News from Third Party Developers

All the latest news about software and hardware products from third party developers

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.

2003 Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul 2003
Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
2002 Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul 2002
Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
2001 Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul 2001
Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
2000 Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul 2000
Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan

June 2002


Spellings.net announce .name domain support

30th June 2002

Neil Spellings

Spellings Computer Services Ltd and the AAUG are pleased to announce that we can now register the newly-released .NAME top level domain name.

Pricing is the same as the other global TLDs (.COM, .NET, .ORG) as follows:

1 year : 25UKP
2 years : 40UKP
5 years : 100UKP
10 years : 180UKP

We have also reduced the price for the .ME.UK personal domain to 20UKP for 2 years, inline with .co.uk and .org.uk domains.

All registrations include email and URL forwarding, DNS hosting and all registry fees.

Our realtime domain search facility has been update to search the new domains, and all can be ordered securely online.

Domains can also be packed with one of our professional web hosting solutions, which include PHP, SSI, CGI as standard. We can also supply more advanced options with your domain such as autoresponders, sub-domains, SQL database support etc.

For futher details, visit our website at http://www.spellings.net/

Neil Spellings

CamPins V1.16 announced

29th June 2002

Stuart Halliday

CamPins, the amazing Internet picture fetcher for your Pinboard has been improved once more.

Get your free copy at:

http://www.quantumsoft.co.uk/files/internet/campins116.zip

and enjoy an every changing beautiful Pinboard picture.

Stuart Halliday

RISC OS port of ccache

28th June 2002

Alex Waugh

A port of ccache is now available from my website. ccache is a compiler cache, which can speed up compilation by cacheing the compiler output (currently only when using gcc) and reusing this for subsequent compiles of the same file when appropriate. See http://ccache.samba.org/ for more information.

Please note that my soton uni email and website will cease to work in a few weeks time, so the ones in my .sig should be used in preference.

PHP, Roots, WebJames and more from http://www.alexwaugh.com/

Alex Waugh

KinoAMP 0.20

27th June 2002

Peter Everett

An MPEG movie player.
Just a few little extras and a few little fixes this time.

Extras,

Fixes,

Download your free copy from,

http://www.everett9981.freeserve.co.uk/pete.htm

KinoAMP is a version of Kino using AMPlayer to play the soundtrack. It is based on Kino v0.3 from eQ R&D, and was produced to provide improved operation on StrongArm machines. It does not however contain any StrongArm specific code.

Requirements are the AMPlayer module v1.36 or later.

Peter Everett

Desktop Games

26th June 2002

Christopher Wraight

Desdemona, a shareware Othello player for RISC OS, is now available for download. Desdemona features several computer players, high scores and a replay feature. For only £4, registered users get to play the toughest computer opponents and have first access to incremental upgrades.

Go to http://www.lym.iconbar.com/ for more details.

Christopher Wraight

'natter' news update

26th June 2002

Russell Palmer

I have just finished updateding the website for 'natter', which is now being kindly hosted on iconbar.com. The pages can be found at (believe it or not!) http://natter.iconbar.com.

'natter' is an all-in-one instant messaging solution, capable of talking to MSN and ICQ clients on other machines. It has just entered beta testing and will be available for public download around the end of July. The website has a 'best guess' release date on the home page, which is, of course, subject to change. Please feel free to have a look around the site.

Russell Palmer

NetChess 1.03

26th June 2002

Colin Granville

NetChess Version 1.03 is now available.

I've added:

  1. Colouring of quoted text added.
  2. Reconnect option added.

Existing users can upgrade from the netchess private area.

Netchess is a shareware Internet Chess client allowing you to connect to internet chess servers - like freechess.org - and play, chat and watch chess games and other chess variants supported by the server.

It is available from

http://www.netchess.iconbar.com/

Colin Granville

Update patch for iSV Products re-release of Star Fighter 3000

26th June 2002

Christopher Bazley

Star Fighter 3000 version 2.02
An upgrade patch has been released for the iSV Products CD-ROM re-release of the classic Acorn game "Star Fighter 3000". The main areas of improvement are in the sound/music module, saved configuration/scores, and more control options.

Brief summary of changes:

Note:

Currently the new sound module does not support the old 8-bit logarithmic sound system, only the 16-bit linear sound system (introduced in RISC OS 3.6) or SharedSound.

A StrongARM machine is the minimum necessary to play MP3s (e.g. through a module-based music player like AMPlayer) whilst also running the game at a decent speed.

Christopher Bazley

AMPlay 1.44 released

23rd June 2002

Mike Sandells

AMPlay 1.44, a freeware front-end for the AMPlayer module is now available for download from:

http://www.mikejs.com/riscos/amplay.html

The main download includes the app itself and text documentation. HTML documentation and the (WIMPBasic) source are also available for download.

Documentation can also be viewed online at:

http://www.mikejs.com/riscos/amplay/docs/html/index.html

1.43 was going to be the last 1.4x release, but one of the bug fixes is too serious to leave until 1.50

What's New?
1.44 contains the following bug fixes:

There are also two new features;

There are also some style-guide related tweaks;

Mike Sandells

FANLib v0.02

23rd June 2002

Bill Kotsias

FANLib is a group of libraries developed by Fantasia FAN. Currently, only 32-bit sprite plotting code is available; however it is intended to support a lot more in the future.

Version 0.02 includes:

FANLib is "FANware" - check the manual for more info.

You can download it from:
http://users.hol.gr/~fantasia/fan/fanlib/fanlib.html

Bill Kotsias

Web_Gen

23rd June 2002

Dave Stratford

Version 1.40 of !Webgen, a utility to create websites from a directory of images, is now up on the website.

Mainly some minor bug fixes, and improvements to the !help, but also a couple of minor improvements to the choices system.

There's also a new manual, to replace the !Help file, which I recommend you download as well.

www.argonet.co.uk/users/daves/software

Dave Stratford

ROX-Filer 1.3.2

22nd June 2002

Thomas Leonard

ROX-Filer 1.3.2 (developer release) is out now! This is mainly a bug-fix release.

ROX-Filer is a small, fast, powerful filer for Unix, Linux and compatible systems. Its user interface is based on the RISC OS filer, and it supports similar concepts, such as application directories, drag-and-drop saving and popup menus. It also implements a RISC OS like pinboard, and a panel which can be used in a similar way to the RISC OS iconbar. It also supports many features not found in RISC OS, including thumbnails of images, keyboard short-cuts, many more options, powerful search facilities, etc.

ROX-Filer can be used on its own, with another desktop (such as GNOME, KDE or XFCE), or as the core component of the ROX desktop. The ROX desktop aims to bring all the good features of RISC OS to modern systems. Get ROX-Filer here: (source and Linux-x86 binary archives at present):

http://rox.sf.net/rox_download.php3

The filer now requires Gtk+-2.0 (which installs easily alongside Gtk+-1.2):

http://www.gtk.org/

Screenshots:

http://rox.sourceforge.net/index.php3
http://rox.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php3

The filer 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 1.3.1:

Bugs:

Plus lots of internal changes. Watch out for new bugs!

ADDRESSES
There are installation and getting started guides available. The getting started guide has lots of screenshots and may be interesting to people thinking of trying ROX, or wondering what it looks like.

http://rox.sourceforge.net/install.php3
http://rox.sourceforge.net/guide.php3

You can read more, download ROX-Filer, read the comments people have made, and look at some screenshots here:

http://rox.sourceforge.net/
http://rox.sourceforge.net/comments.php3
http://rox.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php3

There are two mailing lists; rox-users and rox-devel. You can subscribe here, or look at the archives:

http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=7023

A selection of tutorials on writing ROX applications is available on-line:

http://rox.sourceforge.net/tutor.php3

OTHER ROX NEWS
A new version of ROX-Session is also out. ROX-Session can be used to set up the desktop when you log in, and provides configuration for fonts, mouse settings and so on. The new version allows the message log to be switched between windowed and popup mode. It also fixes an incompatibility with Gtk+-2.0.4 which causes the 'Logout?' box to appear on login:

http://rox.sourceforge.net/rox_session.php3

The Wrappers archive has also been slightly updated:

http://rox.sourceforge.net/rox_wrappers.php3

Enjoy!

Thomas Leonard

GraphDraw new release (v. 2.62)

22nd June 2002

Chris Johnson

An updated version of GraphDraw (now at version 2.62) is now available from the following urls.

http://www.bulldog.u-net.com/software/graphdraw.html

or

http://www.chris-johnson.org.uk/software/graphdraw.html

or

http://www.graphdraw.riscos.org.uk/

(Note: the hw.ac.uk url, that at one time was the prefered url, will cease to work later next month, so make sure you use one of the above urls from now on)

For those that still do not know about GraphDraw:

GraphDraw allows the entry, and editing, of x,y values, and the data may then be fit to

The resulting graph may be printed via any standard RISC OS printer driver, saved as a draw file, or exported as a MultiPlot file to allow several graphs to be combined.

Chris Johnson

The alternative OvationPro site - change of URL

22nd June 2002

Chris Johnson

The "official alternative" OvationPro site, for which I have been responsible for several years, is moving.

The new URL which must be used from now on is

http://www.bulldog.u-net.com/ovationpro/

or

http://www.chris-johnson.org.uk/ovationpro/

For those unaware of this site, it houses a large range of third party Applets, Resources, Templates, etc for use with David Pilling's DTP package Ovation Pro.

I hope to give the site a major makeover later this year, so if any users of Ovation Pro have anything they are willing to put on the site let me know. Alternatively, if you have similar resources on your own site, let me have details and I will link to it.

Chris Johnson

Account2 v.1.20

22nd June 2002

Kevin Edwards

I have recently uploaded version 1.20 which cures one or two bugs and adds some new features.

It is available from http://www.ksedwards.ukgateway.net/account2/

Account2 is a freeware Home Accounts application.

v.1.20 20/06/02

Kevin Edwards

The End of Satellite?

21st June 2002

Marc Warne

Version 1.14 of the Audiogalaxy Satellite for RISC OS is now available and is awaiting your download!

The changes between this and the previously released 1.13 were made by Justin Fletcher. These include improved protocol confirmance, simpler searching and more efficient use of processor time.

You can get it at http://www.alpha-programming.co.uk/ in the Software section.

HOWEVER!!!
As of around 18 June 2002, the Record Industry Association of America and Audiogalaxy, have come to an arrangement in which by default, all music is blocked unless consent is first given by the copyright holders. This, essentially, makes Satellite only useful for receiving only a small subset of music previously available. If, in the future, an 'OpenSat' network appears of servers using the Audiogalaxy protocol, I do intend to support this.

Thus, this release is only really intended for people interested in using the Audiogalaxy service to download music from their hosted artists or others who have allowed free distribution. More information is available at http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact405.html

What is the Audiogalaxy Satellite?
The Audiogalaxy Satellite is a small and simple program that allows you to share your music with friends and other users on Audiogalaxy. You must download [...] and run the Audiogalaxy Satellite for the system to work correctly.

(information from the Audiogalaxy website)

Marc Warne

DrawWorks Select Upgrade now available

21st June 2002

David Holden

APDL is pleased to announce the availability of the new version of DrawWorks that can be used with RISC OS Select.

At the moment this is only available as an upgrade for users of DrawWorks Millennium, and the cost depends upon which version you have.

If you purchased the full DrawWorks 3rd Millennium program from APDL (NOT an Upgrade CD) then the price is 8.50 ukp inclusive. As long as you have sent us your Registration Card you do not need to return your original CD. Just order from APDL quoting your name and address and the Serial Number of your copy of DrawWorks which can be seen in the 'Info' window from the icon bar menu.

If you purchased a DrawWorks 3rd Millennium Upgrade CD from APDL then the upgrade price is 12 ukp inclusive. These CDs are colour printed, and you MUST return your CD with your order.

If you purchased your DrawWorks 3rd Millennium Upgrade CD from iSV Products before it was taken over by APDL then the upgrade price is 15 ukp inclusive. These CDs have a white mono printed label, and you MUST return your CD with your order.

The offers shown above are for a limited period only. To qualify for these prices you MUST order before September 1st.

If you have DrawWorks Millennium or DrawWorks New Millennium then you can upgrade to DrawWorks Select for just 24 ukp inclusive. You do NOT need to return your original CD with your order.

If you do not already have a printed manual then you can obtain the printed manual with your upgrade CD for just 5.50 ukp, 1.50 ukp off the normal price. (Please add 1 ukp post outside UK).

David Holden

ImagePrxy (Proxy Server) update

19th June 2002

Darren Windsor

Work has been progressing nicely over the past few weeks on ImagePrxy, our proxy server application for RISC OS. Originally ImagePrxy was intended as a dedicated HTTP caching proxy server, however recent developments have seen the functionality of the software expanded.

Aside from various bug fixes and performance improvements the server now supports user configured port proxying. This allows the user to configure the application to proxy SMTP, POP, etc in addition to the in-built support for HTTP.

So, what does this all mean ? Well, basically it means that your main RISC OS machine can act as a powerful gateway to the Internet for your entire network (whether it be a complete network of RISC OS machines or a mix of RISC OS, Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc. boxes). It means that your home, office or school network can share a single Internet connection, allowing all users access to the web, email, etc. from their own machines, across your local area network.

Although, by no means a major upgrade (work continues on FTP, SOCKS and HTTPS support) we are making the current version available to registered users as it offers a number of improvements and (some quite major) bug fixes.

If you are a registered user and would like to receive an upgrade to the current development version, please drop us a line.

If you are interested in purchasing ImagePrxy, or would like more information, please contact us (our contact details are at the bottom of this posting).

Image Software (UK)
RISC based business management solutions.

48 Hinchliffe Road, Poole, Dorset BH15 4ED.

Tel. 01202 269720 Mob. 07740 622861
Fax. 01202 685072 Email sales@imagesoft.co.uk
Web www.imagesoft.co.uk

Darren Windsor

Demo Party in the East of Germany :-)

19th June 2002

MoAco

Hi @ll ...

from the 30th of august to the 1st of september there is a computer-party and demo-competition called 'Unconventional 2k2' in Lengenfeld/Germany. This event takes place for the third time and is open to all acorn, atari, c64 and exotic-console users/programmers. The entrance is free and there is much place for sleeping inside the hall.

My part is to invite the acorn-people and console-freaks, so if you have any questitions you can contact me by mail or visit the website:

http://unconventional.atari.org/EvenPlaned/Unconventional2k2/index_html

The party was every year quite cool and funny yet. This year I'll try to get more Acorn-people there ... last year we were only three guys with RPCs. There will be competitions for every system and some funny specials like playing Leaderboard in real ;-)

So even if you have nothing to release, this party is worth to come ... meet people, eat tons of pizza, sleep with the head on your keyboard and just have fun!

cu at Uncon2k2

MoAco

Acorn Publisher to change hands

19th June 2002

Akalat Publishing

ACORN PUBLISHER TO CHANGE HANDS

Akalat Publishing wishes to announce that after publication of Vol. 8 issue 6 (August 2002) the ownership of Acorn Publisher will be transferred from Akalat Publishing to John Cartmell of Fleur Designs who will be responsible for publication of all issues from Vol. 9 issue 1 onwards (October 2002).

Mike Williams, who runs Akalat Publishing and who has produced Acorn Publisher since its successful launch in October 1994, said, "After eight years during which I believe Acorn Publisher has achieved a deserved reputation as the best looking and most readable RISC OS magazine, I have decided that I want to devote more time to other interests. I am very pleased indeed that John Cartmell has agreed to take the helm of the magazine, as I did not want to let down the many people who have supported Acorn Publisher since it started. A new owner and editor is good news for the magazine, and I know that John shares my aims of producing a professional quality magazine for the RISC OS market. Indeed, an injection of fresh ideas may well provide the catalyst to develop Acorn Publisher to meet the needs of RISC OS users over the coming years.

"I hope that everyone within the RISC OS community will continue to support Acorn Publisher, and to support John in the future."

Akalat Publishing will continue to provide design and printing services to a range of clients.

Contacts for further information:

Akalat Publishing - Mike Williams
tel. 01582 881614, email akalat@kbnet.co.uk

Fleur Designs - John Cartmell
tel. 0161 969 9820, email john@cartmell.demon.co.uk

Acorn Publisher is published six times a year addressing the needs of the RISC OS community with particular reference to word processing and desktop publishing, graphics and image processing, and the use of the internet and web page design.

Akalat Publishing

Nutmeg (Oregano cache) news

19th June 2002

Darren Windsor

The latest version of Nutmeg, our cache application for Oregano, is now ready for release following considerable, on-going development work. This version includes improved caching and cache retrieval speeds, a number of bug fixes and improved memory management, including support for dynamic areas.

Check out the results from some of our speed tests on the latest version:

     Site           Initial (s)      Nutmeg (s)


     ----           -----------      ----------





     Yahoo                 12.5             4.3


     Lycos                 20.6             6.7


     IMDB UK               42.0            11.4


     RISC OS Ltd           49.8             6.8


     Acorn User            26.3             6.2


     Cybervillage          14.5             3.8


     BBC news              33.2            10.9


     Slashdot              34.9             9.0

The page being fetched is the index page of the site stated. The 'Initial' time is the number of seconds taken to perform the initial fetch (from request to completion). 'Nutmeg' is the time taken to retrieve the page from Nutmeg (again, from request to completion) once the page has been cached. These tests were performed using a 200MHZ StrongARM RISC PC and a 56K modem. Initial load times are dependent on network traffic, server loading, etc.

As you can see, the results speak for themselves. Nutmeg speeds up the re-visiting of sites dramatically and provides a much smoother web surfing experience.

Nutmeg is a "must buy" for anyone who uses Oregano.

If you haven't already done so, you can invest in a copy of Nutmeg for only 20UKP (fully inclusive). Contact us by phone, fax or email to place your order (contact details are at the bottom of this posting). We accept all major credit/debit cards.

Registered users receive upgrades free of charge. If you are a registered user please contact us to confirm your email address is on our upgrade mailing list. Upgrades will be sent out to registered users in due course.

Image Software (UK)
RISC based business management solutions.

48 Hinchliffe Road, Poole, Dorset BH15 4ED.

Tel. 01202 269720 Mob. 07740 622861
Fax. 01202 685072 Email sales@imagesoft.co.uk
Web www.imagesoft.co.uk

Darren Windsor

RCI release NetFetch version 1.04

18th June 2002

R-Comp Interactive/RCI

We are pleased to announce that NetFetch 1.04 has been sent out to existing registered customers. As usual, if you feel that you should have received the upgrade, but have not done so, please get in touch via email.

The new version allows email boxes to be temporarily disabled, and then re-activated at a later date, by simply selecting "Disable" or "Enable" from the menu. There have been a couple of other small changes too.

For those unfamiliar with NetFetch, it is a version of our well known DialUp program for people accessing the Internet via a network or via broadband. In these instances, the "Dial" part of DialUp isn't required, so NetFetch came about. It has subsequently been extended to fit the differing requirements of network users.

NetFetch is bundled with all RCI's range of network routers for cable, ADSL or modem sharing but is also available separately.

R-Comp Interactive/RCI

BookMaker V1.75

18th June 2002

Nick Roberts

The revetnly-released version 1.74 of BookMaker contains a bug in the support for VoyaTerm (the Voyager telnet client) causing BookMaker to crash on startup (if configured for VoyaTerm).

Version 1.75 of BookMaker corrects this bug, and is available from

http://www.bookmaker.riscos.org.uk/

Note that unless you BookMaker's Telnet client set to VoyaTerm this version offers no benefit over version 1.74.

BookMaker is a hotlist and address book management tool that supports all major RISCOS browsers, most email clients and other internet tools.

Nick Roberts

ViNCe (VNC client) released

10th June 2002

Vincent Lefevre

I now maintain Henrik Bjerregaard Pedersen's port of the AT&T VNC client, which has been renamed ViNCe. It is now available on my web site:

http://www.vinc17.org/acorn/riscpc_eng.html#vince

The main changes are:

Vincent Lefevre

AMPlay 1.43 released

10th June 2002

Mike Sandells

AMPlay 1.43, a freeware front-end for the AMPlayer module is now available for download from:

http://www.mikejs.com/riscos/amplay.html

The main download includes the app itself and text documentation. HTML documentation and the (WIMPBasic) source are also available for download.

Documentation can also be viewed online at:

http://www.mikejs.com/riscos/amplay/docs/html/index.html

This is probably the last 1.4x release for a while - I want to press on with 1.50.

What's New?
1.43 contains the following bug fixes:

It also adds the following new features:

Mike Sandells

Simple ARM emulator

10th June 2002

Ian Clark

I've just written the worlds simplest ARM emulator as my final year project.

It's not very pretty, but it does allow you to run BASIC in a box under Windows so it might be useful to someone.

Get it at:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bashful/ARMIsh_100.zip

Ian Clark

BookMaker V1.74 released

10th June 2002

Nick Roberts

Version 1.74 of BookMaker is available for download from

http://www.bookmaker.riscos.org.uk/

This version includes:

  1. a more forgiving hotlist loader for WebsterXL users
  2. a fix to a bug whereby the fnt size preference was not respected over a screen mode change
  3. The line-spacing preference can now be set below 100%

BookMaker is a hotlist and address book management tool that supports all major RISCOS browsers, most email clients and other internet tools.

Nick Roberts

Assembler programming / HeyRick

10th June 2002

Rick Murray

Assembler programming
http://www.heyrick.co.uk/assembler/ is the place to learn to program in ARM assembler, with tutorials and examples.

The assembler programming part of my site has recently been updated with:

I intend to keep adding to this part of my site; however the next thing to do is probably a small re-organisation as I've hit the 79 files/directory limit; then some things can easily be re-organised. More examples, and, just, more... Keep your eye on the news page to see if it has been updated.

France
As you will know if you've read my main index, I'm now resident in France. The home of a particularly strange language, more than made up for by vastly improved bread. I cannot tell you my elation at never having to face another P*t N**dle. :-) Either way, you'll find it is hard to find a mailto link on my site. By all means, send me mail to the usual heyrick domain; but the reason the links are more obscure is to stop spambots and also because I might get to read my mail next... well... that's anybodies guess.

But fear not! There are such things as floppy discs and auto-collant [*] postage stamps. Updates will get through, one way or another.

[*] Girls wear "collants" (tights), little things like that can lead to some interesting mis-translations. Did you know to pass out is to "tomber dans les pommes" - yes, to fall into the apples.

NewsAgent
Argo people will be aware that I have been making modifications to the standard "newsagent" software. I intend to keep up with this, and present the upgrades on my site as and when. Probably nothing for a while yet as a lot is going on right now; but I do have the wish-list handy...

Work
If anybody fancies employing me, then, hey, here I am!

Shameless, wasn't it? Still, my chances of becoming proficient in French in, say, a month are pretty slim. Certainly half the words I use aren't in my dictionary. If you'd like to get in touch with me, please contact me via Glenn Richards.

Thank you.

And finally...
Y'all have a nice summer!

Rick Murray

Three slice RPC Pins available again! and what's not in stock!

10th June 2002

The Fourth Dimension

CJE Micro's are renowned for having everything RISC OS related 'in stock' But we haven't had any three slice RiscPC case pins in stock for a while. We have now rectified that and have them in stock again :-)

Three slice RiscPC case pins 35GBP Inc UK Postage

Whilst on the subject of stock, below is a list of items that 'shock horror' CJE Micro's do not have in stock and get :-(

RisCafe CD (Acorn Java)
Browse CD
PRM Vol 5A (but we do have PRM Vol 5)
Basic VI manuals, although we do have a second hand one for sale.
Eight Slot Backplanes
Irlam RiscTV but we do get S/H units in occasionally
Irlam i16
Single and dual Serial port podules but we do have a s/h triple card in stock!
Actilead
RPC TRM Technical reference Manuals
A4 TRM Technical reference Manuals
MovieFS
TopModel 2 but we do have Topmodel 1's in stock

SimCity2000 RPC Version but we do have an A5000 version which reportedly will work on a RiscPC!

Oh no more Lemmings, or Lemmings II (The Tribes) but we do have some Lemmings in stock

Please see http://www.cjemicros.co.uk/prices/ for a list of 3000+ RISC OS related items, most of which are 'In Stock'. Please note this list is not a full list of everything we sell, so if you don't see what you want, please contact us and you may be pleasantly surprised.

If ordering and paying by cheque, please make them payable to:
"The Fourth Dimension"
n.b. The Fourth Dimension is not VAT registered, so no VAT to add :-)

Chris Evans

ADSL hardware (and software) for 155ukp inclusive

7th June 2002

R-Comp Interactive/RCI

We'd like to draw people's attention to the fact that RCI have been supplying ADSL hardware for some time now, and it's now available, complete with software, manuals and support for just 155ukp inclusive.

The price includes:

For just 155ukp inclusive of VAT and UK delivery

If you already have a network, there are also versions without the 4 high speed network ports.

We believe this price to be extremely competitive, offering far more functionality and support than its nearest alternatives.

Additionally, the unit does not require the use of micro-filters on the phone lines, saving you even more money!

All you need to take advantage of this, is to be in an area capable of having ADSL. You can then sign up with an Internet Provider eg. Pipex, FreeUK, Demon or BT (prices and payment deals vary, but are likely to be circa 22-29ukp per month).

If you don't already own a network card, we offer some bundle packs with the new NET100 NIC network cards, so that you can get everything at once, and of course it works out cheaper that way too.

R-Comp Interactive/RCI

Jclean version 4.00

7th June 2002

David

An update to !Jclean is now on my site

http://www.dacha.freeuk.com/free/

Among other things, Jclean is a desktop front end for the Independant JPEG Group utility 'jpegtran'. It allows all operations available from 'jpegtran' to be performed by clicking and drag-and-drop rather than having to resort to the command line.

Version 4.00 is a complete rewrite incorporating more native code to extract existing comments and save them to a single Comments file or to individual files, and to insert up to 3 types of new comment in one pass, including a fully configurable filedate string. Other features include:

David

DiscKnight 1.38 release

7th June 2002

David J.Ruck

All registered users of DiscKnight should have received a message informing them that version 1.38 was available in the past few days.

However there are 13 few people who we have not been able to add to our support mailing list due to incorrect or unreadble addresses on their registration forms. If you've bought DiscKnight and not received the message about 1.38, please email me at the address below quoating your serial number (as displayed on the first line of output in the DiscKnight window) so I can add you, and you can download the latest version.

Messages sent to a further 24 existing members are bouncing, probably meaning that they have changed email addresses without informing smartgroups. If you suspect this to be the case, go to http://www.smartgroups.com/ and log in with your old email address, and use the "my details" button to change your email address. If you have difficulties, email me quoating your serial number.

DiscKnight is checking and repair tool for standard and RISC OS 4 format hard discs. Further details can be found at http://www.discknight.riscos.org.uk/

David J.Ruck

ARMalyser version 0.29

5th June 2002

David J.Ruck

ARMalayser version 0.29 is now available from http://www.armclub.org.uk/free. The following enhancements have been made for this release:

ARMalyser is an ARM code analyser that understands RISC OS executable, module, object and library formats. It can output disassembly or ObjAsm assembly styles, in plain text, fully hyperlinked and syntax coloured HTML, XML or custom formats for import into Impression, EasiWriter and Ovation Pro. It is available for RISC OS with a desktop front end, and command line versions for Win32 and Linux x86.

If anyone is using the Win32 and Linux versions, please drop me an email so I can gauge the level of interest in multi-platform code.

David J.Ruck

Acorn User correction & TrackTime update

5th June 2002

Matthew Somerville

[Edited by Backup Moderator with approval of original poster - Back Mod.]

The Oregano KOI8-R/Win-1251 viewer mentioned in the news section of the last issue of Acorn User is not the work of Alex Waugh, but myself - which is why it's on my site under a section for programs I've coded for RISC OS:
<http://www.dracos.co.uk/riscos/programs/koi8r/>

That's an understandable error, if one is in a good mood - in my csa.announce posting about the program (I didn't advertise it anywhere else), I did say that WebJames and PHP, both on Alex's website (and both great programs/ports :) ), are needed to run my program, so it might be possible to get confused.

While I've got your attention, I've updated TrackTime (three years after the last update :) ) - a small program that tells you how to fit CD tracks onto a cassette of specified length - to cope with more than one CD drive in your computer.
<http://www.dracos.co.uk/riscos/programs/>

Matthew Somerville

R-Comp announce new version of Grapevine released

5th June 2002

R-Comp

We are pleased to announce a new release of our well-received instant messaging and communication program, Grapevine. As promised when launched (at the Wakefield show), Grapevine is an evolving application, and the latest release includes a number of improvements including:

The purpose of this release has been to deal with a number of smaller things to provide a good base point before the impementation of larger extensions such as MSN file transfer and ICQ support.

This upgrade was sent out to existing registered customers on Monday, so if you haven't received it by now, and think that you should have done, please contact us via email.

More information (and ordering) about Grapevine can be found at http://www.rcomp.co.uk/ and follow the Grapevine link.

R-Comp

NEW Desktop Repton

5th June 2002

Dbproaction@aol.com

DESKTOP REPTON GETS A MAJOR UPGRADE
Repton is one of the longest-running series ever produced for the Acorn range of computers. Since its first launch in 1985 literally hundreds of thousands of people have been amazed, astonished and astounded that a concept so simple could be so addictive.

ProAction released, at the Bracknell show last year, Desktop Repton 3 the first major release of any Repton game to multi-task within the RISC OS desktop. The reception has been fantastic, to the point where we're delighted to announce both Repton 1 and Repton 2 have been turned into fully multi-tasking games.

The benefits of multi-tasking are quite clear: you can play a game when you should be doing pretty much anything else - designing, accounting, word processing and so on. It's easy to hide the game window to make sure your boss can't see your game either!

PRICING AND LAUNCH DATE
The new Desktop Repton pack launches on 14th June 2002 with a new rrp of 19.90ukp. For the moment we're /not/ - contrary to the earlier announcement - including Repton 4 but who knows what's possible in the future.

The packaging has changed into the new DVD format, and the manual has been extended to cater for the functions of both Repton 1 and Repton 2 to ensure that you'll all find it as easy as possible to get straight into the game. We'll shortly have a competition for Desktop Repton 2 owners to see who can complete the game in the quickest time - details will be available to purchasers as part of the manual.

With the change in format, and expansion of the compilation, if existing users of Desktop Repton would like to upgrade there will be a charge of 10ukp; for which users receive a complete new pack. Do note that you must return the original complete pack to qualify for the upgrade price.

For further information call APDL on 020 8778 2659; email info@apdl.co.uk or write to APDL, 39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London SE26 5RN.

Dbproaction@aol.com

NEW Easy C++

5th June 2002

Dbproaction@aol.com

EASY C GETS A MAJOR UPGRADE!
We're delighted to announce that a certain gifted individual has been beavering away at the keyboard to produce an upgrade for Easy C++. The main program will now support more recent versions of the standard RISC OS libraries (for both C and C++ compilation); a significant number of examples are supplied on the disc; new step by step tutorials have been added; a huge chunk of tutorial material for C has also been added PLUS we're delighted to add Vigil (previously a product in its own right) as an aid to all WIMP programmers.

PRICING & LAUNCH
The upgraded Easy C++ pack launches on 14th June 2002, and as before contains a manual in HTML format on the CD-ROM together with all the updated materials. The new pricing structure is as follows:

Overseas orders will be subject to a 2.00ukp postage charge for the CD-ROM alone, 3.00ukp for the manual alone or 4.00ukp if manual is bought with the software.

For further details please contact APDL on 020 8778 2659, email info@apdl.co.uk or write to APDL, 39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London SE26 5RN.

Dbproaction@aol.com

OvalTime 1.24

5th June 2002

Jochen Lueg

Recently there was a change in the DUT1 code transmitted my the Rugby atomic clock (seconds 0 to 16) which lead to OvalTime getting confused. This has now been fixed.

You find the program on the PD page of my site. Use the link at the bottom of the index page to get to it.

!OvalTime displays and decodes the time data transmitted by the Rugby MSF transmitter. For the program to be of any use you must have a Rugby receiver connected to either the printer port or the user port of a RiscPC.

The design for a suitable circuit is also on my site:

http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/tudor

!OvalTime is freeware.

Jochen Lueg

lcc updated

5th June 2002

Peter Naulls

From the help file:

"lcc is an ANSI C compiler. It is small and fast, though the code it produces is currently of poor quality. However, because of its speed (about twice as fast as GNU C with no optimisation) it is useful for development work, when you spend far more time compiling than running your programs; and because of its size it should run on computers that cannot accommodate GNU C (It should be possible to use it without virtual memory on machines with 2Mb RAM; possibly even 1Mb)."

It is hoped that lcc will prove to be an easy free alternative for novice pogrammers who might be overwhelmed by the larger compilers.

Recent changes:

4.1 beta 9

(Release 1)

4.1 beta 9

(Release 2)

lcc is available from the downloads section of http://www.riscos.info/

Peter Naulls

AMPlay 1.42

5th June 2002

Mike Sandells

It's getting a bit like buses - nothing for ages, then three in a little over a week.

AMPlay 1.42 is now released, and available from:

http://www.mikejs.com/riscos/amplay.html#download

This fixes the following bugs:

Mike Sandells

SPRtools block1f release

5th June 2002

David J.Ruck

A few minor updates have been made to SPRtools, including:

SPRtools Provides bitmap format conversion and image processing command line utilities, designed to run on RISC OS, UNIX and Win32 platforms. Supplied with RISC OS desktop front end scripts for use with !ComndCTRL.

SPRtools and other programs mentioned can be found at:

http://www.armclub.org.uk/free

David J.Ruck

BitField 1.10 released

1st June 2002

Mike Sandells

BitField 1.10 is now available for download from:

http://www.mikejs.com/riscos/bitfield.html

The (WIMPBasic) source is also available.

What is it?
It's a utility for programmers to assist in setting flag words or in other situations where particular bits of a number need to be set. It could also probably be put to educational use.

You can:

Requirements:
BitField will run quite happily on RISC OS 3.1 or higher. It has been tested on 4.02, and RISC OS Select 4.29.

You will need !WBModules v2.09 or greater on your system. This can be downloaded from http://www.mikejs.com/riscos/wbmodule209.zip. This should be installed into !Boot.Resources, and you should ensure that you do not have older versions elsewhere.

If running it on an older system, note that the main window won't fit on a 640x480 screen without needing to scroll. It needs to be at least 800x600 to get all 32 bits widthways.

For more information, refer to the help file included with the application.

Interactive help is supported.

Mike Sandells

AMPlay 1.41 released

1st June 2002

Mike Sandells

AMPlay 1.41, a freeware front-end for the AMPlayer module is now available for download from:

http://www.mikejs.com/riscos/amplay.html

The main download includes the app itself and text documentation. HTML documentation and the (WIMPBasic) source are also available for download. An update to bring the 1.40 HTML documentation up to 1.41 is also available (basically this is the same as the main HTML docs, but without the images that haven't changed).

Documentation can also be viewed online at:

http://www.mikejs.com/riscos/amplay/docs/html/index.html

What's New:
Since 1.40, 1.41 fixes the following bugs:

It also adds the following new features;

Mike Sandells


2003 Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul 2003
Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
2002 Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul 2002
Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
2001 Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul 2001
Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
2000 Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul 2000
Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan