ÿÿÿÿISSUE4/AALP/INDEX.HTM Issue 4, ARM Assembly language Programming
ARM Assembly language Programming
Alligata Media
Contents
Chapter 1 : First Concepts
Chapter 2 - Inside the ARM
Alligata Media
ÿÿÿÿISSUE4/APDL/INDEX.HTM Issue 4, A secret history of... APDL
A secret history of... APDL
Dave Holden spills the beans on the history of APDL
This article was prompted by people repeatedly asking me why a company who's name clearly states that it's a PD library mainly sells commercial software and hardware. Many of these people don't even know what the 'Archimedes' stands for, since they only became interested in Acorn computers after the introduction of the RiscPC. I've therefore decided to write this short history to explain how APDL expanded from it's original PD library format.
The beginnings
APDL was formed by Peter Sykes a few months after Acorn announced their new RISC powered Archimedes computer. Peter had been aware of the large number of PD and Shareware programs available for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga computers and thought that something similar for the new Acorn machine would be a good idea.
At the same time Paul Beverley of Archive magazine, then just launched, was thinking the same thing. The Archive Shareware discs were the first to be announced, but these were never intended to be a 'proper' PD library and so although APDL appeared after the first Archive Shareware discs it was the first independent PD library for the Archimedes computer.
In fact, the name chosen for the Archive Shareware discs caused considerable confusion for many years afterwards. Because they contained mostly PD and Freeware programs people assumed that the terms Public Domain, Freeware and Shareware were more or less interchangeable, and failed to appreciate the important difference between Shareware and the other varieties of freely distributable software. This confusion may help explain why Shareware never really took off with Acorn computers despite its similarity with the Atari ST and Amiga markets where Shareware became an important factor.
Things really took off when RISC OS 2 appeared. This was a far more attractive base for programmers to work from than the old Arthur OS. Although it was a very stable and much improved OS there were still many gaps and omissions in RISC OS 2 which left plenty of scope for people to write 'desktop enhancements' and so the PD scene flourished. There was also no internet, so PD libraries were the main distributors of this material.
In 1991 changes in Peter's job meant that he would no longer have sufficient spare time to enable him to continue to run APDL. Because of a long standing health problem I was forced to reduce the physical side of my own workload, and, partly as a result of this, had written a number of PD and Shareware programs which had been included in the APDL catalogue and those of the other PD libraries as well as writing various articles and programs, mainly for magazines (who then paid substantial sums) and mostly using pseudo names. I had also written a number of Shareware programs for the PC, and this was looking like a promising move as they were beginning to earn a significant amount of money. Knowing my situation Peter Sykes asked me if I would be interested in taking over APDL and I agreed.
Since Peter had been running APDL in his spare time I assumed that I would be able to do the same, fitting it in alongside the other computer work I was doing. Things didn't work out quite as I'd planned.
Re-inventing APDL
I had known that Peter had not been able to give as much time latterly as he would have liked to APDL and this, accompanied by a lack of promotion, had resulted in it becoming slightly run down. To revive APDL I completely re-wrote the catalogue and gave a lot more emphasis to our huge collection of clip art, which was something that no other library had. This, coupled with an advertising campaign and promotions in magazines and by attending dealer's 'open days' and other events considerably raised APDL's profile. To go with the new adverts I introduced an APDL logo (shown below), something that Peter Sykes had never bothered with.
The earliest catalogue that I can find from this period is June 1993, and by this time I had begun to supply what, for many years, became APDL's specialty - hard discs. I can't now remember exactly when I began to do this, but I can recall the motivation.
It had been possible to fit a hard disc to the earliest Archimedes computers, but most people didn't have one. They were also very expensive, though whether this was the cause of their rarity or an effect it is difficult to say. With the appearance of the A5000 with its built in IDE interface and 'add on' IDE interfaces for other models prices should have fallen but they still remained unreasonably high.
Users now expect to just go out and buy almost any IDE drive to fit to a modern RISC OS computer, but things were a bit more difficult more than a decade ago. IDE was a fairly new technology, and some makes or models of drive didn't work with some interfaces, jumper settings and connectors were not so standardised as they are now and the users of the day were unfamiliar with hard drives so tended to assume that there was something 'special' about the drives required for Acorn computers. Some dealers used this situation to charge inflated prices. I didn't think this was a good thing, so APDL began to supply hard drives and interfaces at prices that undercut just about every other Acorn dealer. This tended to make me rather unpopular with the dealers, but it ensured that the prices of hard drives (and, later, CD ROM drives) for all models fell drastically.
The first APDL CDs
I had been thinking about producing some sort of CD for some time now that, with the introduction of the RiscPC, CD ROM drives were at last beginning to appear on Acorn computers, but hadn't been able to work out a sensible way of producing a PD CD for the Acorn marketplace. At this time PC 'Shareware' CDs were very popular, with companies producing a new CD every month whose contents mainly consisted of the latest version of thousands of PC programs. The PC Shareware and PD market was so huge that there were always sufficient new programs and updates every month so this was easily possible, but there simply wasn't enough material for Acorn computers to make this marketing model viable. I didn't want to just produce a CD with all the current PD stuff crammed onto it because I was afraid that once people had purchased it they wouldn't buy any more PD software, and this would not only damage APDL's future (I was supplying in the region of 500 discs each week at this time) but I was also afraid that it would stifle development as someone who had spent around £30 (the average cost of a CD then) on a PD CD would be unlikely to want to then buy floppy discs with later versions, and this would discourage programmers.
As it happened someone else didn't have my reservations about the possible consequences and so DataFile, another major PD library, released their PD-CD 1 in September 1994. I was writing a regular column in Archive magazine at this time and I've just re-read the comments that I made. I remarked that the CD seemed to be rather hurriedly put together, as if the main aim was to have the first CD ROM on the market. It was confirmed later that was that this was exactly the case. I was already in the final stages of preparing APDL's own first CD which was actually released in November 1994, and DataFile had heard about this and rushed to be first. Two months later they had to issue an updated and improved version of the CD with the faults fixed.
In reality there was no need for DataFile to hurry. Having thought very carefully about the situation I had decided to release a CD of Acorn format clip art rather than PD programs. This seemed to me far a more sensible strategy than PD programs as it wouldn't damage the PD scene. There was also a ready market as with many more people beginning to use DTP programs on Acorn computers there was a growing demand for reasonably priced clip art and we had a huge collection.
The clip art CD was a huge success and the following year, at the 1995 Acorn World show, I released no less than three new CDs. Another, completely new, clip art CD and two CDs of PD programs. By now I had formulated a strategy for producing PD CDs. One of the CDs, PD-1, would contain serious programs and utilities, the other, PD-2, games, desktop 'sillies', music files, etc. The idea was that I would produce a new version of each CD periodically (actually, as it turned out, this was annually) and offer an 'exchange' system for people who already had the previous version. In this way I hoped to ensure continuing sales of CDs.
Meanwhile, probably due to the various PD CDs now appearing, sales of PD discs had declined. By the end of 1995, long before the internet had begun to have any effect, the two biggest PD libraries after APDL and DataFile, DataStream and Archangel, had both given up the struggle and APDL had taken them over. Since hardware sales now comprised a significant part of our income APDL was still doing very well, but DataFile was also feeling the pinch as they were reliant upon sales of PD discs and CDs. They produced three more PD CDs, five in all, but despite a brief and abortive foray into the games market the lack of a long term strategy and the growing influence of the internet meant that by the end of 1996 they were struggling and were eventually taken over by APDL early in 1998.
A new development was the sale of various Shareware programs. APDL had always tried to support programmers, and for many years we ran an annual competition awarding cash prizes for the best PD or Shareware programs. To further support the programmers we started to sell 'pre registered' copies of some of the best Shareware programs. These were normally sold at a slightly higher price than the normal registration fee, but we supplied printed manuals, which were not normally available from the authors. The fact that APDL attended most of the shows and events and could offer the software 'ready to run' at these helped to improve public awareness of these programs and develop extra sales for the programmers.
At some point during this time (I can't remember exactly when, but it was certainly before the first APDL CD appeared) the logo changed to the one people are familiar with now. The main reason for this was because APDL was now becoming much more than 'just' a PD library and I thought the old logo, with it's clear visual 'library' association, should change to reflect this. The new logo was also more compact, and this was an important consideration since advertising in magazines is expensive (we were spending over a thousand pounds a month at this time) and the new logo took up less valuable space.
By the end of 1997 APDL was well established as a major player in the Acorn scene and had diversified somewhat from its original PD library roots. A significant part of our income was still the sale of PD on floppy discs as well as various PD and clip art CDs, but the effect of the internet was now starting to make itself felt in reduced sales of PD software as more and more authors began to distribute their programs via their own web sites rather than through PD libraries. The majority of our turnover was now the sale of hard drives, CD ROM drives and interfaces.
A new beginning
Late in in 1998 I took another major step when I purchased the rights to what was then Ian Copestake's IDE interface. This was quickly developed from its original 2 device design to a new 4 device board using DMA and with built in ATAPI drivers and CDFS to enable users to connect CD ROM drives. Once again this meant a significant price reduction for Acorn computer users because not only was the interface cheap but they could now use low cost IDE drives and CD ROMs without suffering any speed penalty compared with the much more expensive SCSI alternatives.
This purchase was a new departure for APDL and highly significant because it was the first step in one part of the strategy which has kept APDL as a leader in the RISC OS marketplace while so many others, often much bigger companies, have vanished. I had been selling Ian Copestake's IDE interfaces for a number of years, since I first began selling hard drives, and it seemed to me that if I owned it myself I would be manufacturing and selling my own product and not relying upon just selling other people's merchandise as most dealers were doing. It also enabled me to invest in further development, culminating in the Blitz 32 bit high speed interface.
A 'spin off' from the purchase of the rights to the IDE interface was what was later to become the famous DataSafe. This has been extremely successful, but it happened almost by accident.
I had always been a great fan of Syquest drives and, like many other people, used them myself for backup purposes. Syquest had announced a new low cost 1 Gigabyte capacity removable media drive named the SparQ (in American, apparently, this is pronounced 'spark'). This was available in two versions, internal IDE and external parallel port. Since our IDE interfaces had always supported Syquest drives getting the internal version to work presented few problems, but I also wanted to write new software to enable people with Acorn computers to use the parallel port version since this seemed, with its portability, high capacity and low cost media, to be an ideal backup solution.
This took longer than expected, mainly because we were trying to wring the highest possible data transfer rates from the Acorn printer port. It wasn't ready for release until just the end of 1998, and a few months later Syquest closed down their UK distributors and went into Chapter 11 receivership.
This was something of a blow. It was still possible to obtain drives and media, but people naturally weren't happy about purchasing under those circumstances. It looked as if our investment was going to be wasted, but there was another possibility. The Syquest parallel port drives were actually IDE drives and employed a parallel to IDE converter with chips licensed from a company called Shuttle Technology, who were the market leaders in this field. By adapting the software slightly it was possible to make it work with the more generic converters made by the same manufacturer and used in external drive cases for 'normal' IDE drives. We found a suitable case, and the DataSafe was born.
Another new venture
The following year, 1999, saw several major developments and another change of direction for APDL.
A few years previously there had been five main magazines dedicated to Acorn computers. By 1999 this had shrunk to just two, Archive and Acorn User. RISC User was due to cease publication and it seemed to me that it ought to be possible to do something about this. My intention was to take over RISC User and re-launch it as a CD based magazine. By utilising APDL's expertise in CD production this would be much cheaper to manufacture and distribute than a printed magazine and so make it financially viable once again. In the event, for various reasons, I didn't take over RISC User, but the idea still seemed worthwhile, so RISC World was launched and Issue 1 appeared early in 2000.
Despite the fact that we didn't manage to buy the rights to RISC User, during our talks with Beebug (who owned the magazine) it was evident that they no longer had any interest in Acorn computers. Towards the end of 1999 we therefore began a series of negotiations which resulted in us purchasing the rights to all the various Beebug software titles with the exception of Ovation Pro which was 'bought back' by it's author, David Pilling.
The first of these programs to be released was Easy C++ at the 1999 Epsom show. It was received with great enthusiasm, so much so that we sold out half was through the first day of the show. One reason for its success was the price, about one third of that previously charged. For the first time this meant that someone who was interested in learning C could obtain a desktop compiler at a price that wouldn't break the bank.
We followed the same strategy with the re-releases of the other Beebug programs which followed; Sleuth, TypeStudio, MasterFile, Ovation and Phantasm. Since these were 'mature' programs we needed to make only minor changes to ensure that they worked properly with the (then) latest machines and OS.
By now I had, almost by accident, formulated another of the key features of the APDL philosophy. I can't claim that it was a carefully calculated policy, it just seemed to happen, but it's very important and has enabled us to produce high quality software packages at very reasonable prices. The basis of this is 'do it in house' and 'buy the tools, not the product'. Translated into practical terms this meant that I purchased a CD printer (then very expensive) and CD writing tools so that I could master, print and manufacture my own CDs. This allowed me to make good looking CDs in small numbers at a time when the minimum you could have manufactured by normal means was 500, and to make it economical you really needed to buy 1000. By doing everything 'in house' (including laser printing manuals, which meant buying more plant such as an expensive guillotine) I could manufacture CDs in quantities as low as ten at a time. I no longer needed to invest thousands of pounds in each new CD and then clutter the place up with piles of boxes of stock, I could just make them in small batches as required.
More importantly, using these methods meant that I could manufacture a CD which might sell only a few dozen copies, which allowed me to be far more adventurous and produce things like the Skullsoft and Soft Rock games collections. I could also now supply some 'retail' shareware programs on CD, which not only was far more convenient than half a dozen floppy discs, the customers (most of whom now had CD drives) much preferred it. Most of these 'small volume' products could simply never have been produced at such low cost by bulk manufacturing.
Of course, another big advantage for the customer of doing printing and CD manufacture 'in house' is that if a program is improved or a manual updated then these changes are incorporated into the finished product immediately. Customers almost always get a CD with the latest version of the software, not something that is three versions or six months behind because we still had 200 CDs in stock.
Without using this system it would be impossible for APDL to function in the way it does today with the huge range of software that we have available.
By now almost all of our software was being distributed on CD and because I hate complicated software protection systems, especially 'key discs' and 'install credits' that don't stop real pirates but seriously inconvenience honest users, I was determined not to use anything that would prevent a genuine user from just copying the software over if they changed hard disc or computer or re-installing from the original CD if their hard disc crashed. However, I was slightly worried since more and more people were acquiring CD writers and so there was nothing I could do to stop them copying the CD. The system I adopted, which is only possible because all the CDs are manufactured 'in house', is to embed a serial number onto each CD. This isn't just on the CD, it's also embedded into the program, and, of course, if someone does copy the CD they can't do so without also copying the serial number. Although this doesn't cause the user the slightest inconvenience and doesn't prevent 'legal' copying by the user it does mean that I can track any illegal copies back to the original source since the serial numbers are all recorded.
The exercise with the Beebug programs made me realise that, with the demise of Acorn Computers, many more companies would be leaving the Acorn scene, and if something wasn't done about it this would mean that the massive back catalogue of software would be lost forever. This had already happened with many titles. Even if the publisher still existed they were often no longer interested in RISC OS and had ceased distributing or marketing programs for the OS.
Something had to be done, and done quickly.
APDL as a software publisher
It seemed to me that if too many software titles vanished then, no matter what happened about new hardware (and that was very uncertain at this time) there would be no future. If users saw no-one actively developing and marketing software and developers leaving the marketplace they would lose confidence and just wouldn't buy new hardware. If the market was to flourish then something had to be done, and no-one was prepared to even think seriously about the subject.
What happened was that APDL went through another major transformation.
All the income from sales of the programs we had purchased so far was used to set up a 'fund' to enable us to buy software titles and we created the 'APDL-ProAction' brand to do this. During 2000 and 2001 we added various titles including Studio24 Pro, RiscCAD, Personal Accounts, the GEK games collection (including FRAK), and others.
We also added the titles which we distributed as two compilation CDs, Celebration and Music Maestro. These were purchased from Clares, who were beginning to suffer from the slowdown in the Acorn market. By placing the various programs which made up these compilations onto CD and selling them at a a very attractive price we hoped they would do well. We introduced them at the Wakefield 2001 show and they were very well received.
The next stage was another major step forward. For reasons which became apparent later that year Aaron Timbrell was no longer able to devote the necessary time to running iSV Products. Shortly after the Wakefield 2001 show I therefore took over the company. This was rather different from previous purchases since it wasn't just the rights to software but the entire company. Because iSV had been around for such a long time I decided that, although it is now an inseparable part of APDL, I would try to keep its separate identity and continue to sell titles under the iSV Products brand.
The (not unrelated to the above) launch of Virtual Acorn early in 2002 helped to keep alive interest in RISC OS. None of the new advanced hardware promised by at least three companies had yet appeared, and, partly as a result of this, people were drifting away as the only new hardware available for purchase was the eight year old (though much speeded up) RiscPC. Virtual A5000, though based on RISC OS 3.1, was, when installed on a suitable PC, around as fast as a Strong ARM RiscPC, and, more importantly, it enabled people to install RISC OS on a modern laptop for the first time. This helped to keep people who would otherwise have departed the platform completely interested in RISC OS.
32 bit and all that
The launch of the Iyonix at the end of 2002 brought a whole new series of problems.
Around this time we were negotiating with Clares to purchase the rights to their range of titles. We had been talking with them for some time, and the purchase of the Music and Celebration titles was an early manifestation of this. It's possible that they realised that they didn't have the resources to update their software and convert it to 32 bit and so this was the best time to sell, but whatever the reason our purchase of most of Clares' titles coincided with the Iyonix launch.
This created a dilemma. The purchase from Clares had seriously depleted our 'software fund'. Furthermore sales of the Iyonix were initially much slower than had been predicted by some people. We therefore needed to build up the fund from sales of 26 bit versions of programs again before we had enough money in the kitty to pay for the work. The problem was compounded by difficulties with early versions of the 32 bit C library. If people installed the new library on their computers then some old programs wouldn't work properly, and programs compiled with the 32 bit compiler would require the new library, even on 26 bit machines.
Luckily the C library problem eventually resolved itself so that older programs would work OK with the new library. This still left us with the main problem.
If we expended too much of our resources on producing 32 bit version of our programs before there were sufficient Iyonix computers sold to enable us to sell enough copies to recoup the costs we would be unable to do other necessary work and would also not have the funds to purchase anything else which became available. If we waited too long then we could find that by the time we did produce conversions people might have found alternatives.
Despite the pressures from certain quarters to commit to producing 32 bit versions of all our programs without delay this just wasn't possible, and we refused to succumb to 'Iyonix fever'. I quietly converted all the programs that could be 32-bitted without too much effort such as Ancestor+, Repton, Ovation and a few others. This also let us see which programs it would almost never be economical to convert. We then (again, quietly) started preliminary work on several others in an attempt to evaluate how much work would be required. As this proceeded we could roughly estimate the cost of each conversion. We also tried to assess what percentage of Iyonix owners would be likely to purchase an upgrade or the complete program. From this we could work out how many Iyonixes would need to be sold to make it economically viable to upgrade each program.
Admittedly this involved a lot of 'guesstimation', but it was the best we could do, and it did give us some sort of roadmap for the work.
We had identified a number of programs which would be moderately easy to convert or where the percentage of Iyonix users who would be likely to purchase could be expected to be quite high, normally because there was no equivalent program available. This resulted in us releasing 32 bit versions of programs like Mr Clippy, EasyFont Pro and StarFighter 3000. If the work incorporated an upgrade which would be likely to generate sales amongst 26 bit users this helped spread the costs, so whenever possible we tried to combine the two processes. If we produced an upgrade of a program we also tried, whenever possible, to make it 32 bit compatible at the same time.
The operation was helped considerably by the introduction of VirtualRPC. This generated quite a lot of sales of software and this money could be fed back into our development program.
By early 2004, with a significant number of Iyonixes sold (though nowhere near as large a number as many people seem to think) we were able to begin work on some of the more difficult programs; ProArtisan 24, Sleuth, Dr Fonty, Typography 2500, Schema2 and a brand new version of DrawWorks, DrawWorks XL.
Of course, during this process we found ourselves going up a lot of blind alleys. Some programs which we initially thought would be straightforward and which we did, in fact, manage to compile successfully just couldn't be made to work properly because of subtle differences in the actions of some of the newer C library routines. This resulted in a lot of wasted effort, but by always proceeding cautiously and ensuring that each new venture was properly funded before work started we have been able to achieve a great deal. We already have far more 32 bit programs than anyone else and the work is still continuing.
While this was going on we were still acquiring more titles, including the RISC OS versions of the Topologika educational programs. Many of these needed to be modified to get them to work on recent machines, and we've now re-released them, mostly on CD, at a fraction of their previous price.
The latest purchase by APDL is the complete Fourth Dimension games catalogue. Once again we're not rushing to sell copies without careful planning. There is a lot of work to be done to make some of these games work properly on recent versions of RISC OS. We have already released a couple of titles and hope to be in a position to announce some 4D compilation CDs early in the new year.
It's been a long and tortuous journey from the day I took over APDL to where we are now. It's also been rather unpredictable since I never really knew what unexpected turn it would take next. But we're still around, still looking to the future and still investing in RISC OS while so many others have given up.
last issue we ran a VirtualGolf competition, where we had 3 copies to give away, all readers had to do was e-mail in and tell us which course Aaron and Dave were playing on...
So who could be bothered to e-mail in? Well step forward Julian Benton, who correctly identified the course as Wentworth. A copy of VirtualGolf will be speeding it's way through the post as soon as possible. But what of the other 2 copies we were giving away? Well we had exactly one entry, yes that's right one entry turned up in the editorial e-mail pile.
In the end we don't mind, the competition costs money to run and it comes from the editorial budget. So we have decided that we will stop running the competition from this issue onwards and spend the money elsewhere on the magazine. As for the other 2 copies of VirtualGolf, well they will go back into regular stock to be sold at a show, or by mail order, or used to prop up Dave Bradforths' Mac.
What next?
It's a great shame that the competition has had to close, all readers need to do was click on a link and send an e-mail. Indeed for a number of issues we had quite a few entries, but mainly from the same readers every time. So most readers don't want a competition, fine, well perhaps those that didn't enter the competition would like to e-mail
RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿISSUE4/DISC/INDEX.HTM Issue 4, DiscWorld
DiscWorld
Aaron Timbrell rounds up the software directory
Our full free commercial application this issue is Dr Fonty, the font editor from iSV Products, now a part of APDL (incorporated).
DrFonty
This version is the original 26 bit release, a 32 bit Iyonix compatible version is available directly from APDL for only £10 inclusive of UK p&p. (non RISCWorld subscriber price is £14.90)
Dr Fonty is an enthusiasts version of FontFiend (the professional font editor). However Dr Fonty has a number of additions including routines that prevent a font with damaged scaffolding being saved out by the user. Dr Fonty's many features include:
On line illustrated manual that can be printed with any RISC OS printer driver
Supports interactive help
Both global font and individual character button bars
Export fonts in PC PostScript format
Full time context sensitive on-line help system on the Dr Fonty button bar. This can be disabled if the user wishes
Loads RISC OS 2, RISC OS 3 and Base 0 Acorn outline fonts
Saves out in RISC OS 2 or RISC Os 3 format, RISC OS 3 fonts can include kerning and misc data areas
Can also load Kerning files from FontFiend or FontKern
Can import & export draw files and incorporate them in existing or new fonts
Transformation system to make new weights from existing fonts. When transforming Dr Fonty will also shift composite characters, correct accents, move scaffolds & skeletons as well as disconnecting any scaffolds that are no longer valid
Edit a fonts misc data area including underline position and thickness
Real time dragging of composites using the mouse
Offers the same main table features as FontED including copy characters, insert composites and copy scaffolds.
Can repair damaged fonts that will not work or load into FontED
Can load fonts that FontED cannot. For example fonts with “Cyclic Scaffold Link” errors
Display both outline and filled versions of characters
Can save out protected fonts that cannot be examined by a user
Convert composite characters to real outlines and skeletons
Full manual scaffolding control
Can delete defective scaffolds or skeletons
Includes special filters to clean excess control points, grid lock characters e.t.c
Flip characters either horizontally or vertically
Make "open" fonts easily and quickly
Alter the weight of a font in either the X or Y axis.
Dr Fonty requires RISC Os 3.1 or later, a hard disk and 4Mb of RAM (8Mb recommended)
Comments
"...Dr Fonty is a super addition to my main application group...much easier to use than the old Fonted...highly recommended." Archiv
"...excellent font editor." Acorn Use
The complete DiscWorld line up
As per usual we have our collections of the latest RISC OS games and applications, as well as support files for this issues articles. So the full DiscWorld line up looks something like this:
CDInlays
CD Inlays from Volume 4 Issue 4 onwards.
DrFonty
The full commercial 26bit release of DrFonty, free for RISCWorld subscribers.
DTP
Support files from our DTP special feature, including some example Impression documents.
Games
All the games from this issues games world column.
Life
Life game by Martin Carradus.
PD
All the latest PD, shareware and freeware releases from the PD column.
ToolBox
This contains two sets of Toolbox Modules. The Castle archive contains the latest 26/32 bit neutral system components, required if you want to run a lot of new software releases on 26bit machines (ie. anything that isn't an Iyonix). The RISCOS Ltd archive contains later and improved versions of a number of modules and is suitable for all versions of RISC OS from 3.1 onwards.
All rights reserved. This program is licensed for use on a single computer by a single user.
This version is supplied for the use of RISC World subscribers only.
The version of Dr Fonty supplied on this CD is for use on 26 bit machines only. We are offering the latest version, which is fully 32 bit and Iyonix compatible, to RISC World subscribers for the special price of just £10 including carriage.
Published by -
APDL
39 Knighton Park Road
Sydenham
London SE26 5RN
Phone : 020 8778 2659
Fax : 020 8488 0487
E-mail : info@apdl.co.uk
Contents
About Dr Fonty
Dr Fonty's main window
Outline windows
Toolbar
Dr Fonty's main menu
The Misc Menu
The Bounding menu
The Characters menu
Composites menu
The Save Menu
Outlines menu
The Kerning menu
The Scaffolds menu
The Skeletons menu
The Widths menu
Outline window menu
Moving & attaching Scaffolds
Zoom & Restore
Dr Fonty's Preferences
Font rendering preferences
Tutorial - Making fonts
Font Problem solving
Swapping kerning
Base 0 fonts
Making composite accents
Loading very complex fonts
About Dr Fonty
Dr Fonty is a multitasking font editor for RISC OS. He is designed as a replacement for Acorn Computers FontED application.
Dr Fonty's requirements
Dr Fonty requires RISC OS 3.1 or later and a hard disk in order to work. Dr Fonty can be run on a machine with 4Mb of memory, however iSV Products recommend 8Mb if you wish to load very complex fonts.
Dr Fonty will require roughly 2600K of free memory before he will load. Once loaded he will not need to claim any further memory.
If your machine does not have enough free memory then quit any applications loaded onto the icon bar and try loading Dr Fonty again. Removing applications from your boot sequence then re-booting the machine may free up more memory. Some applications (such as Impression) can claim a lot of memory and not free it up again even after being quit. Removing items such as !NewLook can also free up more memory.
Loading
Dr Fonty is loaded by a double click on his icon in a filer window. A title banner will appear, then Dr Fonty will load onto the icon bar.
Loading a font
Once Dr Fonty is loaded a font can be loaded by double clicking on its Outlines file, or dragging it to the Dr Fonty icon on the icon bar. Double clicking on an Outlines file if Dr Fonty is not loaded will not load a font. This is on purpose. It allows you to set up your machine so that double clicking on a font file without Dr Fonty loaded will load the font into FontED.
If you load another font after the first one Dr Fonty will ask if you are sure you want to load the new font. Clicking on OK will load this new font and discard the old one. i.e. Dr Fonty can only edit 1 font at a time. You can however load other Dr Fonty/FontFiend files whilst editing a font. For example you could drag a kern file into Dr Fonty to load kerning and add it to the current font.
Once a font has been loaded into Dr Fonty his main window will open showing you all the characters.
DrawWorks OLE link
Dr Fonty can also be loaded by selecting a font in your DrawWorks document and clicking on the Dr Fonty button. In this case Dr Fonty will be automatically loaded and the selected font will then be loaded by Dr Fonty.
Dr Fonty's main window
This is the window that opens when a font is loaded.
The name of the font loaded is shown in the writable icon at the top of the window. Below this is the on-line help icon. As you move the mouse over Dr Fonty's windows this icon will tell you what everything does (Dr Fonty also supports Acorns !Help application). Below this is the button bar, this allows you to quickly open often used windows. The main table below this shows small samples of each character.
The buttons on Dr Fonty's main window act as follows.
A single click with any mouse button will perform the required action. Dr Fonty has been designed to operate in the same way as FontED. So for example a double click with SELECT on a sample on the main character table will open the outlines window for a character. A double click with ADJUST will open a scalable filled sample of the character. Those familiar with FontED may wish to experiment.
Main Table (Clicks & Drags)
Clicking and dragging on the main character table using SELECT or ADJUST will perform the following actions.
Clicks
SELECT (Double click) - Open outline window for char.
ADJUST (Double click) - Open filled character window.
MENU (Single click) - Open Dr Fonty's main menu.
Drags
SELECT - Copy character (or export as drawfile).
SELECT + SHIFT - Move character.
ADJUST - Copy characters scaffolds.
ADJUST + SHIFT - Copy character as a composite.
ADJUST + CTRL - Remove composite character.
For example if you drag character A and drop it on top of character B using just SELECT character B will be replaced by a copy of character A.
If you drag character A and drop it onto character B using ADJUST then any scaffolds in character A will be copied to character B.
Outline windows
When you double click on a character on the main table an outline window for that character appears.
This window displays all of the components that make a character.
You can drag many of these components around. (See the next page).
You can also move the entire character around using the cursor keys. Holding down either SHIFT or CONTROL while using the cursor keys will increase the amount the character moves. (Note that you can only move a character around when the title bar of its window is yellow (has input focus).
An outline window can display all the following information:
Characters outlines (Black outlines with control points)
Local scaffolds (Light green & can be dragged)
Global scaffolds (Dark green & cannot be dragged)
Width of the character (red line under the outlines)
Base lines (light blue lines in X & Y axis)
Scaffold base lines (light grey lines top & left of window)
Composites (grey outlines with no control points)
Skeletons (Light blue lines inside outlines)
Some of these can be dragged inside the outline window. For example, outline control points, local scaffolds and composites can be dragged about. When you click on an outline control point or scaffold to drag it it will become highlighted.
Note If you wish to drag bezier control points from the characters outlines you will need to turn on the option "Render outline control points" from Dr Fonty's rendering preferences window. (MENU on icon bar, click on Prefs..).
Clicking and dragging on the outline window:
Clicks
SELECT - Select a control point or local scaffold
ADJUST - OLE the current outlines & skeletons to !Draw.
MENU - Open Dr Fonty's character menu.
Drags
SELECT - alter position of a control point or scaffold
SELECT + CTRL - drag out a rectangle to enclosed any control points that should be connected to the currently selected scaffold.
Toolbar
The buttons on the toolbar at the side of the outlines window perform the following actions.
Filled character windows
These windows provide an example of what the character will look like when rendered by the font manager.
Altering the size of the window will alter the size of the character sample displayed. Clicking with SELECT in one of these window will open the Outline Window for the particular character.
If you click SELECT in a filled character window then the appropriate outlines window will open.
Dr Fonty's main menu
The main menu for Dr Fonty is opened by clicking MENU over the main table.
The next section of the manual will cover these menu options in detail.
The Misc Menu
Font
This option opens the font information dialogue box.
No of chunks - each chunk of the font contains 32 chars.
Scaffold - this is the size of the fonts scaffold area.
Scaf Chars - number of characters that can be scaffolded
Version - the type of the font (6=OS2 8=OS3)
Kerns - the number of kern pairs in the font.
Max beziers - the max number of control points per char.
Design size - the number of co-ordinates per em.
Monochrome - with this button turned on the font will not be anti-aliased by the font manager when rendered.
Non zero - turning this button on will force the font manager to render the font with a non-zero winding rule. Turbodrivers from CC do not support non zero fonts.
Misc data..
This option opens the font misc data dialogue box.
RISC OS 3 fonts have an extra misc data area similar to that of PostScript fonts. This area contains extra information about the font.
Dr Fonty can work out all the information himself automatically or you can type in new values for any of the entries. Some of these entries purely provide information, for example altering the x height will not actually alter the x height of the font. Cap height, descender, italic offset and ascender also only provide information. However altering X offset, Y offset, underline and thickness will actually alter the way the font is displayed. Note Fonts with a Y offset other than 0 will not work correctly on current versions of Risc OS.
The Bounding menu
This menu has two options. The first Calculate will simply re-calculate all bounding boxes for the font. (This will only happen if the option "Re-calculate bounding boxes" is on from preferences on the icon bar.
Clicking on Global will open the global bounding box dialogue box.
This dialogue box shows the fonts global bounding box. This is the smallest area that can enclose any character in the font (including accented letters). The recalculate button will force Dr Fonty to re-check all letters in the font to ensure that they will fit into the global bounding box. If any letters do not then the global bounding box will be adjusted accordingly.
The Characters menu
This menu is concerned with entire characters (Outlines, skeletons, scaffolds and composites).
Copy & Delete
Clicking on one these options opens a relevant dialogue.
For example suppose you want to copy the upper case letters on top of the lower case letters. Select the "First" character from the encoding menu as "A". Select the "Last" character as "B", then select to "To" as "a". Clicking on OK will result in "A" being copied to "a", "B" copied to "b" e.t.c.
Delete works in the same way as copy except there is no destination character. Copying or deleting characters can corrupt a fonts scaffold tree if present. Clicking on the "Repair Tree" entry in the scaffold menu will fix this.
Small Caps
Clicking on the Small Caps.. option will open the small caps dialogue box. This allows Dr Fonty to make small versions of upper case letters to use as lower case letters.
You can set the size of the small caps in relation to the upper case letters. 100% is the same size as upper case, 50% is half the size.
When you make small caps at a size less than roughly 85% of the size of upper case letters the stroke widths of these new letters will then be wrong. These new letters will appear too light in relation to the rest of the font. This can be corrected by using the Outline Effects dialogue box from the outlines menu to alter the weight of the small caps so that they appear visually similar to the upper case letters.
Transform
Clicking on this option will open Dr Fonty's font transformer.
This dialogue allows you to alter the appearance of an entire font, for example to make it oblique, condensed, extended e.t.c.
The menu button at the top allows you to choose one of the pre-defined transformations. This will be applied to the entire font, including all outlines, skeletons, composites and scaffolds. For example if you extend a finished font with all scaffolding and composite accented characters in place Dr Fonty will shift all scaffolds so they remain correct as well as adjusting composites, widths e.t.c.
Not only can you choose a transformation from the ones on the built in menu you can create your own. This example shows the transformation for oblique.
The important part of this transformation is the 0.15 in the c section of the matrix. This could be altered by typing in a new value (as shown below).
This would make a more slanted font. This new transformation can be saved to disk for later use by clicking on the "Save transformation" button. There are more example transformations supplied on disk. Playing with these along with the built in ones will make this clearer.
Each of the variables in the transform window (a to f) have a particular effect on a font when it is transformed.
a = Positive numbers extend font, negative condense it.
b = Positive makes font slope up, negative down.
c = Alter obliqueness of font, positive more, negative less.
d = Positive numbers make font taller, negative smaller.
e = Alters X position of the fonts characters.
f = Alters Y position of the fonts characters.
In addition you can use mathematical equations, these can include SIN, COS, TAN, RAD etc. The example below shows the Flag matrix loaded from disk. When you alter a font with a matrix you may need to use the Outline FX dialogue to alter the weight.
Composites menu
This contains two entries, the first is Delete . Clicking on this will delete all composite characters from the font. For example supposing an accented character (Ç) is produced from composites of C and ¸. Clicking on Delete will remove this composite character but will leave the original letters (C and ¸) alone.
Make Real will convert all composites in the font to real outlines. The example below left shows a composite character (note the two blue handles). The other example shows the result of clicking on make real.
The Save Menu
Using this menu you can save either an entire Acorn font, a PostScript font (for use with Adobe Type Manager running under Windows) or a kerning file to disk.
Font
When you save a font to disk you will only drag one file icon from the save dialogue box. A font consists of two files (Outlines & Intmetrics). Provided that the option "Save Intmetrics with Outlines" is on from Dr Fonty's preferences window the fonts intmetrics will be automatically saved next to its outlines on disk.
PostScript
This menu has three options. Just like an Acorn font a PostScript font consists of two files (AFM - like Acorn Intmetrics, and PFB - like Acorn Outlines). This menu has a third option which is "ATM info". This saves an info file for Adobe Type Manager. If you want to use the font created directly under Windows then you will need to create this file. If you are going to export the font to a PC/Macintosh font editor then you do not need to save this file. Acorn font names and PostScript names are not the same. Dr Fonty will automatically convert Acorn names to PostScript using the same format as DrawWorks Millennium. This means that you can produce an EPS (PostScript) file and also supply the required fonts on disk with the correct matching font names.
Kerning
You can save the kerning from one font to disk, then load a different font, then re-load the kerning. This allows you to add kerning to fonts which do not have any, or to swap kerning between fonts. If you do load kerning from one font into another then this new kerning will need to be adjusted using the kerning editor.
Outlines menu
This menu is concerned with a fonts outlines.
Alter X/Y Pos
Clicking on these will open the X or Y position dialogue box.
This allows you to alter the X/Y position of all characters in the font. For example you could add an offset (often called a left side bearing) to all characters in the font. Using this with a positive value will increase the gap between the start of a character and position 0,0. A negative value will reduce the gap.
The example below shows the effect of altering X position by 200 units.
FX/Process menu
This contains a number special options that can be used on a fonts outlines.
Clean Points
Clicking on this will open the clean points dialogue box.
This dialogue is designed to remove double sets of control points that could cause errors when using the Dr Fonty Outline Effects dialogue box (see page 25). Some fonts have control points very close together, this can cause the "Make Open" effect to have undesirable results.
Flip X/Y
The two options Flip X and Flip Y do just that, they flip characters in the font over.
Special FX
Clicking on this option will open the Outline Effects dialogue box.
From here you can apply a number of effects to the outlines of a font. For example:
The alter weight option can be exceptionally useful. If for example you make an extended font using the "Characters Transform" option the vertical strokes will be wider than the horizontal strokes. You can use alter weight to restore the stroke width.
In the example above the final character was produced by gradually reducing the X thickness in steps of -4 until all stroke widths were identical.
You can of course combine effects. For example you could make a font bolder (increase X thickness) then make an "open" version of it.
The Kerning menu
This menu allows access to Dr Fonty's kerning editor. If the options on this menu are greyed out then the current font does not have any kerning. You can of course load kerning by dragging in a kern file from disk.
Delete
Clicking on this option will delete all kerning from the current font. Dr Fonty will confirm that this is what you want to do before deleting all the kerning.
Global..
Clicking on this will open the global kerning dialogue box.
This allows you to globally tighten or loosen all the kern pairs in a font. Often the kerning from one font can be transferred to another and only needs to be adjusted globally. For example the kerning from one sanserif font can often be quickly adapted for another.
Edit
Clicking on this option will open the local kerning editor.
From here you can edit any of the kern pairs in the font, delete pairs you do not want or add pairs that you need.
The display shows the pair of letters to be kerned along with the kerned and unkerned positions. At the top of the window is the current kerning amount. Clicking menu over the kerning display will open a menu for all kern pairs.
You can adjust a kern pair in a number of ways. Firstly by typing in a new value into the writable icon at the top of the window. Secondly you can use the left and right arrows to decrease or increase the value. You can also alter the kerning by clicking in the kerning display and then using the cursor keys in conjunction with SHIFT or CONTROL .
Making a new pair
If you need to add a new kern pair then type the two characters which need a pair into the top left writable icons and then click on the "Create" button. If the pair already exists it will be displayed, if not it will be created and then displayed.
Deleting a pair
To delete a kern pair simply choose that pair from the kerning menu and then click on the "Delete" button. Dr Fonty will check before deleting the pair.
Moving to the next pair
You can move on to the next kern pair by clicking on the "Next Pair" button or by pressing the return key.
The Scaffolds menu
This menu is entirely concerned with a fonts scaffolding.
Check Integrity
This option makes Dr Fonty check the entire scaffold tree in a font to ensure that it has no errors. If any errors are found they will be reported. FontED will refuse to load fonts that have faulty scaffold trees, often reporting errors such as "Cyclic scaffold link". With this option you can find any faults in the scaffolds, as well as ensure any scaffolds you have made yourself will not cause errors.
Delete linear links
Linear links are joins between scaffolds in a character. FontED can also complain about these "Invalid linear link" being a common complaint. Dr Fonty can delete these linear links so that the font will then function correctly.
Delete Tree
This option will delete all global scaffolds, and hence the scaffold tree from the font. Global scaffolds will not be replaced with local ones they will just be removed totally. This can be very useful in recovering fonts with very badly damaged scaffolds.
Make Local
This option will convert all global scaffolds into local scaffolds, removing the scaffold tree in the process. Fonts with very complex scaffold trees can be very difficult to edit without corrupting the scaffolds. This option can be used to keep all the scaffolding intact but ensure that any changes to the scaffolds on one character will not effect others. So before editing any characters you can click on this option. The font will still be fully hinted but will be slightly larger.
Repair Tree
This option can be used after "Check Integrity". Dr Fonty will check the entire scaffold tree and remove any defective global scaffolds. You may need to re-scaffold some chars.
X/Y Scaffolds Delete
This option can be used to delete scaffolds in either direction.
X/Y Scaffolds Disconnect
This will disconnect the relevant scaffolds from outlines & skeletons. This may be useful on an Oblique font when X scaffolds will no longer "hint" the font correctly.
The Skeletons menu
This menu only contains one option, Delete . This can be very useful after a font has been changed using the "Outline effects" dialogue box. For example making a font bolder (increasing its X thickness) may result in skeletons that are no longer needed. They may either be no longer required or may poke out past the outlines of letters.
Adding skeletons to a font
To add skeletons to a character first OLE the character into Draw (see the section "OLE Editing with Draw"). Now you need to select the line colour as cyan (light blue). Now you can draw the skeletons inside the outlines in the Draw window. Once you have added the skeletons you want just click on "Save" from Draws main menu. The best way to see how skeletons should be drawn is the examine fonts such as Trinity and Homerton.
The Widths menu
This only has one option "Set to Bbox..". Clicking on this will open the character widths dialogue box.
This is used to quickly set up widths for an entire font. Widths will be set based upon each characters bounding box plus a specific value. In the example above 90.
This can be useful to either recover a font with some very bad widths, or when designing your own font from scratch. If designing from scratch we recommend that you use the default setting of 90 to start with. You can then alter some individual characters if they are not correct.
This can also be used to tighten or loosen character spacing within a font. For example setting the value to 25 will result in a font with characters very close together.
Note - when making your own fonts don't forget to set the width of the space character! This is best done manually.
Outline window menu
If you click MENU over one of the outline windows then the following menu will open.
Many of the options on this menu are similar to those on Dr Fonty's main menu. However instead of effecting the entire font they will only effect the particular character concerned.
Many of the dialogue boxes attached to this menu can be opened using the tool bar to the left of the outline window (See page 9). This section will only cover those menu options that are different to those on the main menu.
Composites List
Clicking on this option will open the composite list window.
This window provides a complete list of any composite character inclusions in a character along with their X and Y positions (offsets). An X and Y pos of 0 means that the composite inclusion will appear in exactly the same position as the real character. In the example above (Ecircumflex) character E (ASCII 69) has an X and Y pos of 0 so it appears in the same place as E. Circumflex (17) is offset so that it appears over the centre of E.
If you move a composite around in the outline window by using its blue handle then the changes will be shown here.
You can delete a single composite simply by setting all the contents of a row in this window to zero and then clicking on the "OK" button.
You can also add composites to a character by typing the new composite inclusions ASCII code and X and Y pos into the first free line and clicking on "OK". (Note however that it is usually easier to insert composites by dragging with SHIFT + ADJUST on the main character table).
Scaffolds list
Clicking on this option will open the scaffold list window for the current character. This window provides detailed information on the scaffolds used in a character including which character any global scaffolds are actually defined in. This example shows one local X scaffold, one global X scaffold and three global Y scaffolds. (Global scaffolds are shown dark green, local ones are light green).
Scaffolds manual
Clicking on this option opens the manual scaffold window.
This allows you to add, replace or delete single scaffolds.
Adding a scaffold
To add a scaffold simply choose the type of scaffold you want to add, click on the "Add" button and then on the "OK" button.
Deleting a scaffold
To delete a scaffold select it in the outline window (it will turn red). Choose "Delete" and then click on "OK".
Replacing a scaffold
To replace a scaffold select it in the outline window (it will turn red). Now choose the type of scaffold you wish to replace it with, click on the "Replace" button and then click on the "OK" button.
Scaffolding a character
In order for scaffolding to work correctly it needs to be applied correctly. Simple rules can be applied to make it easier for beginners.
Y scaffold 1 should be on the base line of the character.
Y scaffold 2 should be at the top of the character.
If more Y scaffolds are needed they sit between 1 and 2.
X scaffold 1 should be on the left of the character.
X scaffold 2 should be on the right of the character.
As you will have noticed there are different types of scaffold, Wide links and Tangent links. Wide links are used to scaffold rectangular sections of a character, for example the left stroke of the D below. They can also be used for sections of a letter with a constant width, for example the top and bottom of the D. Tangent links are designed to be used to prevent unsightly pips at the edges of curved shapes, for example the right side of the D. Tangents can be left, right, top or bottom. Dr Fonty will try to add tangent links in roughly the right place.
As you can see from the previous two examples applying simple scaffolds is quite easy. There are however a few cases when characters can be more awkward to scaffold. For example, characters such as g and y which have descenders. You may be tempted to place Y scaffold 1 at the bottom of the descender, this would be wrong as you can see from the example below. Y scaffold 1 is still on the base line, scaffold 2 at the top and scaffold 3 is now used to hint the descender.
Moving & attaching Scaffolds
When placing scaffolds in the correct place they will of course need to be moved. Tangent links can be moved by simply clicking SELECT on them to hilight them and then holding down SELECT and dragging.
Wide links have two handles, dragging the bottom or left handle will move the entire scaffold. Dragging the top or right handle will alter the width of the wide link (up to a maximum width of 253).
Attaching scaffolds
For scaffolds to work they need to be attached to the control points that make up the skeletons and outlines of the character. In the example on page 40 you can see the right hand tangent link selected (red) with the control points that are attached to it also shown red.
To attach a scaffold first you need to hilight it by clicking SELECT on its handle, then hold down CTRL and drag out a rectangle. Any control points enclosed by this rectangle will be attached to the selected scaffold.
Making global scaffolds
Scaffold trees have been discussed several times in this manual, but how are they made? Very simply one character is scaffolded, for example H. The scaffolds for this character are then copied onto another character, for example E. (This is done from the main character table by dragging H on top of E using ADJUST).
All of the scaffolds in H will then appear in E as global scaffolds. These can then be used to hint E, although some may need deleting and others replacing with local scaffolds.
The process then continues throughout the font, so the scaffolds from E could be used to hint F, for example.
Making a scaffold tree can be fraught with disaster as it can be very easy to accidentally break the tree by deleting the wrong scaffold. If you do wish to make a font with a scaffold tree then we suggest that you regularly check the integrity of the tree (Scaffolds.Check integrity) and then save the font as a backup if there are no errors. Should the tree get corrupted you can then re-load the last backup.
Zoom & Restore
This menu will simply zoom the current outline window up or down. This can also be achieved using the buttons on the toolbar to the left of the outline window. You can also restore the size of the window using the 1:1 option.
Keyboard shortcuts can also be used to zoom the window in or out (CTRL W will zoom in, CTRL Q will zoom out).
Restore
This option acts as a simple undo feature. Whenever an outline window gains input focus (its title bar goes yellow and the tool pane gets attached to its side) Dr Fonty will make a backup of the character. You can then edit the character (outlines, scaffolds, composites e.t.c.) in any way you like. If it all goes wrong simply click on "Restore" and after a prompt from Dr Fonty the character will be returned to the state it was in before you altered it.
Note the restore only works on the last character changed. For example, If you open the outline window for "H" and edit it then open another outline window and edit the character in that you will not be able to restore "H".
Dr Fonty's Preferences
Dr Fonty's preference window is opened by clicking on "Prefs.." from the icon bar menu.
"Save intmetrics with Outlines" will force Dr Fonty to save a new intmetrics file next to the fonts outlines file when you save it. If this button is off then no new intmetrics will be saved.
"Protect font when saving" if this option is selected then any font that us saved is protected so that it cannot be loaded into FontED. Dr Fonty, or FontFiend can still load the font.
"Check scaffolds when saving" if this option is on then Dr Fonty will check the fonts scaffolds for errors automatically before saving the font. This is the same as using the "Scaffolds.Repair tree" option from the main menu.
"Display char names" if this option is on then small green ASCII characters will be shown on the thumbnails in the main table.
"Re-calculate bounding boxes" with this option on Dr Fonty will automatically re-calculate bounding boxes as you work on a font. This button should be left on.
"Enable on-line help" with this button turned on Dr Fonty will display on-line help messages in the help line above the main character table.
"Font rendering preferences", clicking on this button will open the font rendering preferences window, described below
You can save your new preferences to disk so that they will become the new default by clicking on the "SAVE" button.
These new preferences can be set as temporary by clicking on the "OK" button.
Font rendering preferences
This window controls how Dr Fonty renders the outlines of characters in the outline character windows.
"Render outline control points" this will force Dr Fonty to render all the bezier curve control points in a characters outlines.
"Render skeleton control points" this will force Dr Fonty to render all the bezier curve control points in a characters skeletons.
"Render scaffold lines" with this option selected all of a character scaffolds will be displayed in the characters outline window.
"Render outlines filled grey" with this option selected outlines will be filled grey instead of being unfilled.
Tutorial - Making fonts
Dr Fonty can be used to make fonts from scratch quite quickly (although not as quickly as FontFiend). Making a font from scratch can be split up into the following activities:
Draw the shapes of the letters (outlines in Draw).
Import these into Dr Fonty.
Give the characters widths (including space!).
Optional - Scaffold the characters
Optional - Add kerning.
Save the finished font to disk.
In the examples directory is a directory called "BuildFont". This contains a font and a drawfile. The drawfile contains objects that can be used to make a font.
As you can see some letters have already been made and these can be saved out from Draw as selections and dropped onto the correct slot in Dr Fonty's main character table.
Once you have imported a drawfile it will appear on the main character table.
If the imported character is in the wrong place then it can be easily moved. For example if you import a character "y" you may find that it is sitting too high up. If this is the case then simply double click on the character in the main table. Its outline window will then open. Click in the outline window to give it input focus (title bar turns yellow) and use the CURSOR keys with SHIFT and CTRL to move the character to the correct place.
Adding widths
When you import drawfiles they will have no widths. The easiest way to set the widths is to use the "Widths. Set to BBox" option from Dr Fonty's main menu. Use a value of around 50 to start with. This will add a width to all the characters in the font with outlines. The SPACE character must be done by hand using the "Width" option from the Outline window menu for SPACE. The width should be the same as that for I (upper case i) usually this is around 300.
Having produced a font with outlines and widths you may well decide to save it and use it. Before saving the font you will need to give it a name in the writable icon at the top of Dr Fonty's main window.
The example above shows the name "Buildfont.Bold". before saving the font you will need to make a directory inside a !Fonts application for the font to live. The directory structure you make must EXACTLY match the font name. You can now save your font.
Ole Editing with Draw
The best way to edit the outlines (and the only way to edit skeletons) in a character is to OLE the character to Draw. This is done by clicking ADJUST in the outline window for the character you want to edit. A Draw window will then open containing the outlines and skeletons.
You can now use any of Draws normal editing tools to alter the outlines and skeletons. To return the edited character to Dr Fonty simply click on "Save" from Draws main menu
Font Problem solving
This section will cover some font related problems.
"Font cache full" errors
This font has one or more faulty bounding boxes. Make sure that the Re-calculate bounding boxes option is on in the Dr Fonty preferences window. Now load the font then save it out again. This will repair any faulty bounding boxes
The font is fine on screen but doesn't print correctly
The normal reason for this is use of a Computer Concepts Laser Direct or Turbodriver printer driver. Both of these printer drivers have problems rendering many fonts correctly. Turn the halftone text option in the Laser Direct/TurboDriver Halftone options window off. The only draw back with this is that all text will then be printed black, regardless of its actual colour on screen. This is not a fault with Dr Fonty. All professional font suppliers in the Acorn market have encountered this problem
"Cyclic scaffold tree" and "Invalid linear link"
The font in question has a badly corrupted scaffold tree. What you need to do is load the font into Dr Fonty and then delete all scaffolds. When you save the font back out from Dr Fonty the scaffolds will be removed but FontED will then be able to load the font without errors. You may also decide to re-scaffold the font in Dr Fonty before saving it back out. Also using the Scaffolds.Repair Tree option may well recover the font and most of the hinting
When I use the font some characters get filled in
The font has been saved with the wrong winding rule. Load the font into Dr Fonty and then go to the Misc.Font option in the main menu. Alter the status of the Non zero winding rule button. Now save the font back out again. This will usually fix the problem
I have made a font using Dr Fonty, can I distribute it?
Yes, Dr Fonty is a commercial font editor. The program itself is copyright, however any font you make yourself from scratch using the package belongs to you
I have made a PostScript font, what do I do with it?
The usual reason for producing PostScript fonts is to supply them to a bureaux along with a print job so that it can be output on an imagesetter
Swapping kerning
It is often very useful to take the kerning from one font and then apply it to another. In order to do this you need to do the following:
Load the font with kerning into Dr Fonty.
Save the kerning from this font to disk.
Load the font that does not have any kerning.
Drag the kernfile you saved earlier into Dr Fonty.
If you do not have any fonts with suitable kerning then you could start with one of the kerning files in Dr Fonty's examples directory.
Base 0 fonts
The Acorn font manager supports a font type known as Base 0. These fonts can easily be identified because they have a 0 at the end of their file name.
Base 0 fonts contain more than the normal 256 characters. Dr Fonty can load these fonts and convert them to Latin 1.
The original idea behind Base 0 was that the font manager would be able to select the correct encoding file for the given territory and then display any Base 0 font with the correct character set. However for some reason although this feature is built into Risc OS it doesn't actually work correctly.
When you load a Base 0 font Dr Fonty will first confirm that you want to convert the font to latin 1. If you want to work with other encodings then it may be worth looking at our other font editor FontFiend.
Some Base 0 fonts, such as Homerton, contain a complex scaffold tree Dr Fonty will convert as much of this scaffold tree as possible. Occasionally some letters that form part of the tree will not appear in the Latin 1 encoding. This may result in the odd letter that has a couple of scaffolds missing. 99% of Base0 fonts will convert with all scaffolds.
Making composite accents
In the examples directory next to Dr Fonty are two accents files. These can be used to load accents into a font. Note that these files only contain accents, not accented characters.
If you want to add all the missing accented characters to a font then you can drag one of these files into the Dr Fonty main table. This will ensure that the font you are making has all the correct accented letters.
You can then make all the accented letters using composites of the real letter and the accent. For example to produce Agrave (À) you need to drag character A on the main character table (using SHIFT & ADJUST) to the slot where Agrave is on the main table (2 columns in, 4 rows up from the bottom). This will insert A into Agrave as a composite. Repeat this process for grave (one character before lower case a).
Double clicking on Agrave on the main table will open the outlines for this character. You can now adjust the position of the composites (using the blue handles) until they are correct (Also open the Composites.List window).
Loading very complex fonts
When loading very complex fonts Dr Fonty may report that some characters are corrupted, or that there is not enough memory to load them.
You can increase the free memory available to Dr Fonty by dragging the size of the "Next" slot in the task manager up to 6400K.
Then quit and re-load Dr Fonty. Now reload your font and it should load intact without any error messages.
RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿISSUE4/DTP1/INDEX.HTM Issue 4, Can RISC OS still hold its ground for professional publishing?
Can RISC OS still hold its ground for professional publishing?
David Bradforth posed this question on the comp.sys.acorn.apps group as a way of finding out what people produce with their machine.
The idea proposed for this article was simple. Let's find out how many people make use of their RISC OS computer in a professional publishing field; and secondly how many of them read either this magazine or the comp.sys.acorn newsgroups.
It was with this in mind that, on Wednesday 13th October, I sent a posting headed Help needed with an article for RISCWorld to the comp.sys.acorn.apps group, little expecting the reply that followed.
The reply proved so strong that we've decided to start a new series of case studies on the professional publishing projects people use RISC OS computers for; and businesses that make use of RISC OS; but to start off with we've got three DTP focused articles in this issue.
The first is this, giving the replies provided by contributors to comp.sys.acorn.apps along with our own comments and observations along the way. The aim of this article is simply to show what other people are using their RISC OS computers for.
Secondly, we've got a case study on the Rural Life Centre and how Chris Shepheard makes use of RISC OS to produce a newsletter plus various aspects of museum literature.
Our final DTP article for this issue focuses on the software available for design on a RISC OS system. This article aims purely to identify what's available at the time of writing, and if anything should change in future months we'll certainly update the article and include it in later issues.
So what do people use RISC OS for?
To start the ball rolling, let's include the posting I made to the comp.sys.acorn.apps newsgroup. It went as follows:
Subject: Help needed with an article for RISC World...
"Can RISC OS still stand its ground for professional publishing?"
It's an investigative article, looking to bring together views from printers; experiences, tips and techniques as well as examples of what people have produced using RISC OS in a professional sense.
If you've
- used RISC OS for producing any professional publication (leaflets, brochures, magazines, etc)
- passed RISC OS-originated files to a non-RISC OS printer
- got a favourite DTP application
Let me know! I've got a little time, but would like to get the article put together!
If the truth be told, I had no idea what the response would be. When we've previously tried to get RISC OS users involved with the magazine on a specific subject, it's been a case of praying very hard to get any response; often because the subject in hand isn't necessarily that of interest to many.
The first response came from Charles Hope, and goes as follows:
For three years, I produced a quarterly magazine "Camelids Chronicle". It ended up with a fair bit of colour content.
I used Ovation Pro, and I got a write up in Acorn Publisher. I still have record copies as well as the computer files.
Were it not for the fact I can't find my magazines at the moment, I'd hunt down and scan the article from Acorn Publisher; but if Charles can provide us with the necessary files we'll do a profile of the Camelids Chronicle in the next issue as an example of a good project using both colour and mono work from RISC OS.
Simon Smith replied next, talking of notation work:
I work for one of the biggest music publishers (Boosey and Hawkes), did my first project for them using Sibelius on RISC OS, but now use SCORE (which frankly is miles superior and which they prefer anyway - being a DOS program, I can run it on the PC card without even having to use Windows), which generates EPS files. I then put it together using Ovation Pro, using RiScript to read the EPS files and to generate the final PDFs.
From their side of things, naturally enough, it's all Windows. If that's of any interest.
Indeed it is Simon; and it illustrates a very good point about RISC OS software. Where we do have access to foreign file formats, it's very easy to make use of them in virtually any desktop program. Ovation Pro was designed for just such purposes, and when used in conjunction with RiScript, ArtWorks, ImageFS 2 and other similar applications it immediately matches the import capability of some of the more mainstream PC and Macintosh applications.
The newsgroup discussion then wandered off to a discussion of appropriate web page designs, but by then a number of emails had started arriving.
Email brings more specific examples
John Ward emailed, with some helpful advice on producing advertisements for use in a Macintosh-produced magazine or via a printshop. The email begins:
My method of overcoming stipulations imposed by print shops (e.g. "must be Apple Mac fonts") is to produce a 95% quality JPEG at a high enough resolution to map one pixel to each printed dot at the publisher's stated resolution, so yes we can compete in this market!
I have attached a much scaled-down version of an advert I produced earlier this year, and it was easily the highest-quality and most striking advert in the (admittedly rather specialist) magazines in which it - and other related adverts - appeared.
I downloaded the email attachment, and would have to say I was impressed.
Within its target audience, this advertisement makes good use of colour and contrast to highlight the importance of the brand and link this to the colouring of the object itself within a photograph. While we would question the use of green text on a blue background; the advertisement certainly sticks out - and in a market where you may have competition that's always important.
Keith from the City Desk at Waikato University, New Zealand, emailed next:
I used to edit/produce a 32-page monthly using Ovation Pro for a local CD retailer and produced separations as postscript which were turned into film by a local pre-press shop, and printed in glorious duo-tone (my CD shop couldn't afford full colour so we used Pantone Red and Black!).
Images were scanned using DpingScan (or ImageMaster as it was then), and processed in Photodesk; logos/borders, etc were produced using Vector.
The only problems I ran into where when I had to remember not to knockout for black text over the red/pink, otherwise just take a portable SCSI drive with up to 100Mbytes of data on it every month. Everything went swimmingly.
While the PostScript generated by Ovation Pro in conjunction with the RISC OS printer drivers has improved, it used to be much of a different story. If you produced a professional separation from RISC OS computers running Impression 2, you'd occasionally find banding across any images in the printed files; and if you're a professional publisher that would cost you money to replace.
It's pleasing to know the situation has changed so drastically - my own DTP Principles guide (well I say my own; I was the publisher - not the author/designer) was produced using Ovation Pro and the only time a Mac came in to help was to produce the PDF files required by the printer.
Chris Shepheard, from the Rural Life Centre, emailed next. He wrote:
We publish a thrice-yearly (every four-months) newsletter, called Rustic. This is originated in Impression Publisher and sent to a non-RISC OS aware printer as PDFs. Over about 20 issues we have only had one problem where ligatures were followed by a space (fortunately this was spotted before the plate stage).
All of our monochrome leaflets are printed via the same route, though many are originated in EasiWriter.
The email ended with an invitation for more information, which we took - hence the case study elsewhere in this issue. Hopefully some sample files will be featured on the RISCWorld CD to play with (Indeed - ED), together with the appropriate trial versions of Ovation Pro particularly as this will open both Ovation Pro and Impression Publisher files.
With professional printing forming part of my question, it was pleasing to get responses from two professional printers recounting their stories. The first, from Jeremy Roberts of PressXPress in Braintree, makes a number of interesting points.
I've been a self-employed printer for the past 11 years. I've never used PCs for any of the work until very recently, and only then for customers who insist on giving me artwork in PC format.
Unfortunately, that's a necessity of business. As Jeremy is in the printing trade, there are a lot of people fussy with how their files are produced, and if you can't read the original file to produce it exactly how they request you may not get the job.
My RiscPC, which is about 12 years old now, has been the workhorse for all this time - and continues to be so, although I'm slowly going over to my Iyonix.
Despite its age, the Risc PC is still ideal for many things, and with the updated version of Impression X still unavailable to members of the public your only way to run classic applications is through Aemulor, which isn't an ideal solution in itself.
I normally produce film myself, using an HP2100 laser printer, and producing 'laser film'. This is perfect, and cheap, for mono and spot colour work, and I produce metal printing plates here from these films, for use on my small offset press. I have had some problems in sending files to the HP2100 printer - particularly if they involve pages printed sideways (for example, two-up A5's on an A4 sheet). I am now sure this is because of the poor implementation of PostScript on the HP2100, as my colour HP2500L can accept exactly the same files without problem, so replacing my HP2100 with a newer HP mono laser might be the answer.
For full colour work, where the registration is much more critical, I produce PostScript output from RISCOS to file, and send that to my imagesetting bureau, who produce films without any problem whatsoever. There's been a lot of talk about colour interpretation problems when producing CMYK separations from what is, inherently, a RGB computer, but in all the years I've been producing colour work, there's never been any job that's not been easily corrected on the press.
The production of film has always been possible on a RISC OS computer - Calligraph used to produce direct-drive laser printers, one of which was capable of producing paper plates for print production. You still can produce film through RISC OS, but with many printers moving across to electronic publishing instead of film-based you'll find it increasingly difficult to get film-based jobs printed.
I use Ovation Pro for the majority of the work, with drawings etc. generated in Artworks. Photos are fine left in their native JPEG format, although often need some manipulation to get the contrast and brightness looking good. I've traditionally used Ovation Pro's picture editing procedures for this, but that has the disadvantage of turning the images into sprites, which then take up considerably more memory (often too much for the HP2100), so I now use 'Variations' to change the contrast/brightness of JPEG pictures where I can, as this keeps them as JPEGs.
The nicer side of RISC OS lies in the availability of free software to meet a purpose. As far as we know there is no free desktop publishing package (errr. Impression Junior - ED), but there are a lot of fonts (fonts.iconbar.com being one source), clipart (simply search for WMF or EPS images on the web) and other utilities designed to help you get more from the desktop.
The only problems that occasionally arise are when customers send me artwork in proprietary PC software formats - the worst offender being 'Word'. My fellow printers, who are PC-based, in the town actually refuse to accept jobs that have been originated in Word, as the typesetter's version of Word often changes the customer's original!
Word is also absolutely inappropriate for pre-print design, as it doesn't allow any of the functions vital for printers - you can't print out in a 'pamphlet' format and you can't reflect the output. Where customers insist on writing their work in Word, I always ensure they allow me to re-format it in Ovation - firstly to ensure I can manipulate the work as I need, and secondly to get rid of that obvious 'PC-oriented' tell-tale style that Word always seems to give - you can tell a Word document from 100 paces!
We agree entirely. As the editor of MovieDomain and Movie Insider magazines, I have to edit copy produced by a variety of writers. While the copy is normally of a very high standard, some of them provide suggested layouts which are nice enough but not easily prepared for pre-press printing. The solution lies in PDF format, or reproducing the article in an in-house template (production of both these titles being on an Apple Macintosh).
PDFs are another source of problems. The two readers available for RISCOS are of little use for the professional - one (!RiScript) is useless because of it's inability to cope with clipped images, and !PDF is no good as it changes the fonts to RISCOS ones, rather than using the fonts embedded in the file. I've only tried to use GhostScript once, but couldn't really get to grips with it, and it only produced a bit-image of the page, which was of such poor quality as to be unuseable. Maybe I've got some settings wrong somewhere.
I have one customer who always sends me their artwork in PDF format. It's a real handicap not having good PDF software on RISCOS, as more and more customers can produce work in this format. It's the single most important piece of software for printers using RISCOS. The only way I can get round the problem is to use a PC to print the files, but even then the file cannot be 'reflected' - which it must be for films to be produced. The imagesetting bureau can reflect it, but my PC can't!
RiScript is being updated by its authors for relaunch via XAT (the guys who will soon be releasing Impression-X). It is hoped that this will address a number of issues such as the lack of ability to use clipped images and will generally add further features of Acrobat to RiScript. This may make it an increasingly useful application to have, and it should get somewhat cheaper as well.
In summary, then, I would say RISCOS is a perfect OS for printers to use, provided they originate their own artwork from customers' instructions. It's so much faster, and better quality, than a PC. In fact, I am asked by several other local printers to produce artwork for them!
It is interesting to note, however, that most of the printers I know are actually changing from the traditional printer's computers - i.e. the Mac - to PCs. Seems like yet another missed opportunity for RISCOS.
The last point is certainly interesting. If things were somewhat different, and RISC OS had a larger market share, we'd be in a position to compete with the likes of QuarkXPress. Quark are increasingly aiming their key design package at PC users, particularly with the increasing market share of InDesign in the Mac marketplace.
With recent developments such as SIMON (the means of speeding up the loading of draw files) and the introduction of twin-card Iyonix systems perhaps RISC OS is starting to gain more ground as a general design workstation. Such upgrades are likely to cost a fair bit of money, but for professional design this may not be an issue.
Our final reply for the moment comes from Gavin Crawford, of Crawford Printers. Responsible for producing the Wakefield Show guide, Crawford use RISC OS computers daily for the production and management of customers work. Gavin writes:
We are printing firm, and we use RISC OS for almost all of our artwork and origination. We also have Mac and PC based systems, but we hardly ever use them - only for dealing with files sent to us by customers. For me, RISC OS is so much more productive than other systems, and that is why I use it.
So I would say Yes, RISC OS can still stand its ground for professional publishing, and it does, daily.
With that, who are we to argue with a professional printer? RISC OS does currently have enough on offer to compete in the world of professional publishing, and there are many users out there doing just that. If you have any comments to add, please do so - email
David Bradforth
ÿÿÿÿISSUE4/DTP2/INDEX.HTM Issue 4, Design Case Study: The Rural Life Centre
Design Case Study: The Rural Life Centre
In the first of a new series of case studies highlighting how individuals use RISC OS to design and produce professional projects, David Bradforth takes a look at some examples from the Rural Life Centre.
The reasons we make use of RISC OS are quite clear - as an operating system, once you've gotten to grips with it there are very few complexities required in order to master it. While the design software we've got is very simple to use, it often allows for the complexities of professional work to be covered with ease.
It is with this in mind that we're launching a new series of case studies, highlighting the things people use RISC OS for and; where possible; including examples with the magazine.
To start the ball rolling, when Chris Shepheard let me know of the projects he, as the General Manager of the Rural Life Centre, uses RISC OS for; I asked for copies so we could include them in the magazine. What came (very quickly) was a CD-ROM with examples in their original EasiWriter and Impression formats; along with PDF files which made it easier for me to view them at present.
The Rustic Newsletter
As the newsletter for the Rural Life Centre, the Rustic aims to be an attractive newspaper-style newsletter giving all the relevant news; plus contact details for the members of the committee responsible for the centre. Requests for help, etc are usually present and - having read through this issue - it's clear to see that it's produced and edited by someone with a passion for their subject.
The cover from issue 43
While the newsletter makes good use of Impression Publisher, we'd recommend an upgrade to Ovation Pro as some aspects of this - particularly the work involving multiple columns - may become somewhat easier.
2004 Update
The next file provided by Chris was the plan, and information, handed to all museum visitors. Produced using Impression Publisher (for the text-heavy information section) with the plan produced in DrawPlus, 3,000 copies are printed as required by the museum.
The plan of the Rural Life Centre
Looking at the plan particularly, the production of this sort of thing is where RISC OS excels. DrawPlus was designed from the outset to be a version of Draw with extra features; and the extra features include libraries. Using these libraries you can store regularly used objects, then place them back at the mouse position.
It's not the most detailed illustration in the world, but then it doesn't have to be - it does its job very well.
Diary 2004
An events diary is important for any organisation such as this. As Chris describes it, "this is the main publicity leaflet that is slipped into our colour leaflet (unfortunately not produced using RISC OS, but by a commercial printer working from an Impression-produced draft followed very closely). Printed 16,000 times this is then picked up by many thousands of people who walk through the door of the centre.
The Diary 2004
Produced as a double-sided, twice folded, A4 sheet the structure makes it clear to see what's happening and when; although personally I'm not a fan of this format of leaflet I can see the advantages it offers. The structure is uniform, but with added illustrations along the way and the cover sticks out clearly.
Santa
The final example is Santa; a leaflet for the upcoming Santa Specials at the Rural Life Centre. 4,000 copies are printed; but a major part of the task for Chris is organising the 120 or so volunteers needed during the four actual days of the event.
The front of the Christmas specials leaflet
As Chris has yet to meet the complexities of an online booking system, a separate (downloadable) form is available for those who want more information via the Internet.
Concluding
I'd have to admit I'm impressed with what I've seen here. Working to a tight budget, The Rural Life Centre have made good use of the creative capabilities offered by RISC OS in general. As an operating system, software running on it doesn't have the traditional setup times required by many PC or Macintosh programs; leaving more time to get creative.
We at RISCWorld know that, and so do you. If you've got examples of your own, please let us see them - email
David Bradforth
ÿÿÿÿISSUE4/DTP3/INDEX.HTM Issue 4, DTP Software for all?
>DTP Software for all?
If you're looking to get creative with your RISC OS computer, you'll need some software to help you do it. In this article, David Bradforth shows you a selection of what's currently available for RISC OS users and makes some personal recommendations.
Over the last twenty years, every Acorn magazine has - at one time or other - been produced using a RISC OS computer.
Whether it was Acorn User or Archimedes World in the early 1990s; with the former producing the page layouts then adding colour in at the print stage on a Macintosh or the latter relying entirely on RISC OS for the process; or Acorn Computing (The Micro User) with its one-off experimentation around the same time. The results in each case were very impressive, and a good example of the capabilities of Impression II.
Since then, the design scene for RISC OS users has changed significantly. Gone are the days were RISC OS computers are sold for their graphics capabilities, alongside commercial printing packages from the likes of AB Dick, but with ever-increasing speeds of computer available to users, what software exists out there?
What follows is by no means an exhaustive look at what's available, but we've divided it into two categories: layout and graphics
Page Layout
The foundation of desktop publishing is, very simply, page layout. The process of constructing a page to include any text or graphics elements required in a format that's appealing to the eye.
The Impression series was, until very recently, still available from Computer Concepts. Admittedly the program hadn't been developed for a number of years, but in its final release form it seemed to have a lot of things necessary and many happy RISC OS users are still making use of it. What it lacked, however, was 32-bit compatibility, and a deal was struck with X-Ample Technology of the Netherlands to co-ordinate the production of a new version, Impression X.
At present, the project is believed to still be under development; but it's been a long time in coming and many users are making do with Aemulor as a means of using existing versions. It's not ideal, but if you have an Iyonix PC you really don't have a choice. If the situation should change soon, we'll let you know; but in the meantime you can visit
While Softease have announced there are no plans to develop it further, Textease Studio is still available; and as far as I know it's 32-bit compatible. The premise of Textease is nice: click anywhere on the page and start to type, and everything else stems from there. In practice, things have a habit of being not quite that simple; as you have matters of positioning graphics and flowing text around them making the package more ideal for quick leaflets than large-scale publications
Softease may be moving away from RISC OS, but Textease is still a capable program - and available to all RISC OS users.
If you're looking for a modern-day equivalent to the classic Mini Office series, Textease may be it - visit
Just as QuarkXPress has recently felt the challenge from InDesign, the RISC OS market had an upstart attempting to overthrow the crown held by Impression. The upstart, Ovation Pro was released by Beebug Limited in 1996 and quickly gained a strong following. What unfortunately let the program down was the lack of colour separation abilities in the first release; a function which was quickly rectified.
David Pilling, the author, took the program over late 1999, and added a number of additional features to constitute a new CD-ROM based release. As a program, it offers the ability to import virtually any major graphics file format (occasionally with a little help), full professional output facilities (comprehensive colour separation abilities), advanced bitmap manipulation tools and - very usefully - the ability to load Impression documents.
David Pilling's website, at
It has to be said it achieves the latter with varying degrees of success, but it's certainly impressive - it loaded without too much effort one of the files for the February 1995 Acorn User from the CD supplied with the April 1995 issue. You've got to fiddle about with it to get things right, and currently a lot of styles are imported with the file, but it's a lot more than otherwise we could hope for.
The last year and a half of RISC User was produced using it, DTP Principles was produced using it; and Qercus currently is produced using it - it's not without it's flaws, but it's the best DTP program currently available for RISC OS.
Visit David Pilling's website, at
Graphics
Graphics packages cover one of two areas, either the production of bitmap graphics or that of vector graphics. We'll tackle the latter area first, as it's the easier of the two.
If we look back to 1998, before the events of Black Thursday, Acorn World was shaping up to be one of the most interesting shows for years. One key feature was a publishing stand, featuring Acorn Publisher, Spacetech Ltd, Alternative Publishing and Astute Graphics/Nemo.
The collaboration of Astute Graphics and Nemo were to be responsible for the release of Vantage, the most ambitious (and easily the most expensive) graphics package for many years. It promised a lot, but took about three years before anything was released to the public.
Cerilica's site, at
Unfortunately, there have been many problems with Vantage, to such a point that many have stopped using it. There's no denying that its colour facilities are impressive, but it would require a market much greater than the RISC OS market to fully expand it to the original proposed specification. The web page is still available, at
Not suffering from quite so many problems, MW Software have taken over responsibility for ArtWorks and, with ArtWorks 2.3 now available, continue to make some very admirable advanced to the project. The latest version, 2.30, includes
Graduated transparency with graduation profiles and offset control
CMYK ink simulation (core ink simulation technology kindly provided by David Pilling) for both flat colours and colour graduation
The purpose of CMYK ink simulation is to give a better on-screen approximation of CMYK colours as printed using CMYK colour separated printing, so this is a specialist feature mainly useful for professional printers. For example, the simulated CMYK graduation of the rounded rectangle reveals a muddy band that is not shown by the naive RGB rendering. This band would show up in a colour-separated print
Arranger module to make objects magnetic. Editing operations snap to these objects like to the grid
Support in Selector tool for snapping bounding box edges, edge midpoints or the centre of the selection to magnetic objects when moving objects around
Text areas can be converted to shape
Ungroup all feature allowing multiple group objects to be ungrouped in one go
Various bug-fixes and stability improvement
ArtWorks 2 is Martin's regular day job it seems, and he regularly updates it. While it's true that major upgrades are chargeable, in a market the size of ours to have anything as a regular project by any individual has to be admired; particularly when it's of the calibre offered here.
MW Software's ArtWorks 2 pages include a number of stunning examples: the program has been used to produce artwork for Acorn Publisher on more than one occasion.
MW Software's website, at
Of course, we can't forget the latest version of DrawWorks - iSV Product's own answer to graphics design. Featured within DrawWorks XL is virtually anything you could want to do with a Drawfile on an Acorn computer. The latest version, described at
We're due a detailed review of DrawWorks XL shortly (we've been due it for months, the reviewer seems to be unable to respond to e-mails. So if anyone would like a free copy of DrawWorksXL in exchange for writing a review let me know - ED), so for the moment we'll leave that alone.
In the next issue, we'll cover the bitmap graphics packages available and have any further comments from readers on their own choice for design on RISC OS.
Yet again I find myself at the helm of the good ship RISCWorld, sailing in the safe waters just off the coast of RISC OS, me hearties, ahhh, I bet ye likes a lick of the cat......sorry, where was I. Oh yes I was sitting here having just finished the rant bit of my editorial, which I always write first, and trying to decide what to write as my info bit of the editorial. The problem is that there are lots of exciting developments going on at the moment and I really can't talk about any of them yet. I can do my "packed issue" type editorial spiel again but that gets a bit repetitive after nearly five volumes. So what can I say, here's RISCWorld, if you enjoy reading it half as much as we enjoyed writing it, then we enjoyed writing it twice as much as you enjoyed reading it. Oh and please do e-mail us, if you don't the letters page is going to get very empty!
There's just time for a quick addition to my editorial, the latest copy of Archive (Vol 18 No.3) has just landed on my doormat and I was very interested to read a section by Paul Beverley inside the front cover.
"The bad news, however, is that there is still the tendency amongst the people of influence in the RISC OS community not to let go of the past, and this is spreading negative thinking...No! forget it, leave it!"
Indeed, I totally agree. The last we thing we need is someone continually digging up the same old nonsense about Omega serial numbers.
Editors Rant of the month
The following is about the vehicular faith, not specifically about computing.
Those who managed to stay awake during my last editorial based rant about Volkswagens might like to read the following. After my experience with the dim witted joker on ebay I decided not to buy another Beetle sight unseen. So two weeks later I change my mind and did just that and agreed to buy a car from
Now you might think that this rant will be about another rotten old heap being misrepresented by an over eager seller, but no. When I saw the Beetle I was more than happy with it, in fact in some ways it was better than described by the seller. It wasn't perfect, but wasn't advertised as such, so I paid the man his money and drove it home, from Sheffield. Now again you may think this is a rant about driving home, but no, I was home in under 3 hours and the car belted down the motorway without any VW overheating problems. In fact I am chuffed with it, I need some time to get the jobs done, but have promised myself that Camper welding still takes priority (we will see how long that lasts). No my rant this month is about the journey from merry Bracknell to the silvery mecca that is Sheffield, by train....(If we lived in Uberwald there would be a clap of thunder at this point)
Lets start at the beginning. First step is a bus from near home to the station; but wait, Ken my next door neighbour is just about to drive into Bracknell and offers me a lift, brilliant. So I arrive at the station and approach the booking office. I have already worked out my route, I want to go into London, round the tube, then sit on a train for 2 hours until I arrive at Sheffield, nice and easy. However the troglodyte behind the counter has other ideas, apparently it's quicker to go to Reading, then to Birmingham and then on to Sheffield. OK. So I buy my ticket, keeping my hands away from the bars on his cage and wait for a train. Low and behold one arrives only 5 minutes later and I am off to Reading.
On disembarking at Reading I find the station is heaving, and after the bumpy train journey so am I. Anyway I find the train timetables and see that the next train to Birmingham should be here already, but it isn't. I find a helpful member of staff (in fact so helpful that I can't help but feel he won't last long working on the railway), then the shocking news is delivered. "Sorry, there's track work between Reading and Birmingham and the line's closed." Er...why wasn't I told this at Bracknell? "Well they should know." Yes but they didn't tell me, so what do I do? I can't take a train into London as my ticket won't allow me to. "You can take a train to Didcot and get a bus to Oxford, north of the closure and then go on to Birmingham". Well I didn't have a lot of choice. After half an hour a train finally arrives and I fight my way on through the throng of confused pensioners, all of whom seem to want to visit their niece in Bristol, "you know the one who Uncle Roger doesn't like, you should hear what they say about her, and she want's to get married in white".
Anyway, I find a seat and the train clanks off to Didcot. Arriving at Didcot another member of staff is collecting passengers who need to go to Oxford, "The bus is waiting over there", he says pointing to an empty carpark. To add even more joy to the adventure it now starts to rain. A few minutes later a coach turns up, the sign on the side describes it as Deluxe, which it isn't, perhaps it meant Dulux and someone has added an "e". I manage to get a seat in the front so I have a good view of the road ahead. Unfortunately I haven't managed to escape the pensioners, who had obviously confused Bristol with Birmingham and are now merrily filling the coach with carrier bags. Once loaded we depart and after half an hour or so arrive at Oxford station, so where's the train? Well it's anyone's guess as not only are the station display systems knackered, so is the announcing system. At this point I have given up shaking off the entourage and find someone to ask. "Yes, it's the platform over the other side." So we troup across the foot bridge and wait. After a few minutes a train turns up and passengers leave, but is this our train? A few of the braver get on, but nothing happens and the train doesn't move. Eventually we find out that this train is a local service and stops here. So why isn't it moving to let our train on the platform? "It will only be a few minutes, your train is on the other platform and will move over here once this one has moved."
We wait, but the train doesn't move. Meanwhile we can see the train on the other platform filling up with happy travellers. Finally we discover that the train isn't coming to this platform, no, it's leaving from the other platform in 1 minute. Throwing OAP's before me I rush over and just get on board in time for the doors to shut. By this time I have been travelling about 3 hours and need a coffee. As an extra service to customers who have been messed about an announcement comes over the tannoy that this train does not have a refreshment car.
Eventually I arrive at Birmingham and find the information kiosk, "Yes, there is a train to Sheffield, about 20 minutes, on platform 6." Lovely, I find a shop selling what is described as Columbian coffee, I try the "Is this coffee ground, cos it tastes like mud" gag but get a blank response. So I head to platform 6, but wait, which one, there is a 6a, and a 6b. I head back to information, however in my absence the pensioners have reappeared and there is a queue 20 deep. I go back to platform 6a and find a train there. A porter is loading stuff on board, "Yes, this is the train to Sheffield", does it have a refreshment car? "Should do, but the train splits and only the front half has refreshments. Ok, which is the front half? I don't know but I make an educated guess and decide to head for one end, at this point my luck improves and I find the refreshment car and climb aboard, however it's closed.
I take a seat in carriage J, hold on that's the back half of the train, argh, too late we're moving. My improved luck still holds though as to help confuse passengers carriages H to E are the front half, and carriage D to A are the back half. So a few minutes in I manage to grab a sandwich. Now all I have to do is wait. The train gets to Sheffield in about an hour and a bit, and stops a quarter of a mile outside the station, where it stays for 45 minutes. To improve customer satisfaction even further the train has stopped in a cutting and no one has mobile phone reception. Finally I arrive at my destination, having only taken 5 and a half hours for a journey I can drive in a little over 2.
And the moral of the story? Well you can use trains, they're slow, infuriating, they used to have a charm all their own but these days it takes a flipping long time to get where you are going; a bit like RISC OS really.
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
ÿÿÿÿISSUE4/GAMES/INDEX.HTM Issue 4, Games World
Games World
Paul Brett with the latest gaming news.
After the mega games column last issue, with ports of Aleph1 and Rick Dangerous it's all gone a little quiet on the gaming front with only a couple of new releases to tempt the RISC OS gamer, although there has been news of a possible new release, more on this later. In the meantime what new RISC OS games have been released since I wrote the last column?
CrazeeMan
Neil White has been at it again and has released a new desktop version of Crazeeman, a Pacman clone developed using SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) and supplied under the GNU public licence.
CrazeeMan
Unlike the original version in this version you can only see a small part of the maze, and the ghosts re-spawn after having been killed, this makes the game even more of a challenge. Crazeeman is an excellent way to spend a few minutes while you are supposed to be writing article for RISCWorld.
The controls are:
E - Up lef
O - Up righ
D - down lef
K - down right
Q - Toggle sound on/of
Escape - Qui
Horses - Ian Hamilton
This is a horse race desktop game. Start with a pot of money and bet on the horses to see if you can win a mint, or more likely lose your shirt. Before the first race you should setup the number of players. Click with select on the Player '<' or '>' icons,to set the number of players. Each of the player names can be updated to the name of the player required by clicking on the 'Player n' icon and amending the text.
Horses
Each player should select the number of the horse they want to bet on,these are from 1-6 (top to bottom) and are also colour coded. Click on the icon to the right of the cash value which will revolve through the numbers.
Each player should also select whether to do a 10 pound E/W (each-way) or a 2 pound WIN bet by clicking on the icon to the right of the horse selection icon. All players must bet on all races.
When all players have bet,click on the Start race icon. There are six races in a meeting.
NapoleonII - Ian Hamilton
This is a recreation of the original Napoleon game that appeared in Risc User and was written by Alan Stout. This version is 32bit compatible. It's a Patience game based on Napoleon of St. Helena. The object is to build up 8 ascending suit sequences, Ace through King.
Two standard 52 card decks are used in Napoleon. 10 columns of 4 cards are initially dealt to form the tableau. Only the bottom card from each column is available to play. The remaining cards from the two packs are played singly onto a heap, and are either played onto the foundations or built onto the tableau in descending suit sequence. Unplayable cards remain on the waste heap. Available tableau cards may similarly be played one at a time onto the foundations or onto another column of the tableau. When an entire column of the tableau is cleared, the empty space may be filled by any one available card from the heap or the tableau. This card should be chosen carefully as it may raise opportunities for releasing other useful cards.
NapoleonII
Use the mouse to drag and drop the cards to their correct positions. If you click with Adjust on an exposed card, the program will automatically attempt to place it on the correct target foundation. Clicking with Adjust on an exposed Ace will relocate it to the first available empty foundation space.
If the program detects that the game can be completed successfully, it will take over from the player and transfer the cards to the foundations automatically.
It's now possible to select the colours of the playing area. There is also a display grid showing the last move at the bottom right hand corner. The card value is shown to the left. The white stack shows it's current position and the dark stack the previous position. To 'Undo' a move just move the card back to the original position.
Equinox
Jason Tribbeck has been working away on a new RISC OS game called Equinox and on the 13th of November posted to the comp.sys.acorn.games newsgroup asking for a few beta testers....
"Since ArcCommand was pulled a couple of years back, I've been working on and off (mostly off) on a new game - called "Equinox".It's at the stage where I'd like to get some other people to try it and see if they like it or have suggestions for it.
At the moment, it's more of a pre-beta than an actual beta release, but it should be good enough to give you an idea as to what the game's going to be like. There's definitely some loose ends that will need to be ironed out soon.I haven't decided if this is to be a free release, or a cheap commercial release - it depends on if I put some video into the game (i.e. it'll probably be too large for dial up downloads, but probably a lot smaller than most PC games!). It's a possibility that it could be both. Because it could be a commercial release, the beta will only be available to a limited number of people.
If you're interested, then please have a look at
Note that a StrongARM is definitely recommended, but it should run on a slower machine (albeit with frame skipping). I haven't done an Iyonix version yet, but that will come (getting the core done is my main concern atm).Also note that a couple of people may remember that I started this in 1994. This is true. However, it was restarted from scratch in 2002..."
Poping over to the website will reveal all the latest details including a large number of development screenshots and lots more info on the game, which looks very impressive when seen statically, with all the items moving it should be stunning.
That's all there is on the gaming front for this issue, I will report again in January.
Paul Brett
ÿÿÿÿISSUE4/HUGHJ/INDEX.HTM Issue 4, The Hugh Jampton Experience
The Hugh Jampton Experience
Yes it's the man from SMERSH (Stupid Moron....er....whatever)
Hello and welcome to another low brow, and low budget, edition of the Hugh Jampton Experience!
The caption competition
Last issue we published this and asked readers to come up with a suitable caption...
The e-mail account was overflowing (it's only got 3K of capacity) within literally weeks. A couple had to be disqualified for being too funny, but rather rude, so the ones we can print include:
"Look Mom! I've invented the bicycle"
Harry Smith
"Harley Davidson show off their latest creation."
Kevin Wells
I'm having to bike to work since they wheel clamped my car"
Lol Simmonds
"Aaron has finally managed to buy himself a new mode of transport"
William McNee
(What???? Disqualify him at once - ED)
"Bill Gates demonstrates Microsoft's most up to date product yet"
John Peachy
"MicroSoft unveil new Software Troubleshooting Flying Squad!"
Shevels
"Do you like my chopper? I won it in a caption competition."
Lol Simmonds
However our winner, for taking the chopper/axe them just a but further, and explaining the joke in the process is....
"The Original Raleigh Chopper - Handcrafted out of wood with an axe" (Axe = chopper you see !........)
John Crane
So congratulations to John, as usual there is no prize, apart from the universal acclaim of being a RISCWorld caption competition winner.
So here's this issue's picture, can anyone think of a suitable caption?
Send your entries to HughJ@riscworld.co.uk and you too could become famous in your own house.
Hugh's picture gallery
Moving quickly on lets fill up the rest of the space with some of the many pictures I get sent every month...
So lets start with food instructions for Americans...
And whilst we are on the subject of morons here's an ideal accessory for Sunday drivers...
...and something for the occasional computer user as well...
Of course it isn't just computer users who are stupid...
Here is a fun little optical illusion, try scrolling up and down whilst staring at this...
Meanwhile this little chap has found his own way of making optical illusions...
Hardly anyone's been writing...even though everyone's stopped fighting...
Lets start with the traditional RISCWorld cock up corner...
Aaron,
On a first quick scan of Volume 5 Issue 3:
a. your "secret corner" has become so secret that it doesn't exist! Just an empty Directory;
and,
b. your colleague at "PD World" seems to have come out in sympathy!
Have I got a faulty disc, or is the whole RISCWorld hanging on your non-words?
Regards
David Cooper
Actually I hadn't thought of filling up the mag with empty directories, but it's an idea for future issues. Just joking. My master copy here is fine as is a genuine distribution copy of the magazine, so either you have a faulty copy or something weird is going on with your machine. I can't really comment on the latter as I don't know what machine you have, so why not try returning the CD to APDL so they can check it and send out a new version if it's found to be faulty.
P.S. It's not a secret corner, it's a safe corner.
Hi Aaron,
Nice issue. Just arrived. One thing that has obviously passed me by before is this error:
"Special Offers and Advertiser's index"
It should, of course, be "Advertisers' index" unless you only have one advertiser! More on this, of course (cheap plug), at Best,
Andrew Harmsworth
Ah, well this is one where I can safely blame Dave Holden as he handles the adverts and adds the offers/adverts section to the end of the main index file for each issue. However I have given him a stern ticking off (along with an invoice for this issue) and hopefully we won't see the problem occurring again.
After a lot of very careful investigation it appears that it wasn't actually an apostrophe but a poorly attached comma that had fallen down from the line above and lodged between the "r" and the "s". This was overlooked and so got copied in later issues of the magazine. I discovered this problem when I noticed that some sentences ended with double (in some cases, triple) full stops. This had a similar cause; the dots were falling off the top of "i"s and rolling along to the end of the line.
We are now using a much stronger adhesive for punctuation to ensure that these mistake's cant happen. DH.
Now it's time for "bash the editor", and it's not me...
Hi Aaron,
Reading your article about RISCWorld and you mentioned 'Bitter and Twisted'. Sounds good, I'd love to taste a pint but I'm in Italy and we don't get much real ale here. I brew my own, and that's pretty good. BTW do you ever see Paul Beverley editor of Archive magazine? - The mag you can read in the toilet - If you do, make him - yes make him - drink a pint of B+T, he's a shandy drinker! The 'RISCOS community' should take these matters very seriously, after all our technology is the 'real ale' of computing.
Why don't all involved in RISCOS in some way or other get together under one umbrella - 'CAMROS' the campaign for real operating systems?
Cheers
Lol
PS no disrespect intended to PB or his mighty organ, Archive.
Bitter and Twisted is indeed a fine beer. The problem with being in Italy isn't the lack of beer, as there are some fine local lagers, but the insistence that "real" food is made from pasta and tomatoes. As a true Englishman I like my food to consist of some sort of unidentifiable meat boiled to death in gravy and surrounded by extra lardy pastry, oh and a serving of chips on the side would be fine. I did see Paul Beverley at the RISCOS Ltd AGM, but didn't get him as far as the bar, so I couldn't try to tempt him with a real pint of beer, although I did partake of one myself, just for research purposes you understand.
As for RISC OS being the real ale of computing I assume you mean it's hard to find, made by people working in a shed, great to get hold of, but leaves you with a thumping headache in the morning?
Finally here's the letter that gets my weird award of the month.
Date:18/10/2004 06:31:22 GMT Daylight Time
From:xxxx_xxxx@hotmail.com
To:editor@riscworld.co.uk
Sent from the Internet (Details)
sample magazine via letter,please
Mr Agus
85 gedungsari Ave
Semarang 50127
Indonesia
We do actually have a free copy of RISCWorld, we give it away on our website, but we don't send out free copies by post. It looks like someone has been harvesting editorial e-mail addresses in order to get their mits on some free magazines. So this looks like spam, especially as there was no response from the e-mail address when I mailed back. RISC OS based spam? Whatever next, perhaps everyone will soon be getting spam e-mails from RISCOS companies?
Aaron Timbrell
ÿÿÿÿISSUE4/LIFE/INDEX.HTM Issue 4, The Game of Life
The Game of Life
Martin Carradus
The Game of "Life"
Devised by John Horton Conway of Cambridge, the Game of "Life" consists of a grid of cells that are either alive or dead. The grid updates itself from generation to generation by considering the neighbours of each cell. If a cell is 'alive' and the number of its 'alive' neighbours are between chosen limits, then that cell remains 'alive' to the next generation.
However, if there are too many neighbours or too few, then a 'live' cell dies out from overcrowding or isolation and doesn't survive to the next generation.
In addition, if an unoccupied cell has a given number of neighbours, then that cell becomes 'alive' in the next generation.
The Game of Life
In this simulation, a newly born cell is shown as a red dot, and a surviving cell is shown as a blue dot. Unoccupied cells are shown as white.
Begin by left clicking on the 'Life' icon on the icon bar, or by selecting 'Display' from the icon bar menu and setting up a pattern of initial 'live' cells. Either left or right click over the cells you wish to initially make 'live'. If you click over a cell you have already made 'live', then it makes it 'dead' once more.
Alternatively, move right from 'SetUp' on the icon bar menu, choose your own 'Life' parameters on the panel that appears, then click on 'OK' on this panel to set up an initial pattern of live cells.
Having set up the initial pattern, close the initial window, then select 'Run' from the icon bar menu to start the simulation.
'Freeze' stops the simulation during running, then restarts it if it is unticked, and 'Reset' enables the simulation to start from the beginning again.
Certain events cause !LifeGame to halt. If this occurs, hold down any key continuously to cause !LifeGame to resume. DO NOT open anything on the icon bar - !LifeGame crashes.
Please Read the File '!ReadMe' within !LifeGame for terms and conditions of use. (Hold down 'Shift' and double click with the Mouse pointer over the application file icon.).
More free software is available on the Internet from the site
Disclaimer
Users of !LifeGame must accept this disclaimer of warranty: "!LifeGame is supplied as is. The author disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, including, without limitation, the warranties of merchantability and of fitness for any purpose. The author assumes no liability for damages, direct or consequential, which may result from the use of !LifeGame."
Anyone distributing !LifeGame for any kind of remuneration must first contact Martin Carradus at the address below for authorization.
Comments, queries, curses, praise to:-
Martin Carradus
Leaf Mindcraft
c/o 27 Wells Road
ILKLEY
West Yorkshire
LS29 9JE
U.K.
Enclose an s.a.e if you want a reply.
Martin Carradus
ÿÿÿÿISSUE4/MIDLANDS/INDEX.HTM Issue 4, ARM Club Midlands Show
ARM Club Midlands Show
Toby Smith
Following our previous successful shows near Birmingham, The ARM Club will once again be running a show at the newly rebuilt National Motorcycle Museum near Birmingham on 4th December 2004. We're to be one of the first events held since last year's disastrous fire, and the work is well on the way to being completed comfortably in time. The museum is scheduled to re-open on the 1st of December, so visitors to the show will also get one of the first chances for a look around.
The National Motorcycle Museum is just opposite the NEC at Birmingham, off junction 6 of the M42, at the junction of the M42 and the A45, and is very accessible by car. A free minibus shuttle will run from Birmingham International station for anybody coming by train or plane.
The show will be open from 10am to 4.30pm and there will be an entrance fee of £3 (£2 for club members) with accompanied children under the age of 14 admitted free. There is no need to pre-book tickets.
The list of confirmed exhibitors is till growing, but already includes:
Up to date details are on our website at
We still have a few tables left for anyone who wishes to exhibit at the show. A single table costs only £45 so may even be within the budget of those with small / shareware products. For more details, contact
Back in July, APDL announced that they had acquired The 4th Dimension from CJE Micros. This first release sees a relaunch of both Nevryon and Technodream (AKA Nevryon 2) from Superior Software together on the same CD.
So what's new in these versions? Well not a lot, but they are both fully hard disc compliant
and the manuals are now in HTML format, plus they now work with RISC OS 4 and Select
and StrongARM machines without any problems, although they don't work on th
Iyonix natively, but more about that later on.
To install the game it couldn't be easier. Put the CD in the drive, double click and the filer
window will appear. Simply double click the !Install program and the following panel will appear.
Select which of the games you want to install (both by default) then drag the Nevryon ship icon to the required destination. This will now appear in the 'Install to' panel, click 'OK' and within a couple of minutes you will have the game(s) installed on th
hard disc and are ready to play.
NEVRYON
Nevryon first appeared back on our screens in the early 1990s. 14 years later it is still a good quality entertaining sideways scrolling shoot-em-up. You take control of a spacecraft and must make your way to the end where you will encounter the end of leve
boss who must be destroyed in order to make it to the next level.
After the title page you can visit the options screen. From here you can redefine the keys, set sound levels, game difficulty and which level you want to start on, (later levels will need a password). After the options screen its onto the game.
Your ship starts off basic, but as you destroy enemy ships and parts of the landscape various power-ups will start to appear which include faster laser, extra guns, land mine layers, and little droid things that you can fire off in front of you to help clear a pathway through all the chaos.
Although Nevryon is almost 15 years old it doesn't look particularly dated and the graphics still look good now, with lots of colourful explosions and a wide variety of aliens intent on destroying you coming at you from all angles. On the audio side of things I always thought the music for Nevryon was very good, however for some reason it runs way too fast now, however by running the freeware program !VSync the problem is solved.
I've played Nevryon many times over the years both on RISC OS and the BBC Micro version as well, and would recommend it anyone who likes a good shoot-em-up. It gets a bit frustrating at times, especially when your ship is fully tooled up with all the extras and then you die and lose them all and also have to start the level again. This can be very annoying, but it's addictive and good fun. I can't remember if I ever completed it or not, maybe I will have another go at it.
TECHNODREAM
Technodream was originally going to be published by the 4th Dimension as "Nevryon 2 : Technodream" and was properly advertised back in the days when the full colour 16 page 4D catalogue used to appear in all the Acorn magazines. However for some reason, 4D decided to cancel it, but a few years later it finally got released by Superior Software as just Technodream.
Technodream is essentially more of the same; sideways scrolling, shoot everything in sight and then destroy the end of level boss to move to the next level, but it's different enough to be a new game. There are some new features, one of which I particularly like and that is that when you die you don't have to start right back at the start of the level, you carry on from where you died, although you still lose your power ups and get a couple of seconds of invincibility.
Another new feature of Technodream is the two player option. This is a proper two player mode where you are both in the game together. Rather than sit and wait your turn, you can play as a team or play against each other.
As with Nevryon you can visit the options screen before the game should you wish to and redefine the controls, turn animation sequences off or on, select level and zone. As with Nevryon passwords are needed. When you've finished the options you choose your player and then onto the game itself.
I found Technodream to be a lot easier play than Nevryon, and I'm pretty sure I managed to complete the game when I first bought it, but can't remember what happens. The first level is very easy to complete and shouldn't take more than a couple of goes to finish. I also found the graphics, while still good, don't seem to be as bright and colourful as Nevryon. The same with the music, while it is still ok, doesn't seem to be of the same quality. Technodream is a good game and worth playing, but its not quite as good as Nevryon.
MACHINE COMPATIBILITY.
Nevryon and Technodream will run on RISC OS 4, RISC OS Select and, I assume, RISC OS 3 machines without problems. However, unfortunately they won't run on the Iyonix, but that doesn't mean us Iyonix owners have to miss out. Nevryon will run perfectly well with Aemulor Pro (www.aemulor.com) and also !A310emu (http://home-1.tiscali.nl/~jandboer) although the music still runs fast the program !VSync soon solves that problem. However the same cannot be said about Technodream; it won't run, althought it displays the titles and plays the music without a problem, the program gets stuck and doesn't work, but this may be rectified in the future.
Summing up then, if you don't own these games and enjoy a good shoot-em-up then I recommend that you buy this. For the price of £6.90 for both games, it is an absolute bargain considering they would have cost nearly £50 originally. Even if you have the original stand alone releases it's still worthwhile as they are now properly compatible with most of the newer machines.
Overall two very good sideways scrolling shoot-em-ups for just over a fiver can't be wrong, what have you got to lose ?
Product details
Product:
Nevryon & Technodrea
Supplier:
APD
Price:
£6.90 inclusive of UK carriag
Address:
39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London, SE26 5R
Tel:
0208 778265
WWW:
E-mail:
Matt Thompson
ÿÿÿÿISSUE4/NEWS/INDEX.HTM Issue 4, News
News
The latest news from the RISC OS world
RISCOS Ltd and Castle Technology Ltd
RISCOS Ltd and Castle Technology Ltd announce new cooperative Agreement o
future RISC OS Development
Castle Technology Ltd and RISCOS Ltd are delighted to announce that late o
Friday 15th October they concluded negotiations on a new Licence Agreemen
that ensures a bright future for all areas of RISC OS development.
The new licence ensures that both RISC OS 4 and RISC OS 5 will be merge
together, as soon as practically possible and that clear areas o
responsibility have been established ensuring that duplication of effort i
minimised.
Paul Middleton Managing Director of RISC OS Ltd said "I'm sure that all th
RISC OS users who have waited for the availability of the Select Deskto
experience will be delighted to know that they can expect to enjoy it o
many more platforms, such as the IYONIX pc, next year."
Jack Lillingston Managing Director of Castle said "This is fantastic new
for all parties concerned and I know that this sets sound foundations for
bright new future of RISC OS. Castle will continue with the IYONIX pc an
other desktop products, whilst Tematic (a trading division of Castle) wil
focus its activities on the embedded sector. This means that more and mor
devices using RISC OS will become available around the world."
John Ballance, Technical Director of Castle Technology explained tha
"merging the two versions of RISC OS together makes very good sense. Thi
means a set of standard APIs for RISC OS and this will be of great benefi
to RISC OS developers."
Mike Glover of Icon Technology, who chaired the discussions, pointed ou
that "this solution ensures that RISC OS 4 will continue to be available fo
the foreseeable future and that all RISC OS hardware and software developer
will continue to supply their products."
All RISC OS users are warmly invited to attend the Guildford RISC OS Show o
Saturday 23rd October in order to talk to everyone concerned with thi
fantastic new development.
More information from:
Paul Middleton
RISCOS Ltd
Tel: 02920 464020
Jack Lillingston
Castle Technology Ltd
Tel: 01728 723200
Advantage Six announce the A9 series
Advantage Six are pleased to announce their A9 series of RISC OS computers. Building on the A75 range, the A9 series offer increased functionality and speed, at reduced power consumption, whilst retaining the diminutive dimensions of our other industrial controllers.
The A9 series feature a range of ARM9 processors, with a choice of OEM options available. The A9 is the first machine to demonstrate the latest version of RISC OS (Embedded Adjust-32) from RISCOS Ltd. Embedded Adjust-32 enables custom applications to run in a RISC OS environment on ARM processors which have a 32-bit program counter (eg ARM9, ARM10). When available, the full retail Select-32 operating system will be compatible with the A9.
A9 variants suitable for running Linux applications are also available. The A9 may be supplied to OEM customers in a number of configurations. Some example base configurations are:
A9RM - Half-width 1U rack mountable ruggedised case (1.75" x 8.5" x 10")
A9Loc - Wall/Bulkhead-mountable unit with integral 8.4" TFT touchscreen, GPS and GSM/GPRS.
Pricing is dependant on configuration, options and quantity. The A9 is available to qualified OEM customers direct from Advantage Six. Contact
A retail version of the A9 will be available in due course and an announcement will be made when the third party distributor has them in stock.
Commenting on the release of the A9, Matt Edgar of Advantage Six said "It's been a challenging year, and we're extremely excited to see everyone's efforts and hard work finally reified." Paul Middleton, Managing Director of RISCOS Ltd, commented that "The development of a 32-bit version of RISC OS 4.39 (RISC OS Adjust) opens up many new possibilities for 32-bit only computer users to enjoy the RISC OS Select environment. Embedded versions of RISC OS 4 have exactly the same potential features as the full desktop versions but leave the choice of which features are to be included to the manufacturer, dependant on the end application and target cost."
Contact: Advantage Six Ltd
PO Box 183
OLDHAM
OL2 8FB
UK UK Tel: +44 (0)1706 848 600
UK Fax: +44 (0)870 164 1604
US Tel: +1 360-227-5447
Christmas Special Offer from RISCOS Ltd
RISCOS Ltd has avoided making Christmas Offers in previous year
but this year we are breaking away from our scrooge image wit
a special offer between now and 7th January 2005.
We want everyone to enjoy the latest version of RISC OS, so here's our bit of Christmas cheer.
Buy a RISC OS 4.39 (Adjust) ROM image and get a years subscription t
the Select scheme for just £35 extra. The normal price of Select is £99 for Foundation members, or £155 if you are joining Select for the first tim
so this is a saving of up to £120.
N.B This offer is only valid for purchasers who are NOT already subscribers to the Select scheme and is only for subscription to the standard Select scheme. It does not cover subscriptions to the Select 32 scheme.
The price for the Adjust ROM is £130 for users who upgrade from RISC OS 3.X and £115 for users who are upgrading from RISC OS 4.0X.
The total price for RISC OS 4.39 with a years Select subscription is therefore £165 for users who upgrade from 3.X and £150 for users who upgrade from 4.0x.
To claim the extra discount for upgrades from RISC OS 4.0X you must supply the RISC OS 4 ROM serial number. There is also a further discount on the above prices if you return your RISC OS 4.02 ROM set.
RISC OS Adjust ROMs are suitable for Risc PC and A7000 computers. They may also be suitable for MicroDigital and RiscStation computers but we cannot guarantee this.
For further details contact:
Paul Middleton
Managing Director
Geminus
The team behind Aemulor, Aemulor Pro and Cino are pleased to announce
their latest project : Geminus - a multiple-screen driver for the IYONIX
pc. It allows several PCI graphics cards to be installed (up to the
maximum number of free PCI slots-3 in current models) and your desktop
can be split across several screens in various configurations.
Features:
provides screen modes which span multiple graphics cards, allowing the desktop to be used across two or more screen
supports up to 8 screens (Note: only 3 PCI slots are available for graphics cards in current IYONIX pcs.
screens can be arranged in any configuration (left to right horizontally, right to left horizontally, vertically..
each screen image can be rotated 90 degrees clockwise or anti-clockwise, allowing rotatable LCD panels to be used in portrait mode; great for DTP
An API allows applications to create their own display surfaces (the desktop is just one display surface) and thus claim screens for their own, exclusive use, either drawing to them directly or via the OS VDU drivers
For example, Cino can take over the second screen for DVD playback, whilst the desktop is displayed in the first screen.
Geminus makes full use of the hardware acceleration already available in RISC OS 5 on all screens, plus a hardware DMA channel to improve scrolling and copying performance between screens
A graphical Configuration plug-in allows you to define your own large screen modes, specifying the screen positions and, optionally, rotations for each mode.
Future Developments
Geminus doesn't just end there. We have a host of exciting features
planned for the product, which will be made available in different
"flavours" depending on which features you require.
R/B-swapping in software, allowing the use of other graphics cards which have not or cannot have their Red and Blue signals crossed-over (as per Castle's supplied NVidia cards), eg. digital DVI outputs
low-colour modes (code to be migrated from Aemulor Pro into the Geminus module, allowing each physical screen to be used in any display depth, whatever its actual capabilities)
Geminus is ideally placed to further accelerate desktop operations such as sprite plotting and window redrawing
Some early prototype code has already proved that the plotting of texture backgrounds in particular can be greatly speeded up, leading to a noticeably slicker desktop.
Constraints
The widths of the individual screens within a multi-screen mode are restricted slightly, as shown below:
16 million colours width must be a multiple of 256 pixel
32 thousand colours width must be a multiple of 512 pixel
256 colours width must be a multiple of 1024 pixel
So all standard modes are available in 16 million colours (eg. 1024 x 768, 1280 x 1024, 1536 x 1152, 2048 x 1536).
A couple of example desktop modes available with 2 CRT monitors side-by-side : 2560 x 1024 x 16 million colours or 4096 x 1536 x 16 million colours!!
The first public showing of Geminus will be at the Guildford RISC OS
show today, where we will also be selling second PCI graphics cards
suitable for installing into the IYONIX pc, and a range of LCD monitors
at fantastic prices.
We anticipate Geminus will be available for purchase 3-4 weeks after the
show as much of the code is already complete. Pricing for the
multi-screen version of Geminus will be 25UKP+vat.
Modified (R/B swapped) PCI graphics cards are available at 50UKP+vat. Upon release, we will be offering various bundles of Geminus, PCI cards and LCD monitors at discounted prices.
More details from
RiscCAD the Buck stops here
APDL have kindly allowed me to take over the development, sales and marketing of RiscCAD. May I take this opportunity to thank APDL for their efforts in the last few years in promoting RiscCAD.
RiscCAD is a highly capable and fast 2D CAD package for RISC OS. I am not yet sure what I will do with the software, but I will support existing users who have any queries.
If anyone has any questions, please get in touch at
And finally....
Castle Technology
Castle are running yet another "Get a free LCD monitor when you buy an Iyonix" offer. This is marked as a "Special Christmas offer", rather amusingly if you go to the
RISCWorld
ÿÿÿÿISSUE4/PD/INDEX.HTM Issue 4, PD World
PD World
Paul Brett with the latest freeware and PD releases for RISC OS.
I'm back from my summer break and am delighted to see that development of RISC OS freeware and shareware continues at quite a pace. So what new programming wonders have we to tempt you with this issue?
SampleED - Really Small Software Company
The SampleEd application allows you to create, edit and play back sound samples. The main features are:
Load and save samples in a variety of different formats
Disk based editing not limited by available memory
Apply a variety of affects to samples including fades, echoes and loops
Supports the LADSPA plugin protocol for effects
Uses PlayIt to play back on a variety of different sound hardware
In case you were wondering LADSPA stands for Linux Audio developer's Simple Plugin API and provides a mechanism to add new effects or tools to SampleEd. These can of course be used on other applications that support the LADSPA protocol. More details can be found at
SampleEd should run on any RISC OS 3+ machine with 4MB of memory. It does require the Toolbox modules and a 32bit version of the Shared C Library so this might push requirements up somewhat. Any processor should do although obviously an ARM2 will be very slow and a StrongARM is best
SampleED
Memphis - Open Source
Memphis 3 is a fully-featured, dynamically resizing RAM-based filing system for RISC OS 3.5+. Its main features are:
No limit to size of disc (memory permitting)
Uses a Dynamic Area to store files, which automatically grows and shrinks as files are added/deleted.
Filenames can be up to 63 characters in length
Provides an icon on the icon bar like the RamFS Filer
Icon bar has configuration window, with options saved in 'Choices'
Files can be saved directly to the iconbar icon from applications
The disc can be saved (as a spritefile) upon quit, and automatically reloaded when Memphis is next used
Disc can be used as a scrap device
Memphis can be set to imitate the built-in RamFS, so programs that write to RAM::RamDisc0.$' will save to Memphis instead
A single module 'MemFS' provides the low-level filing system support and desktop front-end
Memphis 3 requires a RISC OS computer running 3.5 or later. It has been tested successfully on Select, Iyonix and VirtualRPC. The module is fully 32 bit clean, but since it is linked with StubsG it does NOT require the 32 bit Shared C Library to be loaded on non-Iyonix machines.
Memphis
SpamSpamp - Jan-Jaap
SpamStamp is a program that attempts to detect if an incoming mail is spam or not. Some headers are added to the mail with the result of that check. Your mail client can then decide what to do with the spam. New features for this version include:
Contains installation instructions for Hermes.
Contains installation instructions for AntiSpam/Pluto.
French resources (Thanks to Jérôme Mathevet)
New option to start caching the hashfile on start-up of the frontend
Experimental support for rnews files.
Bugfixes..
Deciding whether mail is spam or not is being done by bayesian filtering techniques see
SpamStamp
Fade - The Really Small Software Company
The Fade application allows you to create, edit and display a simple slideshow. The main features are:
Various different picture to picture fades are availabl
Uses ChangeFSI so a wide range of image formats are supporte
Slideshows run in any 8,16 or 32 bit screen mod
Fade should run on any RISC OS 3+ machine with 2Mb of memory. It does require the Toolbox modules so this might push requirements up somewhat. Any processor should do although obviously an ARM2 will be very slow and a StrongARM is best for some of the fades.
Fade
Sunfish - Alex Waugh
Sunfish allows you to connect to NFS shares on other machines over a network. Sunfish requires a working network connection and an NFS server to connect to. The server should be running version 2 of the NFS protocol, version 1 of the Mount protocol, version 2 of the portmapper protocol, and optionally version 2 of the pcnfsd protocol. It has currently only been tested with the Linux kernel server present in Debian Woody, but it should work with other servers. Both UDP and TCP connections are supported.
Sunfish should run on any version of RISC OS from 3.11 onwards. It has been reported to work on RISC OS 3.7, RISC OS 4 (including under Virtual RPC), Select, and RISC OS 5. It is 26/32bit neutral.
Sunfish has been reported to work with the Linux 2.4 kernel server in various distributions, a Solaris 7/8 server, the TrueGrid NFS server on Windows, and Netware 6.5SP1a. It partially works with Allegro NFSd 1.1.4 on Windows, but a bug in that version of the server can cause file not found errors when copying files onto the server.
You may wish to refer to Allan Curtis' notes on setting up a Linux NFS server, or the Drobe article on setting up the TrueGrid server for use with Sunfish.
Any updates will be available from http://www.alexwaugh.com/.
SunFish
TTF2f - J.M. Bell
TTF2f is a font converter designed to convert fonts supported by
In order to convert a font, follow the following process:
Run the application and open the main window
Drag the source font file to the window - the file path will appear in the Converting display field
Choose a RISC OS font name for the font and enter it into the Fontname writable field
Choose a base encoding number (default = 99). See the manual for details of why this is necessary
Select the location to save the output font from the drop down menu (this is comprised of all the entries in your current Font$Path)
Click convert and wait for conversion to complete
Copy the /BaseNN file into Font:Encodings (You may have to create this directory first)
TTF2f
ViewXLS - Anton Reiser
Finally before I go there has been an update to a RISCWorld favourite, ViewXLS. The new version now has an option to save a spreadsheet as a drawfile. For those that don't know ViewXLS is a file viewer for spreadsheets created by Microsoft Excel, and for those that use PCs on a daily basis it's an absolutely essential application.
That is all we have time for this issue, see you in January.
So.. I arrived at the show around 11am, Castle were starting a theatre presentation on the DIY Iyonix kit, which I sat down and watched, after a few mins I realised that watching someone build a computer, be it an Iyonix or not, isn't all that exiting, until the final powering up, where my evil little mind was hoping it didn't work straight away, unfortunately for me it did.
So I went and did the rounds, the first stand in the door was MW Software, who looked like he had the "..the computer doesn't seem to be working at the moment, it was fine before I threw it around the boot of my car getting here" bug. He was selling updates for Art Works and was plugging a long list of new photo printer drivers.
The charity stand which was advertised as having books only no hardware had a nice collection of old CD-ROMs, floppies, modems and some software, next to which was Mr Serious Statistical Software, plugging his range of serious statistical software, he told me that he actually uses his software to monitor lots of data about global warming, so if your wondering if you should take a jacket or just stay in cos the world is about to explode, he is probably the one to ask.
Oh, it's busy
Peter Naulls and his porting project were next door with encouraging news about a RISCOS port of the Firefox web browser in the pipelines, and demonstrating Iyonix Linux which now runs X windows nicely. Alongside was Mathemagical software demonstrating their new software, Art Graph, which actually makes maths beautiful to look at, and in some cases like a dodgy 60's wall paper design. Fortran friends were were next door with some interesting cardboard models of geometric shape things and a bell ringing simulator, none of which I dare touch, just in case something terrible were to happen.
Icon technology were demonstrating EasiWriter and TechWriter, which I am assured are packed with new and exiting features such as a 32 bit Euclid module for displaying animations in documents. The ARM Club were on the next stand, so far they still have yet to suck me into there cult, sorry club. I do actually have something with ARM Club written on it, somewhere. The Archive and Living with technology magazine people were there, but we won't mention them, same as we wont be mentioning Qercus magazine.
R-comp were flogging there newest versions of Dialup and NetFetch, which now incorporates something called Hermes which is designed to support the latest security and technological requirements of email along with all there usual games and stuff.
ITC-UK had a nice selection of random hardware for sale, APDL had an excellent selection of quality RISCOS software, hardware and books all must buys, at great prices (God he's a crawler - Ed) and the VirtualRPC which was flying off the shelves, at least 25 copies were sold in the 2 mins I was playing with the Linux version (I think he's exaggerating a tad - Ed), which isn't yet available, but is looking promising.
Just for the sake of it of it I ran a PC emulator on VRPC, so that's Windows emulating RISC OS, emulating DOS, if only I'd had another emulator to run in the DOS, oh what fun. CJE were busy on their stand also selling a wide range of RISC OS goodies. alongside were the Electronic Font Foundry with a nice selection of emptiness, yes they hadn't turned up yet again.
CJE Micros
The Aemulor team were showcasing Geminus, which is an Iyonix thingy for using multiple graphics devices and monitors, a first for RISC OS. From their press release- The team behind Aemulor, Aemulor Pro and Cino are pleased to announce their latest project : Geminus - a multiple-screen driver for the IYONIX PC. It allows several PCI graphics cards to be installed (up to the maximum number of free PCI slots-3 in current models) and your desktop can be split across several screens in various configurations. Geminus is ideally placed to further accelerate desktop operations such as sprite plotting and window redrawing. Some early prototype code has already proved that the plotting of texture backgrounds in particular can be greatly speeded up, leading to a noticeably slicker desktop, well that's what the blub says, in practice it did look quite impressive.
RISC OS and Castle were taking a Q & A about the future of RISC OS, where a lot of questions about USB API's, 32bit Select, new PRM's and network issues were brushed under the carpet with a lot of mumbling about commercial viability and "we'll have to see's it's still early days" etc.. One thing that did seem to be established is that the Iyonix Select scheme will only ever be available as a soft load over RISC OS 5, not available as a new ROM set like the Adjust for Risc PC's.
RISCOS Ltd
RISC OS were demonstrating a new drawfile / artworks rendering system which uses some secret hardware add on and new software which can make the drawing of ArtWork / Drawfiles significantly faster, fast enough even to be faster than plotting sprites, and there is talk of replacing all the desktop furniture with vector files, similar to the way the Mac OS X desktop used pdf's.
So, rounding up, a few big things at the show, the Geminus multiple displays system for iyonix, RISC OS's new system for drawing vector files and a vector desktop in the pipe line, VirtualRPC on Linux in the pipeline and the firefox web browser somewhere in the pipeline.
Apologies for the quality of the photo's. I only had the use of a £7.99 digital camera, which is very hard to take non juddery pictures with. just think of them as action shots.
Neil White
ÿÿÿÿISSUE4/STEREO/INDEX.HTM Issue 4, StereoWorld
StereoWorld
Matt Thompson
After the first 4th Dimension relaunch title, comes the second one, this time it is the turn of Stereoworld, which is a collection of programs which produce a variety of weird and wonderful graphics and includes an editor to create your own. I didn't own the original release, so don't know if there is anything new in this release, apart from the manual now being in HTML format, and that most of the program now runs on the Iyonix natively.
Installation of the program is straight forward, with the CD in the drive, double click and the filer window appears, click on the installer program and you should then see the following panel.
Then drag the icon to the relevant place on the hardisc, the program is quite big and needs 9MB of hard disc space, if you have enough space then click OK and the program will install, then double click and it will then load onto the iconbar.
IMAGES
Behind most of the images or stereograms as they are known, there is a hidden image to try and find, by clicking the menu button on the mouse over the image you will get a menu of available pictures, select the one you want, and begin the process of staring at the picture and see if you can see the hidden picture in the image, I tried many times with quite a few pictures and couldn't see any of them even when I knew what they were, you can play this game in the desktop, in a full screen mode, print the image if you so wish and by clicking on help brings up some interactive help about how to play this game.
Can you see the hidden image in this picture ?
No... well this is there one and it's this.
That's the first part of Stereoworld, if you are able to see the hidden images then its probably quite entertaining, but couldn't see any of them, onto the next part which is ..
ANIMATIONS & MORPHS
Nothing to do with Morph off of the television, this section involves selecting an animation or morph from the menu and then clicking on play to see some sort of animation within the image,either in the desktop or in full screen mode, I'm not really sure what this section is all about or what the purpose of it is really, but I'm sure it will appeal to somebody somewhere.
GAMES
A bit of a more interesting section this one, there are three games in this section.
Escape - this is essentially a breakout clone, although its heavily disguised behind a stereogram, rather difficult to play, if you really want to play breakout then there are better ones out there, this game doesn't work on the Iyonix, it is OK on the 26 bit RISC OS machines though.
Lander - this is a game based on the Lunar Lander game, land your craft on a planet surface, you can choose from a menu which planet to land on, this game doesn't work on the Iyonix either,but its fine on the 26 bit RISC OS machines, I found this game rather difficult, as you play the game with a stereogram in the background and it makes it hard to see what is going on, maybe thats the point.
Stereosaw - this is a sliding blocks puzzle, pick the difficulty rating and the computer will show the image then jumble it up and then you have to put it back together, this was quite a nice little game to play and this game works perfectly on the Iyonix.
Turn this:
...Into this:
CREATE YOUR OWN STEREOSAW
If you have the urge, you can create your own stereograms, with the built in editor which runs nicely in the desktop.
There are a wide range of supplied pictures and objects to use with your own designs.
Stereoworld requires 16MB of RAM to run, with 9MB of hard disc space, and RISC OS 3.5 or later, I am pleased to say that with the exception of two of the games (Escape, and Lander) the program works perfectly on the Iyonix without any problems.
In conclusion, I personally didn't find this a particularly thrilling venture, the sliding blocks puzzle part was quite good fun and if you can find the hidden images in the stereograms then its probably worth a go, graphically its bright and colourful, there is very little sound, just a few noises here and there, I'm sure this will appeal to many people out there but I didn't find it that exciting at all, on the positive side it runs on the Iyonix and it is now available at a bargain price, it cost about £30 on its original release, so if you didn't buy it the first time round now maybe the time to give it a go.
Product details
Product:
StereoWorl
Supplier:
APD
Price:
£6.90 inclusive of UK carriag
Address:
39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London, SE26 5R
Tel:
0208 778265
WWW:
E-mail:
Matt Thompson
ÿÿÿÿISSUE4/VA/INDEX.HTM Issue 4, VirtualAcorn
VirtualAcorn
What to do if things go wrong
With the best will in the world things sometimes go wrong, for example you can run out of MIG wire at 3:58 on Sunday afternoon with only a few more inches of welding to do and have to wait till the following weekend to carry on. Of course on the following weekend it will be raining, so then it takes 2 weeks, or maybe more, till you get outside again, anyway I digress. The point is that things go wrong and sometimes you have no control over it.
So what can you do if a copy of VirtualAcorn goes wrong, the first thing to do is not to panic, there is always a rational explanation. So, using my many years of tech support experience, here are the most common problems and their solutions.
I get a black screen with some writing on, why?
This means that although VirtualAcorn has started up, and RISC OS has loaded and started, the machine has not found the !Boot sequence. This is usually caused because a program, or a user, has reset RISC OS to boot from the default filesystem which is ADFS. VirtualAcorn uses HostFS as it's main file system so you need to re-configure RISC OS. You have two choices at this point. Either you can manually re-configure RISC OS, or you an run the CMOS Restore program in the utilities section of the VirtualAcorn CD.
If you decide to run CMOS Restore (which is recommended) then quit VirtualAcorn, insert the VirtualAcorn CD, select CMOS Restore from the utilities section of the menu and follow the prompts on screen. Having done this click on Exit and then load VirtualAcorn, it should now boot correctly.
To manually reconfigure RISC OS leave VirtualAcorn on screen and type the following, press enter at the end of each line:
configure filesystem hostf
configure boo
configure drive
If you type a line wrongly you should get an error message. Having done this quit and re-load VirtualAcorn.
Of course there is another reason why VirtualAcorn might not boot, you might have deleted the !Boot sequence, don't laugh at the back, I have had a customer who did this. In this case you will need to re-install VirtualAcorn from the original CD and unlock it again using the unlock code you wrote down on the front of the installation guide. If you didn't write the code down then you will need to e-mail VirtualAcorn asking for a copy of the code and remembering to include the CD serial number in the e-mail.
I have a laptop with a swappable CD/floppy and I can't read floppy discs, why?
Some smaller laptops have one swappable drive bay, that can contain either a CD/DVD drive or a floppy drive, but not both at the same time. This means that when you try and install the floppy disc driver from the VirtualAcorn CD the driver reports that it has installed, but it hasn't. The reason is that unless the floppy unit is plugged in Windows doesn't know that it has a floppy. So when the floppy driver installer runs Window goes through the motions, but doesn't actually copy the driver as there is no associated hardware available at the time. The usually dead giveaway is that you don't see the Windows logo compatibility warning when installing the floppy driver.
The Windows warning
What you need to do is copy the floppy installer files from the CD, to your hard disc, then insert the floppy drive unit, then run the installer from the hard disc. The files you need to copy are:
FloppyInstaller.ex
Rawflpy.in
Rawflpy.sy
Firstly insert the CD and when the menu opens up close it. Now go to the My Computer icon, and find the VirtualAcorn CD, right click on it and choose Open from the menu. Copy these files from the root of the CD into the VirtualAcorn directory on your Windows hard disc, this is normally:
C:\Program Files\VirtualAcorn\VirtualRPC-xx
Where xx is either SE, for the SE version, or Adjust for the Adjust version of VirtualAcorn. Now insert the floppy drive unit and make sure Windows has seen it, now run the FloppyInstaller.exe program and follow the prompts, you should now see the Windows warning screen shown above, click on "Continue Anyway" to install the driver. Now VirtualAcorn should be able to read floppy discs.
My VirtualAcorn suddenly says it isn't registered, why?
The first thing to do is look carefully at the VirtualAcorn registration window, is there an unlock code already entered?
The registration window
In the example above you can see that no unlock code has been entered. if there is no unlock code then it may be that you have done a system restore and simply "lost" the code. Try re-entering the code and see if VirtualAcorn unlocks.
If VirtualAcorn still doesn't unlock and complains the code is invalid then check the product ID number in the window, has it changed? If so then some hardware/driver change has happened in Windows, if you have recently disabled any hardware, for example a wireless network port, firewire interface, bluetooth dongle etc then try re-enabling it, having done this try running VirtualAcorn again and it may well start up normally.
If the above makes no change then the only possibility left that you can try is to see if a Network Bridge has been enabled by Windows. Windows will often "helpfully" offer to enable a network bridge when one isn't needed, this can then cause chaos and prevent a number of applications from working correctly, including VirtualAcorn. Go to your Start menu, go to Settings and then to Network Connections, if you have a network bridge enabled then right click on it and try deleting it. After the bridge has been deleted try running VirtualAcorn again.
If it still won't start then you will need to contact VirtualAcorn technical support quoting your CD serial number and explaining the problem.
There is no RISC OS driver for my printer, what can I do?
This is a simple one to answer, you need to purchase a copy of UniPrint from
I want to print to a PostScript network printer, but it doesn't work, why?
VirtualAcorn can print to any PostScript network printer, follow the instructions for setting up the printer in the VirtualAcorn manual, taking particular note of the printer name reported by the ShowPrinters file. A network printer should have a name in the form:
\\NetworkComputer\AnExample_Postscript_printer
Enter this name in the file connections dialogue in !Printers (see the VirtualAcorn manual for more details). However some earlier versions of HostFS can get the printer name wrong, if you see something like this:
\\NetworkComputer\AnExample_Postscript_pryyyy
Then you have an early HostFS. Take down the VirtualAcorn serial number from the CD and visit the downloads section of the
Conclusion
The few topics above cover a reasonable percentage of the tech support calls VirtualAcorn get. This article is only intended to be a brief guide, so if in doubt do ask VirtualAcorn for assistance. However one word of advice, do please check the manual before contacting VirtualAcorn, as solutions to a number of other problems can be found in the appendices at the back. If you do need to contact VirtualAcorn then make sure you have your CD serial number handy, as without this it may not be possible to answer your query.
