ÿÿÿÿVOLUME4/ISSUE1/ALPHA/INDEX.HTM Volume 4, Issue 1, The MicroDigital Laptop
The MicroDigital Alpha
Aaron with the background to the Microdigital Alpha.
The Microdigital Alpha is a new laptop computer produced as a collaborative effort by Microdigital, RISCOS Ltd, APDL and of course VirtualAcorn. Now while some other magazines are scrabbling around trying to get an exclusive RISC World has all the details from the horse's mouth, well me, but as I run VirtualAcorn (and edit RISC World) I am placed in a good position to provide a RISC World exclusive.
The background
The Alpha project has its roots in the RISCOS Ltd AGM last year. As those who attended may remember we produced a discussion document for RISCOS Ltd shareholders to show why we (VirtualAcorn) thought licencing RISC OS 4 for use with a VirtualAcorn product was a Good Idea. At the same AGM we had two laptops both running RISC OS 3.7 at nearly StrongARM speed. Also present at the same AGM was David Atkins from Microdigital and some Omega computers running RISC OS Select. Well as is often the case, we got talking, the result was an agreement to investigate the possibility of working together to produce a laptop at some future point.
At this stage a couple of the components that would be needed to offer a complete mobile RISC OS solution where missing. The two most important of these being direct Acorn format floppy disc reading and the reading of Acorn format CDs. As VirtualA5000 owners will know we completed these earlier this year and a VirtualA5000 with direct CD and floppy was launched at Acorn Southwest in Feb 2003. The scene was now set to re-examine the possibility of a RISC OS 4 laptop.
Developing the Alpha
Firstly an agreement had to be reached with RISCOS Ltd to supply the operating system, which they were quite happy to do since the machine would be sold as a Microdigital product. Secondly the hunt was on to find a suitable laptop to use. I have noticed a few rather silly comments on the newsgroups since the Alpha was first announced at Wakefield saying things like "...it's just a PC laptop...". Well it is a PC laptop, but the final machine that has been chosen has not just been picked out of thin air. Several months have been spent talking to possible suppliers and obtaining sample units to test. The initial decision that had to be made was the retail price point, in the end it was decided that £999 inc VAT was the ideal price point. However, this price needed to include two operating systems, WindowsXP and RISC OS, as well as the laptop, a carry case, charger etc. Also the machine would need 256Mb of memory (preferably DDR) and have a processor that would be quick enough to offer StrongARM class performance when using RISC OS.
Another selection criteria that needed to be applied related to the floppy disc drive. Many of the less expensive PC laptops use external USB floppy drives. Unfortunately on purchasing several different models of USB drives from a number of suppliers we discovered that many of these drives are locked and will only read 1.44Mb DOS floppies. We did eventually track down a drive that would read both 720K and 1.44MB floppies and this looked much more promising as it could read both formats it might be possible to write a driver for it to allow VirtualAcorn to read Acorn format discs in the drive. However this wasn't to be, and eventually we had to conclude that we would need to source a laptop that had a "normal" internal floppy drive connected to the IDE bus.
This meant we had to give up with all the existing suppliers and try again! In the mean time further selection criteria had been added. The machine also needed to come with an internal CD drive and be as robust as possible. Although I do like my rather expensive Dell Inspiron it fails the "twist test" rather badly and creaks something chronic whenever any force is applied to it. Any product supplied with RISC OS "on-board" would have to be somewhat stronger, especially if it might get used in an educational environment.
Another selection criteria then reared its head - the laptop would need a Windows "Menu" key in a sensible place. Since the touch pad would be a two button unit it made sense to use the "Menu" key as the Menu button. However although most laptops have this key it isn't always in a sensible place. Indeed on my Inspiron is located top right of the keyboard, it needs to be in the same place it would be on a desktop PC, two keys to the right of space.
We then spent some time testing, evaluating and eventually rejecting several models from other potential suppliers. All this was being done while the VirtualAcorn software (Called VirtualRPC-SE) was being developed. Eventually a bit of good fortune (and a recommendation from a contact in PC land) lead us to a supplier that could deliver exactly what we were looking for, on time, so a single unit was purchased for evaluation in April.
Alpha hardware
The evaluation machine was ordered to the same spec as the production machines would be:
2Ghz Intel Celeron processo
Windows XP Hom
Up to 64Mb graphics memor
256Mb DDR RAM (so that up to 130Mb could be allocated to RISC OS if required
15Gb hard driv
The "normal" ports such as parallel, serial, USB et
1024x768 13.3" TFT scree
Internal floppy and CD drive
10/100 Lan and 56K internal modem. (Not currently supported from RISC OS
8 cell LION battery and power suppl
Carry case
Having spent so long testing hardware with various versions of VirtualAcorn we were quite convinced that this would be the best hardware for the job, and I have to say that the first time I installed the prototype VirtualRPC-SE software I was rather a happy chap.
Its an Alpha!
The machine was then extensively tested for a couple of days to ensure that it was up to the task. We made a few tweaks to the VirtualRPC-SE software to ensure that it performed as well as possible. It was possible to make a few changes that had not been possible on VirtualA5000 as we would be running on fixed hardware, rather than on whatever PC a customer happened to have. Indeed on some tests the Alpha actually out performed my 287Mhz Risc PC. From a desktop usability point of view we wanted to ensure that the machine could play back MP3 files using !AmPlayer while still remaining totally usable. Indeed if you have a close look at the screen shot above you may well notice that !AmPlayer is playing back an MP3 file, while KinoAMP is playing an MPEG video clip.
The integral CD drive
Having satisfied ourselves that this was the machine we were going to use we needed a prototype batch for further testing, development and of course to show at Wakefield. This is where the choice of supplier also comes in handy. Although so far we had only ordered one machine from them they were incredible helpful and we were able to have a further batch of machines built to our specification and delivered in only a couple of days. Of these one machine was set up and delivered to RISCOS Ltd prior to Wakefield, so that they could evaluate it (and make sure it ran Select release 3). After all if you are a Select subscriber then you can install Select on up to 10 machines, one of them might well end up being an Alpha.
The integral floppy drive
And so to Wakefield
All the Wakefield machines were set up in Bracknell and were put in the car along with all the VirtualAcorn clobber on the friday morning before the show. This did mean that I couldn't stop on my way up to Wakefield though, after all if you had eight laptops (including the VirtualA5000 machines) in your car would you stop at the services?
Having arrived at Wakefield and set up the VirtualAcorn stand (and blown the power supply on the desktop PC - see the Editorial) we then waited for Microdigital. I did have a "trotter" moment just as they arrived..."Ere..mate...wanna buy a RISC OS laptop? I got a boot full of 'em I 'ave..". The machines were transferred over to the van and were set up on Saturday morning prior to the show.
Keen eyed readers might have noticed Alpha laptops on the VirtualAcorn stand, also on the APDL stand, the PHR computers stand, the RISCOS Ltd stand and of course on the Microdigital stand. All the machines ran all day without a hitch (well at least no hitches I have been made aware of). The feedback we got over the course of the show was very positive, with a number of customers and developers wanting to place orders. Although we have done the software development work Microdigital (or dealers) are actually selling the machines so all such enquiries were directed to their stand.
The final Alpha is a combination of hardware and software, yes its a PC laptop, but it runs RISC OS, and runs it as fast as a StrongARM. We are still doing some more testing as I write this and have been playing with some of the power saving options. My own Alpha is now running RISC OS for one and three quarter hours on the battery. Once the "hibernate" mode has been implemented this time may well increase somewhat. The Alpha has taken quite some time to develop from the initial RISC OS 3.7 builds that were shown last year. Has it been worth it? Yes, the number of orders certainly shows how keen the RISC OS market is for a portable RISC OS device, after all some users have been waiting years to replace the old Acorn A4.
So when can I buy one?
The next batch should be shipping fairly shortly after a few loose jobs have been tidied up. After having tested his machine Paul Middleton at RISC OS Ltd came up with a couple of useful suggestions which we are going to incorporate. We also need to get the manual properly proofread (whoops), sort out the full software bundle (existing users will get a new CD) and do a few other jobs before the machines will be released. How long will that be? Well not long! For up to date details contact Microdigital.
A quick update
Just as this issue of RISC World was being sent off to be duplicated we had some more good news on the Alpha. Because of the high volume of orders placed with MicroDigital, a better deal has been negotiated with the suppliers. This means that customers will now get a higher spec machine for the same price. So the new additions to the Alpha are:
A upgrade to a 14.1" scree
TV out socke
PCMCIA slo
Firewire socke
Infra red por
Bundled software now includes DrawWorks, Masterfile, Ovation and TableCal
Product details
Product:
MicroDigital Alpha Lapto
Supplier:
MicroDigital Lt
Price:
From £999.00 inc VA
Address:
37 Titus Street, Saltaire, Shipley, West Yorks, BD18 4L
OK, so I watch too many films. However, I needed a sub-title for this column and it does reflect the approach I am playing with at the moment.
Your Editor has graciously asked me to keep those of you who have yet to try Archive-on-Line abreast with the goings on in our mailing list. It also give us an opportunity to bring together the last several week's postings and perhaps give a flavour of what is exercising at least part of the RISC OS community.
What I am not intending to do is to try to emulate the excellent column, called Archive-on-Line Offline, in Archive compiled by Steve Knattress. (Sorry for the plug Ed.) There are several reasons for this. Apart from the fact he has been writing it for some time and I could not hope to better his effort, I am aware that a number of you wisely subscribe to both publications and any attempt at duplication on my part is just plain laziness.
I can also talk about how the list operates and what is happening behind the scenes, the bits that do not get posted to the list.
Technical for non Techies
I said in the last edition of RISC World that Archive-on-Line " ... is hosted by Argonet, still the main Acorn supporting ISP, and managed using Jonathan Duddington's !Pluto working with the !Ant Internet Suite and, latterly, !PopStar. There have been glitches and comments to say that this combination could not cope with the management of a list of this size and importance. Whilst there have, from time to time, been technical problems over the almost five years it has been operating, they have, with the help of some great folk, been overcome. ...." Well, in the past few weeks things technical have moved on. The main disadvantage of the above set up was that it relied on a modem and the house telephone line and the cost of sending out messages could be clearly identified from the phone bill even if messages were passed on at times when the cheaper rate applied. Sending messages had also become noticeably slower as the list grew. Now do not get me started on Broadband, unless the Editor wants the benefit of my thought on this matter at length (Why not? - ED), but when one of my sons decided he wanted to get involved with on-line games playing and was prepared to get his own BT Home Highway line installed I offered to defray some of the running costs if we could piggyback the Risc PC into his account.
Now we have a home network, I plan to tell that story next time, and the way messages are handled has slightly changed. You still send your mailings to Argonet, so nothing on that side has been altered. The mailbox is regularly checked by !NetFetch, via Freeserve Anytime, and downloaded by !PopStar. Messages are then detatched in !Pluto, read by me and, where appropriate, !Pluto divides them into batches of less that one hundred and puts them into !PopStar's queue. Along comes !NetFetch and sends them out via Freeserve Anytime, through our address hosted by gradwell and on to you. The use of such a convoluted route came about when we discovered that Argonet had set a limit of five or more recipients for any message. Messages to more than this number were delayed whilst they were checked as possible spam. The delay involved was becoming excessive. Ironic when you realise that we moved to them when our original ISP treated our postings as spam as far back as 1998! Gradwell and Freeserve seem happy with anything to less than 100 recipients.
It is still too early to do a full comparison but the batches are going out far faster than before and, providing I am close by, messages can be processed at anytime of the day and sent out without me feeling guilty at running up the phone bill. Whilst I suspect this has not been noticed by most subscribers the the fact that 'conversations' can take place throughout the day rather than twenty four hours apart seems to be appreciated. The modem and !Ant Internet Suite are still there to provide a back up.
Archive-on-Line Miscellany
The problem with delayed postings seems to be largely resolved, famous last words, despite one message from someone whilst the system was 'off air' during the rebuild. There do, however, seem to be delays elsewhere out there. Messages are arriving here up to three days after they were sent. It is unsettling to receive a message, sent two or three days ago, late in the afternoon when your system has been downloading stuff every fifteen minutes or so since early morning. It cannot all be down to incorrectly set clocks in the machine. Individuals are also having some, but not all, messages back to them delayed with no discernible pattern. They do eventually arrive but the reason for the delay for specific messages is puzzling.
It may be related to another strange happening. We had a thread called 'Digital Camera Sound Editing'. A perfectly normal request for help. Enterprise.net returned the messages sent to all their subscribers with this heading. The reason: it has a BANNED subject. Their capital letters. They also complained that 'the mail was not delivered because it contained dangerous code'. They have not replied to my request for clarification and the address given for their anti-spam policy is no long valid.
One subscriber tried to send a message with this heading single spaced to see if it would get through. Another ISP rejected this message, enterprise.net did not. Also in the last month I have reviewed the Archive-on-Line archive so to speak. All the messages worth keeping, and some perhaps not, right back to May 1998. I am thinking of doing a retrospective of topics as it is noticeable that some things change and others do not in our little world.
Spam is occupying a great deal of time and thought at the moment. I still wonder how, with this being a closed list and all how the spammers got hold of the address. One of the chores is to remove it before it gets passed on to you, the end user. As the spammers get more devious and subscribers concoct attention grabbing subject lines it is not always obvious which is what.
01 March 2003 to 10 May 2003 I have chosen these dates to review as the Wakefield Show provides a handy cut off point. After the show the Omega debate rekindled. It has generated many times the number of postings than any other subject and is far from over but the show proved to be a water shed and the debate moved on a little or at least changed tack. Basic positions remain unchanged and the divide between the camps is as wide as ever. OK, during the period 01 March to 10 May this year I have stored 823 messages. The most prolific thread was Omega orders with 106 messages though it should be remembered that this matter was also debated within a number of subject headings.
March 47
April 25
May (to 10th) 9
The list below, not complete by any means, gives an idea of the subjects discussed, or not, during this period:
!1901Key2
!Sitematch
!Squash on Iyonix
‘Printing Poor Quality Sprites’ Apr03
/CPT and /WI files
26/32-bit version of AwkScan
800E HD disc reads on 3.6 but not on 4.02 why?
Access on a PC 2
advice sought on Ant Inetsuite ‘aliases’
Advice wanted - white ‘corrosion’ on CMOS RAM backup battery
Aemulor?
ANT Marcel settings change
BJC 600
Broadband and non-English systems
Broadband connection 1
Buffer overflow
Buffer overflow & Blackhole
Buffer Overflow solved
Cable broadband and wireless network
Calculating area of !draw diagram. 1
Calculating area of colours in paint diagram.
CDFSmodules (loads)
ChangeFSI
Changing MP3s to WAV
Chocks Away
Clip the antiglare screen filter wire to what?
Cookie culling. How?
Dashed lines with arrow heads
dealing with spam 1
Depth of field comment
Digital recording to Minidisc?
Disc drive is empty -saga continues
Disc Error
Double postings... 1
Download Speeds 1
Drop out 1
Email/news with VirtualAcorn ?
Empty digests
Exciting announcement Wakefield/Omega
exporting Organiser addresses to Psion?
Fireworkz Pro
Floppy problem
Fontfs
Fresco now stable???!!!
Goodbye goodbuy 21“ monitor
gremlin with Oregano2?
HCCS IDE interface card
hccs video digitiser
How do you get a connector off a ribbon cable? 1
HTML Question
I’m stumped 2
Impression problem (RiScript) 1
internet access
IPA Fonts
Is Bill bugging us???
Is Castle using a unlicensed copy of RISC OS in the Iyonix? 2
Is it worth updating to new RISCOS computer 2
Iyonix & SCSI (Was Re: Omega orders)
Iyonix & Videodesk (fwd)
Iyonix and Omega (was Re: Omega orders)
Iyonix and printers
Iyonix SmartGroup
Knowing of a phone call when we are on line? 1
Laptop/Wakefield Show/Etc (Was Re: Omega orders)
Machine funnies
modem (TA) drivers
Monitor Definition File
Monitor problems
Mono-spaced fonts
More Broadband queries 1
new VA
Omega orders 10
Oregano 2
Oregano 2 gremlins - more
Oregano2 demo
Osaris file type??
Palm OS to RiscOS
PocketBook Replacement?
Portable 1
Postscript printing
Printer problem
Printer Problem (Canon BJC2000)
Printing Curiosity
ProCAD+ follow-up
Remote Control
RISC OS Ltd
RISCOS Ltd Running a printer beyond Datasafe -if so what? 1
Scheduled back up.Is Harddisc companion the answer? 2
SCSI CD-Writer
SCSI on Iyonix? (fwd)
SCSI on Omega?
self hosting a site by... WebJames?
Sharing printers across a network
Something strange here . . . 1
Strange mouse behaviour 1
StrongEd 32bit
StrongED help, please?
The disc drive is empty Solution please 1
Transfering RPC data to Iyonix
Universal USB?
unzipping exe files 1
VA 1.4 1
Web logging 1
What do I need to read all cd’s?
What is wi-fi, please? 1
Which? questionnaire.
Why isn’t the new floppy drive recognised?
Why won’t the new floppy drive light flash?
Winding Rule
Windows 95-> 98/2000
Wireless Networking Of RISC OS Equipment
Coo. The temptation to add comments is almost overwhelming!
Top posters? (over 20 posts)
Paul Beverley (unsurprising) 4
Steve Fryatt 4
Russell Armstrong 3
Stuart Halliday 3
Dave Symes 2
Chris Hughes 2
Anthony Hilton 2
Paul Vigay 2
D G Shimmim 2
Philip Ludlam 2
Many thanks to these and all who asked questions, provided answers or otherwise contributed to the debates.
Subscribing
Remember Archive-on-Line fills the gap between editions of RISC World and is open to all current subscribers.
There is no requirement for you to take out a further subscription. I hope you will contribute and help further to strengthen and enhance the current mail list and bring members of the Risc community a bit closer together, whilst not creating yet another, competing, forum. The list is moderated with, I hope, a fairly light touch but I do take advantage of !Pluto's facilities to add comments to postings from time to time. At the end of the day this avoids any increase in traffic my interventions would inevitably bring.
Messages can be sent here at any time and are now sent on whenever I see them, real life not withstanding.
Sensible snipping is always appreciated, as is the avoidance of bouncing emails when your mailbox is full.
To subscribe please send a message to: <archive-on-line@argonet.co.uk> with:
SIGNON or SUBSCRIBE
in the Subject Line. Pluto picks up your message, adds you to the list and sends you a brief acknowledgement. You can put something in the body of the mail if you wish or if your software does not like sending blank messages. It will not affect Pluto but I do read them. Anyone who signs on who is not a subscriber to RISC World or Archive will normally be sent a polite message and invited to subscribe or removed if a reply is not received in a day or so. As Pluto dates and times the entries on the list it is relatively simple to keep track of what is going on and I normally allow a period of grace of up to three months for the renewal of subscriptions before I remove someone from the list. This reduces the amount of time I have to spend checking valid memberships and gives time for late renewals to be processed. The only other reason for my removing someone is when I get fed up with mail being bounced by an ISP.
In the unlikely event that you should wish to withdraw from the list then a message with:
SIGNOFF or UNSUBSCRIBE
in the Subject Line will automatically remove your name from the list.
If your email address changes then signoff the old one and signon the new. You can try out the new address and run them both side by side until you are confident that the new one is working but do not forget to signoff the old address once you are happy. The list can average about about twenty messages a day. The variation throughout the week is interesting. The weekends are not as busy as I would have expected, Mondays and Tuesdays are busier than initially anticipated.
I look forward to hearing from you on the list.
Contacting me
If you want to talk to me off list I can be contacted at
RISC World looks at the latest release of ArtWorks
Finally the RISC OS world has a new version of ArtWorks to use. At its release ArtWorks was the premier vector graphics package for RISC OS, however newer contenders such as DrawWorks and Vantage have appeared and ArtWorks was starting to look rather long in the tooth. However Martin Wuerthner, the man solely responsible for keeping ArtWorks alive, with his vast range of plug-ins, has now released a new and updated ArtWorks 2.
ArtWorks2
ArtWorks2 was officially launched at the Wakefield 2003 show. Predictably Martin Wuertners stand was packed with eager customers almost as soon as the doors opened. Indeed every time RISC World strolled past his stand it was at least three deep. As many readers may remember Artworks was originally published by Computer Concepts, last November Martin finally obtained a licence to market and develop ArtWorks. Since Martin has worked so hard on plug-in tools for ArtWorks he does seem to be the ideal choice to take over the rather dated ArtWorks and drag it kicking and screaming into the 21st century (surely century of the fruitbat - ED). ArtWorks2 is the result.
One of the first main changes made to ArtWorks is to convert it to 32bit neutral code. This means that it will run on both 26bit and 32bit versions of RISC OS. However this does come at one very minor price, the new ArtWorks requires RISC OS 3.5 or later, and won't run on RISC OS 3.11, still that is a very small price indeed to pay for the improvements. ArtWorks2 incorporates all the previously available tools that Martin has produced for ArtWorks 1. These include:
AlignPlus - align object
BMExport - export GIF and TIFF file
ColourBar - drag and drop colour selecto
Crystal - full transparency for ArtWork
Filter - filter objects according to user defined parameter
Grids - rectangular, isometric and circular grid
Hatch - use customisable hatching pattern
Intersect - clip shape overlap
JPEGObject - embed JPEG images in ArtWorks file
MRotate - rotate multiple select object
MScale - scale multiple object
PathUtils - control line lengths and angles numericall
PolyGon2 - produce Polygons and stars with rounded corner
Replicate - Replicate objects using different pattern
Resizer - scale and position objects accuratel
SVGExport - export SVG file
TextArea - create and edit text in rotatable multi column
However ArtWorks2 is a lot more than just ArtWorks 1 with a few add-on tools. So far the confirmed new features list for ArtWorks2 (version 2.01) looks like this:
32-bit compatible to run on Castle's XScale-powered Iyonix computer.
Holding down Ctrl makes the marquee selection box select all overlapping objects as in Draw instead of all fully enclosed objects.
Pressing the Space bar switches to the previously used tool (obviously, you can only do this while you are not entering text in a text line/area).
ArtWorks document windows now obey the Wimp configuration settings about moving windows off the screen.
New options "Keep Info Box on screen" and "Keep Tool Box on screen". When switched off, the Info and Tool Boxes obey the Wimp configuration settings. This allows multi-desktop utilities, such as Larger to work correctly with ArtWorks 2.
Computation of the area of shapes
New options for Draw import - "Create as editable colours" option (with the settings "None", "All" and "Standard colours only") controls whether ArtWorks creates a named colour for every colour it finds in the Draw file, thus allowing you to avoid the problem of having a huge colour menu (and colour bar). As a nice side-effect non-editable colours will keep the original RGB colour definition as in the Draw file instead of being converted to CMYK.
Plain text import improved: If the "New text always black" option is set, then the text does not inherit the current line colour and other outline attributes.
Better ColourBar integration - it moves with the main window immediately.
In all save boxes, dragging an icon now drags a sprite instead of a dashed box and you can drag right to the border of the screen.
Path editing Info Bar shows keyboard shortcuts
Some of the new features that Martin had added to Artworks have been used in this illustration by Henk Huinen. For example Henk has made a lot of use of the transparency options provided by the Crystal plug-in.
However it gets even better, as anyone who upgrades to ArtWorks2 now will get a free upgrade to version 2.1 which will also include:
Page rulers.
A Skew tool to accompany the Rotate and Scale tools.
Control of both width and height of arrowheads.
User-defined dash patterns.
Configurable default font, font size, join style.
Control over the distance of text fitted to a curve from the curve.
Control over the starting offset of text fitted to a curve.
A print setup tool to select the area of the page to be printed (useful when proofing small parts of a large size document) including the ability to set numeric printing offsets.
Optional warning about unused sprites in the sprite pool when saving a document.
Create a new document by choosing from a menu of several standard documents.
Improved control over graduated fill arrows.
Text export from text areas.
Saving JPEGs that are embedded in ArtWorks files.
Even more new features are promised later on such as graduated transparency, support for multi page documents, CMYK TIFF export, PNG export and most welcome of all a document cleaning option to remove unwanted colours and unused sprites.
All in all this is a very exciting release and substantially extends ArtWorks functionality
Aaron Timbrell dives headlong into the software directory.
Once again RISC World brings you the biggest selection of new software, and of course a free commercial application with every issue. This issue it's the spreadsheet and table generator TableCalc.
TableCalc
The budget spreadsheet and table generator, ideal for machines with only 1 or 2 Mb of memory. TableCalc is designed to be the perfect introductory or light use spreadsheet. Easy to use and quick TableCalc is ideal for school environments, a site licence version is available from APDL.
OLE linking with Impression, simply hold down ctrl and double click on the file to edit it, close the edited file and it will reappear in Impression
Point and click expression editing
Expressions in cells are locked to prevent accidental over typing
Multiple user definable text styles including control over font, size and justification
Export as Draw, TableCalc and CSV
Import CSV from other spreadsheets
Easy to use button bar with common functions
Support of 24bit colour on all machines
Full interactive help display
Copy expressions between slots easily and quickly
Math functions include square root, sine, cosine etc, over 14 in all including VAT calculation
Expression functions include summation, average, power etc
Automatic initialisation of cells with incremental numerical values either across or down.
Adjust cell sizes by dragging
Convert between text and numbers.
Take snapshots
Multiple files in memory at once
Insert or delete columns/rows both before and after the cursor
Copy and paste individual slots
Comments
"...Tablecalc interfaces with Impression using OLE ...as it only takes 260k it is very economical on memory." Acorn User April 9
"...should give the producers of schema, resultz and eureka something to think about." Acorn User March 9
"...delightful to use.." Alex Singleton Acorn Use
"Had these features been incorporated in Dalriada's Tablemate II, it might have satisfied the wish list..." Archive August 199
"I particularly like its ease of use, the on-line manual and the reference card." Mr H. Devo
"...impressed at how easily I have been able to use it." Mr D. Woking
"Thank you very much, it looks great and is just what I needed." Mr C Surre
Acorn User Awards 1995 Runner-up Best Business Software
DrawWorks Millennium
A version of DrawWorks Millennium to accompany the DrawWorks Select review this issue. This version comes without all the CD extras such as fonts, clip art and the other bundled applications. We originally cover mounted this on Volume 2 Issue 3, but are including it for the readers who joined us with Volumes 3 and 4.
Complete integrated package that can be run from CD or hard dis
Colour print preview paper simulator system, CMYK and Spot colour separation
Tint objects shades of any colour,Alter CMYK/RGB colour levels,Contrast & Brightness tool
User defined multi-document text styles & auto convert text to paths when require
Comprehensive illustrated on-line manual and realtime interactive hel
PureTint and Named spot colour pickers & automatic colour filling/tinting tool
Map making tool plus Lining style tool with custom style
Automatic drop shadow tool, custom line width / pt size tool
Access clips directly from DrawWorks, even those you have added yoursel
OLE sprite editing using !Paint plus spot colour separate sprite file
Configurable user levels, example effect worksheet
EuroSymbol support using special fonts & full font editing facilitie
Tint bitmap images for use as backgrounds, anti-aliased file export (Sprite & GIFF
View font examples without installing, iDesigner application to choose fonts for yo
DrawTrix image effects processor, produce Isometric 3D projections easil
Hierarchical toolbar with grouped tools, tear off object tool ba
Full control over Draws preferences including configurable undo buffe
Bend objects and text round circles, fit objects and text into pre-defined mould
Print tiling across multiple sheets, all files fully compatible with Draw file
Sophisticated CMYK grey component compensation on colour separation
Easy to use and quick to master, the professional choice for graphic desig
Tested on Risc OS 4 (pre release version) and other versions of Risc O
Over 440Mb of applications, fonts & clips, Requires OS 3.1+, 4Mb Ram, CD-RO
Comments
"...a vantage beater..." Chris Jarma
"...a whole range of new functionality...easy to pick up...a vital feature of only the best software...excellent...really makes a complete package...this is the right purchase..." Acorn Use
"...undoubtedly the best new CD-Rom for RISCOS that I’ve seen for a very long time...the company’s best-value product to date. buy it without hesitation." Risc Use
"...convenient and user friendly...very effective...superb value for money."Acorn Publishe
"...advanced colour options...value for professional users...a seriously good application...outstanding value for a collection of graphic design programs that can be thoroughly recommended." Eureka Issue 3
The complete DiscWorld line up
Football
The code for Paul Johnson's Football Manager game.
Games
All the games from this issues games world column, featuring a number of releases from Neil White.
HTMLSearch
The HTML search program missing from some copies of RISCWorld Volume 3.
Millennium
A complete version of DrawWorks Millennium to accompany the DrawWorks Select review.
PD
All the latest PD, shareware and freeware releases from the PD column.
TableCalc
The full version of the commercial spreadsheet and table generator from APDL.
ToolBox
The latest 26/32 bit neutral system components, required if you want to run a lot of new software releases on 26bit machines (ie. anything that isn't an Iyonix).
I have to confess that I have been an avid DrawWorks user for some time, indeed on looking back I still have a copy of DrawWorks2 in my desktop publishing directory and from that point I have taken the opportunity to indulge in each of the DrawWorks upgrades as they have become available. I have found that DrawWorks is very useful when one wants to design some small graphic for some purpose or other. Most of the DTP work I have done over the last few years has had some input from DrawWorks at some point.
However I did discover a problem with DrawWorks after I first purchased a Select subscription and installed the latest version of Select on my RiscPC. Suddenly for no apparent reason many of the DrawWorks New Millennium features that I had become so accustomed to no longer functioned. This caused a certain amount of soul searching and in the end I decided that I preferred having the facilities of DrawWorks available and so reluctantly decided to remove RISC OS Select from my system.
I then decided that perhaps I should contact APDL, who now handle DrawWorks and the other software titles previously published by iSV Products, and ask about the Select problem. I was informed that yes there was a problem, however it was not Select itself that was causing DrawWorks to fail, but rather it was the version of Draw that was supplied. If I went and downloaded the version of Draw called DrawDA from the RISC OS Ltd website then provided I used that version I would still be able to use DrawWorks.
This was fine for a while, but I decided that it did not seem sensible to have a new version of Draw on my system that I could not use with DrawWorks. Especially as I often found myself getting a little confused (perhaps in part due to age) and loading the wrong copy of Draw and then discovering that I needed to save my files, then I had to quit both Draw and DrawWorks and then had to re-load everything just to do something that would only take a couple of seconds in DrawWorks.
DrawWorks for RISC OS Select
I was therefore delighted to see the announcement of a new DrawWorks that would support RISC OS Select was being made available quite a few months after Select had first been made available from the RISC OS Ltd website. The delay was apparently caused because APDL didn't want to produce a Select compatible DrawWorks until Select had been finalised and was available from RISC OS Ltd on CD.
The new version of DrawWorks comes in several different versions depending on which version of DrawWorks you have. If, like myself, you have kept up to date with DrawWorks then an upgrade can cost as little as £8.50 on floppy (in my case the upgrade cost £15 as I had an original iSV Products DrawWorks Third Millennium), with a full stand alone CD version of DrawWorks Select for £39 complete with Mr Clippy, loads of clip art, over 2500 fonts, FontFiend and lots of other extras.
Editors note - for those who may not be familiar with DrawWorks we have bundled a copy of DrawWorks Millennium with this issue of RISCWorld. Long term readers may remember that we have cover mounted this in the past, but its worth running it again for newer readers.
DrawWorks Select looks much like any other version of DrawWorks and is installed and loaded in the same way. Users of DrawWorks Millennium or New Millennium will find that there have been substantial changes. A full list of the changes between DrawWorks Select and DrawWorks New Millennium is shown below.
Works with all versions of RISC OS from 3.11 onwards
Supports normal !Draw, !DrawDA and the Select versions of !Dra
Faster than any previous Millennium version of DrawWorks
Over 50% less processor load than any previous version
Double click an EPS file and it loads into Draw
Autoscroll or manual scroll toolbars
Autoscroll toolbars now move much faster
All features now work with !DrawDA
New microbar with commonly used features
Line width, colour, rotate and scale options always available
Font and pt size menus always available
Export as SVG option
Export as PDF option (using GhostScript)
Writable options for start cap and end cap menus
Nudge buttons for start and end cap triangle options
Freehand drawing mode
DWDistort tool to distort objects visually by dragging
New Draw clipboard controls on the main DrawWorks toolbar
Extract the text from text objects automatically
Export all text objects from a drawfile in one text file
Text Area control tool including font and point size
Change the number of columns in a text area easily and quickly
Set margins, line spacing and paragraph spacing for text areas
Improvements to existing features
Export GIF with NetSafe colour palette
New moulds for the path moulder
Improved EPS output
Shadow tool auto groups all soft shadow layers
Start cap and end cap menus tick to show current selection
JPEG export tool improved
Re-designed preferences window
Defective paper size icon in the PrintTool correcte
CM spacing/subdivision menu bug fixe
DrawWorks running with a Select version of Draw
Users of DrawWorks Third Millennium will not notice as many changes, indeed I only noticed the new clip board controls and the evidence of a couple of minor bug fixes. However there is the one very important change, that DrawWorks and RISC OS Select can now happily co-exist on my desktop. This is one upgrade I simply couldn't do without.
Conclusion
If you want to be able to use DrawWorks and Select together and don't want to have to be forced to use !DrawDA then DrawWorks Select is excellent value. As the adverts say "it does exactly what it says on the tin". However I would have liked to see a few new tools with this version of DrawWorks, but then those who have DrawWorks Millennium or New Millennium will find plenty of new experiences with the multitude of new features and improvements. I don't know what work had to be done to get DrawWorks and Select to live happily together (I know :-( - ED) but I am very glad that it has been done especially as Select release 3 is now available.
Product details
Product:
DrawWorks Selec
Supplier:
APD
Price:
£39.00 inclusive
£8.50 upgrade from a full version of DW3M from APDL.
£12.50 upgrade from an APDL (Silver) DW3M upgrade CD.
£15.00 upgrade from an iSV Products (white) DW3M upgrade CD.
£24.00 upgrade from DrawWorks Millennium or New Millennium
Address:
39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London, SE26 5RN
Tel:
0208 778265
WWW:
E-mail:
info@apdl.co.u
Charles Embersley
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME4/ISSUE1/EBAY/INDEX.HTM Volume 4, Issue 1, Using eBay Additional Features
Using eBay Additional Features
Mike Battersby
Introduction
The previous two articles looked at buying and selling on eBay and covered the basic features of eBay concerned with each. However, there are a number of other features that users may find useful once they are confident in the basics. Of course, out of the extra features different people would use different ones so the selection chosen here may prove useful to some and less useful to others.
Watching items
When I first started using eBay, as a naïve user, and I wanted to see how certain items were progressing I would search for each one to look at it. However, a much easier way to keep track of a number of items (up to 30 items in fact) is to use eBay's watching facility.
On any page describing an item there is a "watch this item" link beside a small pair of binoculars icon, as shown in the screenshot below to the right hand side.
If you have not signed in then this link will take you to a sign in page, otherwise you will get a message confirming that you are watching the item.
Once items have been chosen to be watched then on signing in to "my eBay" then on the "buying and watching" tab, items being watched will be listed below items being bid on and those recently won or not won. his enables you to keep track of all the items you are interested in, in one go.
The screenshot above shows an example of three items being watched and shows the current price and time remaining among other information. If you no longer wish to watch an item you can select a tick box at the left hand side and click the "Delete" button to remove the item(s) selected. Another use of watching is that items will remain listed even after bidding has finished enabling you to see what the final price was when the item is no longer listed on the "normal" pages. By the way don't take too much notice of the fact that the Acorn Atom is fetching 20 times the amount the Risc PC is fetching as prices often change dramatically as the auction ends.
Checking the "bid history"
There is a link labelled "bid history" by the "# of bids" info that allows you to see who is bidding but does not show you the amounts until the auction has ended. Even then you are not told the maximum amount entered by the winning bidder just the amount of the winning bid. The bid history can be a bit puzzling as it is not a sequential listing in the same way as a normal auction and the information shown depends on the maximum bid entered by a bidder rather than the price at any particular stage.
Look at the example above. The second place bidder "mikechoo" (me) has a bid timed at 4 seconds after the winning bidder even though later bids are not recorded if less than an existing one. Clearly what happened here is that "carrier command" entered a bid to outbid "johnluberfamilynet" and that maximum bid was at least $122.50, maybe more, and was timed 4 seconds before my bid. As "johnluberfamilynet" had bid $115 the "carrier command" bid would exceed that and the price would be $117.50 (as bid increments are $2.50 over $100 I think). My bid would have outbid the current price and so is recorded as a bid but as "carriercommand" put in a maximum bid of at least $122.50 their bid automatically jumped to exceed mine even though it was lodged earlier. Get it? Notice 3 bidders all bidding in the last minute and a half of time left.
If you look further down the list you will see that "frankge5" appears to have bid against himself on two occasions. Not so, as the first bid by "mrtjet" is timed between his first two and was at least $40. Also "bmitchell" has a bid timed before either of them so what has happened is that the bids of "frankge5" and "mrtjet" have simply pushed up the price by "activating" higher levels within the maximum bid of "bmitchell". Each has had more than one attempt to outbid "bmitchell" but has given up before managing to do so.
Setting personal preferences.
eBay allows the setting of a whole range of personal preferences. To access these sign in to eBay through the "my eBay" option and choose the "preferences" tab as shown in the screenshot below.
Here you can change a whole range of personal information as you can see in the screenshot. There are also further sets of options for "eBay preferences" and how you sign in.
One option here is to create a personal "about me" page. If you do this then a colourful "me" icon appears after your name when buying or selling and clicking on this will take others to your personal page where you can choose information about yourself for others to see. This can help establish yourself e.g. as a seller of integrity (assuming you are).
More sophisticated Searching
The earlier article on buying through eBay covered simple searching using the "Browse" option. This is very simple and quick to use and may be quite satisfactory for many purposes. However, it may be that you want to be able to carry out a more detailed search, for example one that will filter out unwanted items that might be included in a simple search. If you searched on "Acorn" for instance you would get any items that contain the word "Acorn" in the title irrespective of whether they had anything to do with Acorn computers.
If you choose the "Search" option from the main choices at the top of an eBay page then you will get the screen shown below. This screen gives you the option of entering key words on which to search but allows you to select the category that will be searched. Hence by entering Acorn and choosing the category "Computers and Gaming" you would avoid getting non-computer items that for some reason contain the word "Acorn" e.g. a video of Victoria Wood's Crossroads type soap opera "Acorn Antiques".
Similarly, if you know a word associated with a use of your search term that would help eliminate unwanted items you can enter them in the denoted field shown. In the previous example you could enter the word "Antiques" to exclude videos of Acorn Antiques.
The search options also allow you to choose country options, price range and so on. A final option allows you to choose only items that accept Paypal as a method of payment. It can be difficult and quite expensive to send money abroad in other currencies and Paypal is a convenient way of doing so using a Credit or Switch card even if the person receiving the money does not have "normal" card facilities. If that sounds of interest then watch out for the Paypal article in the next edition (hopefully) of RISCWorld.
P.S. This may be particularly useful if Barclays are giving you grief over credit card facilities!
Well here we are, when I took over RISCWorld on issue 4 I had no idea that I would still be doing the editorial thing at the start of volume 4, or, using my numbering system, issue number 20. Which means I have now edited well over 300 articles in the last few years, I can't help noting though that I have edited some with more success than others. Still this is the start of volume 4 which can't be a bad thing.
We have some more interesting plans for RISCWorld this year. We hope to be serialising a couple of very useful books that have been out of print for some time. We also hope to be extending the Software directory to include even more new releases and exclusive versions of older programs as well. After all I don't know if you have noticed but a large number of new software releases have been popping out of the woodwork, and some of them are very impressive indeed! I am personally very taken with the !Emulate emulator that runs RISC OS 3.11 or earlier on a StrongArm RISC PC. There have also been some great gaming releases by both Neil White and Peter Naulls. On the commercial side of things ArtWorks2 is due for a release soon and you never know it might even give DrawWorks a run for its money (ducks). At Wakefield people were able to compare the Omega and the Iyonix for the first time. And were able to look a batch of the new Microdigital Alpha portables, running RISC OS 4 using a special version of VirtualAcorn. Now that's what I call co-operation. Lets hope we see more!
Editors Rant of the month
Firstly a quick update on one of my rants from last month, the SilverShield windscreen merry go round continues apace. The good news is that my car now has a new windscreen, and has hence now passed its MOT. The bad news is that in fitting the screen the fitter manager to scratch the paint on the bonnet, and I didn't notice till after I had signed the usual "..I am completely happy...please have the deeds to my house..." type disclaimer. Still at least the job was done, but wait, what's this? A week later a bill turned up, this must be a mistake, after all a Windscreen is covered by my insurance. Well yes it was, but not any more apparently! So having been told by the insurance company that I had to use one of their "approved specialists", which is SilverShield, I could in fact have had the job done by anyone and not had to wait almost 2 weeks. I have all but given up and have therefore paid their invoice.
However given my view on SilverShield I did take the opportunity to send them a cheque that was 1p short, and to tape a 1p coin to the back of the cheque with what some might consider a rather excessive amount of sticky tape. I know they have now managed to cash the cheque, although it was 2 weeks between me writing the cheque and it going through the bank. Although they got my money I think I got reasonable value from an entertainment point of view.
Anyway back to this months rant which relates to the Friday just before the Wakefield show. As usual the WROCC (Wakefield RISCOS Computer Club) had done a sterling job with organising the show and by 6 o'clock in the evening all the stands were up, the electrics wired in and the tables had arrived. We set up the stand and then decided to check that all the PCs were running OK. Well we turned them all on, and then the power went off. A quick investigation revealed that the circuit breaker had clicked off. So we reset the breaker and tried again, and once more the power went off. This continued for about 45 minutes as we swapped extension leads, mains cables etc. Everytime the same thing happened. Eventually we reached the conclusion that one of the electrical items was completely knackered, but which one? We tried turning each item on and off in turn. Was it the power gobbling 21" monitor, nope. Was it one of the laptops? No, Was it the speakers? No, so it must be the desktop PC. And indeed it was. By now it was almost 8 o'clock. So I was rushed to a waiting Wakefield club members emergency vehicle and was driven at high speed to PC World which was just shutting as we legged it in through the door. We grabbed a PC power supply and returned to Thornes Park with it. I then grabbed a set of screwdrivers (and a KitKat or two) from Dave Holden's tool box and removed the old power supply, which I noticed had a distinct rattle and a rather interesting burnt fragrance. The new supply was fitted and hey presto, its all working, but wait, what's this, why is the picture on the monitor all magenta? Ah the monitor cable has developed a fault. AHHHHHHH. Cheap PC components, don't you just love 'em!
Printing RISC World
The new look of RISC World means that you will no longer get the yellow background when printing articles from RISCWorld. However you will still get the blue border on the left unless you turn off the printing of background images. The example below shows the print dialogue box from Fresco.
As you can see the option "No Background" is ticked. If you want to print out any of the RISCWorld pages and don't want to waste ink on a blue border then make sure you have clicked a similar option in your browser.
Aaron Timbrell
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME4/ISSUE1/EDUC/INDEX.HTM Volume 4, Issue 1, The Education Column
The Education Column
Andrew Harmsworth with the latest Education news
Well, May is already well under way and so the education sector is in exam season - busy as hell at just about every level. It would also seem that the RISC OS world has behaved similarly this month, Wakefield bringing an avalanche of developments to the platform. Let us sit back and reflect on how the recent work may impact on education.
Lapping up a Laptop
The non-appearance of the RiscStation laptop has frustrated me personally - and many other educational users - since the RISC OS 2000 show. Earlier this year I had decided to wait no longer, and had started looking for a reasonable Windows PC laptop on which I could be sure to get the Virtual A5000 emulator to run. Having little time, and there being almost infinite choice, I hadn't actually begun narrowing it down at all.
Along come Microdigital, RISCOS Ltd and VirtualAcorn to deliver the Microdigital Alpha - a Windows XP laptop with the bonus addition of Virtual RiscPC sporting a full version of RISC OS 4, with the ability to run RISC OS Select!
Now, the specification of the laptop has taken a bit of a hammering on the newsgroups, but looking at it from a different perspective. As a teacher, I primarily desire a laptop to cope with good internet access (Windows XP and Internet Explorer really have that sorted), support for Office applications (to allow easy file transfer between colleagues), and it would be great if I could still use some very trusty and highly efficient RISC OS applications. Doing it at speed, and in style, would be a major bonus.
From what I can see, the machine is easily able to cope with everything I need it for. A logical extension is that it is almost certainly good enough for most teachers' needs. In other words, it is my belief that the Alpha laptop - assuming it is sturdy enough - should be able to serve my needs as a teacher for at least as long as the StrongARM RiscPC I'm typing this on has (7 years). It is also half the price (ignoring inflation).
Don't get me wrong; I would love to own a RISC OS laptop that runs natively on ARM-hardware. Ultimately, however, the fact is that Virtual A5000 has given myself and colleagues a wider range of ICT options. It has proven itself to be stable, on any flavour of Windows. I am confident that Virtual RiscPC, running on significantly better hardware than I have access to at the moment, will deliver on its promises. And on the Alpha, it really does seem to offer the best of both worlds. No more compromise.
Time will tell if the machines are available sooner rather than later. I look forward to giving one a go before parting with my cash.
Select 3
The number three seems to be everywhere at the moment, and whilst compiling this article, RISCOS Ltd released Select 3. No doubt there will be extensive reviews of this elsewhere, so let's just take a peek at what might be its biggest benefits in schools..
New !Paint (v. 2.51)
Replete with new features, the biggest surprise to me is its ability to re-order multiple sprites within the same file. For years, I've had to swap between Paint and Andre Timmermann's !NoPaint in order to do this. The latter program is now redundant! For the uninitiated, having more than one sprite within a single file is a superb method for making animations via !InterGif. Kids LOVE animations, and now they can have even more fun with them...
Paint re-ordering sprites of Neptune before animating
Incidentally, if you'd like to find out what the images of Neptune are all about above, see my Orrery website!
!Recyclone
Recylone is written by Archifishal Software, some might say that including third party software in Select is cheating. Get over it I say - having a consistent recycling bin on every machine is eminently sensible. More important, of course, is stability. I've used bins in the past, and they've always been unstable (blown over in the wind, you might say). Getting the thumbs up from RISCOS Ltd. should indicate their satisfaction with this little baby.
What seems to be better about this bin, compared to others I've used, is that using the Filer's DELETE option automatically transfers files to the bin (although you can drag files to its iconbar icon). It would be nice to have an "undelete" option from the bin's filer menu, but let's not get too awkward. For classes in which kids suddenly decide to start deleting files, this is quite handy!
Filer Thumbnailing
Again available for some years as a third-party application (!PhotoFiler by David Thomas, available from WSS) the great thing about having it built in to Filer is that it is a new choice in the Display menu, so can be turned on and off as needed. With Photofiler, on the other hand, you have to remember to hold down CONTROL when going into directories that you don't want thumbnailed. But how do they compare? In standard configuration, Filer takes 12 seconds on my machine (StrongARM RiscPC) to thumbnail the $.Images.00-49 folder. On the other hand, Photofiler can do it in 10. Configuring the Filer to display smaller images does not seem to give improved speed.
Filer thumbnailing a window
That said, the ability to thumbnail directories as and when you please far outweighs the slightly slower rendering of folders. The bottom line is that pupils' WindowsXP machines will display a directory of images as thumbnails; so should the RISC OS machines they use at school. If at all possible...
Networking
According to RISCOS Ltd they have continued to develop and enhance the networking facilities of RISC OS so that it should now be possible to plug in machines running Select and be up and running on any network within minutes. That's the theory, and here's the network configuration options:
RISC OS Select's Extensive Networking Options
The ability to connect to any network is essential for RISC OS machines in schools today if they are to hold their own.
Native Broadband
Broadband has finally come to my home town. Like many others, I signed up to bring our small market town over the threshold set by BT before they would install the service. Inevitably I was already considering having to buy a cheap PC in order to be able to access such a service, not expecting any support for RISC OS to be available.
Fortunately, Paul Vigay exists! He has worked out how to set up our favourite machines through a router, and has begun writing comprehensive instructions which can be found here. After contacting Paul, he tells me that it really is very easy to get up and running.
In addition, Paul has become a reseller of what he considers to be one of the best routers. I've budgeted to buy one of these over the summer, so look forward to finally throwing out my old 56K modem. Who knows, maybe I could make a bob or two from it on eBay?
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
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME4/ISSUE1/FILES/INDEX.HTM Volume 4, Issue 1, PC File Conversion
PC File Conversion
Brian Pickard
Part 1 Introduction and Text files
Introduction
This series of articles is the result of recent requests from friends with PCs wanting posters, documents, images etc. either modified or designed from scratch. I have a RiscPC and as many of you already know RISC OS applications offer a friendly and more productive platform for producing work. The only snag is most of the world likes (!?) PCs usually running some version of Windows. Therefore files produced by RISC OS cannot usually be imported directly into Windows PC applications and vice versa.
I have found some neat tricks/conversions to get round this problem so in these articles I will try and show how to convert the main types of files (DTP, Spreadsheet, bit images, vector graphics etc) so that any PC user can use. I will also show how to convert the PC equivalents to RISC OS versions so that you can use them.
General Points
Throughout this series I will refer to RISC OS and PC computers. RISC OS refers to any RISC OS computer using any version of RISC OS from 3.1 upwards. PC refers to any Windows based PC (Not Apple or Mac). Windows refers to Windows 3.1 through to WindowsXP.
Plain Text from PC to RISC OS
The first and probably most straight forward type is plain text.
.txt files
Most PC users use Windows Notepad for small text files. These files have a file extension txt. This is the easiest type of text file to deal with. Just load them directly into !Edit. The only alteration, or more accurately tidying up, needed is to take out the &0d codes at the end of each line in !Edit. Click select with the pointer at beginning of the text to ensure the cursor is at the start. Using the Find Text window (press F4 or go through Edit option on Menu). Fill in the window as shown below.
Then click on GO and in the Text found window use the End of file replace button.
Microsoft Word Files (doc files)
Another common application used for text files is Microsoft Word. This can save its files as .txt text files but the most common file type is .doc document files. Since this application is a word processor the file contains the document format information, which includes Font style, point size, page borders etc. A .doc file can also contain bitmap images. A free program called AntiWord can deal with the text basically just extracting it without any of the formatting. The latest version is available to download at
The text can then be saved as a draw file or as a text file. For a more complete solution including any bitmap images use EasiWriter from Icon Technology. This will allow a word document to be displayed complete with any bitmap images. The font styles may not be completely accurate but the overall view is a good approximation.
Other PC Applications.
A simple rule is: If the PC application can save the text as a file with extension .txt then ask your friend to save it as a text file.
If not then get your friend to install a PostScript printer driver (preferably PostScript language 2 since this deals with colour). There should be a driver on their Windows CD. Once installed set this driver to save the output to file. (Postscript files have .ps extension). This file can then be sent to you and you can deal with it. If the PC user has Adobe software which saves as PDF files then these can also be read using software on the RISC OS platform.
To read PostScript or PDF files you can use RiScript from Cerilica Ltd. This will read them and produce accurate Drawfile, PDF or text file output. I use this extensively and can recommend it. In a future part I will show how to use it to send complex DTP files etc. to PC owners.
Plain text from RISC OS to PC
Use your usual text editor. (I still like !Edit) But at the end of each line place a character &0d (decimal 13). This can be done quite easily using the Find text Window. This time fill it in as shown.
Then in the Text found window use the "End of file replace" button. This will place the required codes in the text ready for the PC application. Save the file on a DOS formatted floppy(or into a DOS Partition on your hard drive for later transfer via the web etc.) with a name in the format name/txt. The / will be read by the PC as a . and so the PC app will be able to recognise it as a text file.
If it is a long text file then you could use the application SparkFS to produce a zip archive file. This will compress the file considerably. Using the zip archive option will make sure the PC owner will be able to decompress/extract the text file, since most Windows users have its equivalent app called WinZip. But check first!
Any PC text or DTP application can usually understand a simple .txt file so nothing should go wrong!
PC Filenames
One thought as struck me at this stage. Perhaps PC filenames are not so well understood. A PC recognises the type of file only from its extension (the three characters after a .) Back in the dim and distant past DOS only allowed a maximum of 12 characters for a file name, including the extension. So I always try and stick to this as I know all PCs should understand this format. When receiving a file from a PC owner the filename might contain many characters and could upset your RISC OS filing system. I use the !Win95FS application which allows PC files from the web to be saved directly into a DOS partition on my harddrive. I then rename them into a convenient form which my RISC OS 3.7 will understand. If Win95FS has not set the file type automatically then it must be set before loading it into any converter/reader. For those of you with later versions of RISC OS (4.01 onwards or VirtualA5000) the file name length should not pose a great problem.
And Finally...
A quick note on my setup. My hardware consists of a StrongARM RiscPC with 64Mbyte memory (2Mbyte VRAM). This is networked to a PC with WindowsXP (mainly used for Web work and emails etc). I can easily move files onto the RiscPC's hard drives from the PC and vice versa for checking file conversions. LanMan98 and Samba take care of that on the RiscPC.
My hard drives have several DOS partitions (max size 2 Gbyte/partition). These are used as shared drives between the PC and RiscPC. This set up gets over the problems with long filenames from the PC. LanMan98 is set up to read several areas of the PC hard drive so that files can be saved directly onto the PC from a RiscPC app.
My printer is connected to the RiscPC and samba allows printing directly from the PC driver which is set as a shared printer. The PC and RiscPC also have PostScript drivers installed both printing to files. The PC driver prints to a RiscPC DOS partition. The RISC OS driver can print to the PC harddrive. Needless to say this setup was rather fiddly to get working but has been well worth it.
Thats it for this part, Next time I will concentrate on graphics files.
If you have any problems or solutions you have found when porting files to and from PCs please drop me an email.
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME4/ISSUE1/FOOTBALL/INDEX.HTM Volume 4, Issue 1, Football Manager
Football Manager
Paul Johnson
Code jam at the UK coral
Probably the two most difficult aspects of any sort of league based system are the generation of the leagues and the calculation of the league tables. This editions article will deal with the drawing up of the league fixtures. It excludes cup matches as they can be slotted in as and when (remember, when you first start out, you have basically the league and the F.A. Cup to contend for). Given that most non division 1 and premier teams are usually out of the cup by round 3 (when the big guns come in), it is no real problem to slot those in when they're required.
Okay let's look at the league fixture list.
As it stands, it looks quite simple, you have a list of 24 teams (22 in the premier league). Each team plays each other twice (home and away). It's a simple case to generate team 1's list, copy over when they play the other teams, generate team 2, create a fixture, make sure that the team generated to play is not playing another team on that day and so on. In theory, you should not need to generate team 24's list as that has already been done.
Creating the list in practise though is far from simple.
Follow my steps young Jedi....
We can do the generation one of two ways. The first is very simple.
Create an array of 24 teams x 2 matches x 2 home/awa
Fill the array full of -1 (signifies no match played
Create a teams_played list (24 teams), again fill with -1
Start the loop for the home matche
Send to the random function the team number, number of teams in the teams_played array, the teams_played array, the random seed value and finally a reference to the team picked numbe
Random generator picks a number, checks against the teams_played array. If the number picked appears, generate another number and continue to do so until a number is picked which hasn't already been picke
Make the reference equal to the number picked and that's that
Assign the fixture to the master fixture lis
Keep going until the loop is complete. Do the same for the away fixtures
Copy into the teams played the position where the team playing plays all of the other teams below it's own number (for instance, if the team is team 3 then copy over when it plays teams 2, 1 and 0
Repeat until the entire league fixture is done
In theory, this should work (indeed if I only wanted to generate a fixture list for just my team, then it would be fine). However, if you look at the jan-03-03.csv file you'll notice a problem with the theory. The code in listing (1) does not bother to look for transfer collisions and as the generation process continues, you start to get more and more of these collisions and that really does mess up the fixture lists!
Can we modify the listing so that the program works properly?
As it stands, the listing only checks to see if a home (or away) match for the current team is being played. If it is changed from
if (league_fix[team_no][fixture_no][ha] == -1)
to
if ((league_fix[team_no][fixture_no][ha] == -1) && (league_fix[opponent][fixture_no][hc] == -1)
then that should check to ensure that there isn't a fixture clash. And it does, quite admirably in fact. The only problem is that the code has to loop around again to create another fixture. Now we can do that by use of if and else.
If we tag onto the league_fix test
else
{
cout << "team fixture clash. The opponent is already playing that day.\n";
then let nature take its course (i.e. follow the path of the code) then we get something which is almost right, but still not there. Compile listing 2 and you'll see what I mean. Remember, a -1 signifies there is no match. "teams-listing2" gives a sample output from listing 2.
Something strange is happening, for some reason, the program seems to think that four matches have been played. Actually, nothing strange is happening. If you look closely, team 0 plays team 16 on match 5 at home (or team 16 plays team 0 on match 5 away), but at least it demonstrates the overall code problem more clearly; a method of looping back to generate the random number has to be included.
break, continue or goto?
Listings 3 to 5 show the effect of these. Unfortunately, they all exhibit the same problems.
The solution?
This problem can be solved one of two ways. Generate team 1, propagate through the other matches. Generate team 2, propagate except where there is a conflict and so on.
Solution 2 is a re-write of the generation code.
Out of these two options, the first one is the best way forward; we already have the basis of the code, it just needs tampering with.
Onto the paper..
As I said at the start, the more you write down, the simpler the coding will be. In the instance of a league fixture list, a paper copy is the best way forward.
I designed mine like this
Hom
Awa
Hom
Awa
Hom
Awa
1
1
2
I started off with the blue columns (team 1) and generated 22 random numbers for the home games. The corresponding away fixtures were generated.
Next stage is to transpose those over to the other teams, except they would have to be in reverse (if team 1 plays team 3 at home, then at the same time, team 3 plays team 1 away). When the transfers are complete, team 2's fixtures are worked out. However, there is an added complication from here, not all of the cells will be empty. How is that best tackled?
We can either initialise the block holding any teams fixture list to be zero (or any number either less than 1 or greater than 24) and go down then fill the line until we reach a non-zero number, continue down until we hit the zero and fill from there or we can make a copy which contains both the original fixture number and the non-zero number next to it, the list is then generated and the numbers filled in with the correct order, in other words, the array would look like this:
Match no
Team curren
1
1
1
The array on the left would be ordered 1, 6, 12, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13 ... 23
This is possibly the most efficient method and listing 6 shows how it is done.
One thing which I have yet to mention, but is really important is licencing. Back in the days of the original FM series, teams and players didn't give two hoots about their names being used. However, today things are much different. Teams and players make big money lending their names to software packages and they certainly don't want a GPL program ripping them off (or if the package is really dire, lending their name to a turkey).
To avoid any possible repercussions, teams are referred to as team 1, team 2 etc and team players also by a number. The code though will allow you to construct a file which contains both the team and player names, neither myself, RiscStation or RISCWorld can be held to account for the text files you may use which contain the entire premiership and lower league names and players.
That's enough for now. Next time, we'll continue on this with more code and move onto the data structure and the theory behind inheritance (no, I don't mean my will either!)
Paul Johnson
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME4/ISSUE1/GAMES/INDEX.HTM Volume 4, Issue 1, Games World
Games World
Paul Brett with the latest gaming news.
In the last year or two there has been a steady trickle of new games releases, however due to the work of two hard working individuals, Neil White and Peter Naulls, this trickle has turned into a complete flood. Indeed the pair of them have released so many games (over 20 in the last couple of months) that we could in theory keep GamesWorld running for an entire volume!
So this issue we are going to cover Neils rather natty selection, and don't forget that if you like any of his games you should send him some money (or cigarettes), see each games !Help file for more details.
Neil White's Games
Convey
The objective of the game is to collect all the red blobs on the conveyor belt and then cross the finish line, if you miss any you will be taken around again. The controls are Z for left, X for right and space to jump. If you do jump then you can't jump again directly after you have landed you have to wait a second or so - so be warned!
JMBMan
This is a pacman clone written in BASIC in under 9 hours. Neil thought it would be fun to make a pacman clone in one day (been there with AcidHousePacMan many years ago - ED). The keys are Z for left, X for right, / for down and ' for up. The game speeds up every 5 levels until level 20.
Shemozzle
This is an 8 level demo beta. The probe robots you have sent down to the planet are malfunctioning. It seems the magnetic pull of the planet is affecting the control circuitry in all related mechanisms so you'll have to try to use the remote control panel to get them to their launcher pods.
In this demo your robots move in steps of three, your malfunctioning controller lets you select a move of two, then one, after you are happy with your selection click the tick to activate the robot. It will then move according to the commands you have given it.
You have a limited amount of moves in each direction, so be careful, although you are unlikely to run out in this demo. Press all three buttons together to destroy the robot. Use the far right mouse button reposition the controller. Your 'lives' are indicated in the center of the control unit.
Squerd
This is an exceptionally hard puzzle game. All you have to do is place the pieces over the image to remove the entire design - sounds easy? Well it isn't in fact its so hard I can't do a single level. Select a piece from the available ones with Select and rotate it with Menu or Adjust.
Tanks
You are a tank in an arcade game that has become self-aware. Forced to turn on your comrades you must try and escape to a better world where green tanx in arcade games run free. The keys are Z for left, X for right, / for brake, Return for fire and Space for jump. The Yellow coins give you health and bullets. The Red coins hurt and the Green coins are keys which open sections of walls.
To finish levels you need to collect 3 rotating red and pink things, theses only appear one at a time, when you have found all three they will form an exit portal.
Other Gaming News
New StrongARM compatible Elite
There isn't a great deal I can say about the Archimedes version of Elite, this is a new fixed version that will load correctly on a StrongARM equipped machine (such as a Risc PC or one of the new
"This version was produced from a copy I've been using for ages which seems to have no definite origin; as such the 'extras' such as the rjw_Sync module have just been tagged on later once I discovered that they were in the 'official' distribution (i.e. the version Richard Goodwin patched). Apparently rjw_sync is used to slow the game down should it run too fast, but I've never had a problem with this so can't really comment on whether it's needed. If it runs to fast then try using it and see what happens. The game should still run on any machine from RISC OS 2 up to RISC OS 4 (including Select), although this release has only been tested on 3.71. It is not RISC OS 5 compatible. The copy of !System provided should only be merged with the one on your hard disk if elite fails to run without it; it contains an old version of the Shared C Library which you probably wouldn't want to install over the one already in your machine."
Tutankhamuns Tomb by Christopher and Harriet Bazley
This is a strategy/maze game. You have three lives and have to collect the right coloured keys to open the coloured doors which block your path to the pyramid's exit, and retrieve the lost crowns. The final (purple) door will not open until you have all the crowns as well as the purple key! This game was originally for the BBC Micro and has been converted by Christopher and Harriet Bazley.
If you pass under a loose rock, it will fall and block your return path! Giant spiders are lethal, but predictable in their movements and you can sometimes outrun them. Golden crowns give a bonus to your score. You also get a bonus for completing the game in a short time. A high score for each level is recorded. Editing levels in 'TutenEd' will automatically reset their high scores to zero.
The keys are:
Z lef
X righ
" u
? dow
P pause: while pause
Q while paused sound of
S while paused sound o
R while paused commit suicide (handy if you get trapped by a rock
SPACEBAR to unpaus
That is it for this GamesWorld, I will be back next issue when we will have yet another bumper crop of games to cover.
The 2003 Guildford show is now set to take place on the 18th of October at Guildford college, the same venue as last year. The show is organised by the Surrey and Sussex Acorn User Group (SASAUG). After the success of last years show RISCWorld is delighted to see the show coming back again. Tickets are priced at £5 each and are only available on the door (so you can't pre book) and the show is open from 10 in the morning to 4 in the evening.
For those that missed the show last year it was the first public appearance of the Iyonix from Castle Technology. As those who were there will testify the show was absolutely packed and it was difficult to move around with so many people.
How to get there
Guildford is easy to get to, it's quite close to London and the M25.
As you can see the college is quite easy to find and has ample parking. For those that wish to walk from the station here is a larger scale map.
Getting to the show on foot from the Railway station
Bear right as you leave the main entrance of Guildford Railway Station,
passing the bus stop and heading towards the one-way traffic system.
Turn left onto Bridge Street
walking along Bridge Street in the same direction as the traffic.
At the next junction, turn left onto Onslow Street
and continue until you come to the pedestrian crossing where you
can safely cross onto the right side of the street.
(This is before you get to the roundabout.)
Continue along Onslow Street until you get to the roundabout
where you must turn right into York Road.
Don't cross York Road at this point.
Walk along York Road until you can safely cross the road to the left side.
The safest way is to use the pedestrian subway a short distance along the road.
Turn left at the junction with Stoke Road.
Walk along Stoke road for about 650 meters (725 yards) and see Guildford College on your right.
Enter and go to Reception which is next to the hall.
This should take no more than 20 minutes.
Once inside the Guildford college grounds you will need to find the show entrance, and of course park your car unless you have arrived on foot.
Exhibitors
At present the list of exhibitors is still being finalised. Last year the stands sold out very quickly and quire a few potential exhibitors were disappointed. However you can expect to see all the RISC OS developers and no doubt many (if not all) of them will have some very special offers.
For More Details
This issue of RISCWorld includes the whole Guildford show 2003 website which you can have a look at
This is the search program that was left off some of the RISC World Volume 3 CDs. The program is designed to search the entire contents of volume 3 to make it easier and quicker to find specific articles.
Copy the program to your hard drive and de-archive it. The program contains the indexing information to enable it to carry out a search, but once you have done this, to access the article(s) you will need to have the RISC World Volume 3 CD in your CD drive.
If you are using Warm Silence's CDROMFS then you will need to make a small alteration to the !HTMLsrch !Run file. Just load the !Run file into your text editor and follow the instructions you will see there.
Instructions
This program will search the HTML files of the RISC World Volume 3 Magazine CD. It will create an HTML file which can be Saved and then loaded into a browser. This will then give links to each file where the search string was found.
As well as the link a single line of text where the search string was found can also be included to illustrate the context.
The control window
To use the program run it in the usual way and then click SELECT on the icon. The main control window will then open.
At the left-hand side are four option buttons, 'Reverse', 'Whole words', 'Case sensitive' and 'Show line'.
If 'Reverse' is OFF then the search will start at Issue 1. If 'Reverse' is ON then, as you might guess, the search starts with Issue 6 and goes backwards. This is often useful because the most recent entries will be found first.
If 'Case sensitive' is ON only text which matches the case of the search string will be found, if it is OFF case is ignored. If the search string is 'Test' then with this option ON only exact matches will be found, if OFF 'test', TEST, etc. will also be matched.
If 'Whole words' is ON then the matched text will need to be complete words. For example, with this off, if you were searching for 'test' words like 'latest', 'tests', 'testing' would also be found. With it ON only the word 'test' would be found. (Please see the notes under 'Problems' before using this option).
If 'Show line' is ON then a line of text where the search string was found will be shown after the link. If it was found more than once in a file then each line where it was found will be included. If 'Show line' is OFF then just the link will be shown.
Using HTMLsrch
In use the program should be self evident. When you have entered the search string (which must have at least three characters) and set the various buttons as you want them just click on 'Begin' or press RETURN.
The '#' (hash) character is used as a 'wildcard' which means it will match any single character. For example, 'de#d would match 'dead' or deed'.
All you will see until the search is complete is the file being searched and the matches in being counted.
When the search is complete a 'Save' window will open. You can drag the file icon in this window to any filer window, changing the filename first if you wish. If you close the Save window before you save the file then it can be opened again from the icon bar menu. Alternatively you can drag it directly to your Browser.
'Stop', as the name suggests, will abort the search at any stage. If some matches have been found when you click on 'Stop' you can save the results of the partial search from the iconbar menu. Closing the main window while a search is underway has the same effect as clicking on 'Stop'.
The 'Whole words' system is not completely foolproof. A 'terminating character' is regarded as anything other than the letters a-z, A-Z or the figures 0-9. A word must also begin with one of these characters, a pound sign (£) or an exclamation mark (!) so words which start with 'foreign' characters or any other symbols will NOT be found when this option is on. In practice, provided you are aware of this limitation, it is not likely to cause problems. If in doubt switch off 'Whole words' since if the word or phrase you are looking for does contain this type of character you are not likely to have many false matches anyway.
Dave Holden
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME4/ISSUE1/HUGHJ/INDEX.HTM Volume 4, Issue 1, The Hugh Jampton Experience
The Hugh Jampton Experience
Yes, live from the Ramada Ballroom Scunthorpe it'ssssssss the Huuuuugh Jaaaaampton Experience
So RISC World has staggered into Volume 4, and it only seems like a couple of months ago that we were still in Volume 3! Still enough of that, let's now move onto the sorry state of the caption competition.
Last issues caption competition
As you may well remember we ran a piccy of Aaron last issue and asked for your captions. Well we didn't get any. Actually thats not quite true, we might have had some but someone (Who? Me - ED) didn't set up my RISC World e-mail address so no one could get through. However I have now got Dave Holden to set up my e-mail address so you can now e-mail me using this link..
This issues caption competition
Well here it is, can you think of an amusing caption for this little gem?
As usual send your entries to me and we may even be able to come up with s small prize for the winner.
Hugh's Newsgroup Prima Donna guidelines
I have been doing quite a bit of lurking recently, and the good news is that the charges have been dropped. However I have also been lurking on newsgroups and doing a highly scientific study of newsgroup prima donnas. Why? Well to provide a service to RISC World readers of course. In case you are not aware a newsgroup Prima Donna is someone who has voluntarily elected themselves to be a moderator on an unmoderated newsgroup. It's a dirty job, but someone hasn't got to do it. These people exist all over usenet, they slave away tirelessly helping scare away new users, insulting existing ones and stressing their own importance without adding any value. So how do you identify a Prima Donna? Well luckily uncle Hugh is here to help with his simple guide. Read any computer newsgroup for a few weeks to identify the common posters then try identifying the Prima Donnas using these simple tests.
Simple guidelines to spotting a Prima Donna. For each Yes score 1 point, for each no score 0 points.
Does the suspected Prima Donna post at all hours of the day or night
Does the suspect respond to a well constructed argument with mindless abuse
Do they have a website containing lots of software they have written
Does this software need obscure third party modules that are not linked to from the suspects site
Once you have found the obscure components needed does the software still refuse to work
If the software doesn't work do you have to install further third party bits which mess up other programs on your computer
If you report the problem are you directed to a website that doesn't answer your question
Does the suspect suffer from illogical thinking e.g. "I'm right because I'm xxxx and you are wrong because you are not"
Does the suspect refer back to obscure postings from ages ago without remembering any of the actual details in the original posting
Does the original posting actually contradict what suspect is saying now
In response to simple questions from new users does the suspect post answers with some crucial information missing
Does the suspect then claim that it was not necessary to include such information as "everyone who is familiar with this knows that"
Does the suspect go by a short, but pointless, nick name that has no relation to their real name
Does the suspect deliberately flame one individual because their higher level of knowledge threatens suspects perceived credabilty
Does the subject complain about the way others post to the newsgroup
Does the subject stop posting to a thread if they are corrected by someone else who they dare not argue with
If you ask subject for their actual qualifications or details of real world projects they have been involved in do they mumble and then become abusive
Does the suspect negatively respond to other peoples comments without either reading or understanding them
Does suspect seem to believe that they are important and that their posting carry any weight
And the final clincher does the suspect complain about these tests
So having added up you scores what do you get?
0 to 5 pts - not a Prima Donna, just a normal helpful user
6 to 10 pts - expert in some fields but knows their limitations, may be having a bad day
10 to 15 pts - Junior Prima Donna given to occasional tantrums but still helpful
16 to 20 pts - A Prima Donna supremo, often rude with a massively inflated ego but no real knowledge or experience. Often mistaken for a rodent in poor lighting conditions
So do you know anyone who fits this criteria? If so why not send the results of this test to me here as usual there is no prize, expect perhaps the fame of having your name printed in RISC World.
Anyway lets move on to some of the funny photos that have landed in the mailbox that is actually working.
Hidden display properties in Windows
And following on from our usual toilet humour.
And now a little something for the lady computer user.
And if she doesn't find that funny she certainly won't find this funny either.
And finally just what you have always suspected...
That's all from me for this issue, remember stay lucky, keep 'em peeled, don't have nightmares, goodnight.
Hugh Jampton
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME4/ISSUE1/INSIDER/INDEX.HTM Volume 4, Issue 1, The Death of RISC OS
The Death of RISC OS
Insider
M'luds, the case before you is an unusual one. For many years, a single computer platform and operating system was the main stay for educational establishments up and down the country with a many, and varied, user base.
Many things have happened over the years, and today, we have to make the decision; how do we prevent RISC OS vanishing.
Okay, that may be a bit melodramatic, but essentially, it's correct.
The question is, why, on a CD based magazine (which means you're running at least RISC OS 3.5 or are viewing this on another platform totally), should this matter – after all, we're all happy with using 3.5 aren't we. Well, aren't we?
Well, no. And if you are, shame on you. Here's why...
Acorn and RISC OS, a potted history..
We all know the history of innovative, industrious bods who single handed created the ARM processor and an OS to run on it, brought forth some of the most powerful hardware around and along the way, managed to cock things up amazingly!
The mistakes
ARTHUR
This was the first Archimedes operating system. Originally the Archimedes was going to ship with RISC OS, but this wasn't ready, so Acorn cobbled together the working parts of RISC OS and wrote a new desktop (in BASIC!) and released what was effectively half an operating system (hence the name Arthur).
26 bit addressing
Why they did that, I'll never know. They had arguably the single most powerful processor going in the ARM chips, yet decided to bodge it and cause muchos problems down the line.
Lack of finalisation
Acorn were masters of getting things 90% done, but never masters of completeness. You only have to look at OS 3.0 for that. It had more bugs than Windows 3!. 3.1 was out very quickly.... All down to not going that little extra. Sure, 90% in Acorn terms is still close to 98% in Microsoft terms (stability and usability), but it's that little extra which means so much.
Lack of focus
Acorn, while they were innovative (they were one of the first to use SCSI with the Doomsday system), they were incredibly short sighted. Many people joke about Bill Gates' comments ("computers will never need more than 640K" and "the internet will never catch on"), but conveniently forget how far behind Acorn was in terms of harddrive capacity, memory, CD drives, web browser and web technologies. It wasn't until OS 3.7 that you could really use larger than 512Mb drives without partitioning. Memory upgrades have been hopeless due to the specific type of memory required and browsing under RISC OS, while getting better, is still massively behind other platforms. They just didn't see it coming!
Poor design
The RiscPC, while undoubtably the finest Acorn machine ever is not very well designed. There are hold-ups on the memory buses, the IDE system is not that amazing and if you have a mk 1 motherboard, only had 8 bit sound. It was never designed for the StrongARM which really does show the problems up (well, the motherboard was never designed for the SA which can be up to 40 times faster than the ARM 710). Other awful designs included the A5000 and A7000 machines (though the A7000 is not as bad as the A5000).
Awful PR
The fiasco over the Pheobe demonstrated this.
Reliance on one market
Acorn machines and education had been linked together from the days of the BBC B when the government of the time instituted the "computers in schools" campaign. This gave Acorn the tie in which was a stable source of income for many years. They never really invested any money elsewhere.
NMIC (Not made in Cambridge)
If a component was not made in Cambridge by Acorn (or farmed out to an approved company), they were not interested. This cost them dearly – very dearly. IBM wanted to licence the RISC technology (including the OS) when they saw the problems they'd let themselves into over MS. Acorn would have none of it. Imagine what would have happened had they said yes...
Longevity
Acorn machines go on and on and on and on and on. While this is a good thing in one respect (they last), it is a financial death trap as no-one upgrades, especially when Acorn decided that when OS 3.5 came out, software had to still run on 3.1. That single mistake probably did more damage than any other. Apple don't backward support and Microsoft certainly don't. In that way, both Apple and MS get cashflow through punters having to upgrade. Mercenary? Possibly. Financially sound? Definitely.
Reliance on custom components
While the world and his dog were enjoying cheap components (such as memory, network and video cards etc), Acorn machines relied on VIDC and IOMC as well as other custom components. When anything is custom made, that adds an expense onto the machines overall price; sure, they do a very useful job, but it is an added cost. There is also the risk that these parts will vanish.
The positives
The speed
Acorn machines have always been fast. Even back on the BBC B days, machines (such as the Oric-1) which used the 6502 were not as fast as the BBC B.
The upgradability
You can just add and add and add to the RPC. The ability to have a second processor to run an alien OS on is one not seen very often. Neither is a pizza oven on the top slice...
Customer support
If you could find someone in post for more than a couple of months at a time, customer support ranged from blindingly good to terrible. Most of the time it was good. That said, if you wanted technical support, you couldn't ask for anything better!
Innovation and creativity
Acorn made great strides in hardware design and development (with respects to upgradability). Their designs were very creative. The A30x0 range demonstrated that. They are some of the best looking computers designed. The RPC is another such box. .
Okay, given all of these you can see that Acorn had it's problems. The two biggest were the reliance on the education market and the longevity of the machines. In 1997, we had a change of government.
The education sector had already started to buy Windows PC machines prior to this as the RPC was starting to show it's age and the number of software packages for Windows had exploded. Sure, !Draw is wonderful for ICT, but with packages such as T3 (a powerful technical word processor) and a plethora of word processing and DTP packages, it wasn't hard to see why schools moved.
There were two other reasons for the move to the PC.
School governors tended to be business people who all used Windows machines and knew nothing different. The upshot was that they wanted PCs in the classroom so that their kids would be able to do the same stuff at home as they did at school
They were vastly cheaper to buy. Even with the generous discount from Acorn, you could still get two PCs for the same price as one RPC
While this removal of Acorn's cash flow was progressing steadily, the lads in Cambridge were developing the doomed Pheobe. At the time, it was just what the doctor ordered. Fast, able to use off the shelf parts and above all, had a new OS and would be cheap enough for those wanting to upgrade and poke their tongues once more at PC owners who had been boasting at the speed of the 486DX 100s over the SA 233. It ran into delays, funding problems, hardware faults, OS problems and any thing else you wanted to throw in. It was shown at RISC OS shows around the country to much acclaim. But, the delays were costing Acorn dearly.
Combine this with the new deal signed by the government with Microsoft and the end was in sight. Acorn shut down the desktop division, became E14 and then, well, you know the rest.
Stand up and be counted...
There were many attempts to get the Pheobe project running again by buying it from E14. Peter Bondar, formerly of Acorn lead this. Many at the time hailed Peter as being a god-send. They were very wrong. He was a consultant who described RISC OS users as either "education establishments or anoraks". The consultation fees were rather high as well (up to £500 per meeting). At one point, it looked like our little yellow pal would come back, but (if usenet is to believed) things went sour. Mainly as the document of understanding was signed in the morning then someone signed another agreement with a dutch company in the afternoon. The rows broke out and talks broke down. In the end, Bondar walked away. Off to fly his plane...
Then came RISCOS Ltd. They didn't want the hardware, just the OS. It would then be up to hardware companies to make the machines. Some of the finest RISC OS talent were employed by RISCOS Ltd to do the development from the old Acorn 3.8 OS. At Wakefield 1999 the new OS was launched. RISC OS 4 was everything you could ever want.
There were three hardware companies; Castle (who everyone knew anyway), MicroDigital (who many years prior had been licensed to produce the first Acorn clone, the Medi) and a new company, RiscStation. Castle had already signed a deal with E14 to carry on making the RPC and A7000 under licence.
Everything was looking up except for one major problem. Pricing and public relations for the OS. Schools used to get a bulk discount for new chip sets (they would be about 20% the price which they would retail at). Unfortunately, RISCOS Ltd couldn't offer such a discount. If schools wanted it, then it was £120 per chipset. .
The hardware companies didn't help either. Typically, one of the ARM 7500FE machines would cost around £550 for a base model. While the newer machines were far better than the A7000+, they were still poor in comparison to the PC market price and specification wise. There was also never a complete comparison between the old machines and the ARM 7500FE machines. Combine the cost to upgrade to an OS 4 machine from an OS 3.1 machine and the lack of compatibility information from the company behind the OS and it's not hard to see why people didn't upgrade.
Everything was otherwise shiny. We had the first RISCOS Ltd/ARM Club show and the announcement of the palmtop (RON). There were even mentions in the Guardian about the developments in hardware and OS!
Time moved on. The hardware and OS didn't. OS 4.02 (or 4.03 for the Kinetic, RiscStation or MD machines) had it's problems, but it was far better than any previous offerings. .
Bo Selecta!
The next jump in the OS was Select. Incredibly badly publisised by RISCOS Ltd – it consisted of a flyer given out at Wakefield by the ARM Club (RISCOS Ltd were unable to make the show that year). It offered many bug fixes (quite a few of which had been identified during the beta testing stage of 4.02) and some substantial upgrades (such as dhcp – essential for broadband). It also made things look pretty.
Due to a number of reasons (cost, terrible publicity, not actually knowing what you'd get and the very odd "up to 3 CDs a year", some took that to read you may not get 1 CD!), the uptake of Select was not as great as anticipated. Initial estimates were for 500 subscribers in the September of it's launch (roughly 4 months from the Wakefield announcement) and 1000 by the following April. It was at roughly 900 by the following September.
Something which had come to the fore was the amount of nastiness in the developer community. An inner sanctum of developers seem to have decided that they were going to be the future and basically ridiculed and insulted anyone else who dared to start asking questions. In a small community which is trying to get itself out of a rut, the big fish in a rapidly shrinking puddle system doesn't work. Companies willing to invest in RISC OS decided not to invest after looking in on the comp.sys.acorn.programmer group. If there was this amount of infighting, they didn't want to know. One estimate has put this loss at over £1 million in one year.
The exodus was carrying on. Then, one fine day, Virtual Acorn arrived.
VirtualAcorn - the saviour of RISC OS?
Sales of new machines had dropped to very low levels. A piece of freeware which had been around for a while for Windows machines by Graeme Barnes was taken up and made into a commercial package with a licence from Pace for OS 3.1 to be shipped with it.
Once again, schools which had moved to Windows, could use software which had been left in cupboards and boy, did they snap it up!. This reduced their costs. It was a marketing opportunity many of the RISC OS companies took advantage of by re-licensing their software for using on VA. This provided an extra bonus for VA and also an income for the dormant sales of RISC OS software. .
On the hardware front, we had very little new developments. Lots of hot air, no products. The Mico was effectively being sold by APDL (who were becoming an increasingly major software force with their partnership with Dave Bradforth's ProAction label). The R7500 from RiscStation had been destroyed by one of their developers in an attempt to show how robust it was and also the 50ns memory upgrade became available. The Kinetic 300 came and went. The MD laptop was announced, then vanished after signing an agreement with RiscStation. The RiscStation laptop was announced and we waited.... and waited.... and waited.... and are still waiting....
Very little was happening in the RISC OS market. A few bits of software were updated, but nothing to write home about. Then MicroDigital announced their Omega...
Omega – the number 1
The Omega was a miracle. It would work with anything written on a RPC (so meant an instant back-catalogue was available), could take a second processor (PC or X-Scale) and if using the X-Scale, could use the ARM-Twister (a 26 bit to 32 bit hardware convertor) and become really fast. Money was taken and to date, only a selected handful of people have their machines.
The Iyonix
In the middle of last year, Castle sent out a missive to developers about their new X-Scale hardware. A full 32 bit OS and Xscale machine. It looked like a dream come true. Until it was realised that it had a limitation. .
Software would have to be recompiled to run under the 32 bit OS. Fine if the company (or individual) was still about and was willing to shell out £100 for the updated version of Acorn C, but not all developers were prepared to do the work for a relatively small number of sales. Castle realised this and had the Aemulor software written. .
For the price of an Iyonix or Omega you can get a lot of PC (or Mac). It is little surprise that so few have been sold.
VirtualAcorn II
In 2003, a deal was signed between VA, RISCOS Ltd and MD to ship VARPC on a Celeron based WinXP laptop. Many have seen this as the final nail in the RiscStation laptop (and possibly even RiscStation). Was this inevitable with the lack of cash being earned by RISCOS Ltd? Perhaps. A good idea? That remains to be seen. .
We now have a dilemma.
The use and ownership of RISC OS (both machines and the OS) is at the "critical mass" point. People are jumping ship to Windows and Linux due to the level of software and development, with their RISC OS machines being used as second boxes for the kids. It may not be too late to get those on 3.1 machines to upgrade, but only if the hardware manufacturers radically drop their prices. In order to lower prices they need to sell more units, but they cannot sell more units until the price is lowered, catch 22.
£399 for the Mico is a good price for a RISC OS box, but when you can get a fully blown OS 4.02 SA machine on eBay for half of that, it's not that good. If for one month only, all of the AMSes dropped their ARM 7500FE machines to £200, a good lump of OS 3.1 users would jump. Effectively, they'd have a new machine for £100 and the new OS as well. Of course, they'd have to advertise this effectively (not just in one Acorn mag, but across the mags and on usenet as well as any other way they can).
New machines are too expensive. Okay, using a niche market bumps up the price, but not to the extent that companies are charging. If they were sub £1000 (inc. VAT) then more would take the plunge. As it is, I know that I won't. I can't justify the cost. The 4 RISC OS machines in front of me (all except one on OS 4) are fine for what I need. I can't justify £1600 on a new machine, especially as they are comparatively so lowly spec'd.
The Solution
Besides the obvious price reduction for the hardware, developers have to work together.
Forget the personal attacks and the long forgotten arguments. I have noticed on one RISC OS forum that a developer who has publically now left the market being referred to in very derogative terms for trying to dispel some of the hero worship which seems to have infected the platform. I still use a number of his apps, which (if you believe some of the rubbish said about him, will destroy the machine, kill two of your children and possibly have the US claim he has weapons of mass destruction!) work better than anything under Windows, an OS I fight with daily).
We have so few developers left that we cannot afford to lose even one more. We have so few RISC OS users left that we cannot afford to lose any more. It's quite simple, we need to have more copies of RISC OS in use. If we have more users there are more people to buy software, this would mean its worth software houses updating existing products and releasing new ones. .
How do we get more users? Advertise, find a new niche market, promote RISC OS, but do something, and do it soon. Otherwise RISC OS might well be consigned to being run, (like so many of the games machines and home computers of the 1980's), under emulation with no hardware, no new software and no development.
Insider
The views expressed in the Insider column are not necessarily those of the RISC World Editor or Publisher. We allow contraversial opinions to be expressed in this column where we feel it may be to the benefit of the RISC OS community that these should be given a public forum.
This issue the letters page is Sponsored by Andrew Harmsworth...
And here he is for the first time...
Hi Aaron
About to do a news item for riscos.org on RW6... Looks like a big issue - especially with issues 1-5 as well. :-)
Keep up the good work!
Happy Easter
Andrew Harmsworth
Ta, I will try and keep up the good work, well that is assuming I have been doing any good work, which I am not quite sure about (I'm sure - HJ). At present we are still running ahead of ourselves with RISC World, so I can be working on as many as 3 issues at the same time. Which can be fun when you have a series article in each one. So far I have not managed to mix any up and publish a series in the wrong order, but Murphy's law says it's going to happen sooner or later. Anyway no sooner had I replied then like magic this appeared...
Hi Aaron
Sorry to read about your windscreen.
Andrew Harmsworth
For more on the windscreen saga see this issues editorial...
Anyway you may well recall the problem Acorn computer that wouldn't boot from the last issue. I came up with a number of suggestions as to what the problem could be, but I forgot at least one critical instruction...
Hi Aaron
Re: Item on letters page.
With regards to the school Acorn the only other command which may be needed is *Opt4,2 to make sure the harddrive is bootable. Also could you add our User Group to your list:
email:Regards
John Sandford
I have passed this on to the person concerned but haven't had any reply so far, so I have no idea if this actually fixed the problem or not. I have asked the author to update the user group list for the next issue. In the mean time for anyone else who has any Acorn/RISC OS related problems Andrew Harmswoth (what again? - HJ) had this to say.
Aaron,
Can I suggest you point the person whose RISC OS 3 Acorn in a school isn't working to the RISC OS Education list thing
Andrew
I have also passed this on, but again got no response so I don't know if they have joined the list or not. On another subject from John Sandfords letter, user groups, Andrew also had this to say.
Aaron,
As part-time webmaster of AAUG, it is great to see our groups getting their own article in RISC World... but it's a shame that a number of the groups listed are (most certainly) non operational, and their web links (as included in the article) completely dead.
Now, I know that this is also true on the AAUG website, but until I'm informed otherwise, I won't remove or update a club's page. Simple policy, but it works for me!
"Nutshells": http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Systems/RISC_OS which is DEAD! (see previous email re: AAUG article).
The correct link is: Of which I'm an editor! :-)
It would be nice to see published links in RW checked, however.
Andrew
Sorry about the dead links in the user groups article, it came in rather later than it was supposed to have done, which was no fault of the authors and I simply didn't get a chance to do all the checking. However let's start again. In order to compile an accurate list could anyone who runs, or is involved, with a user group please send
Finally at least one reader remembered an editorial from a couple of issues ago...
Dear Aaron,
I give below an excerpt from Volume 3 Issue 5 of Risc World:
"I could find plenty to rant about, but you will have to wait a little bit longer to find out what. As soon as we are able to bring you the full stories we will. In the mean time I am going to keep schtum. When you see the next RISC World you will know why."
Well, I have Vol 3 Issue 6 now, but have seen none of the rants and revelations to which you alluded. Did you forget or are these stories still too controversial for us mere customers? ;-)
Richard Nevill.
Well I still have the article(s) concerned sitting on my hard drive, and I still can't publish them at this point. We really were hoping to be able to have done so before Christmas, but things that are beyond our control simply haven't worked out the way we were hoping. As soon as we can publish them we will. As of today (the 27th of May) I am hoping that we can get them in the next RISC World, the one that comes out in July. Mind you if things actually move the way we hope I may even be persuaded to do another 7 issue volume. Until we can publish I am afraid everyone will just have to sit and wait, sorry.
Finally no edition of RISC World would be complete without our regular "cock-up corner"...
Dear Aaron,
Where is the HTML searching program for the RISC World Volume 3 CD? I have looked everywhere but I can't find it. Even stranger a friend of mine has a copy of RISC World volume 3 and his CD has it!
Kevin Simpson
Ah well, some of the CDs were produced without this being included. We did produce it in time, we had it all ready to go and then forgot to include it on the first batch of CDs, sorry. It has been included in this issue along with the instructions so you will need to copy it to your hard disc and then put in the RISC World Volume 3 CD.
Well that is it for this issues letters page, and in fact its been a little lighter than usual. So why not see if you can get your name in lights and get your letter published by RISC World.
As some of our readers have found out over the last few months when you upgrade a computer to WindowsXP Omniclient can suddenly stop working. This can be a rather worrying experience especially if you rely on having RISC OS machines networked to Windows machines. Users of LanMan98 from
NetBEUI
LanMan normally using a protocol called NetBEUI (NetBIOS Extended User Interface), this originated in the mid 1980s and for some reason MicroSoft have decided that they no longer wish to support this protocol. When you upgrade from an existing version of Windows you will be warned that NetBEUI is not compatible with WindowsXP. If you buy a new computer with XP you will find that the NetBEUI protocol is not installed. However NetBEUI is still supplied on the WindowsXP CD and can be easily installed with no problems by a competent user in a few minutes using the guide below. Before doing this you will need to ensure that you can see "hidden" files and folders by doing the following:
Click Start, then Run, type Explorer, and then press ENTER. Click Tools, click Folder Options and then click the View tab. Under Advanced Settings, click Show hidden files and folders under the Hidden files and folders Folder. You are now ready to install NetBEUI.
Installing NETBEUI on WindowsXP
Insert your Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive and go into the Valueadd\MSFT\Net\NetBEUI directory.
Copy Nbf.sys to the C:\Windows\System32\Drivers directory
Copy Netnbf.inf to the C:\Windows\Inf hidden directory.
Click Start, click Control Panel and then double-click Network Connections
Right-click the adapter you want to add NetBEUI to, and then click Properties
On the General tab, click Install
Click Protocol and then click Add
Click to select NetBEUI Protocol from the list and then click OK
Restart your computer if you receive a prompt to complete the installation
The NetBEUI protocol should now be installed and working and hopefully OmniClient and LanMan will now also be working.
TCP/IP
If you don't fancy using the above technique you can also solve the problem by altering the OmniClient configuration using the !OmniSetup program as shown below.
As you can see currently LanManager is using NetBEUI, you can easily change this to TCP/IP by clicking on the TCP/IP button and then clicking on save.
OmniClient will now be configured to use the TCP/IP protocol rather than NetBEUI.
Conclusion
As you can see there are two ways of getting round the problem of using OmniClient and WindowsXP together. Altering the settings inside OmniClient using OmniSetup is by far the easiest and quickest provided you only have one or two machines to alter. However if you have a large network of RISC OS machines, all connected to an XP based server then installing NetBEUI on that server will be much quicker than having to alter the setup of each of the RISC OS machines.
RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME4/ISSUE1/NEWLOGO/INDEX.HTM Volume 4, Issue 1, The new RISC World logo
The new RISC World logo
Aaron introduces the new logo.
I was sitting at my desk yesterday and looking and doing the first assembly work on this issue of RISC World when something struck me. Unusually for our house it wasn't a greyhound doing 40mph in a 5mph zone, but it was the RISC World logo, quite frankly it was rubbish. Will someone please explain to me how I have been able to get away putting this awful thing on RISC World for the last two and a half years? What was I thinking?
The "old" RISC World logo - yuk!
I seem to recall that I even wrote an article at the time explaining the new design. I know why it was done the way it was, it was designed to render correctly in a 16 colour screen mode. However these days even VirtualA5000 users (and yes we do have quite a few subscribers who don't have a "real" Acorn) can run 800x600 in 256 colours. So sitting here yesterday afternoon I decided that instead of doing a sensible editing type job I would re-design the RISC World artwork, after all it's the start of a new volume so it does make some sort of sense.
Planning pays dividends
The HTML templates for RISC World are very simple, for a number of reasons. The first of these is speed. A simple HTML page will load a lot more quickly than a complex one that uses lots of frames and tables and has cunning "join-up" bits of artwork that mesh the whole thing together. When I first came on board as editor with Issue 4 I dumped the existing design produced by David Matthewman in order to "stamp my mark". I also wanted a more cohesive layout so that the main index looked like an index, and so that each article had a definite design. Secondly a simple HTML template is much easier to change than a complex one, the complete look and feel of a design can be changed easily and quickly.
A page from RISC World Volume 1 Issue 3
The aim of the exercise was to produce an HTML template that could have its appearance changed just by altering the graphics, leaving the HTML code the same.
A page from RISC World Volume 1 Issue 3 using the new HTML template
This new layout (from issue 4 onwards) was applied to the earlier articles for the Volume 1 compilation, so unless you were a subscriber right at the start of RISC World you may have never seen the original design. Although the HTML design has remained the same since issue 4 the graphics themselves and the font colours used have not. If you look closely at the screen shot above you can see a white area around the RISC World logo. This is caused because the early versions of the graphics used did not have a mask. The graphics were masked at some point during volume 2 after Andrew Harmsworth pointed it out! You may also notice that the headings are in red, whereas now the RISC World headings are in blue. This change gradually occurred during the first and second volumes. Indeed at one point we were going to switch to black for the headings, so in some issues some articles have blue headings, and some have black ones. Which is an excellent example of inconsistency.
However as far as I was concerned the design looked dated and an overhaul was long overdue.
The new graphics
Since the HTML template was designed to make later changes easy (because only the graphics would need to be altered) the new design could easily be adopted for each issue of RISC World and for the website. Indeed in the case of the website all that had to be done to apply the "new look" was upload a new set of graphics. None of the HTML pages needed to be changed at all.
A page from RISC World Volume 1 Issue 3 using the new graphics
The trick in making changes like this is to ensure that all the new graphics have the same dimensions as the old ones. This does not mean that they can't be visually bigger or smaller, just that their size in pixels matches. Some of the existing graphics had quite a lot of white space (or mask) around them which means that the new designs could be visually quite different, yet still fit correctly.
When you place a graphic on an HTML page you can specify the size the graphics will be, or you can leave the graphics size unspecified.
<IMG SRC="IMAGES/FIG3.GIF" BORDER=0>
The HTML above displays a graphic but leaves the size unspecified. This means the browser cannot format the page correctly until it has fetched the graphic.
In the example above the size of the graphic is specified. This means the browser can correctly allocate space for it and then carry on formatting the rest of the page before the graphic has loaded.
RISC World actually uses both methods. The graphics that are "editorial" such as the forward and back buttons, the RISC World logo and some other formatting parts are specified in the HTML with a fixed size. Graphics that form the body of an article no longer have their sizes specified since they shouldn't alter the page formatting greatly. Actually that's not strictly true. I long ago discovered that not having to specify the size of each graphic by hand speeded up the editing process for RISC World by a surprising amount, but at least I have a partially believable excuse.
Since the size of the "editorial" graphics was fixed in the HTML it would be a simple matter to make new ones. The new graphics were constructed mainly using Draw and DrawWorks. To ensure the sizes were consistent I made a set of grey coloured sprites that were the same size as the old graphics. It is then easy to scale the new designs to ensure they fit correctly.
The old graphics, the grey sizing sprites and the new graphics in Draw
The picture above shows how the size were kept the same. All I had to do was ensure that any new design would fit inside one of the grey sprites. The amount of white space around the graphic doesn't matter, all that matters is that the finished design fits inside the available space.
The new logo
I really wasn't too sure what I wanted for the new logo but then I had a stroke of good fortune. Rooting around the RISC World hard drive revealed an aborted re-design that had originally been intended for Volume 3. However this design was rejected as it was frankly naff, and looked worse than the design we were already using. However among the aborted logos was this little item produced using ArtWorks.
A RISC World logo constructed using ArtWorks
This had been rejected as it was too flat and lifeless. However it wasn't a great deal of work to add a drop shadow and a black border to give it a bit more depth. In this case all I did was copy the logo in Draw, give it a fill colour and line colour of black then give it a line width of 6. Placing this behind the coloured version of the logo produced this.
Slightly better
However I still wasn't happy with this design and decided it needed a highlight coming from the top left. This was accomplished by moving the coloured part of the logo down and to the right and by then placing a white version of the same logo on top of the black one.
Slightly better
All that was needed now was a bit of "sparkle", in this case all I did was draw a star shape, fill it white and then shrink it down and copy it too add some glossy highlights.
Looking much better now
Having designed the main logo I then had a go at a number of different versions of it. Embarrassment prevents me showing them all here but with hindsight I was going down a dead end road. I got fixated on the "World" part of RISC World and started going all planetary with the RISC World text part of the logo in orbit around a planet. The original logo had been designed as a whole planet with the sun coming up behind, so I thought I could keep this idea but extend the planet part of it somewhat.
The least embarrassing new designs
At this point I got stuck, and so walked away. Coming back an hour or so later I decide to leave the main logo and fiddle with the arrows as I had a much clearer idea what I wanted. I was after a more 3D type effect with a drop shadow. By this point I had already decided that the new background for the pages would be white with a blue border on the left, so the new 3D arrows needed to be blue. Now normally I don't like clip art, after all most clip art collection will generally provide the wrong clip for any occasion. However I remembered that DrawWorks comes with a set of rather nice arrows and so I dug out a DrawWorks CD. I altered several of the arrows to come up with a number of alternatives.
Three of the arrow sets
Then suddenly I realised that I had got too fixated on the "world" concept. I could produce the logo I wanted using an arrow motif. All I had to do was flip over the Index arrow from the bottom set and put that behind the RISC World logo.
So close, but yet...
I still wasn't totally happy with this and then realised why. The arrows were all three dimensional in some way, but the RISC World logo wasn't. However it was time for DrawWorks to come to the rescue (after all what's the point of being a designer, writing your own design tools and then not using them). All I need to do was use DrawTrix to bulge the RISC World logo out a bit
Bulging with DrawTrix
Assembling the whole lot together produce a logo I was finally happy with.
Got it!
It was now quite easy to put together the other required bit following the same sort of idea. All of this was done with DrawWorks apart from the "MainIndex" graphic on the RISC World title page which had its text distorted by ArtWorks, simply because that was the quickest way of doing it.
The end bit
So that sums up the RISC World re-design. At this rate you can look forward to another of these articles at the start of volume 7 explaining how bad this design is and asking what on earth I was thinking at the time.
Aaron
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME4/ISSUE1/PD/INDEX.HTM Volume 4, Issue 1, PD World
PD World
Paul Brett with the latest freeware and PD releases for RISC OS.
!A310Emu - Jan De Boer
Now here is something a little different, an Acorn emulator to run on an Acorn. You may well be asking your self what the point of this is. Well it allows you to run RISC OS 3, RISC OS 2 or even Arthur on a StrongARM RiscPC. A310Emu is a work in progress and is not guaranteed to be bug free however in my tests it has run very well and on a 287Mhz APDL Turbo processor it runs at almost 6 Mhz (the original A310 etc ran at 4Mhz). Now you can run old software, even single tasking programs, that are not StrongArm compatible on a RISC PC. I have asked Aaron to check this out to see if it ran on his Omega and indeed it did. (It also runs on the Alpha laptop - Ed).
Before using !A310Emu you will need to obtain copies of the RISC OS ROMS you will need to visit
!A310Emu in action
BackIT - Shareware from Quantumsoft
Due to the way people work they often forget to take a current backup of vital programs, letters, etc. This program ensures that this process it is not forgotten and no valuable files are lost. !Back_it is unique as it tries its hardest to work in the background, so for the majority of the time you can continue to do work on your computer whilst it is performing the backup.
BackIT copies directories or applications (and their contents) to a preset 'backup' directory into a dated directory. It does the backup as quietly as possible and tries to keep the Desktop as workable as possible as it does this.
BeebIT - Michael J Foot
BeebIt attempts to emulate the behaviour of a British Broadcasting Corporation Model B, B+ and Master 128 Micro Computers.
BeebIt will not work as it stands. You will need a copy of the OS and BASIC ROM images that came with the original BBC Computer. Pace Micro Technology Limited still hold the copyright over these ROMs and therefore they cannot be distributed with this emulator. Here's how to get them though.
If you own an original BBC Model B computer you can use either of the following programs to get the ROM images. These programs must be run on your BBC Model B computer.
Use the 'GrabROM' utility which can be found at
Use the 'SaveROM' program, included with BeebIt
Follow the instructions in the file 'GetROMs'
If you don't own a BBC Computer, but do have a copy of Acorn's '65Host' you can use the accompanying program 'RipROMs' to extract the ROM images. You will have to extract BeebIt to a writable disc and open the filer window that contains !65Host before you do this. The ROMs can be called anything you like as long as the file name matches what is on the configuration screen. I recommend naming your ROM files with the first part describing what the ROM is, and the second part what version it is. ie. OS120 is BBC B OS 1.20, OS200 is BBC B+ OS 2.00 and DFS120 is Acorn DFS 1.20.
The BeebIT configure windows
BBCFiles - James Lampard
This is an essential add on for BeebIT and allows you to easily convert filetypes between different BBC emulators on both RISC OS and Windows. Formats supported include:
BeebItFS is an 8-bit BBC Micro filing system, written so BeebIt can access files on RISC OS filing systems. It also allows the use of some 6502Em style 'BBC Applications'.
Director - Director Developers
Director is a general purpose desktop tool. It allows you to customise your desktop by creating menus of useful commands and icons to attach the menus to. Any number of menus or icons can be created and attached in any order to each other. Director also allows an alternative and faster view onto files in the form of directory menus and allows these menus to be attached to other menus as well.
Director has some other useful features such as remembering the most recently used files, the ability to add key strokes into the keyboard buffer and the ability to produce directory menus over drive icons. Director is fully customisable by the user, and can do many or all of the functions of Pinboard+, TreeMenu (AKA DirMenu), Filer-, QuickDir, DeskUtils, Memorizer, Menon and some of the functions of Filer+.
Director
Free
A very nice little RISC OS improvement that provides a graphical display of the free space on a disc. This is supplied with different versions for all versions of RISC OS from 3.1 onwards. Simply drop the version that is correct for your OS into your PreDesk directory and re start the computer.
Free
PinWay - Giftware by Bernard Veasey
This is a very nice extended version of the normal RISC OS Pinboard. It supports up to 8 different pinboards, each of which can have completely different icons. PinWay pinboards can be auto-saved, eg. When the computer is shutdown, the program is quit or the user manually clicks 'Save'. As well as normal Filer type objects such as Applications, Files and Directories which can be dragged to the 'PinWay' pinboard, 'Command' type objects which execute RISC OS commands can also be created on the pinboard. Files from most applications can be saved direct to the 'PinWay' pinboard. eg. Just drag a 'save' icon from another application to a blank part of the 'PinWay' pinboard. If you drop the 'save' icon from most other applications on to a directory icon that has previously been placed on the 'PinWay' pinboard, it will be saved to that directory and not the 'PinWay' pinboard.
Pinway
PreShut - Giftware by Bernard Veasey
Now a wonderfully simple idea. PreShut can be used to run an automated series of tasks just before the computer shuts down. For example you could arrange for the machine to automatically back up some important files. You can also arrange for shutdown to halt if certain "key" applications are currently loaded. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?
Updates to both of Bernards programs can be found at
Signing off
That is it for this PD column, what software will we be featuring next issue? To be honest I don't yet know but I am aware of a couple of real gems in the pipeline. Come back next time and I will be able to tell you more!
Paul Brett
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME4/ISSUE1/RISCPC/INDEX.HTM Volume 4, Issue 1, Improving RISC PC Video
Improving RISC PC Video
Dave Holden
Improving RiscPC video
Most people will be aware that there are two main types of RiscPC motherboard in circulation; the Series 1 and 2 boards as fitted to the early RiscPC 600s and the Series 3 boards fitted to the later 600s and all other machines up to the present day. The most obvious outward difference between these two is that the Series 3 board has 16 bit sound whereas the Series 1 and 2 boards only have 8 bit sound and require an add-on board if you want to add the improved 16 bit sound, for example, to play music CDs. What most people are not aware of is that the Series 1 and Series 2 boards actually have better video output that the Series 3 board, and this article describes how you can restore this.
There are a couple of other differences, so while we're on the subject I may as well describe them, but first how can you tell which motherboard you actually have?
Motherboard types
The most obvious place to look would be the Product Code as that should be able to be linked to the motherboard model. That might have been true once, but unless your machine is absolutely original, and has never been repaired, it may no longer be the case. When the Strong ARM upgrade appeared it was not uncommon for it not to work on some of the early Series 1 boards, and so many machines were sent off to Granada Electronics to be fixed. Sometimes, with a particularly unstable machine, the 'fix' involved fitting a Series 3 board, so if you have an early RiscPC 600 with a Strong ARM it might have the latest motherboard. Similarly a lot of component swapping and 'cannibalising' went on in schools. I've seen some very strange 'bitza' machines in lots purchased from schools.
To know what motherboard you have look at the rear of the board, just in front of and to the right of the printer socket. You will see the words:
ACORN
COMPUTER
MAIN PCB
and beneath this a number. The number will be one of three -.
0197.000 - Series 1
0197.100 - Series 2
1208.000 - Series 3
This text and the number may be partly obscured if you have an NIC fitted.
The two most important difference between the Series 1 and Series 2 boards are that the S1 boards only have the floppy DS0 line connected so they can only address a single floppy drive, and this must have it's drive ID set to zero. Later boards could address two drives (if required) and if only a single drive is fitted it can have its ID set to '0' or '1'. The other difference is that all S2 boards have modern low profile SIMM sockets whereas most of the S1 boards didn't. This can be a problem, as many SIMMs with chips on both sides, in particular most 32 Mb ones, have the chips very close to the edge of the PCB which means they can't be fitted into the sockets on the S1 boards so you have the fit the rarer, and hence more expensive, 'high clearance' type. Luckily this problem has now largely disappeared as almost all 64Mb EDO SIMMs do have adequate clearance or are single sided.
Series 3 board changes
When the S3 board was introduced there were several changes. Firstly 16 bit sound was fitted, so you could plug a CD directly in to the motherboard. Secondly it was designed from the outset to work with faster processors and with more RAM (32 Mb SIMMs were now common) and no longer required the removal of the infamous C32 if you wanted to fit a StrongARM and lots of RAM. However, there was one change which was retrograde; the video bandwidth was reduced.
This was necessary to meet the new emission regulations. The S1 and S2 boards could exceed the later RFI limits which would have made CE certification difficult. Acorn adopted a fairly unrefined solution to this problem - they introduced a simple passive low pass filter into the VIDC RGB output lines. This removes the high frequency RFI, but it also reduces the video bandwidth and hence can cause some loss of definition in high resolution screen modes. At the time this went largely unnoticed. Eight years ago high definition monitors were much more expensive than they are today, and the monitor that most people used, the AKF60, didn't show the difference, and it was only just noticeable on most examples of the Acorn 17" monitor, the AKF85. However, monitor prices have tumbled, and specifications have risen, and the majority of users now have at least a 17" monitor and expect to be able to use a screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 in 256 colours or 1024 x 768 in 32K colours, and with a modern monitor the reduced video bandwidth of the S3 board is significant.
Luckily it's not a major problem to restore full bandwidth. However, there are a few points to bear in mind.
This modification could cause your machine to exceed RFI emission standards. .
You will need to poke about with a soldering iron on your motherboard. Anyone moderately competent should be able to carry out this work but if you have any doubts don't do it. Either leave well alone or get someone who does have the necessary skills to carry out the work. If you do decide to do this and make a hash of it it could require expensive remedial work, and if this happens don't blame us.
You will need to observe normal anti-static precautions. The RiscPC motherboard is not particularly static sensitive (though the Strong ARM processor is) but do take care
What you need to do.
The modifications carried out by Acorn consisted of a small capacitor between each of the R, G and B lines and earth near to the VIDC chip and an inductor in series with each line close to the video output socket. The following illustration shows a RiscPC motherboard with the main components identified. The two areas enclosed by dotted lines are then shown enlarged and in more detail later.
The first operation is to get access to the motherboard. Ideally you should completely remove it, but it's not necessary. You will have to strip the computer to it's base 'tray' and remove the backplane and processor(s). You will probably find it advantageous to remove the VRAM. You may prefer to leave the motherboard in the tray as it keeps it firmly held, and you may also find it useful to leave the power supply in place as it makes a handy rest for your wrist to help steady the soldering iron (if you're right handed).
Before you actually start work make sure that you have clear access - you may find it easier with the power supply moved out of the way.
Removing the capacitors
First you have to remove the three capacitors. The area around the VIDC chip is shown below.
You should be able to identify the three capacitors close to the NW corner of the VIDC chip. To further identify them you will see that just to their right, between them and the VIDC, is the legend 'IC29'.
These are small surface mount devices, about 4mm x 2mm. The 'proper' tool for the job is a surface mount component remover, but you can do it with a conventional soldering iron and a bit of care.
The best tip is a flat wedge, rather like a fat screwdriver blade. If you don't have one of these then you can make one by filing an old bit to shape. It needs to be wide enough to span both ends of the component (about 5mm) and thick enough to conduct the heat, say, about 1.5mm. Place the iron tip square onto the component, making sure it's touching both ends, and, when you see that the solder has melted, you will find that you can probably remove it and the component will 'stick' to the tip of the iron. Sometimes a small sideways movement will help to 'unstick' the component from the board.
Beware of overheating or you may 'peel' the PCB tracks.
Dealing with the inductors
That was the easy part, now you have to turn you attention to the three inductors. These are just in front of the video socket, and are rather more difficult to deal with. As they are in series with the R G B lines the 'proper' way is to remove them and replace them with three small pieces of wire. However, because of their proximity to the socket this is rather awkward as it's almost impossible to get access to the rear of the inductors with a soldering iron.
The illustration below shows the location of the inductors. These are normally light brown in colour, about 4mm long, 3mm wide and 2mm high.
One solution is to use side cutters to break up the inductors so that you can unsolder the residual bits and then fit short pieces of wire in their place. The problem with this is that if you apply too much force you can easily damage the PCB tracks or pull one or both of the attachment pads completely off the board.
A simpler solution is to leave the inductors in place and 'bridge' them with short pieces of wire. This is possible because although you can't get at the rear of the inductors you can easily get at the socket itself, so you can fit a bridging wire between the solder pad at the front of the inductor and the respective video socket connector. Luckily the three inductors are connected to the three left hand ('E') connectors on the video socket, and these are easy to get to. You will see the vertical flat wires which form part of the video socket, and to bridge the inductors you will need three pieces of tinned copper wire (resistor 'tails' are ideal for this) shaped as shown.
The upper vertical section is soldered to the video socket connector, the horizontal part then bridges the inductor and the bottom of the lower vertical part is soldered to the front ('S') PCB pad of the respective inductor. I would advise you to clip a heat sink onto the wire before you make the second joint as otherwise, with such a short piece of wire, enough heat will probably feed back into the first joint to melt it and the wire will come away stuck on the tip of the iron.
You may find it easiest (I do) to just make the first bend on the wire, attach it to the socket, and then snip it off to length and make the second bend with a pair of very thin nosed pliers. If you are right handed then start with the left hand ('W') side. If you are left handed start with the right hand ('E') side. If you work the other way about then you will find that the link already done will be in the way when you try to do the next one.
Whichever method you use you will need a miniature soldering iron and a steady hand, and I would also advise the use of a magnifier.
And finally...
You will now need to re-assemble the computer, offer up a short prayer to the Gods of RISC OS, switch on and hope it's all going to be OK. If you have a good quality monitor you should notice improved sharpness in the picture.
Unless you are in a hurry you may find it best to check that all is well after completing the first stage (removing the capacitors). However, to restore full video bandwidth you will need to complete both stages.
Dave Holden
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME4/ISSUE1/SELECT/INDEX.HTM Volume 4, Issue 1, RISC OS Select Release 3
RISC OS Select Release 3
Paul Brett with the latest release of RISC OS Select
Just as this issue of RISCWorld was being finalised I received notification that the latest version of RISC OS Select was now available for download by Select subscribers from the RISCOS Ltd website. As a recent Select subscriber I was rather delighted as one of my machines was still running Vanilla RISC OS 4. I therefore e-mailed Aaron to see if he would like a quick overview of the new features along with my first impressions of the latest version of the enlightened persons favourite OS. (I said yes! - Ed).
Select 3
The latest version of Select (version 4.36 with Kernel 6.45) is currently marked as a Beta release. Having said this I am sure that RISCOS Ltd have done a lot of testing and in the brief time I have had to use this version of Select the OS itself has been totally stable.
The new Select3 title banner
Installation was almost painless, apart from the Softload part of the boot sequence refusing to accept the compressed version of the Select ROM. I was going to try to take a screen shot of this but typically having tried adding the archived version of the ROM again it worked. I have however seen a number of reports of users who have had problems. Since I installed Select onto an almost clean RISC OS 4 boot sequence I can only assume that these problems experiences by others may have been caused by existing boot sequence issues.
This new version of Select comes with a number of extra configuration options from the configuration window that opens when you double click on !Boot. One of the first and most obvious changes relates to the default buttons on a window. As you can see you can now change the colour of these on a global basis (my choice of colours by the way) and can also make then rounded. Options are present to alter the level of roundness and to have flat or graded colours. You can also change the colour of the text in these buttons. Some may say that this is eye candy, and indeed it is, but as far as I am concerned it may only be cosmetic, but it is very welcome.
Some Select3 configuration tools
A new !Paint
One of the RISC OS applications that was long overdue for an overhaul was !Paint. And now RISCOS Ltd have done it. The new !Paint bundled with Select is far superior. It has a proper toolbar down the left side of the window and one of my long term complaints about !Paint, the ridiculous time it takes to close a sprite file containing a large number of images, has been finally fixed (Good - Ed). The new Paint also allows you to drag files around inside the "preview" window so that you can re-order the sprites inside a sprite file which is very useful.
Dragging sprites around inside !Paint
Another massive improvement is the support for Alpha channel transparency inside sprites. However it isn't all good news with the revised version of !Paint. Firstly I could not see the airbrush tool on the new toolbar, and the new improved move and copy tools obviously require more work as they do not work as I would expect.
The new !Paint look and feel
Some other improvements
In my brief time with the new version of RISC OS I have noticed a couple of other improvements, firstly !Draw now has keyboard shortcuts for both Copy (which was missing from earlier versions) which uses the universal clipboard, and a Duplicate option which works the same way as Draw's Copy used to. It may also be me but I can't help feeling that the whole desktop feels more responsive. I also like the new Recycle bin, which RISC OS has need for some years now and the new bundled networking stuff looks very interesting. Another very useful improvement is the automatic filer thumbnailing for graphics files, no doubt over the next few weeks I will find even more changes. However I really have not had time to examine all the changes inside a couple of days and so I have reproduced the Select 3 changes list as supplied by RISC OS Ltd.
Major highlights
Cut and paste
Text in writable icons provided by the Window Manager
is now able to be selected by keyboard and mouse. Such icons can be used with
the standard clipboard operations
Thumbnailing
The filer can now display images as thumbnails, allowing
photo albums and other image collections to be browsed more easily.
Improved 'buttons'
Action buttons, as well as groups and other
3D-style icons have been improved and may be made round or given colours.
Support for button styles is a 'plugin' interface and other clients may
provide different button renderings.
Alpha-channel sprites
A new class of sprites has been created for
alpha-channel sprites. These sprites can be used wherever the standard sprite
operations would be used through system sprite rendering calls. Alpha-channel
sprites allow each pixel to have variable translucency, which means that
sprites can blend better to their backgrounds.
Recycle bin
Files deleted by the user can, optionally, be sent to a
recycling bin from which they can be retrieved if necessary.
Improved Paint application
!Paint's internal and external operation
has had a major overhaul to cater for some of the new features of Select 3,
including alpha-channel sprites.
Feature breakdown
In the following breakdown, not all changes have been listed. In particular, fixes to components are not listed unless their effect is significant. Select is supplied with a more complete breakdown of the changes on a per-component basis.
Application changes
New !Recyclone application provides a rubbish bin into which files deleted
by the user will be placed. A configuration tool is provided to allow the bin
to be expired and its location changed.
New !NetLights application displays network activity on the iconbar.
!Draw can now import any type handled by ImageFileConvert where the type
can be converted to a type which is handled natively by Draw. This means that
PNG files, Artworks, BMP and other images types can now be imported.
!Paint has been given a major overhaul. See the separate section for more
details.
Desktop changes
DragASprite no longer uses a 'drop' shadow when translucency is active.
DragAnObject's sprite creation code has been optimised slightly.
Wimp now supports a 'priority' sprite pool which is able to forcibly
override anything in the other sprite pools.
'IconBorder' plugin system allows the default slabbed borders to be
rendered in a customisable manner. FilterManager has been updated to support
multiple icon border filter clients. Example bordering source code will be
supplied.
'Auto-open submenus' option now opens submenus and windows in the correct
position regardless of where the mouse is placed.
Selection of text within writeable icons and its use with cut and paste
operations is now supported by the Window Manager. This furthers the work
started in Select 1 to make the entire OS capable of using the cut and paste
system.
Tinting of icons is now more reliable and can use any tint type provided
by the ColourMap module.
Command windows generated by single tasking applications when run from the
desktop are now centred on the screen.
FilerAction proxying is now an option which may be disabled under the
clients control. This might be used by rubbish bin applications to invoke
'delete' operations on items already in the bin.
When in EY0 modes, Pinboard now correctly sizes its background window on a
mode change.
Pinboard configuration application can now be accessed by its main menu.
Optimisation for redraw speed of tiled ImageFileRender images.
Pinboard and Filer have both been updated to provide StyleGuide compliant
save dialogue boxes.
Attempting to delete !Boot will now raise a warning.
Attempting to copy a directory called !Boot over your !Boot directory will
now invoke the boot merge tool.
Should Filer fail to launch the filer action window for a delete
operation, the confirm deletes option is now honoured.
In Filer, the Help option is now greyed if a directory and application
combination are selected.
Filer windows have been updated to be more style-guide compliant and to
address issues raised by the use of icon bordering.
Filer now offers to share directories as read only by default, rather than
read-write. It makes sense not to share folders as public read/write by
default.
Filer now provides a fourth display option beside those for Large, Small
and information icons. The 'Thumbnails' display renders images using the
ImageFileRender components, allowing any known image format to be displayed
within the Filer.
Directories starting with a ! but without a !Run file are no longer
treated as an application, allowing such names to be used safely if necessary.
RAMFSFiler will share the disc as read only by default.
The Sprite Pool has been updated with a number of slight modifications:
RAMFS icon now fits in with the new style of icons
JPEG icon now follows the bitmap style
Shared CD discs now look more like the CDROM icon
Addition of Zip, GIF, PNM, XBM, Sun raster, PCX, ICO, Clear, and BMP
sprite icons.
LanManFS icon updated to fit better with correct style.
TaskManager can now launch Configure from the menu. The info box now
describes the OS as RISC OS Select, and has been improved to address some
issues with Icon Bordering.
Toolbox "Discard, Cancel, Save" icons have been resized to be 'standard'
size.
TextGadget scrolling list boxes now display associated sprites more
sensibly when selected; previously these would be displayed lighter than the
rest of the line. The text is now positioned a little further across the
window, away from the sprite in order to reduce the tight look that had been
created.
ImageFileGadget correctly positions its window now; previously it would
inset the window by a pixel. When resizing the gadget, the entire window is
redrawn to ensure that it remains up to date. The facilities provided to
developers for using ImageFileGadget have been greatly improved.
ImageFileGadget is now able to report mouse click events and has a much
greater array of image manipulation options.
TextArea gadget now supports standard clipboard operations properly,
allows for 'key notifications', and renders much more quickly in most cases.
Toolbox slider gadgets would respond to clicks and scrolls over the wells
of the gadget even when the slider was set to be display only. They no longer
react to such events.
Free space client templates tweaked to address issues relating to Icon
Bordering.
The sprite file DesktopBanner$File is now loaded by the Desktop module, if
it is present, and used as the welcome banner on entry to the desktop.
ShareFS 'Share directory' window is now updated to represent the current
settings of the share if one is present, including the name of the Share.
TaskWindow now includes a fix for 'The MessageTrans Bug'.
Graphics changes
Rendering of sprites with 1bpp masks, using no scaling or colour
translation, where the sprite data ends on a word boundary, but the mask data
does not end on a word boundary, and the output alignment is not a word
boundary due to a graphics window being present... now works properly.
SpriteExtend would fail to generate code when translucent sprites were
rendered in paletted screen modes where the eigen factor was EX0 or EY0. This
allows sprites to be visibly dragged in such modes.
FontManager can now safely resize its dynamic area. The version supplied
in Select 2 had problems on certain systems which has now been addressed.
ImageFileRender now provides *ImageFileRenderers command for listing the
supported renderers. This is mirrored in a new SWI to enumerate the renderers.
A default viewer application can now be specified through ImageFileRender
and will be set up as system variables for all renderable types.
ImageFileRender's sprite renderer now supports information requests
previous versions were would return the colour type incorrectly for certain
sprite types. Sprite rendering will now render sprites of 8bpp or less through
a wide translation table which improves their appearance when colourmapping is
used in 16bbp or higher.
New ImageFileConvert module is used with the Convert* modules to provide a
generic conversion method, allowing conversion between different file formats
through a number of SWI calls. *ImageFileConverters will list the supported
converters.
DrawFile will now render sprites in 8bpp or less through a wide
translation table which improves their appearance when colourmapping is used
in 16bbp or higher.
JPEG rendering where DPI based JPEGs are given as ratios are now taken
into account in a similar manner to that used by !Draw. JPEGs which supply a
ratio, DPI or DPC (dots per centimetre) of 0 will now be treated as 90 DPI.
JPEGs with low values for DPI or DPC will now be treated as is this was a
ratio.
CompressJPEG module now registers as a sprite to JPEG converter with
ImageFileConvert.
JPEG handling is much more robust now, and should never generate aborts
for either valid or corrupt compressed data.
ImageFileRender_Artworks module added to render Artworks documents.
New ConvertGIF added to ROM to generate a 'dummy' image. This is a
placeholder module which avoids the requirement for a Unisys patent for the
use of the LZW algorithm.
New ConvertXBM added to ROM to convert XBM image files to sprites.
New ConvertSun added to ROM to convert Sun raster image files to sprites.
New ConvertBMP added to ROM to convert Windows BMP image files to sprites.
New ConvertPNM added to ROM, supporting type 1-6 PNM files.
New ConvertICO added to ROM to convert Windows .ico files to sprites.
New ConvertPCX added to ROM to convert PCX files to sprites.
New ConvertClear added to ROM to convert Translator 'Clear' files to
sprites.
New ConvertSprite module added , which supports creation of sprites
through ImageFileConvert from any format which ImageFileRender can handle.
ConvertSprite provides a proxy ImageFileConvert handler for ImageFileRender in
much the same way that ImageFileRender automatically provides a proxy
ImageFileRender handler for ImageFileConvert. ConvertSprite can also provide
callback and SWI functions to render images to a sprite.
ConvertPNG has almost full support for creating PNGs from sprites
(including alpha-channel sprites), with only CMYK sprites presently
unsupported. Sprites can be created from any form of PNG, generating
alpha-channel sprites where necessary.
DrawFile module now supports creation of SVG files from DrawFiles using
the ImageFileConvert interface.
New ColourMap module allows generation of colourmapping descriptors
without recourse to assembler. Currently supported mappings are :
Blend,
Brighten, Contrast, Gamma, Identity, Invert, Monochrome, Monochrome and scale
and User.
Colour map descriptors can be chained together to create more
complex effects.
SpriteExtend, Kernel and ColourTrans have been updated to provide a new
sprite type for alpha-channel sprites. Alpha-channel sprites allow the images
to be rendered with varying levels of translucency per pixel. Previously,
sprites could only provide binary (pixel on or off) masks.
SpriteUtil (System sprite area provider) has had a number of commands
fixed to remove errors when no system sprite area is present.
InverseTable 'destination tracking' is now improved and should no longer
result in corrupt font colours or alpha channel rendering.
Networking changes
Internet, ShareFS and Freeway have had issues relating to large file
transfers addressed.
InetConfigure can now configure static IP addresses properly. Previous
versions would retain the addresses stored in CMOS rather than using the new
addresses supplied by the user.
Internet module has had a fix for interfaces with no addresses never
issuing service calls.
Aliased interfaces are no longer dynamically named; the names used on
their creation are now retained, allowing deterministic operation.
Internet can now handle changes in interface addresses more reliably.
Previous versions had issues relating to multiple aliased interfaces and ARP
requests which could cause machines to seemingly 'vanish'.
Added support for ZeroConf IP configuration. ZeroConf is a means by which
an address can be obtained for a machine on a network without any
configuration process. This is similar to the configuration used by the
Access, but standardised across multiple platforms by a global group.
DHCPClient and ZeroConf client both respond to *ShowStat to provided their
statistics.
DHCP client now supports address changed due to its deletion of the
interface address. Previously this was not an issue, because Internet never
issued service for address deletion, but now that this has been done it is now
aware of this case.
The AppleTalk client is now supplied in ROM. This allows RISC OS systems
to contact AppleTalk file and print servers.
LanManFS has been improved, resulting in faster resolution of names on
local networks. The 'Transact' SWI call has been updated to allow a larger
number of Transact communications to be made, including old WinPopup
messaging.
Miscellaneous changes
OS_CLI is handled by an external module, CLIV.
Some calls have been moved from the kernel to a new module called
LegacyBBC.
BEL (VDU 7) no longer uses OS_Word 7, but is passed to Sound calls
directly.
FileTypes now declares PCX, PNG, SunRaster, BMP, Clear, ICO and XBM file
type names.
FileSwitch is now able to reference path variables (pseudo-filing systems)
through $, eg Music:$ for <Music$Path>. Writing to a path variable with
multiple entries where a <path>$Write variable exists will now use the
$Write directory for the operation.
FileSwitch no longer leaves streams open if a 'close' fails.
ResourceFS will now only issue 'changed' messages where the files changed
are opened by it, thus reducing the impact on menus opened by the user when
ShareFS discs become available over the network.
ParallelDeviceDriver is now capable of reading Device IDs. This allows the
auto-detection of the make and model of Printer connected.
PCI memory reservation has been removed from the kernel, freeing 256M of
logical address space for use by dynamic areas.
Conversions module has a minor for for ReadUnsigned returning an invalid V
flag on some conversions.
ScreenBlanker now supports a second-level blanking using DPMS.
ScreenBlanker no longer uses CMOS to get its initial settings and defaults to
'off'.
CDFS legacy support for built in conversions removed.
EvaluateExpression module takes over from the Kernel's
OS_EvaluateExpression. Additionally, expressions can now extract directory or
leaf names from a string, canonicalise a filename and generate a string from
the current time.
Configuration tools
Softload ROM images are now sorted into date order, making selection of
ROMs much simpler. ROM images are now supplied in archives together with their
change lists; these lists are recorded with the ROM when installed to allow
them to be viewed at a later date.
Resolver configuration is now able to locate DNS servers on the local
network, even with bind variants.
Interface configuration can now take effect immediately, rather than
requiring a reboot.
Re-written Filer configuration tool includes the new thumbnail
configuration options.
All tools now warn if the configuration application is closed when changes
have been made. Tools where changes have been made are indicated by a '*' in
the title of the window, in line with standard RISC OS practice.
CPIShell is now able to be passed command line arguments to pass to the
launched plugin. This is used to allow installation of components through
Filer_Action (dragging over !Boot).
TimeSetup is now capable of setting the timezone.
As you can see that is quite a list!
My conclusions so far
Select 3 installed cleanly and so far has run perfectly. I do however have some concerns. Firstly I am worried about possible problems with !Paint, and although I have not seen any other problems so far but it has put a nagging doubt in the back of my mind. However I need to remember that this is marked as a Beta release and so any problems may well get fixed before this is commited to a CD. Select 3 does have a lot of new features, but then it also costs a lot of money. I know that it is a rolling scheme of improvements and that subscribers are helping to fund future OS development but at the moment I am just not quite sure. I like the new Select a great deal. If it was cheaper I would advise everyone to subscribe. If you want the best version of RISC OS and money is no object then you should seriously consider subscribing. As a new Select subscriber I am so far quite pleased. If RISCOS Ltd can continue to deliver these sorts of changes to the OS and provide a couple of updates a year then Select 3 is well worth considering. It's just that paying £155 for an upgrade to a £100 operating system feels a bit wrong.
(A quick last minute update - I have confirmed that Select 3 will run on the new Alpha laptop, RISCOS Ltd were demonstrating the Alpha running Select 3 at Wakefield but they had had a couple of minor problems, these have now been sorted - Ed)
TableCalc is a sophisticated table generating program for Acorn RISC OS computers with RISC OS 3.1 or later. As well as simple tables, it allows the creation of spreadsheets, in which a range of calculations can be carried out.
Installing TableCalc
TableCalc can be installed on a hard disc by dragging the TableCalc directory to a directory viewer.
Interactive help
When you are running TableCalc, many helpful messages are available. To view them, run the !Help application from the Apps folder. Now, whenever you point at any of TableCalc's windows or menus, a message will be displayed in the Help window.
Creating a table
TableCalc can be loaded in the normal way, by double-clicking on its icon in a directory viewer.
Once TableCalc is loaded, a new table can be created by clicking on its icon bar icon. Table files can be loaded by double-clicking, or by dragging them to the TableCalc icon. A new TableCalc window will open with the toolbar along the top of the window.
Building tables
Most TableCalc editing functions rely on the position of the caret. This is a red vertical bar.
When the caret is positioned within a table, text which is entered from the keyboard is inserted at the caret. When the caret is positioned in a slot on the last row of a table, pressing <RETURN> adds a new row at the bottom of the table. Similarly, <TAB> can be used to add columns to the right hand side of the table.
Editing text
Text is entered into a slot by positioning the caret in the slot, then typing from the keyboard.
If you type more text than can be held by the slot, the slot is extended downwards, word-wrapping the text appropriately. If you type a word which is too long to fit on one line, the width of the column is increased. A single character can be deleted by pressing the <DELETE> key. A complete slot can be cleared by pressing MENU and selecting the "Slots->Clear" item.
The tool bar
Attached to the top of each TableCalc window is a tool bar allowing certain important operations to be performed very quickly. A diagram showing the functions of each of the buttons is shown below.
Adding rows and columns
A row can be added after the row on which the caret is positioned by pressing MENU and choosing the "Grid->Add row" item. If, instead of clicking on "Add row", you move the pointer to the right, a submenu is displayed, allowing you to add a row before or after the current row. The "Add column" item works in exactly the same way. .
Deleting rows and columns
A row or column can be deleted by positioning the caret, then using the "Grid->Delete Row" or "Grid->Delete Column" item. A dialog box will appear requesting confirmation. Click on the YES button to perform the deletion. If you find this annoying, you can turn it off. See the section on global choices.
Column widths
The width of any column within the table can be adjusted by pointing at a line separating columns, and dragging with SELECT. When you point at a line which can be dragged, the shape of the mouse pointer changes. A column width can be set automatically to the minimum width needed to accommodate all the text without using word wrap by double-clicking SELECT over a column boundary.
Selecting a block
Certain TableCalc operations require a block of slots to work on. Other operations which work on single slots can also be applied to all the slots in a specified block. The easiest way to specify a block is to drag select from one corner of the desired region to the diagonally opposite corner.
Alternatively, position the caret in one corner, then click ADJUST in the other. Either way, the selected block is show in inverse video.
Keyboard short cuts
Almost all TableCalc operations which are normally performed from menus can also be performed from the keyboard. The keyboard short cuts are all shown on the menus. The !QuickRefs application can be used to print a quick reference card, which includes a complete listing of all short cuts, they are also shown below.
TableCalc styles
The appearance of text in slots is controlled by a system of styles. Styles are controlled from the style browser, which is accessed by pressing menu and selecting the "Styles..." item (Ignore the arrow symbol). This opens a window showing an example of each available style. Each table has its own set of styles, and its own style browser.
To apply a style to a slot, position the caret, then double-click SELECT over the desired style.
Styles can be applied to blocks in the same way.
Editing a style
A style can be edited from the style browser by double-clicking ADJUST over a style's entry. This opens a window allowing all the style's attributes to be altered. Style attributes are divided into four groups. In all styles (except the normal style) each group can be turned on and off. When a group is turned off, the default values from the normal style are used instead. The style editor can also be accessed by pressing <CTRL-T>. This edits the style used in the current slot. Styles: An example Open a new table by clicking on the TableCalc icon bar icon, then open the style browser. Edit the Heading style, and notice that the Colours section is not ticked. Close the style editor, then edit the Highlight 3 style. You will see that the colours item is ticked. Now edit Normal, and change the background colour, then click on the Set button. Notice that this changes the background colour for all styles except Highlight 3.
All styles inherit options from Normal unless overridden.
The Styles menu
If, for any reason, you do not wish to have the style browser window open, you can access the style system directly from the menu. The "Styles..." item leads to a menu listing all the available styles. Each of these items in turn lead to a menu offering Apply and Edit options. .
Joining a slot
If slots in more than two columns are selected, the "Grid->Join slots" menu item will be available. This can be used to join slots from two or more columns together to make a wider "super-slot". These wide slots can be split up again by positioning the caret and using the "Grid->Split slots" item.
Line control
The horizontal lines between rows can be controlled using two options from the "Grid" submenu. These are both used in the same way: A block is selected, covering at least two rows, then the menu item is used to turn all row lines contained within that block on or off. When a line has been turned off, it is shown with a "dotting" effect. "Off" lines are never shown in printouts, or when draw files are exported. Column lines can be controlled in a similar way.
Saving a table
To save your table, press MENU and follow the "File->Save" item. This displays a standard RISC OS save box, allowing the table to be saved. There are two slightly different formats in which the table can be saved. See the section "OLE support II" for more information.
Printing a table
To print a table, ensure that you have a RISC OS printer driver loaded and correctly set up. Now select the "File->Print..." item. A dialog box will appear, telling you how many pages will be needed to print the table. Enter the number of copies you wish to print, then click on the Print button.
Working with DTP packages
TableCalc can export standard draw files for use with a wide range of DTP and multimedia packages.
To export a draw file, press MENU and follow the "File->Export->Draw" item. This leads to a save box. Having saved a draw file, it can be dropped straight into a DTP program, or loaded into !Draw for further editing. Note that certain DTP packages support OLE, which provides an easier alternative. See the next section for more details.
OLE support
TableCalc supports object linking and embedding (OLE) with appropriate programs. Programs which currently support OLE include Computer Concepts' Impression. To perform OLE, simply drop a table file into a frame or document. It will be displayed as normal. If you wish to edit the table, hold down <CTRL> and double click on the frame. Having edited a table which was loaded by OLE, the original can be altered by pressing <F3> then <RETURN> OLE support II OLE only works correctly if the "save with graphics" option is turned on from the table choices dialog box. Note, however, that files which are saved with graphics are significantly larger than those which are not. Therefore, it is recommended that the "Save with graphics" option is turned off if you are not using OLE. The global choices dialog box allows you to specify the default value of the "Save with graphics" option.
Spreadsheets
As well as normal text, slots in TableCalc tables can contain number slots. To create a number slot, position the caret in a blank slot, then select the "Slots->Edit Expression" menu item. Enter a number into the writable icon, then click on the Set button, or press return.
Other number entry methods
If you wish to enter a sequence of numbers with a constant difference (e.g. 1,3,5,...), the slot initialiser can be used. To use it, select a block then press MENU and select the Slots->Initialise... item. Enter the initial value and difference, then click on the Fill button. If you wish to enter a large number of figures with no constant difference, they can be entered in standard text slots, then converted to numbers slots using the "Slots->Text to numbers" item.
Expressions
As well as simple numbers, number slots can contain mathematical expressions. Expressions can be in terms of numbers (e.g. 2+2), or they can refer to other slots within the table. Slots are referred to by a letter and a number. (e.g. B4).
The letter refers to the column (B being the second from the left), and the number refers to the row. A typical expression using a slot reference would be (C3+2)*3.
The expression editor
Any expression can be entered into the writable field in the expression editor from the keyboard, but many expressions can be "built" using the other buttons in the expression editor. There are buttons to insert the basic arithmetic operators, functions (see later sections), pairs of brackets, and also the ^ symbol which is used to raise one number to the power of another. Slot references can be inserted by clicking on a slot in the main window.
Functions
TableCalc provides a range of functions which act on numbers, slot references, or expressions. A function is used from within an expression by entering the name of the function followed by a pair of brackets containing the number or expression on which you wish the function to work.
Functions can be inserted into expressions using the mouse by clicking on the fn() button, and selecting a function from the resulting menu.
Functions available
Tablecalc currently provides a square root function, a VAT function and a set of trigonometric and inverse trigonometric functions, together with a pair of functions to convert from degrees to radians and back again. Note that all the trig functions currently work in degrees, NOT radians.
Spreadsheet block functions
As well as the functions described above, which act on numbers, TableCalc provides several functions which act on blocks of slots. Currently available block functions are sum() and average(). Both these functions should be passed TWO slot references referring to diagonally opposite corners of a block e.g. sum(a2b6). These functions have special buttons to insert them. The "sigma" (strange 'E') button inserts sum(), and the "X bar" button inserts average().
Constant functions
TableCalc provides two "constant" functions, namely const_pi() and const_e(). These take no arguments, and return the appropriate mathematical constant (correct to 10 significant figures). A typical use would be in the expression (const_pi()*(10^2)), which returns the area of a circle of radius 10 units.
Formula replication
If you have entered an expression into a slot, it is possible to copy it into the slots below or to the right, by selecting a block then using the "Slots->Copy down" or "Copy right" menu items. If the expression contains slot references, these are adjusted appropriately (e.g., if A1+1 was copied down, it would become A2+1 in the next slot down). .
Absolute slot references
If you do not wish a reference to be adjusted when a formula replication is performed (see the previous section), it should be prefixed by the hash character (#). Such a slot reference can be inserted by clicking on a slot with the adjust button, instead of select.
Other spreadsheet operations
As well as the operations described in the previous sections, there are two other menu options concerning spreadsheets. They are both located on the "Slots" submenu. The "Snapshot" item converts expressions into numbers, making them independent of any changes to referenced slots. The "Numbers to text" item converts both number and expression slots to text slots. Both these operations work both on single slots and selected blocks.
The Clipboard
TableCalc now includes a simple clipboard, which can be controlled either from the Slots menu or from the toolbar. The clipboard can hold the contents of one slot. TableCalc provides a single clipboard, which is shared between all documents, making it possible to transfer slots from one document to another. However, when an expression slot is copied from one document to another, it is converted to a constant number slot. Text and number slots are always copied exactly
CSV file support
TableCalc can load and save standard Comma Separated Value (CSV) files. To load a CSV file, drop it on the TableCalc icon on the icon bar (CSV files cannot be loaded by double-clicking). To save a table as a CSV file, use the File->Export->CSV menu item. If a block is selected, you will be offered the choice to save only the selected region.
Table choices
Each table currently has two options associated with it. Saving of graphics with table files can be turned on and off (see the section "OLE support II"), as can a spreadsheet border surrounding the table, which show row letters and column numbers.
TableCalc global preferences
A number of TableCalc's features can be customised by the user. Such features are controlled by clicking MENU over the icon bar icon, then selecting "Preferances...". Choices currently available include: Confirmation when rows and columns are deleted, the initial state of the "Save with graphics" flag for newly created documents, automatic display of the spreadsheet border when the expression editor is used, and the current VAT rate.
ÿÿÿÿVOLUME4/ISSUE1/WAKEFIELD/INDEX.HTM Volume 4, Issue 1, Wakefield Show Report
Wakefield Show Report
Neil White
This will be the third Wakefield show that I have attended, and, every time on the walk from the town center to Thornes Park Athletics Stadium I always spot a possible show go-er, today was no exception. A likely looking suspect in a long leather-esq raincoat was not twenty meters in front of us. I said to my brother, "there's one", it was the carrier bag containing what looked suspiciously like a packed lunch that gave it away. As my brother and I always manage to forget the route to the stadium and were unsure which way to go, we decided to take the same route as said likely suspect, which got us to our desired destination; we were there, Wakefield 2003 The Acorn RISC OS Computer Show.
Wakefield 2003
On entering the 'Arena' the first thing i was presented with was CJEMicros stand with its assorted boxes of various software a RiscPC and an Iyonix were on display, so I was in the right place, the next stand along had two Archimedes with a linux console displayed on the screen, maybe I'm not in the right place! This was the NetBSD stand, someone was frantically stabbing keys trying to get the machine working properly, possibly demonstrating the ease of use of their systems. Aemulor was next to them, with an Iyonix running some non Xscale compatible software through their life saving app, assuming your life depends on running non 32bit compatible software on an Iyonix. Serious Statistical Software was next door, displaying some serious graph printouts and demonstrating the latest versions of their Statistical packages, 1st, 1stJr and 1stL.
In the middle was APDL, selling various machines software and upgrades, there were also flogging subscriptions to some CD based magazine, and notably a new desktop version of Repton, which I would have bought only I played it to death on my BBC while I was younger. Etc Systems' stand looked like someone's collection of Acorn hardware piled up with pricetags, they were selling various older systems and bits and bobs (including some "non-guaranteed" Amstrad NC100 notebooks for £1 each! - ED). Peter Naulls Unix Porting Project was there selling subscriptions to the service providing support to anyone wishing to get involved in porting unix programs to RISC OS. They were also demonstrating some SDL games, SDL being a multi platform C library recently ported to RISC OS, on the same stand was Alpha Programming selling CocoGnut a peer to peer file sharing program, very suspect. Brain Games were there promoting their educational games including new versions of Solitare, Tiles and Vignt et Un. Virtual Acorn were demonstrating their virtual A5000, which I must say is quite impressive with its long list of included software, only let down by the fact that is only available as an A5000, with the limitations of RISC OS 3.1 compared with RO4.
The next section of the middle was the Acorn user stand, which was a very sorry looking stand indeed, seeming to consist of a table with a few flimsy issues of the magazine, I can't help thinking that not letting people see the magazine would get more subscription sales. The Charity stand was there, and by the time I got to the show was selling just about everything Acorn related you would never want or need. The Acorn Publisher stand was there promoting its magazine, a charity and some board games produced using Artworks. My brother took a photo of a teddy bear reading a mini Acorn Publisher, and was then pounced on for a donation into the coin box the teddy was watching over, he managed to raise £25 for the Lower Moss Wood Wildlife Hospital.
The Acorn Publisher Bear
The Castle stand had several Iyonix machines on display, one hiding in the corner running Debian, another fine advert for Linux, as this was another static console display I assumed I was supposed to be impressed, so I took a photo, so you could all see the wonders of Debian running on an iyonix and be suitably impressed yourselves.
An Iyonix running Debian (Debonix? Iyonian?)
Along with the computers on the stand were people doing various pointless desktop stuff which I never quite see the point of, I mean if there is some new killer app you are trying out then fair enough, but you know the computer runs nearly three times as fast as your RiscPC, but for some reason people insist on opening a few of the standard RISC OS apps and poking around. I'm not quite sure how this would determine if you are going to fork out almost £1400 for the machine, but still, it keeps some people amused.
An Iyonix
The Arm Club were there, giving you the opportunity to sign up. Accountz.com were launching their new version of Prophet. Jonathan Duddington was demonstrating his news/mail reader, Pluto and the Speak text-to-speach system with talk-as-you-type module. Brian Jaques was demonstrating his latest Web Writing CD including the recent Archive series 'Introduction to javascript'. Fortran Friends had Fortran for Iyonix, Ployhedra and of course bellringing.
The WROCC stand was where I filled in the detachable part of my ticket for inclusion into the prize draw, they were also demonstrating a Doomsday System, the BBC Master - laser disc based database. RISCOS Ltd were there demonstrating the new Select 3, running on RiscPC's and a MicroDigital Omega, also they had there development JukeBox system.
RISCOS Ltd - featuring an Omega running Select
The Micro Digital stand had three motorbikes on small stands, although I am not quite sure why they were there. Microdigital were demonstrating their Omega StrongARM based computers, and the Alpha, a Intel based laptop using a version of Virtual Acorn making it capable of running RISC OS Select or RISC OS 4 at around the same speed as a StrongARM.
Microdigital
PHR Computers were offering their services, next to them was Really Good Software selling 32/26bit versions of NoticeBoard Professional and Picture book 2 at special show prices. Next to them was RComp selling their new DialUp2 Program, which looks like it could be the best commercial dialup program available, they were also selling various games and the newly acquired Datapower software.
Stuart Tyrrell Developments were demonstrating their new USB stuff, mice, keyboards, wireless LAN equipment and machine sharing switches. I just managed to catch a glimpse of of Art Works 2 through the crowds at the MW Software stand. Icon Technology were showing EasiWriter and TechWriter, Electronic Font Foundry were there offering 'professional advice in all font matters', typefaces for 60+ languages and various other fonts for scientific and educational use. Photodesk Ltd were demonstrating the new CameraDesk Software supporting USB cameras and offering show prices on their OHP and Photodesk Software. ITC-UK ltd. had just about every spare part you could ever want from locking pins to EDO RAM. And Archive magazine was there selling subscriptions to there long running magazine.
Compared with other Wakefield shows this one was noticeably smaller than the last few I have been to (only half the hall was being used), and the density of people seemed a little thinner than previous shows, this may have been because everybody was in the show theatre (I think it was, we were manic all day - ED), which had a full days line up and was packed throughout. For the fourth presentation the partitioning screens had been pushed back to accommodate more seating, this presumably being done after people had been standing on chairs peering over the back screens.
I was a little disappointed in the lack of faded Acorn related t-shirts stretched over beer belly, but a couple of people had on RiscPC jumpers that looked so new and pristine they must only bring them out for occassions such as this. Personally I only made one purchase, but it was a big one. I got the Castle C/C++ tools with the original Acorn Manuals and a copy of paper RiscOS 3 PRMS, my brother bought Virtual Acorn for his PC, he does have a RiscPC, but uses only PCs at work. I managed to get a free copy of the Unix Porting project CD, because I helped port a few of the SDL games, and my brother who works at an ISP mentioned the word advertising to Steve Turnbull at the Acorn User stand and managed to get a couple of free copys.
From the general comments that I got/overheard, the Wakefield show was a worthwhile event for the exhibitors (oh yes - ED) and a bit of all round jolly good family fun for all. The highlights being the anticipation in the air as each prize draw was announced, unfortunately I did not win an Omega, or a teddy bear, or anything.
