you hours!
Advertising
For just over a year my own websites have carried pay-per-click banners from Adviva, a London-based advertising agency. It hasn't made me rich, but it is interesting pocket money. Obviously I was to put their banners on www.gcse.com. To do so meant removing the old ones, and putting the new code in. This was easy, but... the code had been emailed to me, and automatic line wrapping in the email client at their end... had broken all the javascript code, without me knowing it! All the pages needed three return characters carefully stripped out... whilst leaving everything else in place.
To quote Deep Thought, "Tricky". But can you do it? I can, but it would take HOURS! Can !StrongED do it? And in less than 71/2 million years? The Advanced option in search & replace looked promising, but we'd need to RTBM first, I think.
StrongED's manual gave me exactly what I was looking for. There are several ways of tackling this problem of text across lines. By far the easiest turned out to involve the $ (newline character) and Punct to cope with searching for quotes.
New Graphics
One of the problems, or joys, of physics is that it is so conceptual. Diagrams show so much more than even the best written explanation. Images, however, are the most costly aspect of any publication - at least in time. Writing new material for the site was relatively easy. Adding appropriate supporting graphics was crucial.
A recent addition has been some tutorials on radioactivity. The relative penetration of alpha, beta and gamma radiation is often shown in a single diagram. !Draw would be adequate for this task, but I fancied something more professional looking. !ArtWorks was the answer.
The image below was created in under ten minutes, then rendered in !Photodesk, and saved as a GIF. The oblique rectangles are copies of the first one, then coloured appropriately (paper, aluminium and lead):
The perceptive of you might ask how one draws a sine wave in !ArtWorks? It can be done, but not as accurately as if you created it in !MakeSine, by P H Borcherds. This is available on ROSES, and outputs a drawfile from x to y degrees.
Once again, the use of RISC OS software would seem to have many productivity advantages over other systems. You do, of course, have to know what to use and when. If you have a favourite piece of software that you use in education, please tell us about it at the address below.
RISC OS Schools Webring
ROUGOL launched the RISC OS Education Discussion List several years ago. From this grew the RISC OS Educational Resources Site. Late last year, Paul Vigay suggested that it was about time we had our very own RISC OS Schools Webring.
The idea would be that schools who use RISC OS computers could join the ring, thus promoting their own school. As a bonus, the technology itself is more widely recognised as an appropriate solution for use in schools. Yes, it does seem to be the case that lots of people still don't realise this!
Currently six schools have joined the ring. If you work, or know someone who works, in a school that still uses RISC OS-based computers, then perhaps join the Schools Webring.
Tempting, tempting!
I had hoped to be writing this first column on a shiny new RiscStation laptop. Sadly, the end-of-April production deadline has had to be put back. Hopefully it will make its first public appearance at the Wakefield Show, the weekend of 18/19 May. However an announcement has just been made by RiscStation Ltd which should mean the next education column will be produced on a RISCStation laptop and I shall include a full report of its features and abilities in the classroom. School teachers throughout the country, myself included, are holding their breath in anticipation...
Photograph of RiscStation Laptop c/o Chris Wakefield, RiscStation Ltd.
If you have any questions or comments on the use of RISC OS computers in education, please either email education@harmsy.freeuk.com or better still join the RISC OS Education Discussion List, and air them there.
Andrew Harmsworth
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/EDUC2/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, The Education Column
The Education Column
Andrew Harmsworth continues his series
This month I take a look at something which causes all teachers headaches - report writing. And, in keeping with my hope that not just educationalists will be interested in this column, I take a look at a rather natty little program called !webgen
In addition I'd like your feedback: who are the readers of this column? What do they do? Your replies will be vital in helping shape its future. If you don't want to read the articles below, please complete the survey anyway
Silly Season Support
Silly season in schools is that time of year when reports have to be written. In some cases, this can be more than once per term. In all cases, writing them by hand is an outdated process. But can you really trust a computer with such important words?
The answer to that question is, of course, yes. Saving regularly (every minute seems ludicrous, but why not?) and taking multiple back-ups will give you peace of mind, and no excuse for losing them.
Most schools seem to be leaning - sadly not like the newly-straightened Tower of Pisa - towards the use of Microsoft Word for most of their admin tasks. Staff are given a disc with a nicely laid out document template into which they enter their pupils' reports. So, what are the potential problems:
Typing directly into a template produces a document of many pages, making editing a pain
Complex DTP-like layouts in Word documents often don't convert properly in EasiWriter
Making a change to the layout requires you to change all the pages one at a time
The first problem is easily solved in Word by using a mail merge. Simply create a blank document and in it make a table with suitable headings. These can then be read by the report template, row by row, pupil by pupil. In a flash this also solves the last problem - now, any changes you desire, such as the addition of a box for test grades - can be included on all reports by entering it only once.
Now for the really clever bit! Both EasiWriter and TechWriter (hereinafter EasiWriter) can happily cope with importing and exporting Word documents with tables in. This means that you should be able to create your table in EasiWriter, save as a Word document, and merge them straight into the Word template. Sounds too good to be true.
Let's start by creating the following table in MSWord:
Name
Set
Test Mark
Attainment
Effort
Comment
Darren Blac
A
8
Darren is by far the hardest working boy in the class, although he would do better if he wore sunglasses outside
Dave Gree
A
8
Dave should really wipe his nose more often, it will simply not do
Dorris Pin
A
9
Dorris has had a lovely year, although things will only get worse in the future
Drusilla Re
A
10
Drusilla is an outstanding physicist, but I fear that her interest in blood might prevent her taking her academic studies as far as we might hope
Dean Ros
A
7
Dean would do really well at this subject if he actually bothered attending classes
Dan Whit
A
8
Dan has spent far too long cleaning his teeth for his physics grade to ever improve beyond this level
Just to show that it works in EasiWriter, I've included the document here. Whilst we're at it, compare it to this one, saved from EasiWriter. They're the same in every respect, apart from size: the first is 20K, the second 4K. If you can't load them, here's the screen shot:
The table as created in MSWord
We could, of course, have just created the table in EasiWriter. An important point with this program - it automatically sizes table column widths. This is a problem in this sort of document, as we want a wide right hand column, with multiple lines of text. The solution is to turn on word wrap. This is done by turning off automatic column widths:
The table being created in TechWriter
Automatic column widths having trouble coping without a line break!
Having selected the table, change its format...
... by turning column widths off
Aha: perfection!
The file can then be written as if it were on a PC - except for numerous obvious advantages. It can then be saved as a Word document for transfer to a PC for mail merging into your Word template. So - you can now print reports from Word, without having to write them in it. Or, indeed, without having to despair at the thought of buying a PC for use at home just for this purpose.
I don't wish to go into using Word's mail merge facility, but suffice it to say that it's easy, and the following link will give you all the help you need: creating a mail merge in MS Word.
Mail merging is a tool that is not reserved solely for printing letters with different addresses on - its power is in its flexibility. Most of the RISC OS word processing and desktop-publishing programs have the facility. Give it a whirl - you'll be surprised at how useful it is at saving you time.
Getting Photos Online
The digital image is here to stay, and it's about time more people realised that. However, one of the problems with them is that most people can't cope with putting images of a sensible size onto websites. By this I don't just mean bytes, but also size on screen. Even if, like me, you get Jessops to transfer your photos onto CD at time of processing <shameless plug> £1·99 per CD for up to 4 films!</shameless plug> getting the collection of photos onto a website quickly and satisfactorily can be difficult. Unless you have the right tools for the job.
There are a number of tools for RISC OS now that will take a bunch of images, and create from them a set of web pages with them all in. One I tried recently was !webgen, by Dave Stratford, and it's terribly good at its job. More importantly, it's free!
Quoting from its !Help file:
"!Webgen is a simple application, and interface to !ChangeFSI, which can generate simple image galleries, in a format suitable for either publishing on the web, or as a CDRom interface/front end. There is no limit to the uses that the generated site could be used for, though the simplicity of the generated HTML may make large galleries a little unwieldy. The output is generated to a directory, default name 'website' which contains an index.html, a few png files to act as buttons or flags, directories called thumbnails, and optionally images, and also optionally an html page for each image."
Last year I took 72 photographs of my school's leavers' ball, and put them on a website for the kids to print out. This year, I did the same. Last year I had manually built the site. This year, I entrusted !webgen to the task. And what a great job it did.
If you just want to see the results, go online (javascript required) and click here.
Jessops supply two versions of each photograph as shown in the directory display above: low res (597 × 400) and high res (1840 × 1232). For my purposes, putting the low resolution photos online was sufficient. Deciding to see what !webgen could do, I copied 6 images to a fresh directory, and threw them at it. You are instantly presented with the following window:
Webgen's main window
Given that the chance of anyone who was going to be accessing the photos would be using an incapable browser was virtually nil, I decided to go for the "on same page (rollover)" option. This uses some clever javascript code to display a larger version of each thumbnail when the mouse pointer is moved over it.
For some reason, webgen thinks that all the input images need to be square for the code to work. I ignored this, to see what it would do. A save box is presented to you, from which the site is created. Webgen uses !ChangeFSI to process the images into sensible sizes, as well as creating the thumbnails. It displays its progress in a large window as follows:
Webgen at work. Make the tea whilst it, and ChangeFSI, do their stuff
The result is what you asked for: a single web page with a tidy collection of thumbnails that, when rolled-over, are displayed alongside for all to admire. The rollovers work in Oregano and Fresco too, so don't be shy of using this.
Curiously, the HTML code forces the large versions to be square, but this is easily rectified via a search and replace. Each web page it creates is more than good enough for quickly presenting your masterpieces. I edited each of my pages to be different colours, and the resulting pages are shown below (rollover animated for effect!):
Oregan
Fresco
The default image on the right of the thumbnails is a 1×1 pixel white blob, but this is easily replaced by whatever you like - in this case instructions on how to use the site, and order reprints and enlargements!
Overall I have been terribly impressed by !webgen, and will certainly keep using it for my own photographic needs. There is no reason, of course, why it could not be put in charge of creating pages of any artwork, for example. In fact, RISCWorld has created a special award for programs reviewed by this column: highly recommended! Well done, David.
N.B. Since my first use of !Webgen, its author, David Stratford, has updated it to version 1.41 after some suggestions I made. That's one thing I love about RISC OS software authors!
Opinion Poll
If you can connect to the web, please use this form here. Otherwise, please complete this text file, and email it to education@harmsy.freeuk.com.
Next Time
Well, sadly at the time of writing, my new RISCStation laptop has still not surfaced. RISCStation are (once again) due to make an announcement shortly, and there is a good reason for the delay. All being well, and the wind being in the right direction, let us hope that it's third time lucky for the education column. If indeed it does arrive, look forward to a special article on its first visits to the classroom at the start of the autumn term.
If you have any questions or comments on the use of RISC OS computers in education, please either email education@harmsy.freeuk.com or better still join the RISC OS Education Discussion List, and air them there.
Andrew Harmsworth
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/EXPLAN/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, Interview with Paul Richardson of Explan
Interview with Paul Richardson of Explan
Paul Johnson
Paul Richardson of ExpLAN, maker of the ground breaking Solo machine (amongst other things) has agreed to tell us some of his thoughts regarding the RISC OS arena...(interview conducted via e-mail just prior to Wakefield).
PFJ: Paul, how long have you been involved with the RISC OS market as either the boss at ExpLAN or in any other guise?
I first met the BBC Model A in 1981 when it was undergoing pre-trials for acceptance in the UK Government scheme to place 2 computers into each school in the country. At that time I was working for a computer research department in Plymouth that later became one of the MEP training sites. I was on Acorn's first technical training course in Cambridge the next year, run by John Coll, where he showed us a prototype 40-track floppy disc drive that could store 100k. ExpLAN released its first software product in 1984, a menu-system for BBC computer running on Econet servers developed by SJ Research.
PFJ: In that time, what would you consider to be the most significant change to the RISC OS market?
The development of the ARM processor. I understand that Olivetti actually 'bought' the majority share in Acorn in 1986 without even being told that the Arm existed. I still don't think they knew what to do with it when they found out.
PFJ: ExpLAN has always been associated with the printers side of RISC OS. What do you currently think of the state of printer drivers for RISC OS and what would you consider to be the best approach for modernisation of them?
Hmmm. Although we had beta-tested version of !Printers for Acorn since 1994, we only actually became involved with printer driver development in the spring of 1999 when I became one of the founding shareholders of RISCOS Ltd. I realised that the company's scheduled targets laid down in the share prospectus were so demanding that we ought to keep the main programmers doing the core work.
Printer drivers could be done by others like us, especially as it often meant long months negotiating for the release of confidential documents from printer manufacturers. And since an OS without wide support for the main mass-market printers would be particularly unattractive, ExpLAN spent almost a year creating drivers and delivering bug reports back to ROL. We weren't commissioned or being paid to do so, but if the OS was to survive and grow, then someone had to address those issues.
There has been little movement in the ongoing maintenance of !Printers since version 1.64 was released FOC at the beginning of March 2000. We handle one or two tech-support calls or emails each day on !Printers issues, so I have a fair idea of the problems being experienced by the majority of end users. There are now very few basic A4 inkjet printers that can be run from !Printers, and this obviously reflects on our ability to 'sell RISC OS' to fresh pastures.
I don't mind how it's resolved. Either ROL could add in the necessary code enhancements to their existing !Printers, to enable others to write the required drivers. Or we could see ROL step to one side in favour of a new printing system. If Pace's printing system were available, then that too is a good base to start from. However, no one is going to spend time developing a better approach if ROL is minded to work further on their !Printers code. There is no sense in dividing the market by going into open competition.
PFJ: Is the Solo project ExpLANs first foray into the world of hardware and how has it been so far?
We've done other hardware products before, going right back to buffer-boards and motor drivers for schools teaching computer control to pupils using BBC model B's. We also released several network connection systems, including surge suppression units, mainly for Research Machines 480Z networks! Solo is our first full computer, however. There are 14 companies and individuals who have contributed, half of whom come from the known 'RISC OS camp'. The others include casing and materials specialists, and Iridium with whom we're working on inbuilt satellite communications.
PFJ: How does the SOLO differ from other RISC OS machines, given it is based around the RiscStation/Simtec motherboard (with all of it's power advantages)?
Only the first two (of three) prototype stages are based on the RiscStation motherboard. Even then there are extra boards hung on to provided additional features such as direct LCD screen driving. The pre-production (Mk III) prototypes are to use Arm9 processors and will no longer conform to the standard layout of connections at the back of the motherboard. We don't need most of the usual connections, but we do require USB, satellite aerial, and PCMCIA for example.
PFJ: Is it likely that we will see a version of the Solo for the UK domestic market?
Possibly. Ideally I'd like to see them imported from Africa with nice carved wooden cases!
PFJ: Will you be displaying a working model at Wakefield?
Yes. We hope to have two prototype Mk II's available, and we may even demonstrate satellite-email connectivity, although we won't have this internal to the Solo's by that time.
PFJ: Given the lack of a full 32 bit operating system, has this deterred you from shipping the Solo with another OS or are still hoping to stay with RISC OS?
We had always intended Solo's to have dual OS capabilities, from a choice of three: RO, Linux or WinCE. However, all development work thus far has been based on prototypes running RISC OS, so this is the 'face' of Solo which has been seen by the potential users. We have not been offered a version of RISC OS (32-bit) which is capable of being used on the production Solo's, although we had hoped that this would materialise from last year's announcements concerning Pace's version. It is theoretically possible to commission a version to be written, but this is morally unacceptable for the Solo project itself to support or fund. Most of the Third World countries where Solo's will be assembled and used are just emerging from decades of debt. It would be most unethical to expect them to have to fund development and ongoing maintenance of an OS on which their sole computer production facility depended. Only a 'live' generic OS can be regarded as acceptable for use on Solo's, which must exclude bespoke commissioned work.
PFJ: How damaging has the announcements of the likes of the Evolution and Omega been on the sales of current desktop machines?
We are not a major vendor of new machines to the domestic market, so it's had little effect on us directly.
PFJ: How can users help the RISC OS market out of it's current mire? Is it as simple as dumping their old Acorn machines and investing in one of the new RISC OS 4 machines or are there other ways if (for some reason) they can help out?
The Solo Project is being viewed by many people of influence in places of high authority, so there is still the possibility of it generating a separate interest from a potential investor who would like to take RISC OS in a suitable direction.... which for us would be a fully maintained generic OS.
PFJ: If such occurred, then RISC OS would become the third possible OS that could be used on a Solo if customers so wished.
I can't see that there would be a great effect from all remaining desktop users simply buying new machines. We really need fresh market opportunities with a growing user-base. Solo would be a fantastic way to achieve this if it ran RO.
PFJ: As with all companies, you will have had a "masterplan" (or road map) for how ExpLAN planned the future out. What was it?
ExpLAN is basically a facilitator, enabling others to do what they want with hardware and software. We do see Solo as our future, and we would expect to spawn new companies in the Developing World where these ideals can be realised. Ideally we would like to bring IT & Communications to the rough ends of the world. It's no accident that countries without such communications infrastructure are those favoured by terrorists, military take-overs, drug cartels, host government suppression and other destabilising influences. The Solo is a powerful tool to bring such corners of this earth into the limelight. With adequate communications to facilitate trade and gain basic education and medicine for the indigenous population, we don't need to keep waiting for the next disaster to wrench at our hearts and our purse-strings.
Tomorrow I fly out to Central Africa to discuss Solo production with other countries in that region. Let's pray that they sieze the opportunity and use Solo as an appropriate tool to shape their own destinies.
Welcome to !FasterPC for Acorn Computers running RISC OS. The !FasterPC package contains the following:
!FasterPC application
DOS Partition containing DOS and and FasterPC support/utility files
This User Guide The User Guide does not attempt to teach you the intricacies of the MS or DR Disc Operating Systems. These programs have been around in one form or another since 1980 when the original IBM PC was released and are complex. There have been many hundreds of books published covering introductions to the subject (some are listed in the bibliography section later in this guide), and the reader is advised to find one of these in his or her local library or computer bookshop if further help is required
Requirements to use the !FasterPC Emulator In order to be able to use the !FasterPC emulator, the following system is required:
An Acorn ARM based computer running RISC OS 2 or higher
2 Mb or more of RAM
MS DOS, DR DOS or A hard disc is optional but very useful If you do not already have MS or DR DOS, see the section later in this chapter 'Obtaining DOS'.
* The RISCWorld version of FasterPC comes with
Another software PC Emulator?
When I first saw Acorn's PC Emulator, I think it was version 1.33, I was impressed to see a machine with quite a bit of hardware support being emulated by another computer. Simple computers that perform almost all their support functions in software, mainly because of cost, are much easier to emulate. What is more, Acorn's emulator seemed to be running at a reasonable speed. This version only supported the CGA display, and although sometimes painfully slow, it was quite usable.
As Acorn's product was enhanced and EGA and then VGA display emulations were added, the speed of the raw 80188 CPU emulation remained quite respectable but the video display slowed right down to the point where I felt that the 256 colour, 320 x 200 pixel VGA mode was unusable even with software that did not require fast screen updates. Granted, as future ARM processors are released, the speed would improve, but most users want to see their software running acceptably now, not in the future, and I felt that the graphics speed could be significantly improved along with several other features.
My reasons for thinking in this way were based on some past experience. Amongst my previous projects I wrote the Speculator, a Sinclair Spectrum emulator for the Archimedes. [Please note that this application was never released. It is NOT Public Domain NOR Shareware, as the copyright to the Spectrum ROM image does not belong to the author. If you have a copy, I suggest that you destroy it.] The Spectrum was a simple computer with almost no hardware support. That meant that once you had correctly emulated the Z80 CPU, very little else was required in order to get a fully functional Spectrum emulation other than the Spectrum ROM image. That project lasted on and off for about two and a half years and so I felt that I had some idea of the potential problem areas that would turn up in designing and implementing another emulation.
The reason for wanting an IBM PC emulator is that there is a lot of good quality PC/DOS software on the market, and as the PC has been around for such a long time, the older titles are now being heavily discounted. It is these older titles that will work best with !FasterPC or !PCem as they were designed to run on the early slower Intel processors which the Archimedes software emulators can rival in terms of speed.
In September 1991 I found myself on holiday in Tunisia, under a palm umbrella, a cold drink in one hand and "The 8086/8088 Primer", written by one of the designers of the 8086, in the other. In two weeks the initial design of the largest subsystem, CPU, was completed. By February 1992 the MS-DOS prompt was visible, and less than a month later, the emulator was running if somewhat haltingly. Over the next three years further features were added, and the application has now reached its final version other than releases to fix reported faults.
!FasterPC's Advantages
The design of !FasterPC is a compromise. From the start I was after an emulation that was to be fast, and that meant that I was willing to restrict the design in certain areas. The primary restriction for speed was that the PC memory map was to be linear. To allow this, there has to be more than 1 Mb of RAM allocated to !FasterPC to allow it to run, and this obviously prevents it from running on machines with 1 Mb of RAM or less. Another drawback of the linear PC memory map is that most EGA and VGA video modes using paged bit planes are not available under the !FasterPC emulator. Acorn's emulator allows EGA and VGA paged video modes and is slower, !FasterPC does not allow paged video modes and is faster. The main advantages of !FasterPC over version 1.86 of Acorn's PC Emulator !PCem are as follows:
much faster graphics handling
much more accurate sound implementation
support for some Tandy video modes
on-line configuration modifications allowe
Acorn !PCem's Advantages
The main advantages of Acorn's PC Emulator over !FasterPC are as follows:
almost all EGA and VGA screen modes fully supported
comes with MS-DOS, albeit only version 3.2 or 3.3 or DR-DOS
multitasks within RISC OS, but this makes it even slower
built in emulation of a numeric co-processor Obtaining DOS If you do not have MS-DOS or DR-DOS then A.P.D.L., the Archimedes Public Domain Library, is able to supply MS or DR-DOS at very reasonable prices. The address is on the inside back cover. An alternative (but more expensive) method is to look in one of the current issues of IBM PC magazines, PC Format for example, and purchase a copy from one of the advertisers there. Currently MS-DOS 3.2, 3.3, 5.0, 6.0 and 6.2 and DR-DOS 6.0 have all been tested with !FasterPC and have been found to work successfully
Hard Disc Installation
Installing !FasterPC onto a hard disc is merely a matter of copying the !FasterPC application and the DOS partition from the RISCWorld software directory disc to the desired hard disc directory.
The !FasterPC application is now installed on your hard disc. If you now run the application, you will emulate an IBM PC clone with only a floppy disc. In order to be able to access PC hard disc partitions, both newly created and those created by Acorn's !PCem, see the chapter 'Configuring !FasterPC'.
Making Backups
As a purchaser of the !FasterPC application, you are entitled to make as many backups of the application and DOS partition as you wish, provided that the backups are only for your own personal use.
SparkFS
As an aside, rather than buying SuperStor or Stacker for !FasterPC in order to increase the amount of PC data that you can cram into your PC hard disc partitions, why don't you consider buying David Pilling's excellent !SparkFS and create your PC partitions in an archive. It is much cheaper than the PC only products (£23 against about £99), and many other uses can be found for it outside the PC environment, for instance creating compressed clip and line art libraries, or storing scanned or digitised images. !FasterPC handles PC hard disc partitions like any other FS file, so using !SparkFS causes no problems. I haven"t actually tried Acorn's !PCem using !SparkFS in this way, but it will probably work in a similar fashion.
Use SparkFS to create a new archive file on your hard disc. Create your hard disc partitions, using the configuration utility as normal, but specify the file to be in the SparkFS archive. Click on the create icon for the new partition and it will be created in the archive. Run !FasterPC as usual and you will be using the compressed file as your hard disc partition. The main effects of this, other than the reduced disc space used, is that starting and exiting !FasterPC will take longer than usual as SparkFS has to process the archive to open and close it. If the archive is small, I think that SparkFS keeps an expanded copy of it in memory (if there is room) and so processing speed during normal operation is almost unchanged. Exiting !FasterPC causes SparkFS to compress the complete partition and write it to the hard disc. If the partition is larger than the available free memory then SparkFS must only hold a subset of the complete partition in memory.
Note that if you do have hard disc partitions in SparkFS archives then SparkFS must be running before you enter !FasterPC or the application will not be able to access the partition file.
!FasterPC Help
The !FasterPC help utility provides brief on-line instructions on the use of the configuration utility and a description of and potential solutions to each of !FasterPC's error reports.
Starting the Help Utility
To start the help utility open the directory viewer containing the !FasterPC application and click on the !FasterPC icon with the mouse menu button, follow the right arrow from the App. '!FasterPC' entry with the mouse pointer and then select the Help option on the submenu displayed. Once started, the utility will open its only window but will not install itself on the icon bar.
Quitting the Help Utility
To quit the help utility, click on the close window icon on the window's title bar.
!FasterPC Configuration
The !FasterPC configuration utility allows the user to define and create the number and size of PC hard disc partitions to be used with the application. It also allows the configuration of the number and type of available floppy disc drives and the presence and amount of expanded memory available to the emulator. !FasterPC was designed to take up the minimum amount of RAM whilst running to allow its use with as many other applications as possible and the configuration and help features of the emulator have been separated from the main application. The reason for this is that the !FasterPC !RunImage has been written in assembler for both speed and compactness. The shared C library and RISC OS libraries added too much of a memory overhead to allow their use to be considered. In addition, the configuration utility, having lots of writable icons, would have been very fiddly to write in pure assembler without a library of RISC OS WIMP routines. For these reasons, the configuration utility has been written in Basic but is only memory resident when you request it. In order to maintain a seamless interface with the main application, the configuration utility does not install itself on the icon bar, but only exists as a window on the desktop. When you have finished with it, close its window and the utility terminates.
Starting the Configuration Utility
To start the configuration utility open the !FasterPC icon bar menu and select the 'Config...' option. Once started, the utility will open its only window but will not install itself on the icon bar.
The Configuration Utility Window
The configuration utility window, shown above, has deliberately been designed to appear similar to !PCem's configuration window for the convenience of users of both applications. The number after the 'Hard disc drive files:' heading indicates how many of the drive files listed in the boxes below it will be included in the configuration file. To increase and decrease the number of hard disc drive files, click on the number with the select or adjust button respectively. The allowable range is from 0 to 4.
Each row in the dark grey box below the number of hard disc drive files refers to a PC hard disc partition. To include an existing partition in the configuration, either type its full path name into the central wide icon or drag its icon from a filer directory window into the central icon. The icon will immediately change to display the full path name of the file that you have dropped and the following icon will display the file's size in megabytes (1024k bytes). Note that the file type of the file that you drag and drop in this way must be DOSDisc (&FC8). Other file types will be rejected and an error message displayed.
To create a new disc partition, you must type the full path and file name of the partition file into one of the central wide white icons. Once this is done, you have to set the desired size of the file by clicking on the white icon next to the path name that you have just entered and typing the required file size, in megabytes. This then defines the file's location and size. Clicking on the create icon to the left of the partition file name will cause the configuration utility to actually create the file. Note that an error will be reported and the file will not be created if a file of the same path and name already exists, or if the current directory structure does not match your requested location, or if the utility is unable to access the disc or directory that you have specified, or if there is insufficient disc space left to hold your file.
The disc partitions created by the configuration utility are ready for partitioning and formatting using the standard MS DOS utilities FDISK.EXE and FORMAT.COM. Note: if you create drive C: and then re-boot !FasterPC without a system floppy disc in the drive, the emulator will try to boot itself from the newly created and empty partition and this will usually result in the 'Illegal opcode detected' message.
Click on the number after 'Floppy disc drives:' with the select or adjust button to increase or decrease the floppy drives visible to !FasterPC. The range is limited by the hardware present in your machine, and, as RISC OS does not know about drive types, select either the 3.5" or 5.25" option for each configured drive.
!FasterPC now supports PC expanded memory, EMS, complying with the LIM 3.2 standard and the next section of the configuration window deals with this. To use expanded memory, select LIM EMS and either choose the maximum available option, or the size option and enter the required amount of memory, in kilobytes, in the writable box. If the requested amount of memory is not available when the emulator is next re-booted, a warning is issued allowing the user to continue with the amount available or to abort the boot. See the next chapter for how to install the expanded memory driver in DOS.
Once the configuration window is set up to your satisfaction, clicking on the save icon causes the configuration utility to check your settings, to see if you have asked for more drives than you have defined paths/files for. If everything appears to be correct, the configuration utility performs three actions:
saves your settings in the file 'Drives' in !FasterPC's Resources directory
obeys the file 'Drives', setting the system variables to their new values
sends a message to !FasterPC, telling it that the configuration has change
Clicking on the set icon causes the system variables to be set and sends a message to !FasterPC, as above, but does not modify the Drives file. This allows the user to temporarily modify the selected configuration.
Quitting the Configuration Utility
To quit the configuration utility, click on the close window icon on the window's title bar.
!FasterPC's Floppy Drive
Note: to convince MS DOS 3.21 that your floppy disc drive is 720Kb and not 360Kb, add the following line to the CONFIG.SYS file on your bootable partition or system disc.
DRIVPARM = /D:0 /F:
Starting !FasterPC
Before you start !FasterPC, you should first install and configure the application as described in the previous two chapters of this guide. This will ensure that the emulator has access to your MS DOS hard disc partitions if you have any, and also that you know how to access the Help information should you require it.
Double-click on the !FasterPC icon in the directory display. This loads the application onto the icon bar
Click on the !FasterPC icon on the icon bar with the mouse Select button. This causes the application to start and take over the computer. The screen will clear and display the PC screen
If you have no bootable PC hard disc partitions configured then you will have to insert an MS DOS system disc into the floppy drive and press the space bar at this point. When the PC has finished booting it will display a prompt (usually 'A>' unless you have changed it). Note that if you have no AUTOEXEC.BAT file present in the top or root directory of the system floppy disc, then DOS will ask you to set the system date and time before displaying the above prompt
If you have a configured bootable PC hard disc partition, then when the PC has finished booting, it will display a prompt (usually 'C>' or 'D>' unless you have changed it). Note: if you have no AUTOEXEC.BAT file present in the top or root directory of hard disc partition C, then DOS will ask you to set the system date and time before displaying the above prompt
Note: If you have a non-DOS floppy disc in the disc drive when you boot !FasterPC, it is possible that the first sector of that disc may be read into memory and !FasterPC will try to run it. This will almost invariably cause the emulator to exit with the 'Illegal or unsupported opcode detected' error. The solution is to remove the floppy disc and reboot !FasterPC by following the instructions given in this section again.
Exiting the PC Environment
To exit the PC environment and return to RISC OS:
Press the mouse Menu button whilst holding down the left hand Alt key. This causes !FasterPC to stop emulating a PC and returns to the Desktop. Any applications that were running in RISC OS before you entered DOS will still be running with their associated data when you return.
Using FPCQuit
Run the FPCQUIT.COM utility supplied on the !FasterPC support disc. This causes !FasterPC to stop the emulation and returns to the Desktop. Any applications that were running in RISC OS before you entered DOS will still be running with their associated data when you return. This command can also be used in batch files to cause the emulator to return to RISC OS at the end of a particular task. See the chapter 'The Support Disc' for more details.
In order to leave the PC in a state where re-entry is possible, the above quit mechanisms indicate that an exit is required and then wait for the emulator to reach a 'clean' state. This waiting period should be in the order of a thousandth of a second. It is possible that a crashed PC program might never get into this clean state and so would never exit. To cater for this infrequent occurrence, an additional exit mechanism, the 'forced' exit, has been implemented. This is actioned by holding down both Alt keys and pressing the mouse Menu button. The emulator will exit immediately, irrespective of its internal state, and therefore re-entry is not possible without re-booting the PC. This feature should only be used if the normal method fails to exit.
Restarting !FasterPC
To re-enter the PC environment causing a DOS re-boot:
Click on the icon bar icon using the mouse Select button. As you will cause !FasterPC to re-boot, if you have already booted the PC, you will be asked for confirmation before this action is performed.
To re-enter the PC environment where you previously left it:
Click on the icon bar icon with the mouse Adjust button. If you have not previously booted the PC environment, an error will be reported here. The PC environment will be re-entered at the point that you left it. Any applications that were running at the time will still be present along with any data associated with them. If !FasterPC last returned to the RISC OS Desktop with an error or via a 'forced' exit (see above), then re-entry will not be available. See below for information about changing !FasterPC's configuration before trying to re-enter the PC environment.
Configuration Changes
The !FasterPC icon bar menu options can be changed at any time that the emulator is paused and the RISC OS desktop is displayed. The CPU type and sound volume/enable settings come into force the next time that !FasterPC is started, whether by re-entry or re-boot (mouse Select or Adjust). The video adaptor settings are also applied at this point with the difference that if !FasterPC was previously in a video mode that has just been disabled and the emulator is re-entered rather than re-booted, then that video mode will still be in use, although changing to that mode again will result in !FasterPC reporting the error 'Attempt to change to an unsupported video mode detected'. The outcome of this is that you may confuse an application if you disable an 'in-use' adaptor during a run, but the effects should not be too serious.
The configuration utility can also be run at any time that the RISC OS desktop is displayed. This allows the configured hard and floppy discs to be changed during a run of the emulator and also the presence and amount of expanded memory (EMS). If you do change any of the configuration settings, the utility will send a message to !FasterPC informing it of this fact, and in turn, if you try to re-enter !FasterPC, it will warn you that the configuration has changed and ask you whether you want to continue with the old configuration. You are obviously not allowed to re-enter !FasterPC using a changed amount of expanded memory or a newly selected disc configuration as the hard disc files would not be open or positioned correctly and the expanded memory would not be set up. I think that this is an improvement over the 'quit and restart' approach that Acorn has taken.
Installing Device Drivers
Once !FasterPC is configured and DOS is running, the supplied device drivers (mouse and expanded memory) can be installed in the AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files, if required. Instructions for performing this are contained in the Utilities section describing the above drivers, in the chapter 'The Support Disc'.
The Icon Bar Menu
The first option on the icon bar menu is the information window. The two important items found in this window are the application version number and user serial number.
The application version number is of vital importance if you find a fault in !FasterPC that you would like investigating. It allows the author to set up the debug version of the application to reflect the version that has generated the fault. This should result in the problem being solved more quickly.
The user serial number is a unique code built into !FasterPC prior to being despatched. It identifies a particular copy of the !FasterPC application with the purchaser, and will allow the author to verify whether upgrades are being issued to purchasers of the application, and also to find the original owner of any illegal copies.
Sound Emulation
The next option on the icon bar menu is sound control. This option leads to the sound submenu shown below. The master control for the sound system is the enable option at the top of the sound submenu. If enable is not ticked then the Archimedes sound system is totally disabled and takes up no cpu or memory cycles. If the enable option is ticked, then the volume of the sound is controlled by which of the four remaining settings is ticked. These four options are mutually exclusive, and one of them is always selected. If the sound system is not enabled, then these options are greyed out and cannot be changed until the sound is re-enabled. Note that the volumes set are relative to your overall system volume.
A brief explanation of the IBM PC's sound facilities is in order here. The basic IBM PC, without any added sound cards, has a loudspeaker controlled by a one bit output port. This means that the speaker either has current flowing through it or it does not, it is not an analogue device as far as the computer is concerned. The PC can drive the speaker in one of two ways.
1The PC can turn the output bit on and off when it wants to. This allows fullest control over the speaker and even allows it to play digitised samples. This requires a lot of CPU time for the processor to continually count the time intervals between samples.
2The PC has a timer chip (an Intel 8253) which can be programmed to produce a square wave of any audio frequency, The PC can then allow this square wave to get to the speaker or not. This does not require any software processing once the timer is set up. The processor can set up the frequency, start the note, go and do something else, and later return to stop the note.
It is this second form of sound emulation that the current !FasterPC provides. Having listened carefully to Acorn's !PCem, I am still not sure which of the above sound mechanisms its seemingly random beeping is trying to emulate. When !FasterPC plays a note using method 2, above, it ensures that the pitch remains correct, independent of the speed of the emulation.
When setting up PC software, choose the 'No external sound capabilities' or 'IBM PC internal speaker' option for the sound configuration. Note that if you have the Tandy video adaptor enabled (see below) then the PC software might automatically select Tandy 3 voice or Tandy DAC sound. If this happens the program will seem to keep pausing whilst it plays the digitised sound, which of course you cannot hear. Battle Chess does this. The solution to restore playing speed is to configure the program to no sound, or choose sound off whilst it is running. This effect also occurs when software drives the PC speaker using method 1 described above. If this effect is annoying, the solution is the same, configure the PC program not to generate sound. Disabling the sound using !FasterPC's sound menu will have no effect in this situation.
Video Modes
The next option on the icon bar menu is the video adaptor control. This option leads to the display submenu, as shown below. The video adaptors and their functions are described more fully in the sections below.
!FasterPC comes with the default CGA video adaptor permanently enabled. This is because the emulated PC always needs an adaptor to get information to the screen for the user to see. The first three entries shown in the display submenu are optional adaptors that you can enable or disable in any combination that you wish. Enabling an adaptor causes both the code that handles the screen updating and also the adaptor presence hardware or software to be enabled. The asterisk alongside the EGA entry is a reminder that none of the EGA adaptors video modes are implemented (see below). The final options in the submenu, Override and 50Hz, are described later in this chapter. The 50Hz option is greyed out unticked if your monitor cannot display low resolution modes and ticked if it cannot display high resolution modes.
Moving right over the VGA entry reveals the VGA Palette submenu. This allows the user to select whether the emulated 256 colour VGA screen will be updated whenever the VGA palette registers are reprogrammed, or only when a block of them have changed. The two entries are mutually exclusive, that is, you cannot have both speed and accuracy selected together. The use of this feature is also described in more detail later in this chapter.
In order to make the best use of !FasterPC, the video options must be set correctly, and this takes a little understanding of the systems that we are attempting to emulate. The following questions are those that were asked most frequently during !FasterPC's development. Together with their answers, they cover the reasons for and use of the options described above.
What are all these IBM Video Adaptors?
Since the IBM PC was released in 1980, the most popular video adaptors available for it have been:
CGA
This is the default graphics system supported by the vast majority of IBM PC's and compatibles. It supports several text and graphics modes. Indeed, almost all text programs use a screen mode (number 3) that is provided by this adaptor or its emulation in more advanced adaptors.
Tandy
This graphics standard was introduced by the Tandy Corporation in a series of its computers that sold well in the U.S.A. It is a sort of enhanced CGA and provides 16 colours with 320x200 pixels.
EGA
This graphics adaptor provided many more screen modes than the previous CGA system. It also provided high resolution screens (640x350 pixels in 16 colours) for the first time.
VGA
This graphics adaptor is essentially an enhanced EGA. It provides more screen modes including, for the first time, a 256 colour mode in low resolution (320x200 pixels). Most modern VGA cards can be programmed to produce exceptionally high resolution screens (1024x768 pixels) in up to 256 or even 32768 colours. These are called 'Super VGA' cards.
Which screen modes are supported by !FasterPC ?
The current version of !FasterPC supports the following video modes supplied by various graphics adaptors.
The CGA adaptor is the adaptor which is present (or emulated by other adaptors) in almost all IBM PC compatibles. For this reason, and as the layout of the screen memory is linear, it is almost completely implemented in !FasterPC.
The EGA adaptor is present or emulated in most IBM PC compatibles these days, so it would be useful if it were included amongst !FasterPC's capabilities. Unfortunately, due to the way that the screen memory is arranged in colour bit planes, this is impossible to emulate with !FasterPC. The main loss is that we cannot provide video mode 13 (EGA), and this mode is used by a significant proportion of PC graphics programs. All is not lost though, as the Tandy adaptor provides amongst its video modes, a linear memory mapped mode equivalent to EGA mode 13 as Tandy mode 9. The Tandy adaptor is present in relatively few PC's in the U.K., but I think that it must have been quite popular in the U.S. as most software packages requiring or supporting EGA mode 13 also provide Tandy mode 9 support. Thus, by implementing Tandy mode 9, we can have most of the benefits of EGA mode 13.
The VGA adaptor supports many screen modes including some that an Archimedes cannot display without a multisync monitor. All of its video modes except one use colour bit plane graphics memory and so are unsuitable for !FasterPC emulation. The remaining mode is VGA mode 19, and this mode is emulated with the restriction that as the current VIDC cannot provide 256 user defined colours, an approximation is made. However, the resulting screen provides a fast, colourful display and is used by a large number of games and graphics programs (688 Attack Sub, Star Trek 25th Anniversary, Civilisation, etc.).
What about all the programs that I cannot run in EGA modes?
Almost all programs will run in several screen modes to cater for the many different PC configurations in use today, so it is usually possible to configure programs to run in other video modes.
As an alternative, a lot of PC software, especially games, also run using Tandy mode 9 (see above). Examples of this are Battle Chess, Populous, SimCity, Leisure Suit Larry, etc. If this is the case, configure the program to use Tandy mode 9 and enable the Tandy adaptor option in the !FasterPC display submenu.
What are the adaptor options in the display submenu for?
The adaptor options in the display submenu are used to enable the code that drives the graphics screens and also provides the adaptor detection hardware or software. Thus by leaving an option off, the software running under the !FasterPC will not be able to detect the adaptor and the emulator will raise an error if the software tries to change to one of the unsupported modes.
Why would I want to disable a graphics adaptor?
As not all of the modes provided by the various graphics adaptors are supporting by !FasterPC, if the PC software detects that a particular adaptor is present (as it had been enabled in the display submenu), then it may try to change to one of these unsupported video modes. The software may support another adaptor (e.g. CGA) but if it thinks that an EGA or VGA adaptor is present, then it will not use the CGA mode. Therefore the option to disable a video adaptor is provided to force adaptor detecting software to use another adaptor.
Why can I enable the EGA adaptor when it is not emulated at all ?
Some PC software (e.g. Fractint V12.1) checks for the presence of video adaptors in an 'increasing complexity' order, i.e. they check for CGA, then EGA, then VGA etc. Thus if you want to use VGA mode 19 (256 colours) with Fractint, you have to enable the EGA as well as the VGA adaptor. If you don't, Fractint reports 'Video mode not available with your adaptor' even with the VGA adaptor enabled.
How do I choose software that is compatible with !FasterPC's video emulations?
Almost all PC software has a label on the outside of the box indicating which video adaptors that it will work with. Look for one or more of the following:
VGA 256 colour/MCGA - uses VGA mode 19 emulatio
Tandy compatible - uses Tandy mode 9 emulatio
CGA - uses CGA adaptor emulatio
Note that there are three 'Tandy' modes supported by the real Tandy adaptor and only one is currently supported by !FasterPC. It is possible that software marked 'Tandy compatible' will use one of the other two Tandy modes, and so will not work with the emulator so check this first if possible.
What does the VGA palette speed or accuracy setting do?
This option only affects !FasterPC when running in VGA mode 19 (256 colours). The Archimedes 256 colour default palette is left unchanged when displaying this screen, and as the PC program sets the various palette colours, !FasterPC chooses the closest Archimedes colour to display. There are two ways to reprogram the PC's VGA palette, via ROM BIOS calls or reprogramming the hardware directly.
The BIOS method is better from our point of view as the software tells the BIOS how many VGA palette registers that it wants to change and !FasterPC can then make one pass over the 64Kb screen.
Directly accessing the VGA hardware to reprogram the VGA palette registers is faster than using the BIOS on a real PC. Not so the emulated PC. Consider the following: if the PC software wants to change all 256 VGA palette registers using the direct hardware method, it performs a loop 256 times, each pass through the loop it reprograms one palette register. !FasterPC detects each write to hardware correctly as a palette reprogramming command but it doesn't know whether this is the last palette register that is going to be modified in this batch. The result of this is that !FasterPC has to scan through the entire 64Kb of screen memory after EACH palette register is modified, causing it to scan 256 x 64Kb = 16Mb in setting all of the palette registers. The BIOS method tells the emulator that all 256 registers are changing and it can then save the screen update until all the registers are reprogrammed, making the update much faster.
In an attempt to improve the screen update response in this situation, the direct hardware VGA palette update code can be configured to run in one of two ways. 'Accuracy' mode causes the whole screen to be updated after each register is modified. This always maintains the colour of the Archimedes screen with the VGA palette registers at the expense of execution speed as described above. The other mode, 'Speed', causes the screen update to occur only after a block of palette registers have been modified. In the current implementation the number of registers in a block is 64. Thus, in the case of all 256 palette registers being updated, a screen update would occur after registers 63, 127, 191 and 255 were reprogrammed. This will obviously result in a huge speed improvement over the 'Accuracy' setting but it does have its disadvantages. If the PC software sets the palette registers in blocks that are not a multiple of 64 or which don't start at 0, 64, 128 or 192, then the Archimedes screen may not reflect the true status of the VGA palette registers. The best way to choose which setting to use is to try both and choose the version you prefer. What does the video display override option do ?
The override option forces the application to carry on after a mode change to an unsupported video mode has been detected. This could be used to allow a program that uses VGA mode 19 as its main display and another unsupported VGA mode as a text display to run, as the unsupported mode would be forced to CGA mode 3 but the application would not detect that the mode change had failed. As with the palette speed/accuracy setting and the EGA enabling feature, this option is present in order to allow you to get the greatest use out of the only partially implemented VGA adaptor.
What is the 50Hz menu option ?
!FasterPC runs with all current Acorn monitor types except the high resolution monochrome screen. In order to achieve this, two sets of screen modes are provided. One set, for standard resolution and some multisync monitors, runs at 50Hz vertical refresh rate and the other set, used for all other monitor types, uses a 60Hz refresh rate. The '50Hz' modes run faster as there is less memory to be modified by the emulator and also less to be passed to VIDC less often. !FasterPC automatically chooses the correct set of video modes for your system and if you can only support one set, the 50Hz option is greyed out. Acorn's and some other multisync monitors can support both sets and so the 50Hz option is available to choose which set will be used. Remember that the 50Hz set will run noticeably faster.
CPU Emulation
The next option on the icon bar menu is the CPU type. With the 80186 option unticked, !FasterPC emulates an Intel 8086 processor, with the 80186 option ticked, it emulates an Intel 80186 processor. The 80186 has several extra instructions compared to the 8086, and also handles shifts of more than 16 bits in a different way. Surprisingly, some programs require an 80186 or higher processor in order to run. I suggest that you leave this option enabled.
Disc Write Enable Feature
The next option on the icon bar menu is the disc write enable feature. !FasterPC allows you to prevent the emulated PC from having write access to the floppy and hard disc partitions, independent from the setting of the floppy write enable tag. When the 'Disc Write' option is unticked, any calls to the BIOS to perform writes to any discs are disabled, although the error code returned to the caller indicates that the disc write has been performed successfully. This feature is useful to guarantee virus protection and also provide protection during program development, when a program running wild could destroy the contents of your hard disc partition.
Divide by Zero Protection
This menu option stops the 8086 divide instruction from causing a divide by zero or overflow interrupt. This is provided in order to get around the problem of the screen refresh being unable match a real IBM PC and thus causing the "R6003 Divide by Zero" error. This problem is very rare and thus this feature should only be enabled when absolutely necessary. The only programs currently known to require this feature are Civilisation and FractInt. When not required, make sure that this entry is unselected as you are tampering with the operation of the 8086/80186 CPU.
Saving it all
The next submenu on the icon bar menu is the save menu which allows the user to either save the current settings in an internal file so that when it restarts, !FasterPC is set up in the configuration that the user prefers, or to save the current PC screen. This latter feature is only available if the application has been started, i.e. if there is a screen to save. The standard RISC OS 'drag and drop' save mechanism is implemented, with the file type (text or sprite) depending on whether a text or graphics screen mode is currently selected. Note that VGA mode 19 screens are saved as 256 colour sprites which are not supported by RISC OS 2.
Starting the Configuration Utility
The configuration utility described in chapter 3 is started by clicking on the 'Config...' icon bar menu entry.
Reset
The reset option causes the current PC session to be abandoned and !FasterPC closes any opened hard disc partitions, allowing them to be accessed from the RISC OS Desktop again. After a 'reset', re-entry to the DOS environment without rebooting is not possible. Acorn's !PCem forces you to quit the application, access the partition and then reload the application before you can continue.
Quitting !FasterPC
Clicking on the 'Quit' option causes the !FasterPC application to quit. It is always good practice to quit all DOS applications and leave the emulator displaying the DOS prompt (e.g. 'C:\') before quitting !FasterPC.
The Support Disc
Supplied with the !FasterPC application are the support disc files. These contains several files, utilities, and demonstration programs. The files are described in detail in the following sections and the disc's structure is shown in the diagram below.
Utilities
Present in the UTILS directory of the support disc are five utility programs, the quit utility, FPCQUIT.COM, the expanded memory driver FPCEMS.SYS, the mouse driver FPCMOUSE.COM, the RAM disc FPCRDISC.SYS, the mouse driver FPCMOUSE.COM, the !FasterPC detection program FPCEXIST.COM and an example of how to use it, EXAMPLE.BAT. It is obviously sensible to copy the utilities from the support disc to your PC hard disc partition if you have one.
Executing the quit utility causes !FasterPC to return to the RISC OS desktop. It can be used in DOS batch (.BAT) files to force the emulator to return to RISC OS without the user having to use the Alt-Mouse Menu button mechanism.
The !FasterPC mouse driver allows the use of the Archimedes mouse with certain IBM PC software programs. In order to be able to use the mouse driver, start !FasterPC and place the support disc containing the FPCMOUSE.COM program into the disc drive and type 'A:\UTILS\FPCMOUSE' at the DOS prompt. This must be done before any programs requiring the mouse are run. If you wish, you can add a line running the mouse driver to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file and this will cause the mouse driver to be loaded each time that your emulated PC boots. Some DOS programs use the mouse hardware directly, not via the mouse driver. Such programs will fail to work with mouse support with the current version of !FasterPC.
The third utility supplied is the !FasterPC expanded memory manager, FPCEMS.SYS. This file, when inserted into the CONFIG.SYS file, allows !FasterPC to access any expanded memory allocated to the application via the settings in the configuration utility. It provides version 3.2 compliant Lotus/Intel/Microsoft Expanded Memory (LIM EMS), which allows up to 8 megabytes of RAM to be paged into a 64K page frame of the emulated PC in 16K pages. !FasterPC's driver uses segment &E000 as the EMS page frame. In order to be able to use this extra memory, DOS programs have to be 'EMS aware', but as the specification was released in 1985, by now most programs that can make good use of this memory know to look for expanded memory when they start up. In order to install the EMS driver when !FasterPC boots, add the following line to your CONFIG.SYS file and copy the driver to your DOS directory. See the '!FasterPC Configuration' section in the 'Configuration' chapter for more details.
DEVICE=C:\DOS\FPCEMS.SY
The ramdisc installs using a similar line as above as the first line on your DOS CONFIG.SYS file, but with device FPCRDISC.SYS. When !FasterPC boots, the device driver gets loaded and another hard disc drive of size 128Kb becomes available. The drive letter for this drive follows the last 'real' hard disc partition defined. For example, if you have partitions for drives C: and D:, then the ramdisc will appear as drive E:. If you have no hard disc partitions defined, the ramdisc appears as drive C:.
The ramdisc has been written so that it preserves data across a PC reboot (Ctrl-Alt-Del) but not across a restart caused by clicking on the !FasterPC icon bar icon with the mouse select button when in the desktop.
The FPCEXIST.COM utility sets the DOS error level return code to 0 if it is running under !FasterPC and to 1 if it is not. This can be useful in batch files in order to selectively run different utilities depending on which emulator is running it. For an example, see the batch file EXAMPLE.BAT in the UTILS directory.
Music
Present on the support disc in the MUSIC directory are the files, ANTHEM.BAS, ANTHEM.EXE, BACH.BAS and BACH.EXE. You can run the EXE files from the DOS prompt. They play the British National Anthem and J.S.Bach's Gigue from Partita No. 1. They are present to show the accuracy of !FasterPC when playing musical notes. You might like to run the same files using Acorn's !PCem and listen to the difference. They are written in standard DOS Basic and have not been tweaked or fiddled to make them work any better with !FasterPC. The source files, ANTHEM.BAS and BACH.BAS, are present in the same directory for you to examine if you wish. These source files also run under Microsoft's Quick Basic which is supplied with MS DOS V5.0, so you might like to run and/or modify the programs using that, if you have it. The supplied executable files have been compiled using Borland's Turbo Basic.
Graphics
The two directories CGA and VGA, in the GRAPHICS directory, each hold a program that shows the speed enhancement that !FasterPC offers. The assembler source and executable files are present in both directories for you to examine. The tests involve loading a screen picture in CGA mode 6 (640 x 200 pixels in 2 colours) and VGA mode 19 (320 x 200 pixels in 256 colours) and software scrolling the screen. The programs both end after the screen has scrolled once or when the user presses any key. The speed increases demonstrated when comparing !FasterPC and !PCem running these test programs is about the maximum that can be coaxed out of !FasterPC. The programs both spend all their time manipulating video memory and this is where !FasterPC was designed to be faster than !PCem. Almost all PC programs will spend much, or at least some of their time performing other non-video tasks and during this time !FasterPC will be performing roughly as fast as !PCem. The result of this is that the overall speed improvement falls depending on the ratio of the amount of non-video to video processing that a program requires. The reader is directed to the 'How fast is it?' chapter for further details of !FasterPC's performance.
Errors and Solutions
This chapter gives a comprehensive list of the messages that !FasterPC can generate whilst running along with suggested methods for preventing them from occurring. It also includes the mechanism to be used for reporting faults in !FasterPC to the author for investigation.
!FasterPC Error Reports
'Illegal or unsupported opcode detected'
!FasterPC has tried to execute either non-executable data, an unimplemented 8086 or 80186 instruction or an instruction for an 80286 or higher processor.
If you have not enabled the 80186 option on !FasterPC's icon bar menu then enable it and try your PC program again. If the fault is still present then check the documentation associated with the program and ensure that it should run on an 8086 (IBM PC XT or compatible). If this is the case you could contact me following the guidelines at the end of this chapter for an investigation.
'Attempt to change to an unsupported video mode detected' The PC software that you are running has tried to switch to a video mode that is not supported by !FasterPC in its current configuration. This may be because the software does not check whether the required video adaptor is present before performing the mode change, or because you have an adaptor enabled that is not fully supported (EGA, VGA or Tandy).
Try disabling any optional video adaptors, one at a time, and re-running the PC program to see if the problem has gone away. If this fails, try enabling the video override option (if present) in the display submenu to see if this will solve your problem.
'Unsupported palette function detected'
The PC software that you are running has tried to use an unsupported VGA palette function. It thinks that this can be done as you have enabled the VGA adaptor and not all of the palette functions are implemented. This should be quite a rare error as the majority of BIOS palette calls are to do with reprogramming the palette, and these calls are fully implemented.
Try disabling the VGA (and also possibly the EGA) adaptor to see if your program will run in another video mode.
'The Emulator is trying to execute jump vectors'
For some reason, !FasterPC is executing code that is in the 8086 jump vectors (RAM locations 00000h to 00400h). This is probably because it has become confused and mis-interpreted a previous instruction.
Try running your program several times to see if the problem always occurs and whether it always occurs at the same place. If this is the case, the problem is repeatable, and you might like to contact me following the guidelines at the end of this chapter for an investigation.
'Unable to change to required FasterPC screen mode'
This error is reported when !FasterPC has been unable to change to one of its special screen modes. These modes are supported by the VGAmodes module present in the application directory, and RMLoaded when the application is started. It is possible that you do not have sufficient screen memory available before trying to run the emulator. !FasterPC requires 80k bytes of screen memory to run in 50Hz mode and 300k bytes of screen memory otherwise.
Open the task window and free memory by quitting unused applications until the required amount of memory is shown free.
'User forced exit from !FasterPC'
This warning is reported if the user exits !FasterPC with the forced exit mechanism described in chapter 4. This does not indicate that an error has occurred, but is present to warn that re-entry will not be available without a reboot.
'Unable to change to required ColourCard screen mode'
This warning is reported if the user has selected the ColourCard display option and !FasterPC was unable to switch to a ColourCard specific mode. Are you sure that you have a ColourCard installed? !FasterPC relies on your setting this flag correctly.
'An unknown error has occurred'
This error is reported if !FasterPC exits without a valid reason code. This is a 'catch all' error handler and the author has never seen this error reported during the development period. If you get it and are able to repeat it, you might like to contact me following the guidelines at the end of this chapter for an investigation.
Reporting errors for investigation
The occasion may occur when you are unable to correct a possible fault with !FasterPC and some PC software that you are trying to run. The following section presents some guidelines for you to follow in order to get your potential problem investigated.
Contact APDL at the normal address, regretfully we cannot provide telephone support for FasterPC beyond the most basic issues
Additional Features
The current major version number of !FasterPC is 3 and it is intended that this will be the final release of the application save for updates to cover fault fixes as and when faults are found and corrected.
Printer Support
!FasterPC supports a unidirectional parallel printer port. This has been implemented using the RISC OS low level printer handling mechanism, i.e. at the SWI rather than !Printers level. This is because the emulation is of a hardware port and this is necessarily a primitive device over which one has a high level of control.
In order to achieve this, there is a certain amount of switching of printer devices and re-routing of character streams in RISC OS. All this switching is invisible to the user as the machine is returned to its original state when leaving the DOS environment. The switching of the printer device waits until the current printer stream is empty before completing, and if the printer is offline, this could take forever.
In order to prevent this pause when entering the PC environment, two options were considered during development.
1flush the printer buffer of its current contents and try to prevent the RISC OS printer drivers from refilling it.
2check if the printer buffer is empty and disable !FasterPC's printer functions if any data was waiting to be printed. Any PC programs trying to access the printer after disabling will find that the printer reports that it is offline.
The second, less destructive, option was chosen and has been implemented.
Even though the above is designed to protect the user, it is always preferable to complete all the current print jobs in Risc-OS before entering the PC environment and similarly to complete all the current DOS print jobs in !FasterPC before re-entering Risc-OS.
Serial Implementation
!FasterPC has a relatively complete implementation of the 8250 Asynchronous Communications Element UART at both a BIOS and hardware port access level. Due to the limitations of the Archimedes serial subsystem, the emulation represents that of the original IBM PC XT, with maximum transmission/reception rates of 19200 Baud. In addition, only the following data transfer rates are supported: 50, 75, 110, 134.5, 150, 300, 600, 1200, 1800, 2400, 3600, 4800, 7200, 9600 and 19200 Baud whereas the XT can smoothly vary the Baud rate between 50 and 19200 Baud. This is not usually a problem as almost all software makes use of one of the above rates. !FasterPC chooses the nearest value when setting the Baud rate.
Another limitation of the emulation is that when a data receive error occurs, the error is reported immediately to the current PC program, even though RISC OS might be buffering several other incoming serial characters which should be received before the error. This is a feature of the RISC OS serial buffering and should not cause any problems unless the data lines cause many errors in transmission.
The same comments regarding the printer emulation apply to the serial emulation, in that if either the serial input or output buffer is not empty when !FasterPC is started, a warning is displayed and the serial functions are disabled if the user continues with the emulation. This is required because some versions of RISC OS do not allow an application to claim a device and prevent other applications from tampering with it. !FasterPC is trying to see if the serial subsystem is in use and won't use it if it thinks that it is.
The serial emulation has been tested with several "simple" communications programs and seems to function correctly at this level. It also runs the two player serial versions of 688 Attack Sub and Populous successfully. As both of these programs use interrupt driven serial port handlers, I feel that they are a reasonably rigorous test of the implementation.
High Density Disc Support
!FasterPC supports both 1.44Mb 3.5" and 1.2Mb 5.25" high density floppy discs on machines with the appropriate hardware. The configuration utility allows the user to tell the application how many drives of which type are available.
Risc PC Support
!FasterPC is now Risc PC compatible. The enhanced video capabilities of this machine allow the full VGA mode 19 palettes to be displayed. !FasterPC running on an ARM 610 Risc PC provides a small speed increase over the ARM 3 Archimedes versions.
With the Risc PC, the "new" IBM PC AT style keyboard has the backslash (\) key in a different location. In order to use this keyboard with Acorn"s !PCem or !FasterPC you need to include the command KEYB UK in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
Real Time Clock
A PC/AT real time clock (RTC) has been implemented. This is complete except that it does not support the alarm function which is almost completely unused by DOS software. Also, both Acorn's !PCem and !FasterPC's RTC do not report the RISC OS 'summer-time' setting to DOS, even if it is set.
101 Key Keyboard Support The keyboard support drivers and PC ROM have been extended in order to emulate the 101 key IBM PC AT keyboard. The main benefit that this provides is that the cursor keypad will now continue to provide cursor codes even when the main numeric keypad is providing numbers with Num Lock on. In addition, the 6 additional editing keys (insert, delete, home, copy, page up and page down) are also fully implemented. In implementing this feature, I have adopted the key codes generated by three 486 machines from different manufacturers rather than those generated by Acorn's !PCem, the difference being in the autorepeat codes. One feature has been observed. If the Tandy display option is enabled, then the PC ROM has a certain byte set to a "Tandy" value in order that software looking for the Tandy adaptor can detect it. The EDIT and QBASIC editors in MS DOS check for Tandy machines and disable the cursor keypad when Num Lock is on. I believe this is because the Tandy keyboards were/are not 101 key PC AT compatible. Thus, if after you have enabled Num Lock the cursor keys in EDIT don't function, it is likely that you have the Tandy adaptor enabled. Disabling it will allow the cursor keys to function if you quit the editor and re-start it.
Credits
The author wishes to thank the following people for their support during the long implementation phase of this project:
Darren Sillett for his help in all things RISC OS, and in testing and reporting bugs in !FasterPC. Without his interest in getting the application working, it would have been left in a corner of my hard disc amongst the hundreds of other abandoned projects. Darren produced the configuration utility using his library of RISC OS routines, leaving me only to have to fill in the hard disc file creation functions. Lastly, and not least, my thanks to Darren for designing the !FasterPC icons and for telling me how a correct RISC OS application should look and behave.
Dr. Peter Hansen of Ionian Software, Oxford, for being a library for all things relating to both MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. My special thanks go to him for not minding the long phone calls about some obscure I/O port function which I tended to make late in the night when !FasterPC wasn't working correctly.
David Holden, who runs the Archimedes Public Domain Library (A.P.D.L). As well as taking an interest in !FasterPC as soon as it was announced publically, David has been extremely generous in lending me an A3010 in order to help implement the high density disc support. I have also been able to use this system to add VGA and LCD screen support and also to correct some problems relating to the ARM250 processor. A.P.D.L. can supply a large number of high quality PC shareware programs (for example a working Modula 2 compiler and example source files).
Dave Williams, author of the shareware DOS Technical Reference, DOSREF. The information in this publication was essential in the production of !FasterPC. It prevented me from having to acquire many very detailed reference books as all the information was gathered together in one place. Anyone requiring further information regarding DOSREF, its availability and price can contact !FasterPC's author at the address on the back cover of this User Guide.
John Ratcliff, author of 688 Attack Sub, one of the most enjoyable strategy games available on a computer. Indeed, it was seeing this game running painfully slowly under Acorn's !PCem that caused !FasterPC to be conceived. One of the main reasons for adding the serial port hardware emulation to !FasterPC is to get the two player version of 688 Attack Sub running. Acorn's !PCem does not work in this mode, even slowly (I don't think that it handles direct serial port hardware access). If you enjoy strategy games then I can wholeheartedly recommend 688 Attack Sub, published by Electronic Arts, especially as it can be bought these days as part of a 'four pack' for around £25.
Last, and not least, Acorn Computers Ltd for having the foresight to invest in developing the ARM processor at a time when following the more tried and trusted Motorola 680X0 or Intel 80X86 route must have been very tempting. For producing the Archimedes and giving it one of the best GUI's that I have used. Apple Mac, PC Windows and Unix Motif/X desktop users are only just beginning to get man machine interfaces that approach the power, flexibility and ease of use of RISC OS and still they feel that they are at the leading edge of such software! Finally, a plea to Acorn not to rest on its laurels and to continue development of the ARM especially at the top end of the performance range. When you see just how crippled the Intel '486 and Pentium have become with their ever present need for backwards compatibility with the 13 year old 8086 processor, the logical layout of the ARM is obviously a vast improvement.
PC Compatibility
The following MS DOS programs have been tested with the standard !FasterPC and been found to work with the video modes shown. Note: the inclusion of a program in this list does not guarantee that it will work perfectly under all circumstances with this application, rather that it has been tried and, with limited testing, been found to run successfully.
Compatibilty char
Running PC Software
A general point to note when running PC software is that sometimes !FasterPC will seem to go to sleep after the hard disc rattles when the PC program loads. Users of Acorn's !PCem will already be used to this delay which is due to the emulator running the program initialisation code to set up internal data before the program can run. Not all programs have this pause but most do, and on some it can be as long as 30 seconds. The moral of this is that if !FasterPC doesn't seem to be doing anything for quite a while, give it more time. It will hopefully continue in a few moments.
How fast is it?
Computer performance is generally difficult to quantify. With the IBM PC and compatibles it is even more difficult due to the large number of permutations of CPU, clock speed, co-processor, etc. Originally performance was measured in MIPS (millions of instructions per second) and thus was based almost exclusively on the processor clock speed. This largely went out of favour when RISC CPU's were introduced, as these ran very fast (lots of instructions per second), but each instruction did much less than an instruction on a non-RISC (or CISC) CPU. The Dhrystone benchmark was an alternative which tried to assess the computer's speed in terms of its performance on a set of processing tasks. The latest unit is the SPECMARK, the unit in which most major manufacturers of workstations today quote the performance of their machines.
The IBM PC has been served by several different performance measuring applications, most notably Norton's System Information (SI) and Central Point's PC Tools, both of which have gone through several revisions. These applications seem an ideal way in which to measure the performance improvement that !FasterPC claims to offer. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Take a look at the code in the box below.
This is taken directly from an actual system performance analysis tool. As you can see, the measurement code consists of two nested loops. The outer causes the inner to be repeated 475 times. The inner repeats 100 times for each outer loop and thus executes 47500 times in all. Each pass of the inner loop consists of some register and memory loading and an integer multiply and divide instruction. These last two instructions are implemented in 8086 microcode but, being a CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) processor, they take several clock cycles to execute. In fact, the IDIV instruction can take up to 219 cycles, and on a 4.77MHz 8086, this alone would take 2.18 seconds to perform 47500 times. This compares with around 20 cycles for each of the remaining instructions that are within the inner loop. This shows that the overall performance figure is based mainly on how long these IDIV instructions take to complete. As an efficient divide routine is presented in the ARM assembler manual, it is hardly surprising that Acorn's PC Emulator and !FasterPC produce almost identical performance ratings with such software. The actual rating of 4.2 +/- 0.2 times a 4.77MHz IBM XT when running on a 28Mhz ARM3 is not very relevant, as almost all programs spend their time performing other instructions.
So, how do we measure PC emulator performance, given that the programs designed to help are not very applicable? Perhaps the best way is to time both emulators running the same program over an extended period of time to give a 'real world' performance figure. Four such tests are described below.
The Tests
Test A - This test performs a horizontal scroll of a VGA 256 colour graphics screen. The program, supplied as source and executable on the DOS support disc, only measures graphics performance and !FasterPC's large gain figure is the absolute maximum that it can obtain. In practice, real applications will never achieve this figure as other non-graphics processing will reduce !FasterPC's speed advantage.
Test B - This test involved the game 'Xenon2' produced by the Bitmap Brothers. It is a vertically scrolling 'shoot-em-up' arcade game and thus the results are obviously heavily dependent on the speed of the graphics emulation. The test involved timing both emulators from the start of level 1 to a point well into the same level that was easy to time accurately. The test was run in CGA mode on both emulators and also in EGA/Tandy modes which are graphically equivalent.
Test C - This test was based on the time taken to compile a test program using Zortech's V2.1 C++ compiler. This test does not rely on graphics at all and so is only a measure of the speed of the emulation of the CPU.
Test D - This test involved the program Fractint, version 15.1. A full screen Mandelbrot fractal was generated in CGA video mode 4. The fractal was generated twice, once using integer and once using floating point arithmetic. Acorn's emulator gains enormously in the floating point test as it uses its ARM code emulation of the 8087 maths coprocessor whilst !FasterPC has to perform the floating point calculations using emulated 80186 integer arithmetic which is obviously much slower. Note that the integer test shows almost no difference between the emulators as the 8087 is not used.
Dave Lawrence
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/FOOTBALL/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, Football Manager for RISC OS
Football Manager for RISC OS
Paul Johnson
All programs, irrespective of what they are or do are made of two distinct parts; the plan and the code. These work on the basic equation of amount of time planning is inversely proportional to the amount of time required coding - that is to say, the longer and better the plan, the less time it normally takes to get the job done. A classic example of that is SoftEase's TextEase application. Before one line of code was written, every single part of the program was planned and designed on paper - look at the result, one of the finest applications on any platform.
The method
Right, let's look at the task in hand: Football Manager.
Football is a simple game. Twice a week a bunch of talented chaps come together and kick a ball around for 90 minutes. At the end of the match, the winner is the one who has put the ball in the back of the net the most. The more you win, the higher up the league table you go. Sometimes a player hurts themselves or decides to move on, but for most of the time, it's train, travel, play. Sounds incredibly boring, and when expressed like that, it is!
But then as with any macrosphere, when you start looking closely, far more things come into play. Player fitness, suspension, finances and team tactics. On top of that, you have the whims and caprices of the board and fans as well as dodgy agents who make very strange demands. Finally, we have the transfer market. When you add these all together, you soon appreciate there is more to this than meets the eye.
I've missed something : cups. In addition to the league, we also have the FA cup and as you go into the higher leagues, the League Cup, UEFA, Super League, Champions league, Internationals.
Finally, there is the root of all evil - money. Will your team attract a half decent sponsor willing to inject cash into your side over a given period? Who will gain the broadcast rights to screen your matches (or even just the highlights) and how much can you expect to get from this? Can your broadcaster be trusted or will they renege on payment and declare themselves bankrupt rather than payout?
As I say, the closer you look at a macrosphere, the more complex everything becomes. Add onto that having to code this all up and the task becomes mammoth. If we break these down, we can bring things into focus simpler. As this will be written using C++, the task should be simpler due to encapsulation techniques employed by the language.
Okay, let's break the game up into some broad groups and areas. We have the leagues, the players, management and money.
Leagues
Leagues consist of teams. Teams have team statistics. The team stats are goals for, goals against, goal difference, won, lost, drawn and points. Each league has a number of teams.
The league works like this. Each team will have a number of points. The higher the points, the higher up the table the team is. No matter where in the table a team is, if the number of points are the same, then the goal difference (goals scored - goals conceded) is used. The better the goal difference, the higher up the table you go. If the goal difference is the same, it's down to the number of games won.
Example
Team W L D F A P Dif
Liverpool 8 2 2 20 2 26 +1
Everton 6 5 1 15 3 19 +1
Arsenal 6 5 1 13 3 19 +1
Millwall 6 5 1 10 0 19 +1
Manchester United 5 3 4 16 6 19 +1
There is no problem seeing who's on top. The next four teams all have the same number of points. Everton is in second due to their better goal difference. Arsenal are above Millwall as they have scored more goals. Man United are at the bottom of this example as they have not won as many games.
Actually, the team names aren't important. The logic behind it is. In steps involved.
1. Sort the teams in order of points
2. Sort the teams with the same number of points using goal difference
3. Sort the teams with the same points and goal difference on the number of games won
4. If (3) has failed, use the number of goals scored
For the vast majority of the time, steps 3 and 4 aren't used.
The second part of the league is planning the games.
We could just say that our team plays team 2 to team 22 for home then team 2 to 22 for away, but that is not the way fixture lists evolve.
I'm sure you're all used to the "multiplication" boxes; you may have used them at school many moons ago. Simply, they look like this.
1 2 3 4 5
1 1 2 3 4 5 6
2 2 4 6 8 10 12
3 3 6 9 12 15 18
4 4 8 12 16 20 24
5 5 10 15 20 25 30
6 6 12 18 24 30 36
You read the top row, read the left most row and where they meet, it's the answer. Now, if we say that team 1 is Liverpool, 2 is Everton, 3 is Manchester City, 4 is Arsenal, 5 is Bolton and 6 is Manchester United, we can very quickly draw up a fixture list. Obviously, team 1 can never meet or play team 1. The fixture list table now looks like this.
1 2 3 4 5
1 X
2 X
3
4
5
6
We now fill in the blanks.
We know that we have to play each team twice; home and away. Say we give a home game a 1 and an away game 0. We know there are 21 teams per division (excluding our team). We generate two random numbers : where the game is played and who is being played. For ease, the left hand row designates the home fixture and the top row the away fixture. The first number out is 0 and the first team is 6. The first game for Liverpool is against Manchester United at Old Trafford. We place a 1 in the away section against number 6. Go around again. Next one out is 1 and the team is 5. (Liverpool vs Bolton at Anfield). 2 is placed in the appropriate place. This carries on until all of the Liverpool fixtures are created. This then needs to be replicated for the other teams, though in all honesty, what they get up to is purely academic!
Okay, that's the league table and fixture list. The final part to this is the promotion and relegation.
For simplicity (and as I don't want to have to enter the entire sub-division 3 leagues), I will say that once you're relegated from Division 3, that's it, game over. You can also not be promoted from the Premier League when (and if) you win it.
Promotion playoffs.
The top 2 are automatically promoted. No questions asked. The third promotion slot is decided by a mini-knockout competition. The winner of this goes up with the other two.
Relegations
Bottom 3 in each division go down. Easy as that.
Cups
For the lower league teams, we are only concerned with the FA Cup. Rounds 1 - 5 are the normal ones (though premier teams don't come in until round 2), 6 is the quarter finals, 7 the semis and 8 the final. It is simple enough to draw this up. Generate a random number and play them. Next round, do the same, then the same, then the same. Each time, the number of teams available will be halfed.
The winner plays the winner of the Premier league for the charity shield at the start of the next season. Initially, this will 100% not be your team!. If the winner of the FA and Premiership are the same, then the FA winners will play whoever came in second.
Foreign cups.
Champions league is a set of mini-leagues (4 teams), after the league is finished, it's through to the knockout stage up to the final. It used to be two sets of leagues, but that has now been changed.
UEFA cup is a knockout tournament.
Intertoto cup - whoever comes in 4th in the premier league enters this (plus one other). Win this knockout tournament and you go through to the UEFA cup.
These need not concern the lower league cups.
Players
Players are just normal people, like me or you. Sure, some get paid in excess of £30,000 a week, but at the end of the day, they are just skin and bones like the rest of us. Like the rest of us, they are prone to the same ailments (colds, muscle sprains, bad hair days etc.).
You can see the gap. This gap is known here are the "reality" gap.
Imagine you're at the bottom of the 3rd division, money is too tight to hit the transfer market, a good amount of your team is injured and your next match is against a Premier side. The chances of you winning are remote. I'm not saying it won't happen, but it's remote. Face it, the players in division 3 are mainly part timers - they will neither be as skilled or as fit as a premiership side. When calculating the odds during the match, these attributes must be taken into account. It could work out that for every 6 attacks they have, you have one. Then again, they may never score and on your only attempt, you blast it in. By incorporating the player stats, we can introduce a good element of reality. (Unfortunately, this element of reality was missing from both the original and the follow-up versions. On a number of occasions, I played in FA Cup finals containing 2 fourth [as was] division teams).
With each match, if a player is constantly played, their fitness level will drop. If it drops too far, the player will just be too tired to play and is more likely to trip, fall, graze their knee and be out for a week. Rest the player for a week (2 matches) and they'll be as right as rain, perhaps not full fitness, but able to play.
Players can also be injured and when this happens they cannot play (well, duh!) and must be given time to recover. After the injury gets better, it will take a couple of weeks to get match fit again.
Players also need practise in passing, shooting, controlling and saving (for goal keepers). Some players may play better on the left than the right. Most players can also play in alternate positions (attackers playing midfield, midfield and defence being interchangeable) but when this happens, their effectiveness diminishes the further from their natural position. This is at it's most extreme when a goalkeeper plays in attack.
Players also have their dark side; their agents. These can cause a hell of a lot of embarrassment to players by trying to cause trouble, make speculative comments and basically be PITAs to teams and managers.
The final part to any team is their formation. Is it a good idea to play 1 man up front as the sole attacker with 5 in midfield when the other team have 4 in defence?
You can appreciate by now the difficulties in analysing a game as simple (on the outside) as the beautiful game.
Management
The toughest position to be in any football team is not that of the player, but that of the chap who sits behind the door with the word "Manager" written on. He has to be able to determine the team tactics, team formation, the money side of things (though in reality, this is the finance directors job). He has to be able to take the tough decisions on who's in and out, be able to resolve team disputes and moreover, be able to take the flack when the results are not exactly going your way.
In the football manager game, the manager does everything from taking out a bankloan, keeping an eye on finances, buying and selling players, deciding who is playing as well as keep a track on the players. There are no second in commands, no finance directors, just you.
The manager will gain points during the season depending on how his team does.
Money
Obviously, no game would be complete without the element of money. There are three sources of money; sponsorship, TV and prize.
Sponsorship tends to be a fixed number of seasons deal whereby the club gets (say) 50,000 pounds per season for 3 seasons with a bonus of 10,000 if they win something decent. Unless a team really does badly, sponsorship tends to be a guaranteed income for a number of seasons. The club is given this money during the closed season after the FA cup (for the game at least!).
TV money is a consortium affair whereby a division has a negotiated contract to televise a fixed number of matches over a number of seasons. The contract works by each team getting a share of the contract with an extra amount per televised match. Obviously, the better you are doing, the more matches of yours will be shown. The lower leagues will not get anywhere near as much as the higher leagues - how many people would rather watch Enfield vs Cambridge compared to (say) Liverpool vs Man. United? Pay per view will not happen until a team hits the premiership.
Prize money is easy. If you are promoted, you get money. If you win a cup, you get money. It's a once a season affair.
You will also get money from gate receipts.
That's the good side. The bad side of money are the bills; people won't play for nothing. There are wages, ground costs, council costs, rates, water charges, ground maintainence - the list goes on and on and on. To keep this simple, all the bills (except players wages) will be lumped together.
Right, that's the game synopsis. Next time, I'll make a start with the game plan and see what RISC OS parts need to be identified prior to coding.
Insider with more behind the scenes information...
It's been some months since I wrote the last Insider column. I had started on a column for the last issue but Aaron was not happy with it and due to pressure of work it was not possible to re-write it, so you had to do without Insider last issue. As is always the way product development and deal making have continued behind the scenes, so let us see what has transpired over the last few months.
RiscStation
RiscStation announced that they would have a prototype portable on display at Wakefield. However what many customers saw was the PC version of the new RiscStation laptop, running a copy of VirtualAcorn. Those who were around at the correct times would have also seen the "real" prototype, and if they asked nicely would even have been allowed to use it so they could see that it was indeed fully working. An announcement was due regarding delivery of the portable shortly after the show. However it seems that timescales have slipped a little and RISC World decided to ask Roy Heslop a little more about this. He told us that the reason for the delay was due to some components that were in the original design being replaced by newer ones by the component manufacturers. He also told RISC World that they "...had been assured that they would have a fully working demonstration machine, in the production case, at the beginning of August."
Those with long memories may well remember the work that was being done on the RiscStation Evolution some 2 years ago. This was based on the CATS motherboard designed by Simtec, and was scheduled to be a RiscPC replacement. It would seem that this project may well now be continuing in some form. Some of the work that has been done by RISCOS Ltd on the Select version of RISC OS would, it seems, make it easier to port RISC OS to the CATS motherboard. If the RiscStation Evolution does get developed further this would provide a possible competitor for the Omega, although the CATS board is an older design, and doesn't support the X-Scale processor in its current form. RiscStation are not the only hardware company who are interested in the CATS board however, Insider has been told that another hardware manufacturer has recently started expressing interest. Perhaps the Evolution will come to the market, but with a different manufacturer's name on the case.
This years love
One of the most un-likely romances seen in many years is flourishing between two parties, RISCOS Ltd and MicroDigital. In the past the two companies have had a rather stormy relationship. However with the imminent release of the Omega computer it seems the two have patched up their differences. Just to cement the relationship RISCOS Ltd have recently announced a new installer that can be downloaded off the the Select website. This will allow Select to be installed on a Microdigital Mico computer. This is interesting when you take into account this quote from Paul Middleton, the MD of RISCOS Ltd, when interviewed prior to Wakefield "...I believe that there are only three people who have contacted us wanting to know when there will be a RiscStation compatible version of Select, and only one enquiring about a Mico version." Presumably either the one Mico customer was very important or RISCOS Ltd have done the work not to support the Mico, but the large number of potential Omega owners who may well want to run Select as well.
RISC OS Select
Some developers have been reluctant to support RISC OS Select since its release, however it seems that the attitude is beginning to soften in some quarters. APDL recently announced a Select compatible version of DrawWorks, snappily called "DrawWorks Select". However as Aaron is the author of DrawWorks perhaps he should take over the story.
Insider is quite right, I have written a new DrawWorks that now works with the Select version of Draw. APDL had always planned to do it, but only after Select got a real release, and not while it was still being fiddled with. A reasonable amount of work had to be done to get it going but it was fun. Although I have no idea why some of the changes have been made to Draw, indeed they don't make any sense at all. For example there is a key shortcut for copy, but not one for paste!
Talking of Select the RISCOS Ltd web site recently announced that they had signed up the 796th subscriber. Insider finds this quite interesting as it was May 2001 that Select was first announced at the Wakefield show that RISCOS Ltd didn't attend. If one assumes that the 796th subscriber was signed up in mid June that would be 13 months, or let us say 56 weeks which equates to 392 days. This means that on average there are 2.03 new Select subscribers every day (assuming a 7 day week). This is hardly going to get RISC OS back where it belongs. Let us contrast this with sales of VirtualAcorn, which in 6 months (26 weeks) has supplied 1423 copies. That equates to 54.7 copies a week, or 7.81 copies per day. So using these figures almost 4 times as many people are installing RISC OS 3.1 as are installing Select. Another point to bear in mind is that all of those who have bought Select are already RISC OS users, without a copy of RISC OS 4 they could not use Select. Contrast this with VirtualAcorn users, many of whom have never even owned a RiscPC and are still using A5000, A4000 or even earlier machines. A reasonable number of VirtualAcorn users do not even currently own a genuine RISC OS machine and without the presence of VirtualAcorn would not even be running RISC OS. Perhaps this goes some way to explain RISCOS Ltd's continued attitude towards VirtualAcorn. Select is almost exclusively an upgrade for existing users, where as VirtualAcorn can actually bring old users who have departed the platform back. (Witness the interview with Paul Middleton from RISCOS Ltd in this very issue - ED).
Another few RISCOS Ltd oddities appear in the "From the Cutting Edge" article from latest Foundation RISC User. There is a long section about the 32bit version of RISC OS (as developed by Pace Microtechnology), part of this relates to software. The point being that a 32 bit OS running on a 32bit processor will not be able to run most existing software. To support a 32bit OS developers would have to make new 32bit version of their programs. One needs to wonder how likely this would be, would Xara release new 32bit versions of Artwork and Impression? They might be persuaded if the project was funded externally, but it seems unlikely they would do it themselves. So you need a way of running 26 bit software on a 32 bit machine. Paul Middleton suggests the following "Emulating a 26-bit computer on a 32-bit platform may be the answer...". Indeed emulating a 26 bit machine on a 32bit one may well be the answer, but isn't that what VirtualAcorn does already?
The future in black and white
There has been an increasing trend over the last few years in "retro" design, making and building things with deliberate reference to the past. Insider is delighted that TAU Press have embraced this trend with open arms and gone back to the early days of Acorn User by printing the inside of the magazine in black and white. Although this seems fully in keeping with the "retro" feel Insider has been informed that a number of advertisers are none too pleased. Will we see a magazine with black and white articles and colour advertising pages soon? (Yes, so it will be a bit like the Phantasm article in this issue then - ED)
Networking
All the companies that promised high speed network cards for the Wakefield show seem to have delivered on their promises. A large number of companies had the cards on their stands at the show, either designed by Simtec or Castle Technology. These 100 Mbit cards should allow faster networking using RISC OS. A report on
Signing Off
As an endpiece last time I wrote the following "ask yourself a simple question, if you were Pace and could see that a small company which has a licence for a version of a product you own could be a possible competitor would you want any 32-bit RISC OS stuff released at all?" I am delighted to say the answer to this is yes. I am sure those involved will make a full announcement about 32bit RISC OS when the time is right. One should of course remember that a 32 bit OS may well need a new computer to run it on, as well as new software.
The latest letters (What's wrong with A to Z? - DB) from our readers...
Dear Aaron,
I am having a problem loading this piece of software that appeared on issue 1 Vol 3 CD. The load fails with the message 'SWI value out of range for module SharedCLibrary'. I am using SharedCLibrary v. 4.84 on a SARPC with RISC OS 3.7. Any ideas?
Many thanks,
Tom C
PS Any news on the programs directory for the C++ software?
Most likely the program was written and tested with a different SharedCLibrary, version 4.84 dates from 1996. It might be worth having a browse around the
Dear Aaron,
Just got my CD. Where's the education column???!?!??!?!?
Andrew Harmsworth
Er.....well....er technically it hadn't gone anywhere since it was on the last RISC World CD in the correct place. However due to a small oversite caused by stupidity I forgot to link to it from the index page. So I can only apologise to both Andrew and our readers, we are running the article again this issue for anyone who missed it last time.
Dear Aaron,
Attached !HyperMand with a very slight alteration to make it easier to get out of. That is, once you have read the initial screen telling you what it does. Please tell your readers (hyper readers?) that I now have a Hyper Julia Set Generator - !HypaJulia available for free download from my web site - www.martinkd.freeuk.com. You can generate a Mandelbrot, then pick a point in it to base a Julia Set on. Besides Fractals, this site has some useful programmers' tools available for download. In particular I have now managed to produce an Acorn Front End to the GNU C Compiler GCC in the same vein as the Acorn C Compiler.
Hope this is not too late for going to press,
Regards,
Martin.
Martins !HyperMand mandelbrot generator is in the software directory on this CD. Of course the following correspondent won't ever see it...
Dear Sir,
In answer to your reminder. I have owned and operated all models of the computer from the original BBC up to my present one - RISCOS4 and can claim to be a loyal supporter of the range and have always felt that they are superior to what I term the 'Bill Gates Machine'. Over the past six years or so I have operated both types of computer, but gradually I have found myself using the Bill Gates PC more and more. Apart from the excellent Impact database programme, the Acorn gets little use.
Very reluctantly I must now ask you to terminate my subscription - it is as simple as that ! Thank you for past service, I wish you all the very best for the future.
Yours sincerely
Noel Griffiths
This letters sums up the current problem for the RISC OS market nice and neatly. People buy PCs and find they don't use the RISC OS machine very much any more. However we need to examine this problem a bit more, why do people buy PCs in the first place? There are a number of reasons that people decide to do this....
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your letter Ref 1898 reminding me of my lapsed subscription and your request for feedback if I chose not to renew. First I have enjoyed the magazine and its content . If I had to make a suggestion for improvement it would be to have more "how to do it" type articles. The demo software is always welcome and the free utilities very helpful. I have cancelled all my subscription to publications on the RISC OS Platform, including the Foundation.
I have decided reluctantly to change over to the PC platform after many years (early 1980's) with both Acorn and RISC OS. The RISC operating system is first class and very easy to use and leaving it has been a difficult decision . I have all the major software packages for the platform and find them excellent in use, but many of them are no longer supported and are showing their age.
Browsing the internet has become a pain over the years . Voyager is almost useless on many of the site I need to access .Oregano has made life a bit easier but even this causes me problems , I purchased NUTMEG to try and improve the speed of Oregano but have never managed to get the thing working correctly. I shall continue to use RISC OS software for a short time but over the last two years almost of my work has been stored in a format readable on both platforms.
One area where your magazine might be potentially very useful is showing how the two platforms can be networked and integrated to get the best of both worlds. The lack of a credible web browser is a major factor for swapping over but, more important is the lack of a upgrade path for the SA RiscPC. I intended to buy the Omega but without good software to run on it I won't be any better off. The inability to read DVD discs is also a factor. The RISC OS market is very small and software development is slow. Hardware is very expensive , for example a SCSI card for RiscPC cost me well over £100 pounds but a similar spec card for the PC Cost £29.
The platform is falling behind in so many areas. The availability of printer drivers for many of the latest models just do not exist, the same situation is often the case with scanners and digital cameras, not to mention many new devices currently available on the PC platform.
Of course this has nothing to do with the quality and professionalism of your magazine however you may agree that there are others (once loyal to the platform) like myself who feel the same way which directly impacts on subscriber numbers. Acorn User is so slim these days that its in danger of becoming a pamphlet taking 10 minutes to read; a sign that all is not well.
I intend to buy Virtual Acorn and use TechWriter and Ovation Pro (hopefully). If Virtual Acorn works out to be successful then I may reconsider my subscription at a later date. Pity that RISC OS cannot be written to run on a PC making it independent of RISC architecture.
Yours Sincerely
Roy Philpott
Well, there isn't a great deal I can say to this. I am, in many ways, forced to agree, I don't want to agree, but I cannot in all honesty argue that strongly against Roy's points. Although you might well feel differently. Still at least he is going to buy a copy of VirtualA5000, so he won't lose touch with RISC OS completely, although I would prefer it if he bought an Omega! Meanwhile someone else has noticed the lack of the EasyC++ example files....
Hi,
I am very keen to have a bash with the EasyC programme, but can't find the programs directory containing hello World. Is it missing? If not, where can I find it, and if it has been omitted, where can I get hold of the file?
I have a couple of days free and would really like to have a try - it looks really interesting. Will even get the upgrade if I get past chapter 1!
Excellent magazine. I always look forward to reading all of it. It constantly reminds me of all that's best about the RISC OS world.
Kind regards,
Tom Chubb
The EasyC++ sample files are on this issue. I am glad that you enjoy RISC World, I enjoy editing it a great deal, and I hope very soon to be able to do an entire letters page without apologising for a mistake in the previous issue. Still carrying on.
Hello Aaron,
my name's Les Chant, I've been in touch with you before. I'm a subscriber to RISC World, and would just like to say that I'm very sorry to see that the !Powerbase articles have suddenly stopped....Are there any plans to continue this in future issues? Even though I've had !Powerbase for some time, I'm only slowly learning it's capabilities and was finding Derek's series a very useful adjunct to the Manual that I got with the application.
Thanks, regards,
Les.
We have been doing a bit of RISC World re-structuring of late and a few series have stopped (as opposed to finished). The first one we stopped was the BASIC programming series by Dave Holden. I must say I did expect a lot of complaints, but there were none, if you were reading this series and would like it to start up again please let me know. The next one for the chop was Hugh Jampton's Weird World Web (again did anyone miss it?) and in this issue we may well stop another series... However back to PowerBase, we do hope to have a further "advanced" PowerBase article in a future issue.
Well once again I find myself closing off another letters page. What mistakes will I make this issue? Stay tuned to find out....
Mailscout - Anti Spam and On-line email interrogation for RISC OS .
How many times have you downloaded your emails only to find that its full of rubbish which you instantly delete? i know i have, if you use online email such as lycos or hotmail this isn't quite such a problem as you can just ignore it but, if like me you download it all in one go, and then look at it offline, you can't get rid of it, but now you can.
Image software have released Mailscout which is a simple but effective spamblock program which is the answer to every spam haters prayers!
Installing Mailscout is the usual drag onto the relevant place on the hard disk and then let it copy it across and thats it - simple.
Before you can use Mailscout you have to configure it, all you do is load the program and then from the icon on the icon bar click on "Choices" and then you will see the "Configuration" window as shown below.
Now you need to enter your details, so enter your Mail Server, User ID, Password and which protocol you are using, the configuration screenshot shows it set up for an Argonet account. By using the "Settings" option you can switch to other email accounts that you have set up and bin the spam from them as well, if you have just the one, then leave it on default, once done, click on save and all being well it should work ok.
One last bit of configuration and this is the important bit you MUST turn off the fetch option on your internet software (eg !Dialup) otherwise you won't be able to examine it before download to do this with !Dialup from the iconbar menu go to Choices>General and then on the "mail/News Transfer" untick fetch/sendmail on connection.
Now we're ready to go.
Connect to the internet and when you are connected, click on the Mailscout icon on the iconbar and you should see the following window.
After a while this window should appear and then you can begin the email interrogations!
This shows two bits of spam received which are highlighted for deletion
If you want the email, you leave it alone, if not you click on the icon at the end of the email line and give it a tick, it will be highlighted in red now, if you want to add it to the filter click on the "from" with the mouse, you can add "to" and "subject" to the filter (more on that in a bit), when you ready then click on delete to bin the selected emails, once you click on delete thats it - they're gone for ever!
When you have decided what emails you want, then click on download email from your internet program and the emails you want not all the rubbish will then get downloaded to your mailbox then come offline and sit back and read your mail!
The Mailscout filter is a useful feature of the program, to access them, click menu on the Mailscout icon and select "Show Filters" and window with three textfiles "from" "subject" and "to" should appear if you click on the texfiles you will see any of the email addresses and subjects that you selected to add to the filters, if you get any more emails from the same address or with the same subject then they will be displayed automatically in red but are not deleted until you specify it, so if you remove the tick you can keep the email if you wish to.
You can then email all your filtered email addresses to Image Software to create a global filter so all known spam addresses are instantly highlighted for deletion, this list will never be complete as they spammers change email addresses frequently, but it is a very useful feature.
Thats basically all there is to Mailscout its a simple but effective little program which does a job that was needed to be done, I absolutely recommend it to anyone who gets spam and gets annoyed with it (that must be everyone) since I bought Mailscout there have been 2 upgrades and there is more to come including the possibilities of being able to read your emails online and check if it is spam or not if unsure some of them are sneaky, also the possibility of being able to drag spam out and dump it into Junkmail to fire off complaints, other features are being looked at so the future looks good for this product, the after sales support and help services from Image Software is superb very quick and very helpful.
This review is based on the internet setup of !DialUp with !MessengerPRO with an Argonet ISP, for other set ups contact Image Software, but the most recent upgrade includes a patch to use it with Voyager as well.
Product details
Product:
MailScou
Supplier:
Image Softwar
Price:
£25.0
Address:
48 Hinchliffe Road Hamworthy Poole Dorset BH15 4ED
Tel:
01202 26972
WWW:
E-mail:
Mathew Thompson
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/MODULES/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, Modules for Beginners
Modules for Beginners
Part 4: The Wimp Filtering System - Brian Pickard
All multitasking RISC OS applications rely on the WIMP SWI's. These give the programmer a reasonably straight forward way of designing the Windows, icons and controlling the application via mouse clicks etc.
The whole application is based round a loop which contains the SWI Wimp_Poll. This SWI polls the WIMP to see if certain events have occurred (e.g. a mouse click or key press or the window needs redrawing etc).
The loop is only exited when the application is quitting or an unrecoverable error occurs.
Modifying Wimp Applications
Sometimes applications do not quite meet the users needs or a more friendly user interface could have been designed. An example of this is DrawWorks Millenium which uses the Draw application but adds a great user interface as well as extra facilities. It would be nice if such applications could have their actions modified. There is a way of doing this using what is known as the Wimp filtering system.
Note the applications code is not altered in any way so this method does not break any copyright.
The Wimp filtering system is usually a hidden feature that is left dormant. It is a way of 'looking into' any multitasking applications events before or just after they occur. So using this method mouse clicks, for example, can be intercepted and under certain conditions may be made to do something different.
In fact this filter can be applied to ALL multitasking applications using just one module, so the same event(s) can be modified in ALL tasks. But less of the boring details lets get down to a useful example.
The RISC OS printing system has one flaw, (up to version 1.53 anyway) if the printer has not been switched on or the connection has got broken then trying to print results in the computer hanging. It would be nice if a warning occurred and the printing was not allowed to start.
To do this requires the Print key press, the print menu selection and the mouse click on an print start icon to be stopped from reaching the application. The tricky bit is to recognise this mouse click! (See later).
Setting up Wimp filters
There are two sorts of wimp filter.
Pre-Filter: This is called whenever a task is about to call Wimp_Poll. The task is not yet paged in memory at this stage so all the routine can do is change the event mask that the task has setup
Post-Filter: This is called whenever the Wimp is about to return from Wimp_Poll to the task. The task therefore is already paged in memory. This means the tasks control block is readable, the wimp event code may be changed or intercepted
Personally I have found Post Filters are more useful than Pre Filters. To set up a filter the SWI's Filter_RegisterPreFilter and Filter_RegisterPostFilter are used. NOT Wimp_RegisterFilter! In our example the following code is used in the modules initialisation.
ADR R0,fname ;R0 points to filter nam
ADR R1,routine ;R1 points to filter routin
LDR R2,[R12] ;R2 start of module workspac
MOV R3,#0 ;R3 is zero since we wish this filter all task
LDR R4,mask% ;R4 is Wimp mask for which events require
SWI “XFilter_RegisterPostFilter” ;register the filte
The filter name can be anything up to a max of 12 chrs and null terminated.
Note that R2 should point to a convenient area of workspace. I use the modules workspace previously setup. So R2 will contain the start address of the modules workspace. When the filter routine is entered this address will be set up in R12 by RISC OS.
R3 normally has the filtered tasks Wimp handle but for all tasks to be filtered we use zero.
R4 should contain a mask value for which events you do not wish the filter to be called. The value is worked out by a bit pattern. In our example we want mouse clicks (event 6), key presses (event 8) and menu selections (event 9).
The value should be &FFFFFFFF - (1<<6) - (1<<8) - (1<<9).
To de-register filters the same data is required with the SWI "XFilter_DeRegisterPostFilter" the code being placed in the modules finalisation. You can check your filter has been registered by typing *Filters at a task window prompt. This lists all the known filters.
The Modules Action
For any task when the wimp is about to return from Wimp_Poll to the task our filter routine will be called. So the following registers are set:
R0 will contain the event cod
R1 will contain the control block relevant for the even
R2 will have the tasks wimp handle
R12 will point to the start of the workspace
R13 is the usual stack pointe
R14 contains the return addres
The processing mode will be SVC (more about this later).
We must preserve R1 and R2 (obvious?!) but we can alter any data in the control block and we can change R0 to produce a different event code. Making R0 = -1 stops the event from reaching the task. The complete module source code is on the CD it is called Modsrc1 and the assembled module is called PrtChkMod1. The filter routine first checks to see which event has occurred. The simplest is the key press since checking for the print key number is all that is needed to decide if the printer connection needs checking.
For mouse click and menu selection the routine needs to check what icon and window the mouse pointer is in. Since this is quite involved the routine checks the printer connection first. If a printer driver is not present there is no need to intercept the event. The module checks this by finding out if the system variable Printer$Path exists. If it does then it reads the first few bytes and decides if the printer is printing to a file or a LanMan98 PC network. (You cannot easily trap these conditions so the program assumes the connection is ok).
If the printer is printing via the parallel port then check the status bits of the port. If the connection is ok then get out of the routine, allowing the event to be passed onto the task. If the routine finds the printer connection is blocked then check if the event will start up the printing process. In Wimp tasks a user starts printing by clicking on a Print icon so the routine needs to check if this event is about to do this.
Checking the window and icon properties is not so straight forward. Here is the outline.
Check the text in the icon. If text = Print then intercept the event (the task will not receive it). Check window title. If title = Print or print and icon text = OK or Ok then intercept event If the printer cannot be used then call SWI 256+7 (VDU7 make beep).
Here is the code as used in the module
STMFD R13!,{R0-R6,R14} ;store registers to stac
.the Printer$path and parallel port connection check code
.is here (see module source code
ADD R1,R12,#12:SWI&600CF ;use Wimp_GetPointerInf
LDR R0,[R1,#16]:CMP R0,#0:BLT no% ;to see if in a icon or windo
LDR R6,[R1,#12]:CMP R6,#0:BLE no% ;if not then exit routin
STR R6,[R1]:STR R0,[R1,#4]:SWI&600CE ;get icon dat
LDR R0,[R1,#24]:MOV R2,#(1<<8) ;and check to see if th
ADD R2,R2,#1:AND R0,R0,R2 ;text is re-directed or no
CMP R0,R2:LDREQ R5,[R1,#28
ADDNE R5,R1,#28 ;set up R5 to point to text (if any
ORR R1,R1,#1:STR R6,[R1]:SWI&600CC ;get window dat
LDR R0,[R1,#59]:MOV R2,#(1<<8
ADD R2,R2,#1 ;check to see if title is re-directe
AND R0,R0,R2:CMP R0,R2:LDREQ R4,[R1,#75
ADDNE R4,R1,#75 ;or not. Set up R4 to point to titl
LDRB R3,[R4]:ORR R3,R3,#9
CMP R3,#ASC(“p”):BNE printic% ;check title of windo
LDRB R3,[R4,#1]:CMP R3,#ASC(“r”
BNE printic% ;if it is not the wor
LDRB R3,[R4,#2]:CMP R3,#ASC(“i”
BNE printic% ;Print or prin
LDRB R3,[R4,#3]:CMP R3,#ASC(“n”
BNE printic% ;then go and check th
LDRB R3,[R4,#4]:CMP R3,#ASC(“t”
BNE printic% ;text in the ico
LDRB R3,[R4,#5]:CMP R3,#3
BGT printic% ;that was clicked o
.ok
LDRB R3,[R5]:CMP R3,#ASC(“O”
BNE printic% ;check if the text in ico
LDRB R3,[R5,#1]:ORR R3,R3,#9
CMP R3,#ASC(“k”):BEQ intercept% ;is Ok or OK if so then correc
.printic
LDRB R3,[R5]:CMP R3,#ASC(“P”
BNE no% ;if text not Ok or OK the
LDRB R3,[R5,#1]:CMP R3,#ASC(“r”
BNE no% ;check if text is Prin
LDRB R3,[R5,#2]:CMP R3,#ASC(“i”
BNE no% ;if not then this cannot b
LDRB R3,[R5,#3]:CMP R3,#ASC(“n”
BNE no% ;a print window and print ico
LDRB R3,[R5,#4]:CMP R3,#ASC(“t”
BNE no% ;so not correc
LDRB R3,[R5,#5]:CMP R3,#32:BGT no% ;(might be the word Printer etc.
;the next 3 lines of code does the required interceptin
;of event and makes the blee
.intercept
MVN R0,#0 ;make R0 = -
STR R0,[R12] ;store value at start of workspac
SWI 256+7 ;make the bee
.no
LDMFD R13!,{r0-r6 ,R14} ;return all Registers tric
.exit
LDR R0,[R12] ;R0 now contains required event cod
MOVS PC,R14 ;return to applicatio
You will have noticed I have not mentioned the Menu selection event. Menus are quite similar to windows and icons at this level. When the menu selection event is about to occur using the SWI Wimp_GetPointerInfo returns the Menu handle and the icon handle of the selected menu option. So the same code can be used as the mouse click event.
Special Features
All the above requires the use of several Wimp SWI's. This means the return address in R14 needs to be saved on the stack before calling any SWI's. The module also sets up two star commands called prtfilteron and prtfilteroff.
These call the modules initialise and finalise routines, checking if the module is active or not, and then re-registering or de-registering the filter.
Thats it for this part. I hope the module is useful. You can of course try out some ideas of your own. Make a beep when the pointer is leaving a window, or making the iconbar menu appear when the pointer moves on to the respective tasks iconbar icon.
Next time I will extend the ideas of interception in RISC OS with vectored routines.
Brian Pickard
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/OMEGA/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, MicroDigital Omega Press Day
MicroDigital Omega Press Day
Aaron Timbrell was there....
On the 18th of July, at the Victoria Hotel in Bradford
The meeting kicked off with David Atkins explaining his "Spectrum" development program. Despite what you might think this has nothing to do with old Sinclair computers but to do with the proposed MicroDigital product range. The "Spectrum" ranges from yellow at the bottom, through green, to blue at the top. The Omega is the green machine in the middle of the range.
David Atkins from MicroDigital
The MicroDigital "Spectrum"
David Atkins then spent some time explaining the differences between the proposed machines. Firstly the yellow machine, this is basically a cut down Omega with a slightly cut down spec as follows:
300Mhz SA110 processo
DDR 266Mhz RA
32 bit data bu
100 Mbit etherne
2 USB interface
ATA 100 hard disc interfac
Single chip lightning graphic
The proposed machine would also come with 2 serial ports, but no PCI expansion slots or Parallel, keyboard or PS2 interfaces. Although this board could power a desktop computer, using a USB keyboard and mouse, this isn't what Microdigital have designed it for. Instead the board is aimed at computer control applications. David was able to demonstrate a prototype control simulation application designed for schools. My personal view is that the board isn't really aimed at schools, but at the more lucrative commercial computer control markets. RISC OS would be ideal for this as it starts very quickly and doesn't need a potentially fragile hard disc to store programs.
David Atkins then went on to describe the top of the colour spectrum, the blue machine. This has a spec above that of the current Omega:
Dual SA110 and XScale processor
64Bit data bu
Super high resolution Lightning Graphic
ArmTwister technolog
ATA 133 hard disc interfac
PCI V 2.3 Expansio
1 Million gate Xilinx Virtex 2 FPG
This board has apparently already been designed for a Japanese company that produces medical devices. David Atkins explained that one of the board's first jobs would be to assemble 3D images from 2D slice scans produced by medical scanners. He was also able to confirm that RISC OS would be used as the OS of choice.
The Omega
Why is the Omega "Late"
David then moved onto to the reason we had really trekked all the way up to Bradford, the Omega. The first question related to why the Omega had been announced at RISC OS 2000, but still hasn't shipped yet. The answer was simple; getting the large FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) chips to perform to their published specification. The FPGA chips are the heart of the Omega, as they allow RISC OS to think it's seeing VIDC20 and MEMC chips, as found in the current generations of RISC OS machines. The FPGA chips allow massively increased performance, but look just like Acorn's chip designs to RISC OS. Another advantage of FPGA chips is that they can be reprogrammed easily, even by the customer! Most of the Omega chipset ca
be reprogrammed with the exception of the SA110, XScale and Southbridge chip. This means that a user of an Omega could simpl
download a program from the MicroDigital website, which would re-program the hardware and speed up the performance of the computer. For example it is quite likely that the first batch of Omegas will ship without the Lightning Graphics hardware acceleration enabled, the hardware will be on the motherboard, but it won't be activated. Once the drivers have been completed a user will be able to just download the firmware update, run it, and hey presto the hardware acceleration will be turned on. For those that think this sounds a bit fanciful let me assure you it isn't. I recently had to upgrade the firmware in our home DVD player. I simply went to the manufacturers website
So what is the Omega like?
The first question must be is it stable? The answer is yes. An Omega was used for all the presentations throughout the talk given by David Atkins and it didn't show the slightest sign of instability. The prototype on display was in the finished case design, but lacked some of the drivers for the floppy and CD-ROM drives. Also the prototype machine had to be "kick started" from a PC in order to get it to start loading RISC OS. David Atkins did say that all production Omegas would be coming with a free PC to start them up. Then had to explain that this was a joke to a couple of those present. All production machines will come with RISC OS on ROM and will turn on the same as any other RISC OS machine.
Once started the normal RISC OS desktop appeared, the whole presentation was done in 1024 x 768 pixels (the maximum resolution of the projector) with 24 bit colour at 80Hz, although the Lighting chip was shown going as high as 1600 x 1200 in 24 bit colour at 75Hz. A wide range of RISC OS software was demonstrated during the talk, including Artworks, Impression Publisher, Easiwriter, TEK 1608 and Vantage. All seem to run very well on the new machine. A few quick speed demos were tried using Draw. Having re-created these on my 287 Mhz StrongARM machine I think the Omega, even with hardware acceleration switched off, still feels 3 times the speed of my old RISC PC.
A bad photo of the Omega desktop
The Omega will be shipping with a software bundle consisting of DrawWorks, Ovation and a number of other packages. I was also able to have a quick chat with a couple of developers who are working on Omega specific versions of some of their products, but I can't spill the beans at this point, and I am not allowed to publish the screen shots I have either.
The X-Scale and ArmTwister
The first Omegas will come with the SA110 soldered to the motherboard and a socket for the X-Scale add-on card. This will be available later at a projected price of around £149. Having installed the X-Scale processor a user would then have to run the program to enable the ArmTwister technology that allows both processors to work at the same time. Simply put ArmTwister allows the X-Scale, which is a 32bit only processor, to run a 26 bit operating system (such as current versions of RISC OS) and 26 bit applications with the help of the SA110. David Atkins would not be drawn on how ArmTwister works but one can make a semi educated guess. My assumption, which may be wrong, is that as each block of instructions is fetched into the processors cache it is examined for 26 bit only instructions. If the block does not contain any it is shunted into the X-Scales instruction cache. If it does contain 26 bit code then it is shunted into the SA110 processor cache. Since the SA110 can run both 26 and 32 bit code it does not matter if there is a mixture of 26 and 32 bit code in the same block. This would have a massive advantage over current machines. As more and more code gets converted to 32 bit, more and more will be running on the X-Scale, and the Omega will get faster and faster. Some quick "back of a fag packet calculation" indicated that in a couple of years time an Omega could be running 3 to 4 times its current speed, having only had an X-Scale and some downloads from the website added. So if my impressions are correct and the Omega is already 3 times faster than a RISC PC, in a couple of years it could be 12 times faster!
Looks Like ArmTwister to me!
The Omega benefits from a number of other improvements; the hard disc interface will be capable of running at over 40 Mb a second, it can handle over 1 Gb of RAM, it can have a proper PC card added and can take advantage of lost of cheap PCI expansion cards once the drivers have been completed. MicroDigital are already working on drivers for Sound cards, Ethernet cards and SCSI. The Omega also has USB interfaces that are compatible with those designed by Simtec.
So when is it coming?
Soon. Not a good answer but the only one we could get, David Atkins would not be drawn on a release date. However he was able to say that the hardware was finalised, and it was purely down the the length of time it would take to complete the remaining drivers. However I have now seen and used an Omega and I am convinced. In my opinion it is the best RISC OS machine ever designed. It's fast, small and, considering the prices of the "alternatives", cheap. Not only that but its easy to expand it, the flexible design means that its design can be "upgraded" just by downloading and running a bit of software. At RISC World we like it a great deal, and judging by the response from others in the room so does everyone else. Indeed I cannot think that I have ever seen Paul Middleton from RISC OS Ltd look so happy. He can see the future of desktop RISC OS computers, and so can I.
Aaron Timbrell
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/PD/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, PD World
PD World
Paul Brett with the latest PD and freeware roundup.
As is often the case the warmer summer weather (what!!!! - ED) slows down the development and release of PD, Shareware and Freeware software, so this issue we have a sightly smaller PD column than usual. Still we do have a new announcement to make at the start so without further lets continue.
RISCWorld - Highly Recommended
From now in the PD column you may well come across a new logo next to a product name. Its the RISCWorld Highly Recommended logo and it looks like this:
We are going to award this to any product, hardware, commercial software, shareware, PD or freeware that we think is exceptionally good. If you see this logo next to a product then you be assured that we have tried it, and we like it a lot. I cannot take the credit for this idea as it was proposed by Andrew Harmsworth after finding a particular piece of software that he just could not do without. There may not be a logo awarded every issue, or indeed there may be several in each issue, we will have to see. Now let us carry on with the latest software releases.
CamPins - Stuart Halliday
We featured this back in RISC World Volume 2 Issue 6, but since then it has had an upgrade or two. For those who don't remember, CamPins works if you double click on one of the TaskObey script files in the CamPins directory. Your computer then tries to download an image from a site on the Internet and then places this image onto your Pinboard as a Sprite. Some of these scripts grab an image from a webcam site. Some of these scripts grab an html page first and then download an image referred to by that page. CamPins uses ChangeFSI to convert any images it finds into RISC OS sprites. You will need to follow the instructions supplied inside the CamPins archive to install the software.
FadeBack - Richard Goodwin
I am sure that everyone has seen and admired the new graduated backdrop feature in RISC OS Select. Now you can have a much improved version on any version of RISC OS courtesy of Richard Goodwin. This allows you to produce all sort of wonderful coloured backdrops easily and quickly using the comprehensive built in features. I have to confess that I got somewhat distracted by Fadeback and spent rather a long time playing with all the options. In my opinion this is one of the most interesting releases this year.
Locate - Stephen Fryatt
Locate is a file find utility for RISC OS. It will search a specified directory for files that match a set of conditions. These conditions include the filename (including wildcards), file size, modification date and filetype. Locate is loosely based on similar utilities available on other platforms: particularly File Find on Windows. Locate requires RISC OS 3.1 or later. It can be run off a hard disc or floppy disc. To install Locate on a hard disc, copy the !Locate application to a suitable directory. Under RISC OS Select, Locate will act as a Filer plugin for Find by default. See the Filer Action Plugin section for details of how to disable this feature.
Mod Check - Owen Griffin
A very simple program, but one that is exceptionally useful. ModCheck will examine your !System directory hunting out all the modules that make up RISC OS. It can then tell you which modules need to be updated. Running this on one of my RISC PCs produced rather a shock as I had thought it was all up to date!
ViNCe - Vincent Lefevre
The latest version of the VNC client originally ported by Henrik Bjerregaard Pedersen. ViNCe gives RISC OS users a remote desktop facility, so you can control (and view) the desktop of one machine from another. This new version has a number of bug fixes as well as improved support for the ViewFinder card.
That's it from me for this issue, as usual if you have any PD, Freeware or Shareware applications you would like featured why not get in touch with the
Paul Brett
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/PHANTASM/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, Phantasm - the manual
Introduction
Phantasm is a unique colour control addition to ArtWorks. It enables the named colour system, a part of ArtWorks, to deliver to the artist a new level of control. Features like lightness adjustment, contrast and saturation were previously only available using professional non-Acorn vector and painting (bitmap) programs. However, it is the special features of shifting colours and converting colours to monochrome that provide a method of painlessly generating effects such as transparencies. In addition there is the ability to create new colours using various methods.
This manual assumes a working knowledge of both RISC OS and ArtWorks. We recommend you read the instructions for any add-on modules before installing them.
The operating principle
Phantasm can work externally to ArtWorks because it can import and export colour tables from any ArtWorks picture. It was created as a stand-alone application rather than following the conventional module add-on method so that it could provide a large number of options and features that would otherwise not fit within the standard ArtWorks tool bars. An additional advantage is that Phantasm can produce a sequence of colour manipulation operations much faster than any built-in module as ArtWorks does not have to render each stage, only the final result.
The way to export colour tables from ArtWorks is to bring up the main window menu, following File, through Export to Colour table. Drag the table file onto the Phantasm main window to commence editing.
System requirements
Whilst Phantasm will run on any RISC OS 3.1 or later machine we recommend that for any serious usage you have at least 4Mb of RAM and a hard disc.
Installing Phantasm
Phantasm is ready to use on any RISC OS 3.1 or higher machine. It can be copied onto your hard drive from the supplied disc. No further action is required.
Phantasm may be used on a floppy disc only system, just copy the program from the distribution disc onto another Acorn formatted disc. This disc must remain writable. Note that neither APDL nor ProAction guarantee the suitability of this program when used in this way, we recommend you use Phantasm with ArtWorks installed on a hard disc.
Phantasm’s Layout
After the Phantasm intro window clears the program icon will appear on the icon bar. From here click Select to open the main window.
The main window is split up into three distinct segments; Mode selection, Function and Save. The Function segment is mode-sensitive and will change according to the required colour creation or alteration mode. Upon loading only the Create new colour table option is available as no existing colour table has been imported ready for modification.
Colour Creation Mode
The default setting lets you create new colour tables ready for exporting to any ArtWorks drawing window. The new colours may then be utilized within the drawing which can be edited and saved as normal. For Phantasm to let you create new colours, the Function window displays the three options;
Interpolate colours
By choosing Interpolate colours (default upon loading) it is possible to generate various types of colour interpolations. The types can be chosen by clicking on the Palette... button which brings up the following window;.
Phantasm lets you automatically create a table of interpolated colours between either two or three user-selectable colours. The start, middle or end colours may either be chosen from the standard ArtWorks palette, or by individually selecting new colours through the colour picker. The number of stages between these colours may also be stated so that you may determine the amount of change in colour between each step.
Interpolation between three colours
If any of the start, middle or end colours are present in the standard ArtWorks palette then it is possible to select these by clicking on any of the stated colours (by default, Blue, Green and Red) and their sample squares which will open an ArtWorks-like named colour menu. When this menu is displayed (note that the option none is only available with the Start colour) you can select the desired colour as with ArtWorks. This colour is then displayed in the main Interpolation window.
However, it is also possible to select non-standard colours using the Pick... button. This opens a colour picker window from which you can select any 24-bit colour using either RGB, CMYK or HSV. To help with the selection, the main display area will show an accurate view of your choices and how they would appear in sequence.
Once you have selected all three colours it is possible to alter the number of interpolations using the number input box. The number entered is the total number of resultant interpolated colours including the start, middle and end colours.
The final choice available for a three colour interpolation is whether you wish to have a linear or non-linear transition. Linear is the default and gives a constant percentage colour change between the colours. Non-linear interpolations provide cylinder-wall effect shading where the percentage change in colour increases towards the start and end colours away from the middle one.
When satisfied with the settings click on OK to fix them and close the interpolation window. Now click on Apply changes at the bottom of Phantasm"s main window.
To use these interpolated colours drag the colour table (the text icon above Apply changes) directly to Artworks. Alternatively they can be saved to disc for use later. When using ArtWorks with the new colour table dropped onto its drawing window it is possible to select any of the interpolated colours in the normal manner. Interpolation between two colours It is possible to use the interpolation facility in the same way described for three colours to generate a two colour variety. All features, such as being able to select the middle and end colours, entering the total number of interpolations and specifying whether the transition is linear or not remain. However, in order to use two colours, select none for the start colour (through either the named colour menu or the standard colour picker). This forces the start colour to be boxed out.
Generating interpolation tints
The best example of an interpolation tint is Black and its ten shades found in the standard ArtWorks colour table. As Black (Key) is one of the standard four colour separations, and therefore effectively a spot colour, its associated tints (x% Black) are all true shades of a spot colour. This is very important for printing purposes (see the literature accompanying ArtWorks for greater knowledge on the printing process), but is not restricted to just Black (Key).
When on a tight printing budget it may be best to opt for only one, two or three printing separations and not all four standard varieties (CMYK). It is also possible to specify a particular colour (for example, a corporate image) as one of the spot colours so that a true colour reproduction may be assured. However, it would then be possible to create a sequence of shades of that particular colour by using Phantasm"s interpolation tint option. Acorn"s green logo is such an example.
The one major restriction of ArtWorks is that it is not possible to create true separations using tints interpolated between two spot colours, even though the printing process would easily accommodate it. Therefore all tints of a colour, based on process or spot, have to graduate from the base colour (denoted as the end colour in Phantasm"s interpolation menu) to no colour — ie. white.
By selecting Create tint in the interpolation menu both the start and middle colour options are greyed out. Phantasm will automatically specify the middle colour as white and leave you to select the end colour. This is the colour all tints will remain proportional to, even when used within ArtWorks.
There are three further options left; the number of interpolations and linearity (both discussed earlier) and the new option of forcing the base (end) colour as being a spot colour. By selecting this you will be specifying a new separation in the printing process, so both a basic knowledge of the professional printing process as well as caution are required if you elect to print any artwork using a bureau or similar. (Note that such matters do not concern desktop printers.) By clicking OK in the interpolation window as well as Apply Changes in the main Phantasm save window, the tints are ready to be exported directly to ArtWorks, or saved to the filer. Note that Phantasm will save the interpolated colours in the table as true tints regardless of any Save settings, described later.
Creation of a “Full range palette”
In the colour table creation mode area found of Phantasm"s main function window is the option of creating a Full range palette. What this does is to create the greatest variation of hues when both saturation and value levels are at 100%. The result is a user-specified amount (the number of which is entered in the input box) of rainbow colours. Any shade may be generated from these colours by performing either a radial or linear fill from any of the generated colours to either black or white (effectively altering the saturation and value amounts).
By selecting this option and entering the required amount of colours, you may click on Apply changes to generate the table which is then ready for exporting or saving.
Generating random colours
For those indecisive moments...
When this option is selected and the number of colours entered, in an identical manner to creating a Full range palette, then the resultant colour table will contain a user-specified amount of random colours.
Colour Alteration Mode
Arguably the most useful aspect of Phantasm is its ability to alter existing colour tables used by ArtWorks drawings. The process used is to export the ArtWorks colour table to Phantasm as illustrated below;.
Once the ColTable file has been dragged from ArtWorks" Export Colour table menu onto Phantasm"s target area (denoted by the white down-facing arrow), Phantasm will automatically alter its operation mode to Alter imported table. In doing so, the Function window will change as shown below The Function window is operation-sensitive, so by default the window will display the ability to Shift to colour. Note that the lower part of the Function window is always reserved for the Ignore facility regardless of operation. This is discussed later Six operation modes are available to suit the type of colour table modification required. These are;.
Shift to colou
Convert to monochrom
Adjust lightnes
Adjust contras
Adjust saturatio
Miscellaneou
Each operation mode alters the Function window is some way to suit the user control. In order to enable each operation mode, you have to click on the pop-up menu button to the right of the text "Shift to colour" which will result in a menu stating all available operation modes. By clicking on your operation mode choice, you may begin to edit the imported colour table accordingly.
Shift to colour
The theory of Shift to colour is very simple but it can create some unique effects, such as transparencies.
If this function is applied to an existing colour table at 100% strength (selected either by sliding the blue bar, or entering the value in the input box), then all colours in the table become the same as the selected destination colour in the Function window (by default, Black). However, there are very few cases where a 100% shift is required, so a more moderate percentage is usually chosen which would result in all colours shifting x% from its original state to the chosen destination colour.
This is the principle of transparencies. The diagram to the right shows an object (Block) viewed through a sheet of Material X from Viewpoint. The link between the operation Shift to colour and Material X is that the percentage opacity of Material X is equivalent to the percentage in Phantasm"s window.
In the diagram above square A, which is of colour A, (the colour to be altered in the imported colour table) has a filter, B, partially obscuring it. The filter"s natural colour is B (the selected colour when using Shift to colour), which is defined by its colour when the filter loses all transparency. The intersection, C, is then of the colour A shifted to colour B by the level of opacity of the filter B, the percentage selected in the Function window Shift to colour.
To use Shift to colour, first select the colour you wish to shift the imported named colours to. For example, if you wish to create a glass-transparency effect, then you would either ensure that the colour name Glass is created using ArtWorks (try 35% Cyan, 5% Magenta, 0% Yellow and 10% Key) and therefore exported along with all other named colours so that it may be selected by select-clicking on the colour square and name, or by picking the colour by select-clicking in the Pick... button.
Once the colour is chosen, determine the percentage shift by using either the blue slider bar or the input box, then click on Apply changes at the bottom of the main Phantasm window. The colour table is then ready to be exported or saved to filer.
To create transparency effects, please read the Techniques section.
Convert to monochrome
This is identical in layout to Shift to colour and very similar in principle to it. If 100% percentage shift were to be selected with this operation the result would be that all named colours would end up as percentage colours (like tints) of the selected monochrome colour. For example, if 10% Black were to be converted 100% towards Brown (to emulate old photographs), then the result would be that it would alter to 10% Brown. Likewise Black converted in the same way would become the colour Brown.
Uses for this are, for example, to create old-style photographs and to create true Black-and-White drawings which are more suitable for generating better results from monochrome printers.
Adjust lightness
When this is elected Function window alters as shown. The main differences from the previous modes are that there is no colour to select and that percentages can be either positive or negative.
Adjust lightness is a very simple tool. By lightening the named colours by a positive amount the picture becomes brighter; a negative amount darkens it.
The two methods of determining the percentage adjustment are as before; either by dragging the slider or entering a value.
To reset the value to zero click on the centre triangle or the number zero below it. To increase or decrease the value by 5% steps click in the (+) and (-) buttons at the extremes of the blue slider.
Once the value has been set click on Apply changes at the bottom of Phantasm"s main window. Export or save as usual in order to use the modified colour table.
Adjust contrast
Adjust contrast is identical in appearance to Adjust lightness and just differs in the results it produces.
Note that certain colours and drawings are more susceptible to a positive function in this operation than others as certain colours can"t increase/decrease at all in terms of contrast (eg. Black).
Adjust saturation
The principle of this mode is that all named colours are internally converted to the HSV (Hue, Saturation and Value) colour model. Adjust saturation alters the percentage saturation within this colour model for each colour. The saturation is how "deep" the colour appears to be. The percentage adjustment is the multiplying percentage shift for each Hue value, not an addition to each value.
As with Adjust contrast, the effectiveness of this depends upon how much saturation each colour already possesses. If you were to adjust the standard ArtWorks palette colour Red (which converted to HSV values is 0° Hue, 100% Saturation and 100% Value), by +100%, there would be no effect as the colour already has 100% saturation. However, if the percentage adjustment were -100%, then the colour Red would become white. Experimentation with this operation mode is recommended.
Miscellaneous
The final operation mode presents two options without any levels or colours to be selected. The first, Invert image colours, is just an absolute operation that inverts all named colours by 100%. To make this effective to the imported colour table, ensure this option is selected, then Apply changes.
The second, Revert to original colours, is very useful as ArtWorks doesn"t recognise imported colour tables in its undo facility. Therefore it is strongly suggested that the ArtWorks file is saved before its colour table is exported, altered in Phantasm, then placed back in the drawing. However, this facility can be used as a last resort.
Ignore (mask) colours and separations
Each of the six colour table alteration modes have the ability to ignore certain named colours simultaneously with any combination of the four separations, Cyan Magenta, Yellow and Key. This adds great versatility to Phantasm.
By default Phantasm does not ignore any colours or separations as the Ignore box is unticked. However, as soon as a colour or separation is selected, the box becomes ticked and the ignore facility is operative.
To select a named colour (or combination of named colours) to be ignored when the table is being altered, click on the colours button next to Ignore A menu will appear (the list of named colours depends on the colour table imported). At the top is a set of five quick-select options for selecting groups of named colours. 'Ignore none' is equivalent to deselecting all.
Below the dividing line is the list of imported named colours. Note that all tints are greyed out as they always remain relative to a specific colour. By selecting the colour on which tints are based, you will also be selecting all associated tints.
Click on a single colour or option to select it. The menu will disappear and this colour will then be ignored throughout any alterations.
To select a number of colours or quick-select options, use the Adjust mouse button to select or deselect individual colours. The menu will remain on screen and the ignored colours will be ticked.
The reason for the item Ignore all @ colours is that if you draw an ArtWorks picture with Phantasm in mind, you may wish to keep a number of colours free from any alteration. If this is the case, then name these colours (or re-name them) with an "@" symbol at the start. Then you may choose to ignore all these colours with a single mouse click.
Ignoring separations is similar to ignoring colours, except the menu always displays the same four colours (CMYK) and there are only two quick-select options..
It is possible to eliminate certain separations (by ensuring they are not ignored, then shifting all colours to White by 100%) or single-out a particular separation. Ignoring separations may be used simultaneously with ignoring named colours.
Palette Display
It is possible to view effects, both when creating and altering, without having to export the colour table back to ArtWorks. Click on Show palette near the bottom of Phantasm"s main menu. A window similar to the one on the below will appear.
Not only will this display be constantly updated as you make any alterations but it also shows the specification. These are in the form of one or two letters before the colour square. The first of these may be either;
R — RGB colour model
C — CMYK colour model
H — HSV colour model
T — Tint
The second letter applies to all colour models other than Tints.
P — Process colour
S — Spot colour
Please refer to the ArtWorks documentation for full descriptions of each if in doubt.
Detailed colour information
It is possible to obtain more accurate and detailed information by clicking Menu over any of the named colours displayed in the palette window. The type of window that appears depends on the colour type (RGB, CMYK, HSV or Tint).
The two types of colour info windows are shown.
Information is shown such as colour composition, colour model, modification status and, if a tint, all associated tints.
Save Options
The Save options window is opened either by clicking on Save towards the bottom of the main Phantasm menu, or by clicking on the menu entry on the icon bar.
The options available in this window will probably determine the quality of the result from Phantasm and in some cases should be used with caution.
Whatever settings you choose they may be made effective just for the current session by just clicking on OK or made permanent, to be brought up in the next session, by clicking on Save settings.
Save only new/modified colours will ensure that Phantasm saves/exports the colour table only with modified or newly created colours.
Replace original colours should normally be set as it tells Phantasm to append an exported colour table originated from ArtWorks. This in turn means that all colours will be updated with any alterations.
Strip standard colours from file is useful when collating ArtWorks palettes that may be useful for future pictures. It eliminates the standard ArtWorks palette of Black and its 10% interval tints, White, Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. This ensures that any palette dropped on an existing drawing will not interfere with the standard palette already in use.
Convert all colours to... (RGB, CMYK or HSV) will ensure that Phantasm saves/exports all colours in the chosen colour model. If this and Save only new/mod. colours as..., are unticked Phantasm will save any new or modified colours in the model that is most convenient for it internally, which may not be the best for the artist. Note that it is best to ensure that an ArtWorks picture is of one colour model to enable blends and other features to operate properly.
Phantasm operates a full Grey Component Replacement function to get the best results from four separation printing processes. Please refer to the ArtWorks Commercial Printing Guide for more information about this specialised area. However, this implies that if this option is set ticked and CMYK is selected (recommended), the output should be optimised for printing.
Save only new/modified colours as... (RGB, CMYK, HSV) will toggle Convert all colours to... off — if on prior to selection of this option. By ticking this, you are ensuring that Phantasm keeps all imported colours in their original colour model and only effects the created or modified colours.
Convert all colours to process ensures that all Spot colours are eliminated. This might be a good idea when checking a drawing for a commercial printing process. If it is not set and certain additional colours were set as Spot, then theoretically the printing cost could soar as you would be requesting more separations.
Convert all colours to spot should be used with extreme caution for the reasons outlined above. This option is only useful when dealing with a very small number of colours which were created specifically to be spot colours. Please read the ArtWorks literature for a greater understanding of Spot colours before use.
Convert all tints was added to Phantasm"s features to give further control to the user. In certain operations involving altering colour tables this is the only way to ensure correct function alteration. Phantasm will convert all tints to process colours (apart from the tints created in the interpolation window). However, this process is not easily reversed. The advantage of maintaining tints is that if spot colours are used, true tints remain as the drawing structure would have originally dictated. Also note that some alteration functions automatically convert tints, such as Invert.
Miscellaneous
Reset
It may be necessary at some stage through a single session with Phantasm to reset the application. This can be done by an entry on the icon bar menu and will result in the application returning to loaded state regarding the colour tables. It saves on having to quit and re-load Phantasm in order to start a-fresh.
Help features
There are three main help features with Phantasm, excluding this manual;
Acorn"s !Help application (supplied with each RISC OS machine). Please refer to Acorn literature regarding this application
!Help file held within the Phantasm"s application directory. This may be accessed by either using the filer help facility or by clicking on Help file found at the top of Phantasm"s main menu. It contains the latest additions/alterations to Phantasm
Quit
Phantasm may be Quit by the normal manner from the icon bar menu.
Info
Phantasm"s version number is displayed by following Info on the icon bar menu.
Techniques
Phantasm is a very versatile application and may add much potential to your copy of ArtWorks. However, in order to harness this potential it is necessary to grow accustomed to some techniques used to create artwork effectively and efficiently.
Creating appropriate colours
Phantasm will operate perfectly with all existing ArtWorks files although it may be advisable to stick to a few guidelines to accelerate any colour adjustment work. The major consideration is to name colours meaningfully, not just using New colour x. The next step is to use the colours as their name dictates. So, for example, if you create a colour called Sea Blue and use it as the basis of creating a view of the sea, try not to use the same colour for the sky. In doing so you not only have to use Phantasm to adjust a scene"s colours, but also cut and paste objects/groups to the clipboard only to shuffle such items between ArtWorks sheets.
Always try to operate in one colour model, RGB, CMYK or HSV when using ArtWorks. You may find that HSV is the easiest system to select a colour and this is reflected in the title given to it of "The Artist"s Palette". The reason for this is not anything to do with Phantasm"s functionality, but with the way ArtWorks handles colour. This is shown in operations like blends where if a blend starts with an object filled with a colour of model A and finishes with an object filled with colour of model B, the results are not always good. Refer to ArtWorks literature for more information.
Make use of the "@" colour facility. You will often find it necessary to isolate a component of the drawing. This can easily be done for objects in ArtWorks where components may be grouped, but is not possible for named colours as they are not affected by groupings. If you know in advance that an intricate border should not be effected by Phantasm, name all colours involved as @ Border <colour>. Then if there are a number of colours used solely by the border, you are able to ignore them easily.
Example one
In this example the principle of naming colours appropriately will be demonstrated.
Load the ArtWorks file Example1a (above) into ArtWorks. This picture shows a strange ring tube with two spheres at the top and a skewed rectangular base constituting a frame around a cube with some text and a astro-belt effect disc.
The intention is to alter the centre cube, the text and astro-belt so they are converted to a red and white monochrome effect, whilst leaving the frame components intact.
When drawing this picture, the two major groups were given distinct colour names and were never interchanged, as below
To obtain the colour alteration visible in the file Example1b, take the following steps; .
Load Phantasm
Export the colour table of file Example1a directly onto Phantasm"s target import area
Alter the Function window operation mode to Convert to monochrome
Select the colour Red from the named colour menu
Specify a shift in percentage of 100% by sliding the blue bar all the way to the right
Click on the colours ignore button and select Ignore all @ colours. (Notice that the Ignore tick box is automatically ticked.
Click on the main menu Apply changes button
Drag the colour table directly to the ArtWorks window displaying Example1a from where the colour table originated
The result should be identical to the file Example1b.
Example two
Demonstrating the principle in example one with a bit more realism, apply all the stages in example one to the file Example2, except instead of ignoring just the "@" colours, also choose to ignore all standard colours.
Please note that the classic ArtWorks Apple4 file (which was the basis of the file Example2) has had its colour names modified so that this process may be applied with greater ease. However it is possible to apply this effect to the standard file that was supplied with all copies of ArtWorks. Simply ungroup the drawing and select the apple body leaving the stalk, leaf and background behind. Group this selection and cut to clipboard. Paste this onto a new ArtWorks sheet and apply the Convert to monochrome (towards Red) process to the new drawing that just contains the apple body, ignoring the standard colours. Copy the result to the clipboard and paste and position the red apple back into the original file.
Cutting and pasting
The standard practice of cutting and pasting sections of drawings between sheets in ArtWorks is essential in order to colour manipulate images successfully. Basically, the principle was displayed with Example two, where in order to target a certain component of a drawing for isolated colour manipulation, it was copied to the clipboard and then pasted and modified on another sheet. By doing this you are also eliminating the need to carefully select colours to ignore, which is practical when dealing with drawings whose named colour use is not ideally suited to Phantasm"s Ignore facility.
By altering the colours on a separate sheet then copying and pasting back to the original drawing any modified colours are appended to the original drawing rather than replacing the existing ones. The two real problems with this are that; .
1If you carry out a number of such operation, each with several named colours, then the resultant file will have a large total number of colours which hinders selection (although there are no problems printing or editing).
2Positioning the artwork back in its correct position can be tricky. The best solution is to maintain the original object, then, when a modified replica is pasted back, use ArtWorks Alignment facility to exactly position the object.
Once an ArtWorks drawing has had a number of colour tables added to its list either by pasting a selection with a new set of colours or by importing a colour table it is very time-consuming to remove them individually. With a highly modified drawing it may be best to periodically copy and paste the whole drawing to a new sheet. This will remove all unused colours, but also eliminates any of layers unless each one is copied and pasted individually. Also, page sizes, colour etc. all have to be re-set.
The method of copying selections to the clipboard then pasting on another sheet is utilized in order to generate transparency effects.
Example three
Requires MW Software"s ArtWorks Intersect module for practical use.
Please contact APDL or view the MW Software website www.mwsoftware.com.
Creating transparency effects has eluded ArtWorks users since its launch. However, though Phantasm doesn"t allow ArtWorks to render these effects properly, it is able to give the appearance of being able to do so. The results remain in vector format yet look and print identically to true transparency-enabled software.
The theory of creating this effect was described earlier in Shift to colour but the following explains how to translate this into ArtWorks-specific use. By combining the features of the Intersect module and the ArtWorks clipboard it is possible to create effects as in the file Example3. To replicate this take the following steps; .
1Create the object to be seen through the lens, in this case a cone-shaded object constructed using radial fills and blends. In this example it was given a white start colour and a suitably named end colour. Group the objects.
2Draw the to-be-transparent shape and place over the original object. Note that the Intersect module limits this type of shape. Try to keep the number of bezier curves to a minimum. Colour the shape with a meaningfully-named colour, in this case Lense. This will be the absolute colour of the to-be-transparent object. This brings you to stage one in the file Example3. Save the drawing.
3Copy both items to clipboard and paste on to a new sheet. Select all and ensure that no objects have a line colour.
4Export this new drawing"s colour table to Phantasm and ensure that Shift to colour mode is selected.
5Choose the colour used to fill the to-be-transparent object as the colour to shift to .
6In this example, the opaqueness of the lense is 25%, so this value is set using either the slider or the input box.
7Apply changes and export back to the ArtWorks window from where the colour table originated. For correct results, it is advised that the Convert all tints option found within the Save options window is set. This should bring you to stage two in the file Example3.
8Ensure that the single path object, in this example the circular lense, is in front of the object group. Using the Intersect module Intersect with top (found in the Lines/Shapes ArtWorks sub-menu). Group the objects. This should bring you to stage three in the file Example3.
9Copy this intersected group to clipboard and paste in the original ArtWorks drawing window and position precisely over the illustration.
10If the original transparent shape had a line colour, clone it and set the cloned shape to a fill colour None. This will bring you to the final stage in Example3.
The final result in this simple example is technically accurate as well as being a true ArtWorks drawing that is backwards-compatible and printable.
Known Limitations
There are a number of limitations of ArtWorks which affect its use with Phantasm.
Unnamed colours
ArtWorks operates on the principle that all colours are named and accounted for on any colour-selection menu. This remains constant until a blend between two named colours is made into shapes, a task done by either using the Make shapes command, or by using Intersect on a blend. At this point, the new inbetween shapes are coloured correctly, but their colours are not listed in any menu. Therefore they are not exported in the colour table which renders then untouchable to Phantasm.
The reason for this is that ArtWorks renders blends "on-the-fly". This has many advantages, such much less memory usage, but it also means that Computer Concepts considered that when converted to individual shapes, part of the theory should continue in the form of keeping colour listings to a minimum even though they have to be held within ArtWorks somewhere in order to render them.
The solution to this problem is to take the approach as shown in Example3, which is to first perform the colour alteration, then make shapes. However, under certain circumstances this may be impossible, for example, the Make shapes command may have been performed first and the undo facility does not go back that far, or it was pasted onto the drawing in that state. Therefore, the only option is to export the shapes to Draw, then to re-import them. By doing this all colours will be present, usually entitled New colour x, but there will be a loss of quality as any graduated fills will also be converted into single colour shapes. The result of this may be a very large named colour list as well as a very large file size.
Original ArtWorks files
Before ArtWorks was released it was known as TopDraw. Many drawings, such as the MG Midget, were created using this pre-release version of ArtWorks. Some of these files have non-standard colours as they do not have any name, which is theoretically impossible with later versions. For Phantasm to work on these files, they first have to be copied/pasted to a new sheet. This will force all colours to have a name.
Linking Phantasm to ArtWorks
Phantasm was created as a stand-alone application as this gives benefits such as greater control over colour manipulation and more features.
The original intention was to link Phantasm to a specified ArtWorks window so that, if required, any alteration to an imported colour table could be rendered instantly. However, after much research it has been found that ArtWorks does not comply with RISC OS convention and can therefore not be linked successfully. .
ArtWorks Undo
ArtWorks" Undo doesn"t recognise a colour table which has been imported into the drawing. Therefore, when clicking on undo past the point when such a table was imported, ArtWorks will not be aware of the change in colours.
Sprites within ArtWorks drawings
Phantasm is not a bitmap colour manipulator. Any sprite file(s) within an ArtWorks drawing will not be modified unless it is a 256 colour grey-scale image in which case the screen.top colour will be adjusted as it is listed and exported in the colour table. To adjust such graphics files, use an application such as ChangeFSI (supplied with every Acorn computer) before dropping onto the ArtWorks window. Further ArtWorks Information ArtWorks has been around for many years, yet there are only a handful of resources available. Various individuals have attempted to change this by writing articles for RISC OS magazines and placing information onto the Internet.
Artworks Made Easy
APDL does have in stock a limited number of the Dabs Press book ArtWorks Made Easy. Please call on 020 8778 2659 or visit the APDL stand at a show - postage costs almost as much as the book.
RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/RISCST/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, Interview with Roy Heslop
Interview with Roy Heslop
An interview with Roy Heslop (MD of RISCStation Ltd) and Paul F Johnson conducted via email.
PFJ: Roy, how long have you been involved with the RISC OS market as either the boss at RiscStation or in any other guise?
From about 1988, as a retailer from 1992.
PFJ: In that time, what would you consider to be the most significant change to the RISC OS market?
Clearly the end of production of machines from Acorn.
PFJ: Why was the RiscStation's shipped with the ARM7500FE and not the StrongARMs? Surely with the Simtec design and the extras built in (such as the power management, network connection, sound sub system, ability to wake on LAN and other fun things), a StrongARM RiscStation would have left the old RiscPCs dead in the water?
The Riscstation's were built specifically to run RISC OS 4 and with their modern design motherboard actually perform many tasks faster than the old RPC design. The plan as many people know was to port RISC OS onto our SA prototype, which has been gathering dust for the last 2 & half years. Unfortunately, mainly as the unforeseen "Anti-British IT" stance from the current Government, we have been unable to attract the investment required to finish the project. It does make me wonder if anybody has actually calculated how many lives could have been saved by the NHS had the money Tony Blair has wasted on his mate Bill Gate's Company's products been spent more prudently than on "broken machines & software".
(Tony Blair can currently be found at the next opening of Bill Gates Fridge! (Providing the light comes on and the Press are there))
PFJ: How is ARM Linux coming along for the RiscStation range and can we expect to see a RiscStation CD release of it in the near future?
This is almost ready for release, and the answer is yes.
PFJ:When is the expected delivery date of the laptop?
There have been some minor setbacks, but everything is now flowing smoothly. We will be making a full announcement very soon, hopefully by the end of this coming week. Current expectation is as soon as possible.
PFJ: Will there be a working model at Wakefield?
Yes. (And indeed there was - ED)
PFJ: What has been the cause of this delay?
No major causes, other than the problems than can and do occur in a development cycle.
PFJ: How do you respond to the fair comment that RiscStation should have contacted all of those waiting for machines as soon as it became apparent that there would be a delay?
Yes, but an announcement that we would be making an announcement seemed somewhat futile.
PFJ: Why has nothing official come from RiscStation about this, instead of an authorised "leak"?
A bad move the way it was perceived, but since we did not fully know about the delay or how long the implications would be it would not make sense to make any full announcement until we know.
PFJ: What is the score on obtaining Select for RiscStation machines? Is it likely to appear in the near future?
This is all under development. So yes.
PFJ: How damaging has the announcements of the likes of the Evolution and Omega been on the sales of current desktop machines?
Almost Total, this appear to also include upgrades and the use of consumables, all of which support development. At present we are relying on PC users who buy consumables to support the RISC OS computer development.
PFJ: Where is RiscStation at with regards to the Evolution? It has been on your website for ages now without an update.
It still requires about 2 months work funding.
PFJ: How can users help the RISC OS market out of its current mire? Is it as simple as dumping their old Acorn machines and investing in one of the new RISC OS 4 machines or are there other ways if (for some reason) they can help out?
The former is obviously of great help. Without current sales how can there be new machines. Other issues also include a general lack of support, it would appear that a great number (of course not all users) would prefer to spend over the odds at places like Dixons, PC World, Viking etc rather than saving money by buying their goods from the likes of CTA Direct. It baffles me.
PFJ: As with all companies, you will have had a "masterplan" (or road map) for how RiscStation planned the future out. What was it?
Very simple sell approx. 1000 to 1200 R7500 machines in the first year (not very many really). On the back of proven sales obtain additional backing to finish the Evolution (Non RISC OS prototype already existed before we even shipped any R7500's), to launch the following year. Alongside this development would be the Portable (as was) for release at about the same time.
PFJ: Can you explain why the RiscStation website has not been updated in ages?
Actually, although the website wasn't update for a period earlier this year, it is now been updated on a regular basis.
PFJ: and why emails to RiscStation go unanswered (other than to the riscstation.software address) - surely it would be in the companies' interest to have both of these functioning properly?
I am not aware of any unanswered e-mails as these are answered on a bi-daily basis
The only exceptions are when large numbers of people are all asking the same questions, it's a matter of resources. Hence the mailing list.
PFJ: What software and hardware projects have you got on the back burner at present, which will probably, only appear when finances allow?
Current count is about 14; this includes numerous software projects targeting "required for market" items.
PFJ: Realistically, how long would these take to bring to market?
Again a question of man-hours, but some as little as a few weeks :-)
Conducted by Paul Johnson
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/ROL/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, Interview with Paul Middleton
Interview with Paul Middleton
Conducted by Paul Johnson
An interview with Paul Middleton (MD of RISC OS Ltd) and Paul F Johnson conducted via email just prior to the Wakefield show.
PFJ: Paul, how long have you been involved with the RISC OS market as either boss of RISCOS Ltd or any other guise?
PM: I have been involved with the RISC OS market since January 1990. i.e just over twelve years. I started Uniqueway with my brother Simon in April 1990, initially as an Acorn ISV. We first developed a Teletext subtitle preparation system, and then in 1991 we were invited to become Acorn Dealers for South Wales. We then worked with Acorn on the development of the Acorn Replay system and produced the high quality movies found on just about every CD that featured Replay movies. We were Xemplar Education agents for 2 years and then I became the leader of the team negotiating with Acorn from September 1998 onwards to take over development and marketing of RISC OS for the desktop market. Eventually this led to my becoming the MD of RISCOS Ltd in January 1999.
PFJ: In that time, what would you consider to be the most significant change to the RISC OS market?
PM: There have been a number of significant changes at various stages in Acorn's history.
Acorn had some very amazing engineers who, long before Apple used the phrase, definitely "Thought Differently." Acorn always had people with some great ideas, but more often than not they were unable to capitalise on those ideas, simply because it seemed they were restricted by Olivetti who controlled the purse strings. Acorn didn't seem to be able to focus on the commercially viable projects that would bring in revenue, rather than the Blue Sky projects that didn't.
The usual problem was that Acorn simply did not have the money to fully develop the ideas that they came up with into commercial products. That may seem a strange thing to say, but Acorn were not really a major player in the desktop market and many of their ideas were too far ahead of their time. There were many other much larger companies vying for a place in the PC market and when even Olivetti themselves couldn't make it as a major PC supplier then what hope did Acorn have? So the most significant change for me came when Acorn were finally freed of the ties with Olivetti and went public as a PLC. That gave them the funding to potentially exploit the opportunities that were available at that time. The problem was that they were then just beginning to face a major challenge by the Wintel camp on their dominance of the Education market which proved impossible to counter.
However going public was the eventual demise of the company as it enabled the corporate sharks to dismember the company in 1999 for the value of the shares it held in ARM.
PFJ: Given the advances in processor technology, how important would you say it is that we are able to make use of the likes of the X-Scale, ARM 9s and the such as a computing platform?
PM: The choice of processor is always dependent on the target market for the final product.
ARM processors have traditionally been aimed at low cost, low power devices. Acorn were the only people that used the ARM processor as a desktop computer, because RISC OS was the only Operating System that could effectively function on the 8 MHz-50 MHz processors that were common before the advent of the 200 MHz StrongARM. RISC OS still provides a very responsive system on a 233 MHz StrongARM and for most people, the only things they would probably like to change on their Risc PCs would be built-in support for more, faster hard drives, and bigger screen modes. Acorn grouped the Risc PC under their Workstations division and a Risc PC does make a very good general purpose workstation. However RISC OS is very much tied to the ARM processor and should not try to be something that it is not. i.e if you want to manipulate large maths intensive spreadsheets then a PC processor will be much better at the job. If you want a low power computer then you use an ARM chip.
Any new faster processor such as the XScale would be nice but the price and availability of those chips have to be appropriate as well. With the pace of current processor developments there is every possibility that a 64 bit ARM processor may become available in the next couple of years, thus making the current discussions on 32 bit versions of RISC OS, and which processor to use, irrelevant.
In the meantime the StrongARM SA1110 processor still offers 26 bit processor modes and significant speed advantages over the current SA110, without needing the change to a 32 bit version of RISC OS.
By the way, it is very interesting to note that Microsoft have decided that Pocket PC 2002 (a.k.a Windows CE) will now be available solely on the ARM platform. There is no doubt that on identical hardware that RISC OS will be much more responsive than Windows, so all we need now is the appropriate hardware and a manufacturer who wants to use RISC OS to justify future development of RISC OS for new processors. .
PFJ: If you could make one major change to the current operating system, what would it be?
PM: The one change I would like to make would be to implement Universal Cut and Paste / Drag and Drop between any writable icon.
PFJ: Would you say that the long term survival of the platform lies in the embedded systems rather than it's current desktop market?
PM: RISC OS has always relied on products outside the desktop market to justify its existence. Currently many more RISC OS desktop machines are sold that end up "embedded" than are actually used as desktop machines.
The desktop market is the visible face of RISC OS, but without the other markets then the RISC OS market would not be viable.
As far as the UK is concerned we have to accept that we do not have the political clout to force the Government to change its relationship with Microsoft and hence the dominance of the PC platform. I had the chance to talk with one of the UK e-envoys recently and asked him about the Government's attitude towards different operating systems. He stated that the Government had a policy to ensure that their services could be accessed by any operating system and that their web sites should not be tied to any specific OS. As regards any other support for specific Operating Systems it seems that the Government are officially agnostic.
However in the Education market the promotion of Interactive Learning Systems, which are only available on PC or Mac systems, and the discounts that Microsoft give to schools make their position almost unassailable whilst schools have dedicated computer rooms. If the Government plan of one computer per child was ever to reach reality then RISC OS might once again have a chance to compete for the provision of basic computing services. The Ron project (RISC OS on netBook) for example would enable the provision of a portable computer with a vast back catalogue of education software, at cost much lower than a normal PC portable could match. £500 seems to be the magic price that schools are looking for in order to make the "One per child" goal achievable. .
PFJ: Would say that one of the main strengths of RISC OS hardware has also been it's biggest weakness in that the amount of backwards compatibility has meant that for the large part of the time, people have not required to upgrade their machines as most software will run fine (if not a tad slowly) on an A5000 that will also work on a RPC (assuming they've not made any use of the likes of >OS 3.5 specific parts of the OS such as dynamic areas).
PM: For the Education market backwards compatibility was considered essential as schools were used to expecting that Acorn computers would last at least 5 - 7 years and that as new models came out that they would be compatible with existing software. Whilst the growth potential of schools and the home market was still enormous Acorn were happy to still maintain that compatibility as they didn't want to alienate their major customers. However the net result was that schools didn't need to upgrade software and the long life of the hardware also meant that schools didn't need to upgrade their hardware. If schools had been forced to upgrade to Risc PCs in 1995 then we wouldn't have been left with a legacy of schools still using RISC OS 3 computers here in 2002 and Acorn might still be around.
PFJ: Is it fair to say that from various corners, the Select scheme has come in for a lot of criticism.
PM: It is interesting to note that virtually all the people who have criticised the Select Scheme have done so without being subscribers, so their complaints are rather hollow. You yourself Paul fall into that category. The vast majority of the subscribers to the scheme have been very happy with it, and they are the ones that count.
PFJ: Two of the large criticisms has been the delay over a version of the Microdigital and RiscStation ranges. Roy has stated that there is a version for the RiscStation in development, can you say if the same applies for the Mico and what the main delay has been over the CDs?
PM: Again the criticism seems to be rather one sided. I believe that there are only three people who have contacted us wanting to know when there will be a RiscStation compatible version of Select, and only one enquiring about a Mico version.
The RiscStation version exists but needs more work before it can really be used as a publicly released product. We are awaiting information from Simtec to enable that to happen. The Mico version may follow at some stage.
The CD was held back until the Installer was fully developed to ensure that the upgrade from RISC OS 4.0x to Select was a smooth as possible. .
PFJ: Can you counter the comment made that vital information for developers such as changes to the !Boot structure should have been made available to all developers, not just those subscribed to Select? There have been instances of software breaking due to the disappearance of PreDesk.
PM: Unfortunately we are running a business not a charity. Preparing any form of documentation is an expensive process. Acorn didn't used to give away PRMs. If you wanted to learn about RISC OS you had to buy the Manuals. They didn't give them away for free, unless you were one of the small group of "key" developers.
We offer a slightly better deal in that you will get the OS and the manuals by joining Select. If you had joined Select yourself Paul, you would have known that PreDesk has not disappeared. It has been relocated to allow for multiple user setups. Any application which has obeyed the long established guidelines for writing their choices to <Choices$Write> does not have any problems. Only those that mistakenly write explicitly to Boot.Choices have problems with the new Select Boot sequence.
PFJ: How damaging has the announcements of the likes of the Evolution and Omega been on the sales of current desktop machines and confidence as a whole?
PM: Back in 1998 Senior Acorn Managers vowed that they would never again pre-announce a product because of the bad publicity over the delays to Phoebe. Before then, Acorn had always been very secretive about new products. Apart from "key" developers, the first time that most dealers and developers got to hear about a new product was on the day it was put on sale. That way there were no false hopes raised and users could not be disappointed by delays between a product being announced and the time when it was actually available on sale.
I can understand the desire of manufacturers to want to announce a new product as soon as possible in order to steal a march on their competitors. However there comes a point when a very early announcement of a new product can have a negative effect on potential customers, who feel let down by excessive delays and lack of news about product availability. Ultimately delays will have a negative effect on the company concerned and will inevitably make its customers much more wary about wanting to wait for future products.
In a niche market such as ours it is very important to keep user confidence by releasing products on schedule as we have always done at RISCOS Ltd. It is very unfortunate for everyone that some other companies have been unable to deliver products in a timely manner and I hope that those delays do not have a long term effect on the market.
PFJ: What is the state of play over updates to the Acorn C package? The last that was publically told (at MAUG last year) was there was to be a large update around November.
PM: For reasons outside our control there has not been any progress on that. We have had discussions with ARM over the work that they are doing with their new development tools to see if they can be used for future RISC OS projects, but I can't give any more details at present.
PFJ: Will the PRM for RISC OS 4 be made a publically available document (for purchase) and if it is, can you give us an indication on when it will be available?
PM: Yes it will be. We do not have a timescale for that at present though as there is still a lot of work in order to fully document the code for public release.
PFJ: Would you care to comment over the reports which have been made (on usenet, iconbar and foundation newsletters) that VirtualAcorn is shipping OS 3.1 illegally? Surely a product such as VA will help bring people back to the fold (there have been many instances of this happening and a rise in the price of second hand RISC OS machines since VA hit the streets)?
PM: VirtualAcorn claim to have an Agreement with Pace which as far as we are concerned is contrary to our exclusive Agreement for the sale and development of RISC OS in the desktop market. However since Virtual Acorn claim to have an Agreement with Pace it is ultimately up to Pace to confirm or deny that claim. The fact that they have made no comment as yet, should not be taken to imply that the VirtualAcorn claim to have an Agreement is correct.
I do not believe that Virtual Acorn is helping the RISC OS hardware developers sell more products. It may bring more people into using RISC OS 3.11, but at present I very much doubt that anyone who used to have an A5000, and has then moved over to using a PC will be tempted back to buy a RISC OS computer because of Virtual Acorn. I very much doubt that an existing PC user who discovers RISC OS for the first time will then go out and buy a RISC OS computer. I would also point out that any profit that Virtual Acorn is making is solely going into the pockets of those running VA it is not furthering future development of RISC OS, or encouraging people to buy a new RISC OS computer.
(I cannot let this one through without a few comments - firstly as a former Development Director of RISC OS Ltd I should point out that I am fully aware of the RISC OS Ltd licence, and that VirtualAcorn in no way breaks any parts of RISC OS Ltd's rather limited non-exclusive licence. Secondly we have a number of examples of customers who have used VirtualAcorn and then gone and bought a real computer. Thirdly we do indeed profit from VirtualAcorn, but then to quote Mr Middleton from earlier in his interview "Unfortunately we are running a business not a charity". - ED)
PFJ: In your opinion, what would be the most productive way end users can support and maintain the platform?
PM: The obvious form of support is to buy our products and those of the other companies that are supporting RISC OS development, rather than those that are encouraging software piracy.
PFJ: Is RON still an ongoing project (as opposed to a suspended project) and if it is, then when will we be able to see it?
PM: Yes, Ron is still ongoing, but the requirement from the original funder has changed.
We are currently waiting to see what Psion are going to do with their next product release before a decision is taken as to whether a full desktop release of Ron is viable. At present I would have to say that it is unlikely that a full version of RISC OS will become available for the current Psion netBook. That is not to say that future Psion products could not be supported.
PFJ: Finally, do you believe that the key to the future of the market is for all developers (both hardware and software) to get along and work together rather than the clash of personalities we currently have?
PM: In any market, clashes of personalities are inevitably destructive. However the RISC OS market as it currently stands is essentially an enthusiasts market, which means that nearly all the companies involved are very small and consequently there is much rivalry between certain companies. I would very much like to see more co-operation between developers, but it really needs a much larger organisation than current exists within any of the current companies in order to make greater all round co-operation between everyone a reality. It also needs an end to the destructive attitude of certain people on the newsgroups and web sites who have personal grudges against specific companies and/or individuals.
Large organisations don't want to deal with a sector where specific companies have followings of people who waste everyone's time by constantly complaining and arguing over everything. They want to deal with a market where they see a co-operative supporting environment which enables them to get their products to market in the shortest time and with the least amount of hassle.
Conducted by Paul Johnson
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/SCORING/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, Scoring rules in Messenger Pro
Scoring rules in Messenger Pro
A quick walkthrough with Hariet Bazley
The value of a messag
Every message stored by Messenger Pro has a 'score' value associated with it. The easiest way to illustrate this is to display the 'Score' column for a given newsgroup - say comp.sys.acorn.apps. By default only three columns are shown, 'Subject', 'Sender' and 'Date' (and the status icon on the left, which shows whether the message has been read yet or not). Open the newsgroup window, display all (both read and unread) messages and select Display->Columns->Score from the menu.
This will show you what the current score for each individual message is. You can update the scores shown in a group after adding new scoring rules by selecting 'refresh' or by closing and reopening the window. If you have not previously set up any scoring rules, most if not all of the messages will have the default score defined in the Scoring rules section of the Choices window - when a new user is first created, this score is set to zero.
Sorting by scor
Messenger Pro's scoring rules allow you to highlight postings by specific individuals or on a named topic, visually (by colouring the subject line and thread title) and/or by using the option to display a group sorted by score. If you click ADJUST on the 'Score' label at the top of the column, any current messages with negative scores (i.e. those to which a killfile has been applied) should come to the top of the window. Likewise, if you click SELECT, any messages with scores higher than the default (you probably won't have any of these yet) will come into view. In order to sort a given group permanently by score, set it up the way you want it, then click MENU over the group display and select Display->Settings->Save.
Default value
Open the Choices window and click on the 'Scoring rules' icon. This shows the current contents of your 'killfile'; in fact, it shows all your scoring rules, both positive and negative, so to speak!
It also allows you to define the default score to assign to a message before any scoring rules are applied to it, and how low the score must be before messages are killfiled (not displayed at all). If you set the default score to be 1 instead of 0, you will see that one side-effect of this is that sorting by score now displays the threads in order according to the number of posts they contain.
The 'Kill if score not above' setting has two effects, the most obvious being that this is the score assigned to any messages which you explicitly killfile via the 'mark as read' instruction. A more subtle effect is that you can cause messages to be killfiled cumulatively; for example, if this level is set to -10 and you have two negative rules each subtracting 6 from the message score, messages matching both will score -12 and be hidden, but messages matching one of the rules but not the other will score only -6 and thus still be visible.
Editing the rules - step by ste
You can double-click on the rule names to edit them (or select them and then click on the 'Edit' icon). Just as an example, I'll explain the details of the first rule in my own list: "List us"
The order in which rules are applie
In the top right-hand corner of the rule editing window is a numerical value labelled 'Priority'. This allows you to ensure that certain rules are executed before all others, by allocating them a higher priority. You probably won't ever need to use this; it does however provide a mechanism for changing the order of the rules in the list, as rules with a higher priority are displayed towards the top, whereas normally new rules are added at the bottom (and carried out last).
Name and grou
On the top left is an icon for the rule's name - Messenger will supply a default name if you leave this blank, but for any long-term rules (i.e. anything other than 'kill subject x') it is a good idea to give them some kind of meaningful name. This name is the text which will be displayed in the list of scoring rules.
The 'For groups' icon specifies for which groups this rule will be carried out. If you opened this window by clicking on one of the 'x' icons on a message window, the name of the group will be filled in for you; you can also select further names from the list of groups to which you are subscribed via the pop-up menu to the right of this icon. You can edit the groups specified using the '*' wildcard. In this "List us" example, I have simply listed * on its own so that this rule applies to all groups. Another useful name to give is comp.sys.acorn.*, which will affect all groups in the comp.sys.acorn hierarchy, but not, for example, alt.fan.harry-potter.
Altering the message valu
The 'If matched' icon is where you define what effect this rule will actually have on the messages which match its criteria. The most useful options available from this menu are 'mark as read', 'increase score by' and 'just colour'.
In this case, I have used 'increase score by' and set a value of 50 in the numerical icon to the right. I have also set the rule (by clicking on the 'Edit...' icon to the far right) to change the colour of the subject lines of all messages matched - to a sort of yellowy-greeny colour: R 65%, G 72%, B 0%. This highlights the messages (and any threads containing them) visually, so that they stand out even if I do not actively sort them to the top of a newsgroup.
'Mark as read' simply sets the score for those messages to the minimum necessary to match your 'Kill if score not above' setting.
A 'Decrease score by' rule can be used to downgrade the priority of messages by an inflammable individual without killfiling him outright. Using a threaded display, if you set Messenger to assign a small negative value to each of his posts, the more times he posts to a given thread the less that thread will score - so if you sort the display by score, threads to which he has posted multiple times (likely to be a flamewar) will appear below those to which he has posted only once or twice. Likewise, threads containing posts which match a rule awarding them an increased score will rise up the list. This means that you get to read the interesting stuff first!
Note that multiplying the score of a message will have the effect of intensifying the effect of any previous rules that apply; 'good' messages will acquire very high scores, but any slightly negative messages may well be transformed into killfile fodder. If this isn't what you intend, beware of the order in which your rules are processed - and remember that this can be adjusted if necessary via the 'Priority' icon.
Which messages match
The 'Matching criteria' are the important parts. This is where you define what Messenger actually checks for when deciding whether to apply this rule. Again, you need to use wildcards here when matching strings - unlike when using Messenger's search facility (which is otherwise very similar). A lot of people have already complained that this is very confusing....
The top set of icons in this section may already be filled in for you with a suggested entry, i.e. if you selected Add->Rule to killfile-> Subject, the top line might read Subject = Re: ChangeFSI. (If you did a 'Kill subject' on the first article in a boring thread, however, the string supplied would be Subject = ChangeFSI, which would then fail to match all the subsequent followups with their subject line of "Re: ChangeFSI", and you would have to edit the rule manually to specify *ChangeFSI as the subject - an oversight on the part of Messenger.)
The pop-up menu for the first icon allows you to pick from nine possible common header fields. In the case of my "List us" rule, the top line reads From = *Bazley*, which will pick up postings by either my brothers or myself. You may also pick from a menu of possible comparisons; generally only '=' or '<>' are sensible for string values. The other operators are only useful for scoring on the 'Date', 'Lines' or 'Size' values, which one doesn't normally wish to do.
However, a single criterion may sometimes prove insufficient to pick up all the messages you wish to match your rule - or, as in this example, you may wish your rule to perform more than one function. The "List us" rule not only highlights posts by us, it also (more usefully) picks up any follow-ups. In order to do this, I supplied a second line of criteria - as you can see by the rows of icons, Messenger allows you to have up to four. However, the second three have an additional icon on the far left, which controls how they combine with the first (non-optional) line. By default, this icon is set to 'off', which greys out that line altogether. You may switch it to either 'And' or 'Or' in order to activate the remaining icons. In my case, I used 'Or', since follow-ups will obviously not contain Bazley in the From: header and thus will not match the first criterion.
I set the remaining lines to Or References = *harriet@freeuk.com* and Or References = *chris@freeuk.com* to pick up any threads replying to either of our messages. References = *freeuk.com* would also have picked up posts by other FreeUK subscribers such as Dave Ruck!
Alternatively, I could have used References = *harriet@freeuk.com to pick up posts where mine was the last entry in the References: header, namely direct responses only, since threads can wander quite a long way off-topic after five or six further replies....
Rules that apply for a limited perio
The life of a rule is defined in the 'Expiry' section. Messenger has fairly sensible defaults here. If you add a new rule manually, it will use 'Do not expire', which means that the rule will remain in force until you delete it manually from the scoring rules list window. If you use the automatic 'Kill sender' it will do the same. If you use the automatic 'Kill subject/descendants', it defaults to 'Remove if unused for 7 days', to save having large numbers of rules hanging around relating to threads which are long since defunct.
Personally, I normally killfile a given sender and/or follow-ups to their posts (not always possible, depending on the format of their Message-ID headers) for an initial period of one to three weeks, only resorting to permanent killfiling if they do not appear to have become more coherent/less offensive after that time has elapsed. Hence I usually set the Expiry time to 'Remove after x weeks', the third option in this section. You can also set a rule to expire on a specific date - for example, in alt.fan.pratchett, I might set Messenger to filter out (mark as read) all posts tagged as [I]rrelevant over Christmas, until the date when Christopher goes back up to university and I have access to his computer for somewhat more extended periods of time.
Note that 'use' in the 'unused' option applies to every time the group window is opened, rather than every time new messages are downloaded. In other words, the rule will not start to 'expire' until after the last message to which it can possibly apply has expired. If you set it to expire 'if unused for 1 week', and that group is set to expire messages received more than 2 weeks ago, it will thus be three weeks before the rule disappears from the list.
Hiding spa
Scoring rules can be used as a simple and non-drastic way of removing spam e-mail. (In other words, if you get it wrong, the message has not actually been deleted!)
In order to remove e-mail not addressed to you directly, you need to set up a scoring rule for the group 'Incoming mail'. If your address is (for example) "Colin Baxter <baxterc@bigcompany.co.uk>", then create a rule where the criterion is To <> *baxterc@bigcompany.co.uk* (to match all possible variants on your address - with and without the 'Colin Baxter', with and without enclosing angle brackets, etc) and the action to be taken if matched is 'mark message as read'. It would probably be a good idea to add colouring as well (perhaps a faint silver grey?) so that later, when displaying both read and unread messages in your inbox, you can distinguish between those which you have really read and those which have simply been 'marked as read'! You can then sort your inbox by score to collect all the 'killed' messages together and delete them manually.
Downloading message bodie
There is one situation in which the Size: header can be used to great effect - in a newsgroup which is downloaded headers-only, so that a subset of messages can be marked manually for full download at the next fetch. It is common to download groups which carry binaries in this way, since it avoids downloading large files in which the user may not be interested, and it is also convenient for high-traffic groups in which much of the content is off-topic or mutual flaming. Unfortunately Messenger's standard thread icons do not distinguish between threads which contain unread message bodies (fetched in the last download) from those which contain only fresh headers. By setting up a size scoring rule for such a group, however (Size > 21 for example) and colouring all messages which match, it is easy to identify the threads which contain unread material.
This is one example where you will probably want the group always to be sorted by score - if you don't want the side-effect of long threads appearing near the top, set the default score to be -1 and cancel this out by increasing the score of full-size articles by 1. Headers will thus be slightly negative while normal articles again score zero. Of course, this will affect all your other groups as well....
The next thrilling installment...
...filtering in Messenger Pro
My second article will build on this one to explain how to use filters to move/delete messages at source, and how to have separate addresses on a single [FreeUK] account.
>Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazley.freeuk.com>
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME3/ISSUE2/SIMTEC/INDEX.HTM Volume 3, Issue 2, Interview with Gareth Simpson of Simtec
Interview with Gareth Simpson of Simtec
Paul Johnson
In yet another exclusive to MyRISCOS and RISC World Gareth Simpson of Simtec Electronics, the company who manufacture the motherboards for the RiscStation range and ExpLAN SOLO machine (to name but a few), has given over some of his time to give this interview. This interview was conducted by email just prior to the Wakefield show.
PFJ:Gareth, how long have you been involved with the RISC OS market as either Simtec or any other guise?
Since I was a University student in about 1990 when I decided that I could make my own memory upgrades for half the price at which I could buy them. Then I decided it was more interesting to carry on doing this kind of work rather than complete my PhD. At one point, Acorn offered me the opportunity of becoming one of their dealers but I preferred to stay away from that area and concentrate on technical developments. I get more job satisfaction from designing interesting hardware (although I must not take all the credit away from the design team) than from just selling somebody else's wares.
PFJ: In that time, what would you consider to be the most significant change to the RISC OS market?
The exit of Acorn. What more can be said?
PFJ: Given the advances in processor technology, how important would you say it is, that we are able to make use of the likes of the X-Scale, ARM 9s and such as a computing platform?
There are only two processors which are guaranteed to run RO as we currently know it - and they won't be manufactured for ever and ever. If RO is to do anything other than run on vintage silicon or emulated machines, it must be developed to protect itself against the future. As an example of how the availability of hardware could be improved were RO to be developed, we are currently producing ARM9 based systems which give better-than-Kinetic-and-Omega-performance at 7500 prices. It would be good if RO were a viable alternative to Linux or WinCE for these new processors.
PFJ: If you could make one change to the current operating system, what would it be?
A complete ground-up rewrite to include 32-bit compliance and hardware abstraction :-)
PFJ: Would you say that the long term survival of the platform lies in the embedded systems rather than it's current desktop market?
Yes, as it is more and more difficult for RO to compete as a general desktop computer where Windows, MS Office and Explorer are the de facto standard (however irrational that may seem to RO users). At least in the embedded market, the perceived deficiencies of RO are of less importance.
PFJ: Are we likely to see the USB podule with drivers and documentation from Simtec for both the likes of the RPC and RiscStations?
Yes.
PFJ: When is the expected delivery date?
Not this week.
PFJ: Will there be a working version at Wakefield?
Yes, on a number of stands. And there was also a working version at Epsom 2001.
PFJ: Will the USB card be able to work inside of the Mico or Omega?
We currently have a podule with drivers for RO 3.1 and later and an ISA card with drivers for the RiscStation. Theoretically, the ISA card would fit the Mico, but would require modified drivers ...... possible, but not probable. However, the software has been designed to be completely portable and could be adapted to work on the built-in interfaces of the Mico and the Omega. Again, possible but not probable.
PFJ: What hardware is currently supported by the Simtec USB?
Mouse, keyboard, joystick, hubs, printing and digital cameras - and others that we are not yet able to talk about until our partners are ready.
PFJ: Is there any truth in the talk that there were 3 different companies working on USB, but none could decide on the API? If there is, does this not say a lot for the market as a whole with companies and individuals not being able to work together?
Well, there are at least two companies who will show USB interfaces at Wakefield so obviously working co-operatively is a problem for some. As has been shown by our recent collaborations with RComp, CTA, Stuart Tyrrell Developments, RiscStation, etc we are willing to work with anybody who is willing to work with us.
PFJ: How do you respond to the fair comment that the RISC OS hardware companies (as a whole) do not seem to communicate very often with normal customers?
Couldn't agree more. We must all improve.
PFJ: How damaging has the announcements of the likes of the Evolution and Omega been on the sales of current desktop machines and sales of Simtec consumables (such as memory upgrades)?
Pre-announcements tie in with your previous question of RO hardware companies (as a whole) needing to improve their communications. But to answer your question, it hasn't noticeably damaged Simtec's overall sales - most of which are outside the RO market. However, I'm sure it must be very difficult for those companies who rely solely on the RO market for their livelihood. Many well respected names have left the RO world in the last few months and the market is the worse for it.
PFJ: What software and hardware projects have you got on the back burner at present for the market place?
Quite a few - but I'm sure you'll forgive me if I don't pre-announce them here :-).
