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.

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2002 Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul 2002
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2001 Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul 2001
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2000 Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul 2000
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November 2002


German article about Omega

29th November 2002

Alexander Ausserstorfer

You will find at my homepage now a German article about the Omega (as pdf-file, 189 KB). Feel free to spread the information and use it for your own.

http://firmen5.chiemgau-net.de/ausserstorfer/

We will spread the information to the Germans magazines, newspapers etc. to support RISC OS Computers here in Germany.

We was doing the same with the article about the C1 (the latest version of the Commodore 64 in 2002 with 1 GB RAM etc.) and it is the best publicity for the product.

Alexander Ausserstorfer

R-Comp release many 32bit applications at show!

29th November 2002

R-Comp

We are pleased to announce that 32bit upgrades for many R-Comp applications will be available at the show this Saturday.

With the release of the 32bit-only Iyonix computer system, we have had to spend significant time updating software to allow it to work on the new systems.

To reflect the amount of time, support and expense required by the move to 32bit applications, the upgrade price for existing customers will be (largely) 15ukp inc VAT per application.

The only exceptions to this will be people moving from (say) Messenger Pro 1 to Messenger Pro 2 32bit version. Additionally, since we've recently issued a chargeable DialUp upgrade (DialUp2), DialUp 2 owners can upgrade to a 32bit version for 5ukp inclusive. (Because of this situation, and because other exceptions may need to be made in the future, please consult us before sending cheques for upgrades!) On this occasion, we do not require you to return your old 26 bit discs.

Please note that the charges are to pay for development time, tech support, and to cover expenses incurred for testing and development.

Finally, for those loyal customers with several R-Comp applications, we are setting an upper limit on what you have to pay. Provided you let us know which upgrades you require "in one go", the maximum fee will be 75ukp inclusive of VAT and UK carriage.

Overseas postage will be 2ukp per item, and the Maximum fee will be 80ukp.

IMPORTANT NOTE: We only recommend 32bit applications be used on 32bit-only computers. This is because in many cases specific changes have had to be made to allow the applications to work. We will continue to support and ship 26bit software for RiscPC and earlier machines, in order to offer all our customers the best compatibility and functionality.

R-Comp

!Account2 v.1.23

28th November 2002

Kevin Edwards

Version 1.23 of this Home Accounts freeware application is now available from:
http://www.ksedwards.ukgateway.net/account2/

NEW AND REVISED FEATURES
The number of possible Automatic transfers (direct debits, standing orders) raised from 20 to 40. You are now warned if you try to create more than 40 transfers.

Automatic transfers can be suspended, and re-instated individually or on mass.

Option to suspend transfers when producing a "reconciled only" file. This is useful when archiving files.

The direct debit window is updated on loading a new account.

"!Type:Oth A" and "!Type:Oth L" QIF files are now recognised and imported.

Date import type on QIF import can be set to dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy in Choices.....

Clicking Adjust on the report icon opens the report directory.

BUG FIXES
Fixed bug in fixed term transfers when starting a transfer in a month mid-year. (Wrong number of tranfers were appearing)

Had introduced a bug in an earlier version where it became possible to link to the same file as that in memory. This in now cured.

Kevin Edwards

The latest news from VirtualAcorn

27th November 2002

Aaron Timbrell

VirtualA5000 and 32 bit Software

Following the recent release of the 32 bit compatible C development suite from Castle Technology, VirtualAcorn can confirm that 32 bit neutral applications produced using Castle Technology tools will also run on VirtualA5000. A number of key developers have expressed concerns that they might need to have two different versions of their products, one for the next generation computers and one for VirtualA5000. We are delighted to confirm that our tests so far indicate that this is not the case and that the new SharedCLibrary and programs that make use of it run correctly.

The VirtualAcorn Forum

VirtualAcorn are delighted to announce that the VirtualAcorn forum is now online at:

http://www.virtualacorn.co.uk/forum

Although the forum has been running for some weeks we decided not to announce it until any potential problems had been reported and ironed out. The Forum includes a number of discussion boards for VirtualAcorn users. Anyone can browse any part of the forum without having to join. If users do wish to join then they can register for free and will be e-mailed a password that will allow them to post to any of the boards.

Aaron Timbrell

R-Comp release Grapevine version 1.04

27th November 2002

R-Comp

We are pleased to announce that Grapevine 1.04 was sent out to customers today via email. If you haven't received the upgrade in 48 hours, and believe you should have done, please contact us.

Version 1.04 adds sound effects (optional) which makes it easier to have conversations whilst doing other things. It also improves aspects of file sending. The colour used for hyper-links (eg. web addresses, or email addresses) can now be set as well. Additionally, there are the usual bug fixes and other improvements.

For those unfamiliar with Grapevine, it is our RISC OS MSN/IRC conversation and file transfer program. It allows you to keep in touch with friends and relatives, have conversations over the internet with them, and much more. See http://www.rcomp.co.uk/ for more information.

R-Comp

OHP goes 32 bit

27th November 2002

Chris Hornby

OHP goes 32-bit
Photodesk Ltd is proud to announce a new release of OHP, the leading RISC OS presentation software package.

OHP has been updated to a new 26/32-bit neutral version so it will run on RISC OS 5 (as used in Castle's new Iyonix computer) as well as on RISC OS 3.5 to 4.x. Attendees at the RISC OS South East Show on 2nd November will already have seen a Beta Test version of the new OHP - this was in action in the theatre in the hands of Castle's Jack Lillingston on the demonstration Iyonix computer.

The new release, OHP 2.5, includes extensive compatibility changes. These enable operation on RISC OS 5, improved compatibility with large video modes (with Viewfinder, Omega and Iyonix in mind) and operation with forthcoming commercial releases of the Artworks renderer (AWViewer).

OHP 2.5 is not just for lucky owners of new hardware though. There are a number of enhancements over OHP2 that will work for everyone, including:

and various other minor improvements.

OHP 2.5 will be released at the RISC OS Midlands Show on 30th November.

There will be a show-special price for new purchasers and upgrades for existing users. Upgraders should note that Photodesk will follow its normal practice of offering the upgrade price to those that return their previous OHP CD-ROM. So bring your old CD if you want to upgrade!

See you at the show.

Contacts
E-Mail: chris@photodesk.ltd.uk
Web: www.photodesk.ltd.uk

Phone: +44 (0)1305 822753
Fax: +44 (0)1305 860483

1 The Courtyard,
Southwell Business Park,
Portland,
Dorset.
DT5 2JS

About OHP
OHP was launched in 1998 to critical acclaim in the RISC OS press. OHP 2.5 will be the second major update since then.

OHP is an editor and viewer for full-screen presentations under RISC OS, a computerised OverHead Projector but with sound and transition effects. It lets you create, load, change and save presentations containing slides you produce using the familiar RISC OS graphic editors (including Draw and Paint).

The desktop drag and drop editor works very much like the RISC OS Filer letting you add, order and delete the slides in your presentation. You can define transition effects between the slides and an OLE function lets you edit slide graphics directly from the presentation window. OHP supports a wide range of sound file formats to add sound effects or sampled speech to your presentations.

OHP can be used interactively as you speak to an audience or to create fully automatic rolling presentations.

About Photodesk Ltd
Photodesk Ltd supplies imaging solutions for RISC OS computers. These include OHP, Photodesk (the photo manipulation software), printers and digital cameras.

Photodesk Ltd is managed by Chris Hornby and brings together the products and technical team from Spacetech. We continue to support and develop Spacetech products following the closure of that company.

Chris Hornby

CountFetch 1.01 - Puts a Web Counter on the Pinboard

25th November 2002

John Williams

I have updated CountFetch to make it more user-friendly.

It is now much easier to enter your counter URL and pinboard co-ordinates.

It also now indicates on the pinboard when it is in use so it is easier to manage multiple versions.

Additionally, it demonstrates some techniques useful in obeyfiles, such as using aliases to pre-evaluate expressions.

For your further information:

CountFetch allows you to keep track of a web counter image as an icon pinned to your pinboard. Each time it is run it refetches the counter image if you are online.

It stores the images as sprites named with the day/date/month, so you can keep a daily record of counter increments for later use.

As it uses the !ChkSpr utility to rename its sprite file icon, it can easily be renamed and used in different incarnations - that is, you can use more than one version at the same time! Well, not /actually/ at the /same/ time, because the versions would share a system variable so it won't let you, but in sequence!

It is available on a revamped John's Software site at a new location accessible from http://www.PicIndex.info/ - I hope that you find it useful.

I would prefer people to bookmark this page, as the subsidiary pages may move. This one I own, whereas the software page is now at its fourth location!

John Williams

wimpbasic.org

24th November 2002

Wimpbasic

I am pleased to announce that Wimpbasic has a new home, following on from the success of Wimpbasic.Com.

Wimpbasic is a programming aid for the development of Wimp based software. It takes all the hard work out of programming development. Wimpbasic allows the editing of code, windows all within the same enviroment, and produces compact programs at compile time. For those more complex tasks full access is available to the OS.

Wimpbasic is produced by Clares. Wimpbasic.org is an independant resource for users of the system.

I would be pleased to hear from anyone that has in the past contributed to the old WB.com site.

I have inherited all of the old software, so if you do not wish me to put the software on the new site please let me know.

Have you written a Wimpbasic application? Please submit it along with its resource files for users to look at.

Have you given up Wimpbasic programming? If you have some old half finished projects why not submit them for completion?

Do you have a Wimpbasic related site, please submit the URL for inclusion on our links page.

I would be pleased to hear from anyone on any matter relating to Wimpbasic.

Please pop along and see the range of programs, all now fully tested on RO4.29.

Visit http://www.wimpbasic.org/

email submissions@wimpbasic.org

Wimpbasic

Keep track of Web Counters and Web Images

24th November 2002

John Williams

I am pleased to announce the release of two new small-but-useful pieces of software.

They both use 'wget' to do useful things.

CountFetch allows you to keep track of a web counter image as an icon pinned to your pinboard. Each time it is run it refetches the counter image.

It stores the images as sprites named with the day, so you can keep a daily record of counter increments for later use.

As it uses the !ChkSpr utility to rename its sprite file icon, it can easily be renamed and used in different incarnations - that is, you can use more than one version at the same time! Well, not /actually/ at the /same/ time, because the versions would share a system variable, but in sequence!

ImageFetch allows you to use a web image as a backdrop, even on pre-RISC OS 4 machines. I use it to keep an eye on the weather patterns via a satellite picture, but you may have a different idea - perhaps a terrestrial webcam.

They are available on a revamped John's Software site at a new location accessible from http://www.PicIndex.info/ - I hope that you find them useful.

John Williams

KinoAMP 0.23

24th November 2002

Peter Everett

An MPEG movie player.

This release should clear all the problems that I am aware of with multitasking operation, which now supports true multitasking with the bonus of variable display scaling and aspect ratio control.

In order to achieve this, the player is about 20% slower when multitasking. At least a further 10% is lost to the operating system and other applications, depending on what else is running.

The speed of full screen and single task desktop modes are unaffected.

There are also switches for restarting and continuously repeating the film.

Download your free copy from,

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

Although the drop in speed might seem like a backward step, I feel the improvement in desktop operation is worth it. Especially as singletasking and full screen modes are unchanged.

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

FTPc 1.38

22nd November 2002

Colin Granville

I've just put FTPc1.38 on my web site

http://www.ftpc.iconbar.com/

It has the following changes:

!FTPc is a freeware internet File Transfer Protocol Client. It enables you to transfer files/directories to and from your web space from the desktop using drag and drop.

Colin Granville

PDF1.01.1.08

22nd November 2002

Colin Granville

I've just put an update to !PDF on my web site

http://www.pdf.iconbar.com/

It has the following changes:

!PDF is a public domain PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file viewer for RISC OS.

Colin Granville

Grapevine Mailing List

21st November 2002

Alan Wrigley

A mailing list has been started at Yahoo Groups for Grapevine, the communications client from R-Comp, to allow users and other interested parties to raise and discuss matters relating to the application.

The list can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/grapevinediscuss. The email address to subscribe is grapevinediscuss-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

Please note that this group is maintained by the author independently of R-Comp and is not supported by R-Comp. Any views expressed on the group are not necessarily those of R-Comp.

Alan Wrigley

R-Comp announce upgrades to DialUp 2, WebsterXL and UniPrint

21st November 2002

R-Comp

Rather than three separate announcements, we are posting a single one to let people know that there have been email upgrades sent out to three products - DialUp2, WebsterXL (Priority Support Version only) and UniPrint:

DialUp 2 v2.05

This is a small upgrade, dealing with a minor problem reported by a customer, and providing some minor fine-tuning elsewhere

WebsterXL 1.99r (Priority Support Release)

This has been sent out to WebsterXL Priority Support customers, and is a fairly major upgrade, including the speedups announced previously, many enhancements for various websites, an option to invert the drag-scroll direction, and various other things.

UniPrint 1.01

This upgrade dealt with a problem printing to certain printers which demanded to be given a filename when printing. It shouldn't have caused problems, but some Windows drivers wouldn't accept jobs without.

If you believe you should have receieved these upgrades, but have not, please wait 24 hours, and if you still haven't received anything via email, please contact us.

R-Comp

SuperFPEm 2.48 available

21st November 2002

Mech

SuperFPEm version 2.48
I have continued to develop SuperFPEm, a module that provides a speed increase to floating point emulation.

I've fixed a number of bugs since I last posted to csa.announce and if anyone still experiences problems with it, I would like to know.

It can be obtained from this URL:

http://www.toth.org.uk/~mech/

SuperFPEm speeds up floating point operations on RISC OS 3.5 and above and supports the versions of FPEmulator released with the 32-bit tools. It supports StrongARM, ARM710 and ARM610. It doesn't support the ARM7500FE, so ignore this message for A7000+, Riscstations, Micos etc.

The archive includes a help file that should give any further information that may be required.

Mech

E-Merge e-mail mail-merge program

19th November 2002

John Williams

To fulfil an immediate need of my own in updating my records concerning Pic_Index subscribers, I have written a simple program to generate mail-merged e-mails using a TSV or CSV file and a template e-mail.

It has been tested with POPstar mail transport, and should also work with Voyager/Posty and the Ant Suite.

It is a single-tasking program which places the generated individual e-mails in a Results folder in a suitable form so that they may be directly transferred, after checking, to the appropriate place in your mail transport software by running a simple obeyfile generated at the same time.

In case anyone else might find this useful, I have placed the application on the Pic_Index site accessible from the front page:

http://www.PicIndex.info/

- and a sample template and TSV file containing fictional data are also provided.

Whilst retaining copyright on the program, I am happy to make it available to individual private users, and would be happy to receive feedback on its efficacy at the address on the web page.

I'm hoping that JSD will consider building such a feature into Pluto, which would make this program redundant.

Whilst you're there, have a look at Pic_Index as well!

John Williams

Announcing Oww 0.68.5

18th November 2002

Simon Melhuish

Announcing Oww 0.68.5

http://melhuish.info/simon/projects/oww/

[Oww is an application for RISC OS and Linux (and other Unix flavours) to control a Dallas Semiconductor / AAG 1-wire weather station, and associated weather instruments. See www.aag.com.mx for hardware. UK supplier: http://www.techsupplies.co.uk/]

0.68.5 is a bug-fix release. The wind vane ring colour palette is now read in the correct sense.

Further information on Oww releases may be found at:

http://melhuish.info/simon/projects/oww/news.html

Simon Melhuish

GCC/GCCSDK 2.95.4 release 2

16th November 2002

Nick Burrett

GCC is a free collection of compilers that provide the user with a powerful tool for translating C, C++ and Fortran source into fast ARM assembler that is suitable for execution on RISC OS.

GCCSDK is a portable build environment for creating ARM executables to be run natively on RISC OS. The build environment is designed to be hosted on a Unix-like system, such as GNU/Linux, FreeBSD or Solaris.

This is the second release of GCC 2.95.4 and focuses mainly on useability bug fixes, compiler and C run-time library fixes.

The compilers are large programs and will require at least 6Mb of free memory to execute, so you will either require a RiscPC or a an 8Mb machine. See http://hard-mofo.dsvr.net/gcc for download information.

We consider this to be the best version of GCC for RISC OS and recommend that all existing users upgrade to it. The compiler toolset should be considered stable.

For full download instructions, mailing list information and bug reporting instructions, please visit

http://hard-mofo.dsvr.net/gcc - The main distribution for GCC.

GCCSDK Developers, 2002.

Nick Burrett

Windfall Engineering's stance on Viewfinder

14th November 2002

John Kortink

[Posted in the interests of right-to-reply - Mod.]

Considering the recent flurry of disinformation regarding the Viewfinder support given or not given by Windfall Engineering, recently leading to yet more disinformation, the following will need to serve to clear up the view.

The (moderated) Windfall Engineering mailing list was created to flush out the unproductive rows constantly instigated by a number of contributors to the Viewfinder mailing list, something which the mailing list administrator, David Ruck, refused to deal with. Users have subsequently been asked by Windfall Engineering to move to the Windfall Engineering mailing list for continued support, support via the Viewfinder mailing list being dropped. A large number of users moved to the new mailing list. A larger number, apparently uninterested in any further support from Windfall Engineering, didn't.

Support for Viewfinder, contrary to what is being said by those unhappy with the creation of the Windfall Engineering mailing list, and perfectly willing to violate the truth in the process, has never been dropped outright. Users were simply asked to move from the unmoderated Viewfinder mailing list to the moderated Windfall Engineering mailing list to receive continued support from Windfall Engineering. No more, no less. Those who have chosen not to do so have not only sidetracked themselves, but have also made it impossible for the moderation on the Windfall Engineering mailing list to be effective.

Considering this clearly undesirable-for-all situation, Windfall Engineering has decided not to release further updates to the Viewfinder software until the Viewfinder mailing list has been closed and all users have joined the Windfall Engineering mailing list. David Ruck, in starting the 'RISC OS graphics cards' mailing list and closing the Viewfinder mailing list, has chosen to 'rename' the offending mailing list, instead of simply laying the whole matter to rest, so all Viewfinder users can enjoy continued support and software updates.

This, to give the affair some background, after 2 years of continued free software updates (including honouring many user requests) and solid support from Windfall Engineering.

To whom it may concern, judge for yourselves.

John Kortink

LogosWord 4.8 Released, plus other updates

14th November 2002

W. Simpson

LogosWord 4.8 released
LogosLite 3.26 released
New plugins released

www.logosword.co.uk

-- LogosWord --

LogosWord is a Bible Study software package, now at version 4.8.

Visit www.logosword.co.uk/register.shtml to download a demo.

The offer of a 20% discount on the NASB Bible Study module when purchased with LogosWord is still available. To read the [improved] 'preview' page (with snapshots) of this very useful study pack (which includes the highly-acclaimed NASB translation, Hebrew and Greek lexicon/concordances, study outlines and the extensive NASB cross-references and translators notes) go to http://www.logosword.co.uk/LogosUser/packs/NASBinfo/index.shtml

-- LogosLite --

LogosLite is a Bible text viewer, now at version 3.26.

Visit www.logosword.co.uk/logoslite.shtml to download the latest version of LogosLite.

-- New plugins --

If you have previously downloaded lexicon plugins from the LogosWord website, you should be aware that the names of the free Greek and Hebrew lexicons have changed. They are not called "Strongs" anymore, but there are two new Greek and Hebrew lexicons added to the collection which *are* called "Strongs". If you want to make use of the new lexicons, your safest bet is to download the new ones plus the renamed originals (now called 'Thayers' and 'BDB').

To view the ever-increasing list of resources available for LogosWord, go to www.logosword.co.uk/logos.shtml

Contents to date:

W. Simpson

ViewFinder Mailing list closed

13th November 2002

David J. Ruck

This to let people know that the ViewFinder mailing list which I created in June 2000 for to offer help and support for users of the card, has now closed. All support for the card should be directed to the Windfall mailing at:

http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/windfall

This action has been necessary due to continued statements by John Kortink that no further development or support will be provided for the ViewFinder card, while the unmoderated ViewFinder mailing list was still in operation.

At the request of the 220+ former list members who wanted a forum to continue the free discussion of various topics, I have created a new mailing list for users of all machines featuring accelerated graphics cards, which will also include Castle's new Iyonix. This can be found at:

http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/riscos-graphics-cards

I would like to stress that it has no connection with Windfall engineering and offers no form of offical support or endorsement for the ViewFinder or any other products.

David J. Ruck

Joystick driver for Microdigital Mico

13th November 2002

Christopher Bazley

A joystick driver for the Microdigital Mico computer (which has a PC gameport mounted on an ISA soundcard) is now available for download from my website. I wrote this over the summer to allow a standard PC analogue joystick (or two, with a Y-cable) to be used with all existing RISC OS games.

Features:

N.B. The PRMs seem to imply that the implementation of 'dead zones' is the responsibility of client programs. I find this rather stupid, since they can be in no position to know about the characteristics of individual joysticks. But if that is what is desired then you can always *JoystickConfig -noctrzone -noendzone.

I had been in contact with Microdigital about official distribution as part of their Plug'n'Play support software, but they seem to have lost interest. Therefore I am distributing it myself for the benefit of any other games playing Mico owners. The URL is http://www.bigfoot.com/~chrisbazley/games.htm#micojoy

Note that since the module is written in C it requires a version of the shared C library that supports the APCS-32 calling standard (available from http://www.bigfoot.com/~chrisbazley/download/32bitModules.zip)

Christopher Bazley

Phasers on Stun at Stuart Tyrrell Developments

13th November 2002

Stuart Tyrrell

Stuart Tyrrell Developments are pleased to announce a range of new finger-operated trackballs for use with RISC OS machines via their PS2MouseMini interface.

The trackballs, starting from UKP14.95 all include finger-operated select, menu and adjust buttons. The range also includes devices with built-in laser pointers - even a wireless version! They are ideal for presentation and general use.

For further details, please see http://www.stdevel.com/mice.html

Stuart Tyrrell

SSH-2 library ported

13th November 2002

Maarten Bezemer

I've ported the newest PuTTY (0.53) code to use with CVS. This code contains the complete SSH protocol this protocol makes connections secure. So it's very often used to send all kinds of data around the internet. (PuTTY contains also code for telnet and rlogin protocols, but these aren't used by CVS, so they may not be working...)

But the SSH protocol is perfectly usable for other programs since I didn't made modifications needed ny CVS.

I've created a zip-archive which contains the PuTTY source used by CVS. As an expample I've also included the source code which acts like a kind of interface for CVS. With this file it's very easy to find out how to use the library.

It's available at my website:
http://home.student.utwente.nl/m.m.bezemer/cvsuk.html

Maarten Bezemer

TinyThumb v1.01 released

13th November 2002

Stephen Borrill

We are pleased to announce version 1.01 of TinyThumb has been released today.

TinyThumb is not a complicated program. It is designed to do one task and do it well. It will produce small versions (thumbnails) of a series of JPEG images. The thumbnails will all have the same height or width. It will recurse through a directory tree. Finally, it can generate a series of HTML pages with the thumbnails displayed so that they can be clicked on to download the original image.

TinyThumb is particularly useful for use with digital cameras as they can often produce very large images with cryptic filenames which can take a long time to search through if you want to locate a certain photo.

Verion 1.01 fixes a known problem with very long pathnames as well as offering a number of different formats to display the path in.

TinyThumb can be downloaded from:

http://www.precedence.co.uk/downloads/tinythumb/

Stephen Borrill

CVS version 1.02 available

13th November 2002

Maarten Bezemer

CVS port 1.02 is right now available at my website.

The changes included in version 1.02 are:

So in this versiob of CVS SSH-2 is also supported. Unfortunatly this is very slow. (At the the key genereration is) So CVS uses SSH-1 as a default. With the new command SSH-2 can be used. Se -t to view evey step in the authentication process.

I've turned the ssh agent client code off, so it's not possible to use a personal key to log in. First I've to find out how this works before I implement this.

For more information about my port or for a copy of it (or its source files) please have a look at my website: http://home.student.utwente.nl/m.m.bezemer/cvsuk.html

What is CVS?

CVS is a version control system. Using it, you can record the history of your source files. This means that it stores all changes made by one or more developers to one or more source files.

For more information about CVS itself and what it does, please have a look at the documentation on the official CVS website at one of the following locations:
http://www.cvshome.org/docs
http://www.cvshome.org/docs/manual

Maarten Bezemer

Acorn/RISC OS Soft-Wear

12th November 2002

Sober T-Shirts

Sober are pleased to announce Acorn/RISC OS T-Shirts. For as little as 5.99 GBP you could be the proud wearer of our quality soft-wear. You can either use our pre-made design (see website) or send us your own design and we will produce it. Prices are as follows:

Front Design Only Back And Front Design P&P for <5 items P&P for >=5 items

Front Design Only 5.99 GBP
Back And Front Design 6.99 GBP
P&P for <5 items 1.00 GBP per item
P&P for >=5 items 5.00 GBP total

Send orders to:


Jonathan Tyreman
Sober Sales
Young Enterprise
Egglescliffe School
Urlay Nook Road
Eaglescliffe
Stockton-on-Tees
TS16 0LA

Please include your name, address, email address, phone number, order code (or attach your design if made by our t-shirt designer-see website), size required (S/M/L/XL) and a cheque for the correct amount. If you wish to use your own design then please send it as GIF or JPEG format on a floppy disc (DOS 1.44MB) or CD with your order, It will be returned to you with your t-shirt. If you wish to use the "Acorn Nut Device" in your designs then please to because we have permission off Herman Hauser to use it. These will make ideal Christmas presents, and the first deliveries should be within 21 days (earlier depending on demand) We do also do non-RISC OS T-Shirts so please look at them on our website. All sales enquires to sober@banners.iconbar.com Our website is at http://mysober.tk/ or http://banners.iconbar.com/sober/

Do not delay... orders will be processed on a first come first served basis

Andrew Duffell

HTMLcheck 1.10

10th November 2002

Tom Hughes

I am pleased to be able to announce the release of version 1.10 of my HTMLcheck software for validating HTML pages.

This is a simple recompile of the previous version with the 32 bit tool chain to enable the provision of a 32 bit compatible version of the software, which will be used automatically on machines with an appropriate run time environment installed.

More information, including the software itself, is available for download from my web site at:

http://www.compton.nu/htmlcheck.html

Tom Hughes

LinkFS 2.00

10th November 2002

Tom Hughes

I am pleased to be able to announce the release of version 2.00 of my LinkFS software for providing symbolic links to directories.

This is a complete rewrite of the original software which fixes a number of minor bugs and also introduces several new features:

More information, including the software itself, is available for download from my web site at:

http://www.compton.nu/linkfs.html

Tom Hughes

Analog for RISC OS 5.24 released

9th November 2002

Stefan Bellon

I've updated my RISC OS port of Analog to the current version 5.24 which fixes a few security bugs. Additionally I introduced wildcards when specifying logfiles on the command line.

If you don't know what's that all about, Analog is a webserver logfile analyser. Just have a look at http://www.analog.cx/ as this is its real home.

My RISC OS port can be found in the software section of my homepage at http://www.sbellon.de/software.html

Stefan Bellon

Oops and UPS at Stuart Tyrrell Developments

6th November 2002

Stuart Tyrrell

USB Free hub offer to be extended
As you may already have heard, Stuart Tyrrell Developments have been giving away a free Hub with the Simtec USB card during October.

The scheme was a bit of a runaway success, to the extent that we were able to negotiate a very attractive price for hubs, and given that they're pretty little ones with lovely switched mode power supplies, we were, erm... "tempted" by a significant quantity discount.

With this in mind, we are pleased to announce that the offer for a free hub with the Simtec USB card will be extended until the end of November, or whilst stocks last.

See www.stdevel.com/USB.html for more information.

New Uninterruptible Power Supply frmo Stuart Tyrrell Developments
Stuart Tyrrell Developments are pleased to announce that they are able to supply the Energy Protector 650 UPS.

The UPS provides up to 45 minutes of backup time, along with surge protection and RFI filtering. An AVR mechanism will boost or buck the mains voltage if it is out of tolerance.

It is equipped with two mains outputs, and comes complete with cables to attach these to RISC OS or PC-type machines, monitors or peripherals. Provision for the protection of a modem line is also present.

The Energy Protector 650 costs UKP64.95+UKP10 carriage = UKP74.95 including VAT (ie UKP55.28 exc VAT and carriage).

See www.stdevel.com/UPS for more information.

Stuart Tyrrell

!FSI_Batch 2.9

6th November 2002

Jochen Lueg

On my webpage is the latest version of this program. Go to the bottom of the index page at

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

and select the link to my share ware page. And while you are there, why not take a look at the beautiful Roe Valley as well.

This version has one very useful addition - you can now enter the scale of any conversion as a percentage value - from 5% to 1000%. I don't know why I didn't do this to begin with!

For those that don't know the program:

Batch FSI is a front-end to ChangeFSI and allows you to drop up to 200 image files on its window. It will now convert all these images according to the options selected, while you can go away and have a cup of tea or a well deserved nap. Most of the options can be selected with buttons, rather than via menus.

You can, for example, set the program to half size, output JPEG at 65%. Now drop 200 photo CD images on the window and come back half an hour later to view the results.

If your filer only allows 77 files per directory the program will automatically create sub-directories to store the overflow.

!FSI_Batch is shareware.

Jochen Lueg

Thumbcat an image catalogue application

6th November 2002

Malcolm Ripley

Title: Thumbcat

Abstract: Image catalogue

Author: Malcolm Ripley

Version: 2.0pre release - 5th November 2002

Location: http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/mripley/index.html (software section)

Description:

The original intention of this program was to create an HTML catalogue of photos that could be burnt onto a CD and be compatible with both RISCOS and Windows. An immediate need of my own. The first version achieved all of this perfectly. However, it immediately (I really do mean zero seconds!) became apparent that the functionality could be extended to include all types of images, including vector files, and that editing of catalogue details would make far more sense in an interactive catalogue environment rather than the text files.

Enter version 2 (I couldn't upload v1 anyway due to a website problem). This greatly extends the original scope so that Thumbcat will catalogue the following:

Sprites
Drawfiles
AVI's (from digital cameras)
JPEG's
EXIF's (little endian and big endian)
Any file formats recognised by ImageFS e.g. BMP, Photoshop, WMF , TIFF etc

The complete release will also have the facility to create a catalogue of a read-only sources e.g. clip art CDROM's from PC's. This will be interactive not HTML.

I had hoped to complete version 2 before now but due to my latest project at work I have little time and energy left so I'm not sure when it will be finished. Therefore, I have decided to release a cutdown V2, essentially V1 with the additional image file types. In fact it's not cutdown at all but faded out on the Iconbar menu.

Since I'm still coding, recommendations for minor improvements would be most welcome and possibly accomodated in V2. More extensive recommendations will be reserved for a future release.

Malcolm Ripley

ARMalyser version 0.35

6th November 2002

David J. Ruck

ARMalayser version 0.35 is now available from http://www.armclub.org.uk/free

Enhancements in this version

Bug Fixes

The following apply to the non RISC OS versions

Background information
ARMalyser is an ARM code analyser that understands RISC OS executable, module, object and library formats. It can output disassembler 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 26bit and 32bit RISC OS with a desktop front end, and command line versions for Win32, ARM and x86 Linux.

David J. Ruck

KinoAMP 0.22

5th November 2002

Peter Everett

KinoAMP v0.22
An MPEG movie player. Changes in this release are,

Download your free copy from,

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

The majority of the coding was by Henrik Bjerregaard Pedersen, and the changes required to support multitasking were quite extensive. The 32 thousand colour drivers give a much improved display with no impact on speed. Many thanks Henrik.

In addition, it includes a fix to stop the last few frames of some clips from being skipped.

I should add here that the player only multitasks when it has spare time. i.e. when paused or when playing small picture sizes. There are a few small bugs with the multitasking 'always' option that I have not found yet but they are only 'cosmetic' and shouldn't cause any problems.

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

RiscX 0.07 released

5th November 2002

Leo White

Just a quick note to say that version 0.07 of RiscX is now available for download.

Changes in this version are

Go get it here ... http://www.beyondthought.co.uk/

For those that don't know, RiscX is an X Server application for RISC OS. It allows you to run the various X client programs on a remote server (Usually a Unix/Linux based system) and see the output on your RISC OS desktop. Its one way of getting Mozilla to run on a RISC S box.

RiscX should run on any RISC OS 3+ machine (Assuming you have the memory) And has a single tasking and multi tasking mode. The multitasking mode runs quite happliy on a StrongARM machine, and the single tasking version is fast enough for most things on non-StrongArm machines.

Leo White

New version of SuperFPEm released (2.42)

5th November 2002

Mech

Faster Floating Point (a bit)
SuperFPEm 2, the FPEmulator performance enhancer has been updated. It has had bug-fixes and performance enhancements since the last announcement I submitted to this newsgroup.

http://www.toth.org.uk/~mech/

SuperFPEm 2 is a freeware module that installs in parallel with the standard RISC OS FPEmulator module. It speeds up common maths operations for software using the ARM FPA instructions. All RiscPCs (but for a rare few) lack this hardware and rely on software emulation.

SuperFPEm is no use to the Riscstation R7500 machines, the Acorn A7000+, or the Microdigital Mico.

SuperFPEm 2 has been designed to work with RISC OS versions 3.5 upwards and with StrongARM, ARM610 and ARM710. It is not compatible with RISC OS 3.1.

I have no idea if it's 32-bit compatible without testing it on suitable hardware. It is supposed to be.

Warning: SuperFPEm 2 is a very low-level piece of software and any bugs in it may cause software to crash at random. It is supplied as-is and with no warranty as to its usefulness for any particular purpose.

Please send any bug reports to: mech@toth.org.uk

Mech

RISC OS South-East Feedback

4th November 2002

Mr J Sawer

THE RISC OS S-E SHOW
The organisers would like to thank all exhibitors and visitors to RISC OS S-E for making this a most memorable show. We hope you all had a great time.

There were 518 visitors, with the result that it was a little busy!

As one load of visitors tried to get into the hall and another lot queued for the theatre, somone commented "and they say the RISC OS market is dead." That remark summed up the buzz that was around the show, something remarked upon by several exhibitors.

Now you have a chance to give your comments on the show by mailing feedback@fillin.co.uk.

We know there are a couple of areas that could be improved but think these were negligeable compared to the tremendous success of the show.

Mr J Sawer

A radio operated mains controller

4th November 2002

Jochen Lueg

On the interfacing section of my website, http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/tudor (scroll to the bottom of the index page for the link), is the write up of my latest hardware project. This describes a four channel radio operated mains controller which can switch up to four 13 amp sockets.

The total cost of the project is about 24 ukp - assuming you can lay your hand on the "remote control sockets" unit, which I bought from Lidls super market. The project is accompanied by a small demonstration program called "!MainsCon" which simple turns four mains socket on or off with the click of a mouse.

As usual, any comments are welcome.

Jochen Lueg

R-Comp/RCI at Show this weekend

1st November 2002

R-Comp

Rather than lots of small announcements about our show offers this weekend, here's a "digest" version to let you know what we'll be up to.

NEW PRODUCTS
DialUp2 and UniPrint are our two main new products and these have been announced separately. If you're interested, read the press releases, or visit our website at www.rcomp.co.uk

SPECIAL OFFERS
We'll have special offers on our Cable and ADSL broadband units. Our prices have always been good, and we include special software, documentation and support, but we're doing more "specials" at the show! In fact we have great offers on almost all our networking products, so now is a great time to buy!

Our Feathermail anti-spam service will be available for 25ukp per year (saving you a few pounds).

Expect other offers too!

WEBSTER XL NEWS
It wouldn't be a RISC OS show without a new version of WebsterXL! As usual, we'll have the latest version available, hot off the programming press. Most people know that WebsterXL is almost synonymous with "actively developed"!!!

The new version includes the usual raft of enhancements and fixes, and includes several options which can dramatically reduce time to render pages (on a test site picked at random, time [as reported by the browser] with a modem connection dropped from 40+sec to under 15sec). Obviously the effectiveness of these improvements will depend on the site in question, and the machine you're running on, but enhancements are always welcomed!

R-Comp

See Aemulor - the 26-bit emulator for Iyonix - at the Guildford show

1st November 2002

Neil Spellings

Spellings Computer Services Ltd are pleased to announce that a preview version of their forthcoming 26-bit emulator for the recently announced Iyonix PC will be on display on the AAUG stand at the Guildford show this weekend.

More details on "Aemulor" (pronounced aim-you-lore) will be announced during November, but in the meantime we are please to open the doors to the Aemulor support and discussion forums for questions and general chit chat regarding 32-bit software conversion, 26-bit emulation, XScale or other loosely related topics. We cant promise to answer all your questions until more details on Iyonix PC and Aemulor are in the public domain, but we will do our best.

If you wish to be kept informed about Aemulor news and developments, visit our website and signup for our email newsletter.

Aemulor website http://www.aemulor.com/
Aemulor support and discussion forum http://support.aemulor.com/
For more details on the show visit http://www.fillin.co.uk/seshow/
For more details on Iyonix including a chance to win one, visit http://www.iyonix.com

Neil Spellings


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