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I am pleased to announce the public release of EasiFiler 1.16, an easy appplication launcher for RISC OS.
The changes since EasiFiler 1.15 are as follows:
EasiFiler 1.16, binary and source, is available from my servers at:
<http://homepage.eircom.net/~lrtc>.
Online documentation can be found at:
<http://homepage.eircom.net/~lrtc/computers/software/easifiler>
As with all my software, I welcome comments, suggestions or bug reports. Too submit a comment, please do so through the EasiFiler mailing list (<http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/easifiler>)
Both of these programs are freeware and are now available - along with some other programs - from my website at
http://www.mat.bham.ac.uk/llewelld/
Working quietly away, Cerilica is now at a stage to be able to reveal some of the fruits of over six months work on what will be Vantage's largest and most significant upgrade to date.
Due to be released in April, free to all existing customers, the upgrade contains many important new tools and enhancements to aid both the design and production process from deep alpha blending to SVG export. For further details and some example images of what is now possible using one of the most powerful vector rendering engines available today, please visit:
http://www.cerilica.com/vantage/
To accompany the software upgrade, a number of new comprehensive tutorials (in the Vantage interactive Drawfile document format) will be released simultaneously along with the new original example files.
Cerilica Vantage is a highly sophisticated RISC OS-only vector design and publishing package providing key features such as comprehensive design and layout tools, multi-page handling, ink simulation, variable integrated transparencies, interactivity, limitless undo/redo, OLE editing and an industry-standard range of file format providers. Cerilica's key product has already attracted very positive reviews from RISC OS' leading publications including Acorn Publisher and Acorn User (quotes presented in the Vantage web pages).
For full details of this package and what is now possible using RISC OS and all Cerilica design and publishing products, please visit the Cerilica web site at:
A new website devoted to C Programming on RISC OS has been launched today, under the new .info top level domain.
You can see it at http://www.riscos.info/
www.riscos.info is still work in progress, and I'm happy to accept submissions. More information is being added regularly.
The site hopes to cover all aspects of C programming on RISC OS, from dicussion of the various compilers through to tutorials for performing specific kinds of tasks.
To complement the launch of the site, I've taken over maintenence of lcc, a C compiler for RISC OS, from Reuben Thomas. 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)."
lcc has been updated to the most recent release from 4.0 to 4.1, as well as being brought up to date with developments in other tools it relies on.
It is hoped that lcc will prove to be an easy free alternative for novice pogrammers who might be overwhelmed by the larger compilers.
lcc can be obtained from the downloads section on
http://www.riscos.info/
The LibXML, LibXSLT and XSLDebug tools xmlcatalog, xmllint, and xsltproc, as well as the RISC OS source for libxml 2.4.19 and libxslt 1.0.15 have been updated at:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/justin.fletcher/XML/
This update follows the release of the libxml 2.4.19 and libxslt 1.0.15 sources last night.
XML is a structured description format used in many modern applications. XSLT is a mechanism for transforming data in XML-based formats to other formats (most usually HTML or some similar markup). XML Catalogs are structured, extensible way of providing cached copies of externally accessible documents.
XMLCatalog manipulates catalogs.
XMLLint checks validity and well-formedness of XML documents.
XSLTProc applies stylesheets transforms (XSLT) to XML documents.
The tools contained in these releases are used by in the 'RISC OS documentation project', which I am working on. They have been tested by myself and those working on the project.
This release incorporates a number of bug fixes and corrections which have been applied over the past week:
More information about libxml2, libxslt and its related tools can be obtained from http://xmlsoft.org/. More information on xsldebug can be obtained from http://xsldbg.sourceforge.net/. libxml2 and libxslt is developed by Daniel Veillard, as an open source project in collaboration with many others.
LibXML and LibXSLT are currently in API freeze for Gnome. XSLDebug is currently undergoing major work to integrate with other unix debuggers and will appear 'soon'.
As in the past, I intend to keep RISC OS libxml2/libxslt releases within 24 hours of the base unix source release. I'm well inside that, this time, and a sub-50 minute port time too; I'm happy :-)
Learning Partners / Polemic Books is and remains a RISC OS based publishing company. Unfortunately PC sales of our software for the education market exceed RISC OS sales by up to 100:1. It is with regret that we have decided to withdraw RISC OS versions of our products when current stocks are exhausted. To give our RISC OS customers a final chance to purchase these products we are offering the limited remaining stock at a substantial discount.
Careers Workshop - PC price 85 ukp plus vat (99.98)
- RISC OS Offer price 50 ukp plus vat (58.75)
- Only two remaining
British Parliamentary Constituencies on CD-Rom
- PC price 50 pounds with 10 user licence
- RISC OS Offer price 12.76 plus vat (14.99)
- Only twelve remaining
Product details are given below. Prices include postage. Send a cheque or official order on headed paper with your name and address to:
Learning Partners
Marquis House
2 North Street
Winchcombe
Glos GL54 5LH - e-mail enquiries lp.books@argonet.co.uk
Careers Workshop is written by Robert Werry (also RISC OS based) in Australia where this is the leading careers software product. The approach is a lot less formal than comparable British Software, but it is based on the same sort of research on personality, interest and career choice. It offers good reporting and database facilities to teachers. We have had good sales to people working with young offenders and non-academic FE and sixth form provisions. The only difference between this and the PC product is that due to the more compact code this is supplied on disk with a printed manual, rather than on CD-Rom with on-line manual.
British Parliamentary Constituencies on CD-Rom is written by Tony Fox (Senior Research Fellow University College Worcester) and Professor Ivor Crewe (Professor of Politics and Vice Chancellor, Essex University). It provides data sets for the 1992, 1997 and 2001 elections and a social and economic profile of each constituency at the 1997 election. One RISC OS user on the staff of a Welsh university said "I am impressed with the quality of the software and the extent of the data". The only difference between this and the PC product is that the updated 2001 data is supplied in HTML rather than as an Excel file. Full documentation is supplied with this product in the form of several booklets.
We are pleased to announce that version 1.99f of WebsterXL was sent out to WebsterXL Priority Support customers on Friday last week.
If you think you should have received this update (ie. you are on the Priority Support List), but have not, please contact us by email, phone or fax.
We expect to send a version to regular customers shortly.
1.99f contains many enhancements, most notably, support for style sheets (CSS) which are used by many web sites to alter font faces, sizes, colours and other attributes. CSS can also be used to size some objects (eg. text areas).
On the subject of text areas, WXL 1.99f includes a totally revised text area input "gadget" which has been designed to be much more pleasant to use with features like wordwrap, text highlighting (for copy/paste/clipboard operations) and easy clearing. This makes using message boards and the like much more user friendly.
We have expanded Bookmaker support for people using that program as a "central" hotlist between programs. We also now support the HTML hotlist formats used by Browse and Fresco.
JavaScript, table and frame issue have also received attention as usual. You can now choose what level of JavaScript WXL will attempt to execute (up to 1.4) although users are reminded that Microsoft style of script doesn't always match the version numbers! The javascript handling has also been improved. WXL 1.99f opens up a number of sites which have caused problems for RISC OS users in the past (we believe, for example, Open University is now ok, but haven't checked all of this personally!)
There are also many other smaller enhancements (tweaks to file upload capability to make it work better with filename translations) and so on.
And of course, ongoing development continues!
If you have any questions about WebsterXL, please contact us on the details in the signature below.
Best wishes for Easter,
Tel: (+44) 01925 755043 Fax: (+44) 01925 757377
http://www.rcomp.co.uk/
These versions come with a Microsoft Windows installer that will install them into VirtualA5000 and come with a new licence allowing their use on VirtualAcorn products. For more details please see the Icon Technology website at
http://www.icontechnology.net/
It is with delight I can inform the RISC OS community at large PlayBack, originally published by RISC Developments/BEEBUG and more recently ProAction, is made freeware subject to the following conditions:
In the event that you wish to host an archive of the software on your website, please first let me know in order that my personal links pages can be updated. You'll be able to do this free of charge, but I'd like to know about it first. I appreciate that the licensing details given above are a little strong, but experience dictates it's a neccesity.
I've just uploaded NetWatch version 1.61.
The following changes are made:
Netwatch has proxy-server support right now. Every URL may be fetched using a proxy-server or just the normal way.
There are also more options moved to the choices-window
The pane is 'better' attached to the main-window.
The debug information (left from version 1.60) is turned off now.
NetWatch is available on my website:
http://home.student.utwente.nl/m.m.bezemer/netwatchuk.html
For people who don't know what NetWatch is:
NetWatch is a program which keeps up with changes on the internet. The user has to mark the pages of his interest. NetWatch will fetch these pages at defined intervals and calculate a checksum (MD5). This checksum is compared with the store checksum of the page. When these checksum aren't the same the page has changed and NetWatch will warn the user.
It's also possible to download something with NetWatch and when the download gets aborted for some reason, NetWatch is able to resume the download! (At least when the server is able to do)
Announcing the release of !DrW2HTML.
!DrW2HTML takes the textmanual from the DrWimp Basic programming Library and converts it into an HTML manual, much easier to flick through and prettier looking too.
!DrW2HTML can be downloaded from
http://www.denmarkwa.net.au/~kwright/
VCD format tracks should now play. Various speed-ups in the video decoder. Nothing fantastic but 'every little helps' as they say.
Available for free download from,
http://www.everett9981.freeserve.co.uk/pete.htm
For anyone who missed the first release, 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.
Thanks to Andre Timmermans for speed-ups and Zoom mode.
Thanks also to Jess Hampshire for help with VCD formats.
The !TaskUsage application enables the processor usage of a RISC OS computer to be easily monitored with percentages and a bar graph for each task or reason code.
!TaskUsage v1.51 is now available, and the main changes are...
Full details are available from http://www.avisoft.force9.co.uk/ and it can be downloaded from there as a zip archive file.
Also available for download are ...
Any comments on the web site, or the applications, always welcome.
Labyrinth is a port of the Acornsoft game of the same name to RISC OS 3.1+ machines. It runs at full speed even on ARM 3 machines.
Version 1.00 adds sound emulation.
The port is available now, via:
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/J.Kortink/software.htm
ZeriBeep is an accurate SN76489 sound chip emulator, meant to be used by BBC emulators and the like, running on RISC OS 3.1+ machines.
ZeriBeep 1.00 is available now, via:
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/J.Kortink/software.htm
I have refreshed, re-edited, augmented, etc. my personal website.
Some of you might like to have a look:
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/J.Kortink/
The site contains the latest versions of my software, and some links.
cdparanoia is a command-line application which extracts audio data from CDs. It requires that the CD_ReadAudio SWI is available, and currently supports CDFS and CDROMFS devices.
This is a completely redone port of the version I did a while ago, and is more stable as far as I can tell. You can now specify which CD device you wish to use, and doesn't crash as nastily if it runs out of memory.
You can find it at:
http://aardvark.mine.nu/archifishal/programs/
in the Port beta section.
Those interested in emulation of the SN76489 sound chip as used in the BBC may like to visit:
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/J.Kortink/sn76489.htm
I've been able to determine the exact white noise bit sequence, which may benefit others trying to emulate this sound chip.
Forthcoming is a module that provides a pretty accurate emulation of the SN76489. It will be freeware.
The LibXML, LibXSLT and XSLDebug tools xmlcatalog, xmllint, and xsltproc, as well as the RISC OS source for libxml 2.4.18 and libxslt 1.0.14 have been updated at:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/justin.fletcher/XML/
This update follows the release of the libxml 2.4.18 and libxslt 1.0.14 sources yesterday.
XML is a structured description format used in many modern applications. XSLT is a mechanism for transforming data in XML-based formats to other formats (most usually HTML or some similar markup). XML Catalogs are structured, extensible way of providing cached copies of externally accessible documents.
XMLCatalog manipulates catalogs.
XMLLint checks validity and well-formedness of XML documents.
XSLTProc applies stylesheets transforms (XSLT) to XML documents.
The tools contained in these releases are used by in the 'RISC OS documentation project', which I am working on. They have been tested by myself and those working on the project.
This release incorporates a number of bug fixes and corrections which have been applied over the past month:
More information about libxml2, libxslt and its related tools can be obtained from http://xmlsoft.org/. More information on xsldebug can be obtained from http://xsldbg.sourceforge.net/. libxml2 and libxslt is developed by Daniel Veillard, as an open source project in collaboration with many others.
LibXML and LibXSLT are currently in API freeze for Gnome. XSLDebug is currently undergoing major work to integrate with other unix debuggers and will appear 'soon'.
As in the past, I intend to keep RISC OS libxml2/libxslt releases within 24 hours of the base unix source release. I think I'm a few hours outside that for this version, but I have to sleep some time soon.
DoomWAD is a simple program which can extract Doom WAD files into directories in a similar way to DoomFS, but can also put them back together from a directory.
This version has been updated slightly by Chris Bazley, so it's not quite as rubbish as the last release I did ;)
You can find it at:
http://www.toth.org.uk/~aardvark/archifishal/programs/
Partis Computing is pleased to announce its web based e-shop at http://www.partis.org/.
Our web site can take online orders using credit/debit cards through a secure server - making payments from outside the UK much easier.
Our products include:
Plus more....
Acorn Arcade, in conjunction with Artex Software, are running a mini competition where you can name a TEK trooper!
Artex's new game, TEK, will have named troopers along side all the cool hardware. The first twenty people to email us with a six character name will have a trooper in TEK named after them.
So go to http://www.acornarcade.com/ and mail us now!
I've just uuploaded NetWatch version 1.60.
NetWatch is ready to work together with FileBase (http://filebase.acornusers.org/) This is an online database with information about RISC OS programs. NetWatch is able to get the website URL, the download URL and details of a program in this database. NetWatch is also able to determine whether items are added or changed and will give a warning if so. All programs added to FileBase will be accessable in a menu structure.
Some minor changes are made as well.
NetWatch is available on my website:
http://home.student.utwente.nl/m.m.bezemer/netwatchuk.html
For people who don't know what NetWatch is:
NetWatch is a program which keeps up with changes on the internet. The user has to mark the pages of his interest. NetWatch will fetch these pages at defined intervals and calculate a checksum (MD5). This checksum is compared with the store checksum of the page. When these checksu aren't the same the page has changed and NetWatch will warn the user.
It's also possible to download something with NetWatch and when the download gets aborted for some reason, NetWatch is able to resume the download! (At least when the server is able to do)
I've just uploaded !riscSeach V0.86ß to its homepage at www.riscsearch.de
changes are small, but I recomend anyone to upgrade
Changes in V0.86:
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 to find web-pages about a certain topic by asking different search engines about the keywords you supply. It collects results from (at the moment) 9 different engines, filters out duplicate matches and then presents all links in a window of your web-browser.
RaspSoft are pleased to announce the latest version of HardCash V5.00 2002/3. This version of the payroll system is now compliant with all the new tax and N.I. rules for the year starting 6th April 2002. Features are as follows:
Weekly, Fortnightly, 4weekly, Monthly periods.
Calculates P.A.Y.E. and DIRECTORS.
Vehicle Taxes, Fuel allowances including Co2 emission bands.
Loan repayment (Good for compulsory deductions eg. Council Tax).
Full Pension calculations including stakeholder.
Global Tax Code updates.
Exports user defined CSV files and CSV into Apricotes Prophet.
P35 and SC35 records and tracking.
Cash breakdown.
Labour can be entered as Hours & Minutes or Hours & Decimal.
Wage slips can be standard TAS, SAGE, HARDCASH or User defined format.
Screen layouts as standard P.A.Y.E. and N.I. documents.
Prints out P14,P60,SC11, Employee details, I.R. monthly returns.
Prints out Bank giro, B.A.C.S. slips, P45s.
Prints out Pension payments, Pension details, Archive sheets.
In built user guide/manual (Also 96 page printed manual).
Browsing feature.
Automatic backup feature.
Automatic SMP calculations.
Automatic SSP calculations including linkage periods.
Time card calculator.
Rota sheet compiler and printout.
Working Family Tax Credit payments and claims.
Automatic collection of student/Company loans.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), end of year returns on magnetic media, (requires EDI module).
Holiday tracking for employees with auto reminding.
Statutory holiday tracking.
Attachment of memo's for each employees file.
Separate department feature allowing the subtotals for each department.
All printouts can be viewed on screen.
All printouts can be exported as DRAW files.
Business mileage tracking for use with Class 1A setup.
User defined calculations/headings.
Registered users can upgrade to version 5.00 for ukp30.00 and new customers can purchase the current version for ukp99.00 for the Advanced and ukp149.00 for the Professional.
Contact:
RaspSoft Business Software
42, Springfield Lane
Morley
Leeds
LS27 9PH
0113 252 1767
sales@raspsoft.co.uk
www.raspsoft.co.uk
I've released SHA1, a small module that will calculate the SHA-1 digest of a block of data. This is useful for checking the integrity of data blocks, hashing passwords etc.
CryptRandom, my generator of cryptographically useful random numbers, has been upgraded to version 0.08. The sole change is the implementation of a CryptRandom_Word SWI to return a 32-bit random word.
These can be found at http://www.markettos.org.uk/riscos/crypto/
Also please note that my website has moved. You are advised to access any pages that were formerly at http://www-stu.cai.cam.ac.uk/~atm26/ through http://www.markettos.org.uk/ This points to a new address, which should remain stable indefinitely, but you are recommended to use markettos.org.uk as that will redirect if they do move. The old address will forward to the right place for a limited period. Also note that if you want to email me, you should use theo@markettos.org.uk or theom@chiark.greenend.org.uk in preference to any other email addresses you may have for me.
We would like to announce txt2pdf 5.6 version.
http://www.sanface.com/txt2pdf.html
txt2pdf is shareware; it is a very flexible and powerful PERL5 script that converts text files to PDF format files, so you can use it in every operating systems supported by PERL5, including RiscOS. Joern-Erik LEO Burkert developed !txt2pdf: a txt2pdf RiscOS GUI (http://www.burkert.org/leo/acorn/). If you prefer we also distribute executables for Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and Mac OS X. Inside the Windows version is Visual txt2pdf, a VB GUI.
What's new in this version
New linear option or inside your configuration file: list. With this new option you can specify a list file with inside a list of your input textual files (one entry every line).
Test txt2pdf 5.6!
You can find it at http://www.sanface.com/txt2pdf.html
I've great pleasure in announcing the immediate availability of NeXTBar version 1.07 to download from my web site at http://www.vigay.com/shareware/
NeXTBar is my flexible application launcher for RISC OS. Not only can you launch applications simply by clicking on the relevant buttons, but you can assign URLs to buttons, have multiple button bars either in a vertical or horizontal orientation, or even shrink the buttons to give a mini NeXTBar.
New to version 1.07 is a bug fix whereby the Autoload option occasionally didn't recognise the first mouse click on it, when it was previously ON. I've also added a 'Disable copy/move' option to the main choices which will disable the ability to drag buttons to new locations. This is from user feedback from some people who accidentally dragged a button to a new position and wondered what had happened.
I hope you like NeXTBar and feel it is useful enough to register at only 12.00 ukp.
Registered users can simply copy over their existing copy in order to update it.
Chris & Lee's Photodesk hints & tips web site has been updated:
Find the site at http://www.nocanews.new.labour.org.uk/chris/index.html
Feedback is very welcome, as are requests for features.
I have uploaded an update of ScummVM to my site.
Changes to the RISC OS port include:
The following games should load, but are not yet in a playable form.
You will need a machine with around 10MB of RAM free (games may use less... I went by the size of the data files) for Monkey Island and up to 16MB free for Day of the Tentacle. The memory usage is configurable via a textfile (like RiscCPS) if you use the frontend, which is again like the one supplied with RiscCPS.
BTW all credit for this awesome piece of software should go to Ludvig, I merely ported it across to RISC OS!
If you have any problems feel free to mail me, but please read the !Help file first!
URL for my website is: http://www.acornemus.freeserve.co.uk/
There are other interesting things on the site... not least of all info on my forthcoming media player along with some screenshots.
The LibXML, LibXSLT and XSLDebug tools xmlcatalog, xmllint, and xsltproc, as well as the RISC OS source for libxml 2.4.17 and libxslt 1.0.13 have been updated at:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/justin.fletcher/XML/
This update follows the release of the libxml 2.4.17 and libxslt 1.0.13 sources yesterday.
XML is a structured description format used in many modern applications. XSLT is a mechanism for transforming data in XML-based formats to other formats (most usually HTML or some similar markup). XML Catalogs are structured, extensible way of providing cached copies of externally accessible documents.
XMLCatalog manipulates catalogs.
XMLLint checks validity and well-formedness of XML documents.
XSLTProc applies stylesheets transforms (XSLT) to XML documents.
The tools contained in these releases are used by in the 'RISC OS documentation project', which I am working on. They have been tested by myself and those working on the project.
This release incorporates a number of bug fixes and corrections which have been applied over the past month.
More information about libxml2, libxslt and its related tools can be obtained from http://xmlsoft.org/. More information on xsldebug can be obtained from http://xsldbg.sourceforge.net/. libxml2 and libxslt is developed by Daniel Veillard, as an open source project in collaboration with many others.
LibXML and LibXSLT are currently in API freeze for Gnome. XSLDebug is currently undergoing major work to integrate with other unix debuggers.
As in the past, I intend to keep RISC OS libxml2/libxslt releases within 24 hours of the base unix source release. The last two releases of libxml2, and the last release of libxslt were minor bugfix releases and included wrappers for python which were not relevant to the RISC OS port.
An updated patch for !Shylock, the old Archimedes game, is now available from my website at <http://homepage.eircom.net/~lrtc/computers/software>
My thanks to Keith Wright who is largely responsible for this update.
This patch (version 2.00) fixes:
A new version of BDRand incorporating some bug fixes and minor enhancements is now available.
It can be downloaded by going to
http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/tigger/
and following the 'Programs' and 'Desktop Utilities' links.
BDRand is a highly configurable backdrop randomiser for RO3.1+.
For !stream 0.30, go to http://duffell.cjb.net/ and download it from the top of the page.
New features include a slimmed down status window, you've all whinged and prompted me lots so I've also put in m3u support, plus a few other things like it shrinks the buffer faster if you reduce its size, and it doesn't decrease the size of the DA when amplayer is still using it (which is good for a laugh sometimes).
Bascially, if you liked the first version, you'll love this one :)
Stream is a shoutcast (http://www.shoutcast.com/) and m3u (http://www.mp3.com/) player. The latest version can be downloaded from http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~jwd104/ or http://duffell.cjb.net/. It works on any machine with RISC OS 3.5 or later and a copy of AMPlayer 1.39 (http://www.amplayer.org/).
Just to let you know where the POSum project stands as of today. It's about time we had an update on POSum in general. Various people know various things, but not everyone knows everything that's going on, so this is an ideal opportunity to help everyone catch up.
For those who don't already know; POSum is a RISC OS based EPOS solution for the small to medium sized retail market. EBMS (the Electronic Business Management System) is the software behind the POSum.
Ok. Where to start.....
Not all the work has been in this area though. Support for membership subscriptions was properly implemented in version 1.23. This was necessary for an installation on a shooting range in Australia. Although the system should support a wide range of other application including, for example, fitness clubs, gyms, etc.
One already has an automated stock ordering system which we hope to be integrating with the software over the next few months.
Another is looking at POSum as their first experiment in client-side electronic stock ordering and will, hopefully, be selling POSum systems through their warehouses across the UK. This is a big name client and acceptance of our proposal will mean big things; not just for us but for the RISC OS platform in general.
However we do get requests for information from potential clients in other areas of the country. It is always a shame to turn these people down because of a lack of local reseller.
If you are interested in becoming a reseller of POSum systems then please get in touch for more information. Contact Alan Gibson of Liquid Silicon on 01592 592265 for an informal chat.
So, here we are in the first quarter of 2002. With both international distributors and local resellers signed up and starting to commit themselves to the product, and development continuing strong and firm, we should see huge advances in the project over the next twelve months.
I'll keep you all posted.
Development of an ISA variant, suitable for the RiscStation R7500 is now complete and the NIC variant, suitable for the RISC PC and A7000, is nearing completion and will be available soon.
This partnership brings together the design and manufacturing skills of Simtec and the expertise in network configuration and cross platform integration currently offered by CTA, RCI and Stuart Tyrrell Developments.
The interface will be available from CTA, RCI and Stuart Tyrrell Developments and will cost ukp 69.00 excluding VAT and postage. The total cost including VAT and postage should be in the region of ukp 89.00
CTA Direct, 168 Elliott St., Tyldesley, M29 8DS. Phone 01942 797777, Fax 01942 797711, Email: sales@ctadirect.co.uk
For more information see www.stdevel.co.uk or contact them using info@stdevel.co.uk tel. 0845 458 8803
For more information see www.simtec.co.uk
This is to announce the stable release of version 0.29 of Director
There are two archive available for download. One contains the main Director programs and associated utilities and menus. The other also contains the source code and CVS information.
Both archives can be downloaded from:
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/director/
Since the last beta release of Director, the following changes have been made:
Since the last stable release of Director, the following changes have been made:
Director also allows an alternative and faster view onto files in the form of directory menus and allows these menus to be attached to other menus also.
Director has some other useful features such as remembering the most recently used files, the ability to add key strokes into the keyboard buffer and the ability to produce directory menus over drive icons.
Director is fully customisable by the user, and can do many or all of the functions of Pinboard+, TreeMenu (AKA DirMenu), Filer-, QuickDir, DeskUtils, Memorizer, Menon and some of the functions of Filer+.
!UnPass is a small application that allows recovery of forgotten passwords of Alex Waugh's !Password application.
It was written to meet the needs of my classroom and is now available from
http://www.denmarkwa.net.au/~kwright/
It has been stated by many customers and magazine reviewers alike that ArtWorks has been transformed by the ever-increasing number of MW Software plug-in modules: for example, by the TextArea module adding rotatable multi-column text areas or the BMExport module adding high-quality Sprite and GIF export options.
However, none of the acclaimed modules released so far comes even close to what the forthcoming Crystal tool offers you: Finally, ArtWorks will have full transparency support! Crystal offers various types of transparency (Mix, Stained glass, Bleach) and allows you to apply a transparency type and percentage to any ArtWorks object, no matter whether it is a shape, a line of text, a sprite, a text area, etc.
Development of Crystal is well-advanced and the public release of the module is scheduled for the end of this month. You can have a look at some screenshots at:
Crystal will require RISC OS 3.5+, ArtWorks 1.7, and quite a bit of memory (at least 16MB of RAM in your machine is recommended). A StrongARM is highly recommended.
These bug-fixes, as well as the development of Crystal have become possible because MW Software has finally taken control over the ArtWorks kernel (the main ArtWorks !RunImage), too. This allows many long-standing bugs to be finally fixed and allows plug-in modules to control more aspects of the way ArtWorks operates.
For comments and questions, please contact: martin@mw-software.antispammeasure.com
Further information on the web: http://www.mw-software.com/
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/david.thomson/riscos/software.html
appear to have been broken for a considerable period of time, and it's just been brought to my attention.
If you've been trying to download any of my software, now's the time to have another go. A reminder of what's there:
I've updated the Postscript and PDF files in the resources section of my AALP page. Owing to an administrative hiccup, the previous versions had the last line missing from some pages. Thanks are due once more to Ralph Corderoy for doing the work, and Jean-Claude Picard for pointing out the problem. (The PDF derived from the HTML pages was fine, but doesn't correspond to the formatting of the printed book.)
In addition, I've added alternative links for the PDF and PS files that point to my Yahoo filespace. These should download quicker than from my webpage (assuming your link is faster than the 100 kbps of my cable modem...)
http://www.peter-cockerell.net:8080/aalp
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