The news is organised in chronological order, with the most recent stories at the top. Choose the month you require, then click on a topic heading to jump to the associated announcement.
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As from close of trading on the 31st July 2000, Spacetech Limited will be going into liquidation.
A further announcement will be made regarding the future of Spacetech products.
Spacetech closes down on 31st July. Support for existing products will continue by email at support@spacetech.co.uk. It is expected that another, as yet unnamed, company will continue the marketing of Spacetech product. It is expected that there will be a release of a newly packaged Photodesk called "Photodesk: The Olympic Edition." Work also continues on newer photoreal printers.
It is requested that in the period of uncertainty which is expected to last only a couple of weeks, that you communicate with me via Email. Any orders will be fulfilled as soon as the new company starts trading. Support will continue as usual.
It is with a great deal of sadness that I have to announce the end of a company that has worked within the Acorn community for 16 years. I would like to thank all the community, customers and fellow traders alike for their help and support over the years. Especially I would like to thank my hardworking and loyal staff, Rachelle and Keith and wish them well in their future lives and new employment.
Since Cerilica's original concept-launch day for Vantage, way back at the end of 1998, Article Seven has hosted a mailing list for beta testers of Vantage. With the final pre-release of the package before the full commercial version goes on sale having been released at this year's Wakefield show, there seems little need now for the beta testers' list (which had been sparsely used for some time) to continue.
So, with Cerilica's permission, I have now opened the doors of the list to all pre-release users and interested parties, with the intention of building it into a full, traditional users' list similar to those dedicated to Photodesk and Ovation Pro, in time for the eventual and much-anticipated commercial release.
To subscribe to the mailing list, send an email to:
..with the line:
subscribe vantage
..in the *body text* of the email. The subject line is ignored. You'll receive a confirmation message, and the list address itself is
vantage@article7.co.uk.
Please direct any queries regarding the list to myself, not Cerilica.
You can now download version 1.11 of !FullNames from my website at http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~ajb121/fnames.htm
This new version includes:
For those of you who don't know, !FullNames is freeware utility which provides the following features:
I've just uploaded !RiscSearch V0.20ß!
!RiscSearch is meant to be a meta-search engine, and AFAIK it is the only one available for RISC OS anywhere. It helps you finding web-pages about a certain topic by asking different search-engines about that topic. It collects results from (at the moment) 10 different engines, sorts out duplicate matches and then presents all matches in a window of your web-browser.
Changes in V0.2ß:
I've updated my LAME for RISC OS patch to support the latest versions of LAME as well. I've successfully compiled the latest version 3.85 now.
It's now a generic patch with only around 45K in size. Since LAME went under the GPL and the ISO dist10 code was removed, it is legal now to download the full source code, so the ugly patching is not needed any more.
It's however still not legal to distribute binaries. So you'll still have to compile your version of LAME for yourself, I'm sorry.
You'll find it - and detailed instructions - on my home page at http://www.sbellon.de/ after following the LAME link.
I've released a new version of my !Dial application (V2.00). This is probably the last version of the software. The new version features;
Get it from http://www.madsoft.cjb.net/ as usual.
IMPORTANT: I /have/ /not/ uploaded it to the old freeserve space and this site will be closed soon. Please update your bookmarks.
For those who missed it the first time around !Dial is a front-end to JF's dial util. It tone dials telephone numbers using the computer's internal speaker or (ideally) external speakers. This is useful if you haven't got a tone dial phone and want to use tone operated automated services or if you just want to dial long numbers easily using the built in address book and keypad.
The complete kit includes the programming hardware and all the above software for just £99,comparable products are VH00A from Maplin at £149.99 or 631-760 from Farnell at £143.94.
More details,and a free command line version of the assembler can be downloaded from http://www.sprow.co.uk/pics/
There's also some demo PIC code there for you to try out/use.
V1.17 of the freeware stock portfolio program !Stocks is now available for download from http://www.magrathea.freeuk.com/softwr.html.
This is a bug fix update more than anything else, allthough the stocks are now listed alphabetically. V1.12 had the problem that it would not save a new portfolio file if you hadn't allready loaded one and gave the error 'unknown or missing variable' if you tried. My apollogies for any inconvenience.
Existing users please note that from V1.11 there have been some changes to the portfolio file format, please read the ugrade notes in the docs directory.
For those of you who don't know, !Stocks allows you to keep an eye on your stocks through a simple user interface.
Features
There is also a shareware version which should now be available from http://www.uksharereg.com/ for a one off registration fee of 15ukp which gives you the followin extra features-
More features will follow if there is a demand. Currently there is no support for historical or graphing features, but that may change in the future.
!Numberfix 2.5 is now on my website. Numberfix allows you to perform various filer operations on numbered files - the kind often found on CD's or produced by download software for digital cameras.
It will automatically change 1, 2, 3 to 01, 02, 03 so that the filer can display the files in correct order. It will allow you to renumber files beginning with any number and you can add pre- and post- fixes to numbers.
This new version has a 'Merger'. If you have two directories with clashing numbers, you can drop them onto two different windows. The first file will be renumbered starting from 01, the second file will be consecutively renumbered and then the two directories are merged.
This makes a common household task very simple to perform.
This is an early version, but seems to be quite reliable. An updated version will follow if there is any interest.
!NumberFix is shareware.
http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/tudor/
The Association of Acorn Usergroups, in association with Spellings Computer Services, are pleased to announce massive price drops in their domain name registration service.
!!Many prices are now as much as 50% off previous published prices!!
The AAUG use the domain registration service as their main source of funding which allows us to continue to offer free membership, publicity and support to all the Acorn and RISC OS user groups worldwide.
New prices are as follows:
| .CO.UK domains | 25UKP!! (50% reduction!) | |
| .COM,.NET,.ORG domains | 50UKP (15UKP reduction!) | |
| .EU.COM, GB.COM,UK.NET | 65UKP |
All the above include :
If you require webspace to host your domain, or do not wish to use the free URL forwarding, we can also provide this at the following rates for 2 years hosting:
| 1Mb | 25UKP | |
| 5Mb | 55UKP | |
| 10Mb | 110UKP |
We offer other advanced features such as transparent frame forwarding, individual email aliases, web site statistics, search engine registration etc all at competitve prices. We can also offer attractive discounts for bulk registrations!! Please contact us with your requirements!!
For more information on your local AAUG-supported user group, visit
http://www.aaug.net/
Neil Spellings
AAUG Chairman
Indivisibilities is a new web-based game which, basicially, involves betting an amount of virtual money on a music single or album which you think will be number 1 in the official music charts on Sunday.
There are no programs to download because it is completly web-based and if you do not like it, you can simply stop playing.
If you want to join in, please go to:
http://www.indivisibilities.com/
or
http://www.indiv.co.uk/
and click on the 'Sign up' link in the left frame.
Indivisibilities was created on a RiscPC 700 (SA) connected through a serial network to a windows laptop which ran PHP and MySQL. The programming was done in Zap, the files were FTPd to the laptop and the result was viewed in Fresco.
Enjoy!
My RISC OS projects (ThermIIC, TherMon, ThermGif, FanatIIC, SClock, Streamer, &c) pages have moved to:
http://www.melhuishs.freeserve.co.uk/simon/projects/
I have also added pages for a new project:
Dallas Semiconductor "one-wire weather station". See -
http://www.ibutton.com/weather/
This comprises a wind sensor (measuring wind speed / direction, and temperature) and an optional rain gauge (0.01" resolution), connecting through the "one-wire" bus to the host computer's RS232 port (DS2480 UART - no bit-banging!).
Owners of the weather station can now drive it from RISC OS. An A5000 or later (i.e. later type serial port) should be OK. I've had it running alongside TherMon / ThermGif and a web server on a modest machine. So if you can find a WS and an old networked Acorn this is enough to provide a web-interfaced graphing weather monitor.
Sleeve is a simple emulator for the ARM instruction set, in 26-bit mode. It supports only those features which user mode code is likely to need. It's written in C and available under the GPL. At the moment it's embryonic, and needs to be combined with an OS emulation to make anything go -- enough of an `OS' is provided to watch a self-extracting RISC OS binary decompress and start falling over when it calls SharedCLibrary SWIs.
It should be highly portable, and aims towards efficiency and speed.
Read more about it at:
http://www.armlinux.org/projects/sleeve/
First of all, the ROX web-site and mailing list have moved!
The new web-site is at:
Instructions for joining the mailing list are at:
http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=7023
Please update your links.
The ROX desktop aims to provide a RISC OS style GUI on Unix/Linux machines. Currently the filer is mostly finished and the desktop already supports drag-and-drop loading and saving, application directories and an iconbar. The desktop is stable and fully usable - I have been using it as my only desktop for many months now without problems.
The desktop is distributed under the GNU General Public License, which means that anyone can modify it, use bits of it in their own (GPL) programs, etc. Indeed, many of the improvements made to the filer were added by other ROX users and posted as patches to the mailing list.
Changes since the last post here:
The filer can now act as a pinboard, allowing you to drop files from filer windows onto the desktop background. The pinboard is automatically saved.
Keys bound to menu entries are automatically saved when the filer quits.
When using the path entry minibuffer to navigate, starting the leafname with '.' automatically turns on the display of hidden files.
There are more displays styles to choose from: Large or Small icons, on their own, with full details or just the sizes (or size bars).
A bug which prevented ImLib support from working on some X servers has been fixed.
Calling all !Impact users
The Fourth Dimension have now set up a discussion e-Group for the Impact database that they now sell. The group is for the discussion of features, and a self help group for users of this software package.
To subscribe go to http://www.cje.co.uk/4d/Circle/ and fill in the form at the bottom of the page.
Dear ANT software users,
Future Computer Services Limited are pleased to offer support for the ANT Internet Suite (Release II) and Server Suite. If you require an alternative or addition to your existing line of support then we can help.
More oriented towards schools and businesses using ANT software, Future Computer Services Limited offer a pricing structure for anything from individual queries to annual support contracts.
Drawing on the technical expertise of a former key member of the ANT technical support staff and with a cumulative background of over a decade installing and supporting ANT software, you can rely upon prompt results with clear steps to resolve your queries.
To contact us for further details please telephone free on 0800 0527918 or visit <URL:http://www.futurecomputers.co.uk/contactus.html>.
The AU CD support site has now been set up and is happily running at
http://www.paulf.johnson.redhotant.com/index.html
Beside the fixes for most of the ex-commercial games on the current CD, there are other goodies as well.
Paul
AU CD editor
I've just uploaded AWKfe on to my website, which is a RISC OS front end to (g)awk.
It is intended to make it easier to pass data files through awk scripts. Therefore, it does not provide a user interface to all of awk's options - merely the most common sub-set.
To download it (18Kb Sparkive), go to
http://www.wynded.demon.co.uk/nsw/freeware/awkfe.html
The TCR (Technology Consortium for RISC OS) has now its own Web server under the URL http://www.t-c-r.org/. Further the Website was changed over completely german to english, in order to be able to become internationally active.
For the future various projects are planned. Particularly software developers may look forward to the "Visual Developer Box" of the TCR. It concerns an integrated development environment, which is to simplify and accelerate programming around some.
Further information about projects and internal messages will be naturally find on our Website.
Technology Consortium RISC OS - www.t-c-r.org, Germany
I have a few things to announce...
I have "taken over" development of Thomas Olsson's CustomRPC application, a utility for editing Monitor Definition Files (MDFs). Here are some of the new features available in CustomRPC 1.06
-----------
The first stage of my Psion series 3a converter is available as well. This has been on my web site for a few months now, but I haven't announced it. This converter, named Psion3, can convert Psion series 3a "word" files into Impression DDF files. Impression DDFs can also be imported into OvationPro and, I believe, the latest version of EasiWriter.
I have plans to extend this to the conversion of Sheet files to some format (I am undecided about what this will be). The biggest obstacle is the equations are stored in RPN (Reverse Polish Notation).
-----------
Commune, a multi-user system, is now at version 1.25beta. The new version has a new scripting language which is much more conventional, variables are now also supported. This latest version also has a much better administration. New users could be created without even having to write any scripts. There is also preliminary support for command line protection.
Future improvements for Commune include : per user directory access and seperate choices directories for each user.
-----------
The last announcement is about the troubled RiscFree internet suite. Although there have been problems in the past with this program, the latest version, 1.60beta2, is completely unrecognisable from previous versions.
The current version is still in beta stages, so I would not expect all the features to work correctly at this stage (although they should!).
At the moment, the current version of RiscFree will not run on anything less than RISC OS 4.02 or a machine with the nested Wimp (3.98) installed. I came across this problem quite recently and I will investigate a solution.
-----------
Please note my relatively new web address:
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~jamjars/
Liquid Silicon runs one of the most comprehensive and up to date RISC OS shops on the web and we now have our own web address (at last!).
http://www.liquid-silicon.com/ redirects to the Cybervillage shop as usual and please use either sales@liquid-silicon.com or alan@liquid-silicon.com for email queries.
This is to inform you about an upgrade of WimpDebug to version 1.11.
What's new to this version:
Version 1.11, 15-Jul-00:
Here one more what !WimpDebug does, if it is new for you:
!WimpDebug supports debugging of BBC BASIC Wimp applications:
You can read/get about all details at:
http://members.aon.at/asl/RISCOS4/index.htm
WimpDb is shareware.
Now with online registration!
I've just uploaded !RiscSearch V0.16!
Changes:
For all of you, who don't know about !RiscSearch:
!RiscSearch is meant to be a meta-search engine, and AFAIK it is the only one available for RISC OS anywhere. It helps you finding web-pages about a certain topic by asking different search-engines about that topic. It collects results from (at the moment) 10 different engines, sorts out duplicate matches and then presents all matches in a window of your web-browser.
With a bit of luck (and time!), I'm hoping to have a support site set up independantly of the main AU website for all of the cover mount CDs, starting with the most recent.
I'm hoping to have the site uploaded sometime on Sunday with fixes for Premier Manager and any other software currently not working, plus instructions on getting the games to work.
http://www.paulf.johnson.redhotant.com/index.html
Paul
AU CD editor
I have now registered with UKShareReg to provide online ordering via a secure server for my popular AntUtils application.
This will hopefully enable overseas users to pay via credit card and avoid paying silly bank charges and extra effort trying to find a bank that issues sterling cheques.
If ordering from the UK, I'd still appreciate it if you send a cheque, so that I avoid paying commission on the credit card transaction, but you can still pay by credit card if you find that easier.
To order, simply visit the usual AntUtils page at http://www.vigay.com/riscos/apps/antutils.html and click on the registration logo.
This is a general announce. Specifically, Joern-Erik LEO Burkert tested txt2pdf on Acorn-risc RiscOS 3.5 He also create !txt2pdf: a RiscOS frontend for txt2pdf Requires: JFShared-Library by Justin Fletcher, !Perl for RiscOS and txt2pdf You can find it in the contributed/Acorn-Risc directory or directly at LEO's RisOS-page http://www.burkert.org/leo/acorn/
txt2pdf is a very flexible and powerful PERL5 program (5 penguins at LinuxBerg, 5 cows at TuCows Mac and BeOS). It's a converter from text files to PDF format files. Why do you need txt2pdf? Most of your documents are text files Usually, your reports from legacy applications, DBs, ERP applications, datawarehouse are textual txt2pdf is a PERL5 script, so you can use it in every operating systems supported by PERL5 (View the list of OS tested) txt2pdf is a native converter, you don't need to pass through PostScript format txt2pdf is specific for text to PDF conversion, so you can mark yellow, red, green, blue or bold, italic, bolditalic (with PERL regular expression) words in the produced PDF files you can produce a 2-columns PDFyou can add page number in every page you can add text at the beginning and at the end of every file you can add a border to every page every word like http://... ftp://... mailto:... https://... file:... ldap:... news:... will become an URL you can create a link to a specific page within a PDF document http://...pdfdocument#pdfmark every word like mime:... will become a link that launch the correct application and opens the file you can use a few parse commands (e.g.[!blue]...[!/blue]) you can use background and foreground layers txt2pdf supports STDIN and STDOUT the fee for every licence is $55 SANFACE Software is going to give you a free licence for every good idea or for every good modify
txt2pdf is shareware. The txt2pdf source code is our company core business. We trust you. You can test text2pdf and modify it. You can't use a modify version of txt2pdf for production purpose. You can't resell txt2pdf or a modify version of it without SANFACE Software authorization. You can't copy part of it to include in your source without SANFACE Software authorization.
What's new in this version
withextension feature to don't change the file default extension with .pdf (simply txt2pdf will create new PDFs appending .pdf to the original name)
Lotus Notes note by Charles Daniel
MPEiX note about spoolfiles by Mark Bixby
HP-UX executable version
Test txt2pdf 3.6!
You can find it at http://www.sanface.com/
Any of you who have played !Chain+ from Games.PD_Games.Uni-Stuttgart may be interested to know that a multi-tasking version of it (called !Reaction) has been released and is available from my website at <http://www.shrimper.org.uk/software/reaction.zip>
The download weighs in at an enormous 17K.
!Reaction is a simple desktop strategy game for one to four players that involves blowing up up other players' squares and is substantially better than Minesweeper.
!Reaction is, and has been for the last nine years, public domain.
I would like to announce that the website set up as a tribute to the classic 8-bit game 'Exile' is now located on Acorn Arcade at the following URL:
http://exile.acornarcade.com/
On the site you will find:
I hope you enjoy the site.
If you have any information whatsoever on any of the game's incarnations, please do not hesistate to get in touch.
The majority of Slayer's source has been GPLed for you all to have a good look/laugh/cry at. Slayer is KiwiSoft's RISC OS anti-virus, and is becomming difficult to maintain, mainly because of lack of time on both of our parts.
The VDEngine hasn't been GPLed yet, but may do later on in the month, depending on how things go.
This source should be useful for several purposes; it has a fair bit of reusable code in it... I wouldn't use it to learn from, but for people who want to see a reasonably large BASIC program, it's great :)
It can be downloaded from http://www.kiwisoft.co.uk/
There may be some movement on StrongEd.
There's been an article in Archive, possibly the start of a new series on StrongEd, and there's been interest from a couple of programmers re taking over development.
As a response, I've stated up a new mailing list where interested parties can meet, and wher we can give mutual assistance.
I'm hoping also that we can get together to write a manual and a support www site.
To subscribe, click on the link:
<mailto:StrongEd@4qd.co.uk?Subject=subscribe>
HTMLTidy is a program which tidies HTML files.
Just to let you know that a new version of HTMLTidy (06-Jul-2000, RISC OS port date 09-Jul-2000) is now available from my website.
http://www.toth.org.uk/~aardvark/
I've just set up a mailing list for users of John Kortink's ViewFinder card. A new expansion card for Risc PCs featuring an accelerated AGP graphic card to offer massively enhanced resolutions, colour depths and refresh rates.
The mailing list is intended for the discussion of new features, the reporting of any problems, and a repository for details of software which exploits the enhanced capabilities of the card.
To join send an email to viewfinder-subscribe@egroups.com or visit the webpage at http://www.egroups.com/group/viewfinder/.
Please note, the list is run by independent users and does not reflect the offical positions of either John Kortink or CJE.
Ever wanted to debug Basic programs easily??
Reporter provides commands which enable information to be easily displayed from a Basic program in a separate multi-tasking debugging window.
Reporter v2.20 is now available, and the main changes from v2.10 are ...
Reporter v2.10 already provided ...
Full details are available from http://www.avisoft.force9.co.uk/ and it can be downloaded from there as a zip archive file.
Reporter v2.20 will also be available from Chris Morison's web site at http://www.organizer.ukgateway.net/
Any comments on the web sites, or the application, always welcome.
Due to a big response to my offer of MDFs, I have put them on my website (under construction!) at http://www.xenonet.co.uk/ in the graphics section.
I hope they are of use to you :-) If any of you have an MDF with custom modes in that you would like to share with the world, please contact me.
I have great pleasure in announcing the relocation of my popular RISC OS links page (formerly at http://www.vigay.com/riscos/links.html) to its new location of http://www.riscos.org/links.html.
Please update your bookmarks accordingly.
The links database is now controlled by a server script so that you can search for specific entries or topics. Just enter a keyword and the relevant links will be returned. If you leave the input blank you will receive a listing of ALL links in a similar format to the original page.
I hope to do further enhancements in the future, so please keep the comments coming in.
Don't forget, bookmark http://www.riscos.org/links.html now!!
There are currently 735 links in 37 categories, making this possibly the biggest collection of RISC OS links online.
The Coding Vault has now changed address to:
http://www.drobe.co.uk/codevault/
The Coding Vault acts as a library for unfinished programs so that other individuals/teams can take up the projects where they are left off.
If you have any unfinished code lying around then please get in touch via the web-site.
Acorn Gaming, the longest-running regularly-updated Acorn web site, has recently been updated with the first full review of Paradise's new budget-priced game, Overload. Pop along to www.acorn-gaming.org.uk for that and all the latest news.
Also at Acorn Gaming are all the other regular features, including:
Acorn Gaming - over 5 years of Acorn games news
I've just uploaded a version of !RiscSearch to my Homepage, V0.15ß
Changes to V0.1ß
This new version uses 'Messages' to store language specific phrases, the last version used a dynamically linked library file, but this method has made some problems because !StrongBS removed this library call.
!RiscSearch is meant to be a meta-search engine, and AFAIK it is the only one available for RiscOS anywhere. It helps you finding web-pages about a certain topic by asking different search-engines about that topic. It collects results from (at the moment) 6 different engines, sorts out duplicate matches and then presents all matches in a window of your web-browser.
!RiscSearch can be downloaded for free from
www.patrick-mortara.de/
This release of !Flash adds the following features:
Unfortunatly as of this version of !Flash you require RISC OS 3.5 or better. I am sorry that I had to make this decision but !Flash now uses dynamic areas.
!Flash is a plugin for web browsers that enables you to view flash files. Many commercial sites use this format to make their site more attractive. Besides showing nice pictures and clips the flash object also allows you to navigate through a site, therefore, without the right plugin it was most times impossible to get past the "Get Shockwave" logo while running a web browser. Although we now have the capability to view flash files not all sites will allow us to enter because they test for other required features or do not detect the !Flash plugin.
I would like to thank Henrik Bjerregard Pederson for submitting the sound code and speed optimalisations. Thanks also to Jeremy Poulter for enhancing the url parsing algorithm.
You can download !Flash 0.49c as usual from my website
http://people.a2000.nl/lsmiers/
This is to inform you about an upgrade of WimpDebug to version 1.10.
WimpDebug was released as WimpDb before. To avoid any mixup with a database application I changed the name to WimpDebug now.
What it does:
Supports debugging of BBC BASIC Wimp applications:
WimpDb seems to be the only debugger wich supports breakpoints so far. You can read/get about all details at http://members.aon.at/asl/RISCOS4/index.htm
WimpDb is shareware.
Now with online registration!
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