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Hot on the heels of Lynx, there are now more new ports available.
Tetrinet - multiplayer Internet tetris client and server.
In addition, new versions of the following programs are available:
ArcEm, Tetrinet, and updated Lynx versions are available from:
Finally, Jikes, the port of the Java compiler has been updated. This is largely due to the efforts of David Marston and Andre Schaefer.
Jikes has its own page, and is available from:
The time has come and the drobe.co.uk editors are moving off to University. Two things arise from this:
Firstly, while we settle in, the drobe news portal will probably be untouched. This may go on for several weeks but please don't think we've totally left the scene.
Secondly, any emails sent to any of the drobe editors will probably not be looked at for a few weeks as we get our computers connected to the uni networks (or not as the case may be). So please don't send us any mail unless absolutely necessary.
Finally, on a happier note, our Cerilica Vantage review is online and ready to for you to read.
Drobe News Portal: http://www.drobe.co.uk
See you soon and thanks for reading drobe.co.uk.
Peter, Chris and Robin
As announced a few days ago, versions 1.64 and 1.65 of BookMaker both contain a nasty bug that can cause a machine freeze.
This bug has now been tracked down, and is fixed in V1.67, along with a number of other less catastrophic bugs:
A memory management bug has been identified and corrected.
At user request, an Export option has been added to the Book menu, which will allow an entire hotlist to be saved for backup purposes.
The few users who received a copy of 1.67beta should upgrade, as that version only fixes the Browse freeze.
BookMaker is a hotlist and address book management tool that supports all major RISC OS browsers, most email clients and other internet tools.
http://www.bookmaker.riscos.org.uk/
This is just a quick note to announce the availability of version 1.35 of AMPlayer (FrontEnd, decoder modules, command line decoders). These can all be found at:
For those that don't know, AMPlayer is an MP3 player. The central decoder module comes in 3 flavours:
There is a simple example FrontEnd that comes with documentation on the module API. People have used this to write many other frontends available across the web.
There is also a set of 3 command line decoders for MP3 -> PCM or WAV. The 3 flavours of these decoders correspond to the 3 flavours of module above. This allows any RISC OS 3.5 or above machine to decode any MP3 file, albeit maybe not in real time.
1.35 improves on previous releases in various ways - full changelogs are included. Most importantly the module has been reworked to be a generic MP3 decoding resource, so different applications can make use of it without all having to support MP3 decoding natively. It can also be multiply instantiated, which coupled with the SharedSound system means that several places can be playing MP3s at the same time.
So you can listen to the news from a Internet radio station, while listening to music from your harddisc, and still hear the sounds the flash animation you are watching! (Subject to those apps being updated to talk to AMPlayer of course...)
Various bugs have been fixed, other new features added, and the system made generally more robust.
Anyone interested in using AMPlayer in a project should find all the documentation they need on the web site to allow you to do it; feel free to contact the AMPlayer developers for more information, advice or feature requests.
Many thanks to the beta testers for their help in preparing this release.
I have just uploaded version 1.2 of RiscCPS to my site.
This release adds Neo Geo emulation. For those of you unaware of the Neo Geo it is an arcade/home set up by SNK. It is a 2d platform, which is home to some of the best 2d games anywhere such as Metal Slug, Pulstar (by the guys that created Rtype), Top Hunter, Windjammers and numerous beat em ups.
With this emulation added RiscCPS now supports 71 romsets, which includes 31 Neo Geo games!
Other changes include a smidge more speed.
There is further information on the emulator and what games work in the !Help and gamelist files included in the zip file.
RiscCPS is an arcade emulator specifically for the RISC OS platform that emulates the Capcom Play System 1 & 2 and now the Neo Geo. It requires a fair amount of RAM (at least 12MB) and a fast processor (ie a StrongARM).
Note that in order to use the Neo Geo emulation you will need a BIOS image.
So if you want all this you can grab it from my website:
http://www.acornemus.freeserve.co.uk/
Version 1.20 (29 Sep 2001) of WinIcon has now been released. WinIcon is a freeware program that will convert Windows icon (.ICO) files to RISC OS sprites. This new version can now convert icons with 16, 256 or 16 million colours of any size.
WinIcon is available from http://www.voyager.co.nz/~mikef/ under the Acorn RISC OS Software section.
Also released is a RISC OS conversion of the BBC game Guardian. This is also available from http://www.voyager.co.nz/~mikef/ under the Acorn RISC OS Software section.
In line with Cerilica policy to bring a new Vantage tutorial each month, a very comprehensive Path Tool Vantage interactive tutorial has been uploaded to the Cerilica web site. This tutorial is in addition to the two tutorials supplied on the CD with the first version of Vantage.
Please download the tutorial from:
http://www.cerilica.com/vantage/tutorials/
This 19 page tutorial leads the user through many aspects of Vantage's advanced and flexible Path Tool including lines, curves, freehand as well as some use of the regular shape tool. The tutorial shows every step required to reconstruct the latest Vantage example file and reveals a few "hints 'n tips".
Please note that the downloadable Drawfile can only sensibly be rendered using Vantage as it is a mutlipage interactive document.
The latest Cerilica news items can be found at:
http://www.cerilica.com/news
Just to let you know that version 0.15 of Nutmeg (the caching, site saving and parental control application for Oregano) is now available.
All registered users of Nutmeg should be in receipt of an upgrade (sent out by email earier on today). Those of you whose email addresses we do not have will receive letters through the post on Monday morning requesting that you get in touch so that we can get a upgrade to you.
** If you do not receive an email or a letter by Tuesday then please drop us a line to let us know your email address. **
For those of you who have yet to purchase Nutmeg the latest version is available for 20UKP. It provides a cache for Oregano enabling sites which you have already visited to load up much quicker on re-visiting. It also provides a facility for saving out web sites, areas of websites or single files of a web site from the cache to disc.
Users of Cassia (the little sister of Nutmeg) can upgrade to Nutmeg for the price difference. Nutmeg offers a number of advantages over Cassia, including proper cache control and site saving facilities.
We can accept orders by credit/debit card or cheque (made payable to Image Software).
New version of StupidPlayer is out.
It's a simple MP3 Player for eQ ARM 7500FE design.
It should also work happilly on RiscStation 7500, Mico and A7000+.
New version from 27 sep 2001 (v0.6) can play mono MP3 as 22 KHz and 11 KHz MP3...
All is on http://www.eqrd.net
Many RISC OS designers will be aware of the prolific Martin Wurthner, author of numerous commercial packages as well as creator of many ArtWorks add-ons. Cerilica is now exclusively publishing Martin's latest creation which is designed to help users of Vantage access their comprehensive collection of ArtWorks creations with ease: Batch EPS.
Batch EPS is an ArtWorks add-on that is compromised of both ArtWorks modules and a stand-alone user interface. Once installed (a painless process), simply drag a directory to Batch EPS and see all ArtWorks files contained within converted over to ArtWorks' own flavour of EPS which can be directly imported into Cerilica Vantage.
This neat compact application has a number of options to help control the process of conversion as well as organise your conversions.
Batch EPS is available only direct from Cerilica Limited and is supplied by e.mail and is priced very competitively at 19.50ukp fully inclusive or 16.60ukp exclusive of VAT (no package and postage).
See http://www.cerilica.com/batcheps for more details.
The latest Cerilica news items can be found at:
http://www.cerilica.com/news
All Cerilica Vantage customers have the opportunity to take advantage of a great professional font CD offer.
The RISC OS platform is very well serviced with 'free' or 'bundled' fonts, hence the decision not to supply these with Cerilica Vantage. Everybody has access to such fonts through sites such as Harry Decker and typically every user has as many free fonts as their system can reasonably cope with.
It is the professional fonts like those produced by specialist company Electronic Font Foundry which should be sought-after. If you are serious about design and publishing, you should be serious about the main contents on an average page - the text!
Together with EFF, Cerilica is able to offer each Vantage customer the opportunity to purchase EFF's latest professional offering which contains over 800 hand-crafted fonts which can be used for both RISC OS and Windows machines (great for inter-compatibility). With approximately a 20ukp reduction, this CD may be ordered with Vantage at only 98.50ukp fully inclusive.
Customers who bought Vantage packages via overseas Cerilica dealers can order this CD direct from Cerilica Limited in the UK for the same price. This offer applies retrospectively to all Vantage customers - please refer to the release notes supplied with your package.
More details about Cerilica Vantage can be found at:
http://www.cerilica.com/vantage
The latest Cerilica news items can be found at:
http://www.cerilica.com/news
New version of Kino is out.
Kino is a MPEG video player with audio support for eQ ARM 7500FE design. It works well with 384x288 files in 15 bit depth screen. It should also work happilly on RiscStation 7500, Mico and A7000+.
New version from 27 sep 2001 add:
Fixed bug in system stream decoder, now playing video streams with audio chunk first.
"divide by zero" bug removed! Much MPEG files should work now.
Add support for 3 different modes (v0.2).
Press "T" key for switching in 3 different modes:
All is on http://www.eqrd.net
I've just updated some of !RiscSearch decoders, so that they produce some usefull output again. As usual, !riscSearch is available from www.riscsearch.de
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.
!SimpWeb, my simple utility for converting text into HTML, has been upgraded to produce unordered lists.
v1.2 can be downloaded from http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/riscos/soft.html
There is now a mailing list for WebsterXL open on smartgroups.
To subscribe go to http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/websterxl. It's currently open to everybody, even if you don't own WebsterXL
If there is something you really want WebsterXL to do, visit the forums at http://www.myriscos.co.uk/ and add it to the WebsterXL Wish List.
Please read the posting guidelines before you actually add anything to the list.
WebsterXL mailing list
http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/websterxl
WebsterXL Wish List at http://www.myriscos.co.uk/
http://www.myriscos.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=Forum&file=index
Solitaire and Tiles for RISC OS and Brain Games
The web-site supporting these items has been transferred to the Karoo ISP at a big cost reduction. The two games did have their own ...riscos.org.uk addresses, but I have been unable to get these addresses changed, having tried since mid-August without success.
The new addresses are:
Apologies to those of you who read this notice after attempting to find them at the old address, which will close very soon.
Brain Games has been selling educational games for the RISC OS platform since 1992.
The two games Tiles and Solitaire are educational games and they both run in the WIMP environment. Tiles is a board game that can be played by up to 4 players, any of whom can be computer generated. It is multi-featured, having 50 different boards in five languages. Solitaire is that well-known game where the object is to leave one ball in the centre. It also includes Colotaire, a variant, which allows children to arrive at the solution more easily.
Both of these games have free samplers on their web-sites.
A new version of BookMaker is available for download, from
This is a minor upgrade, making the use of a marbled background for the main window configurable.
It also corrects a very minor bug with the stand-alone (i.e. non-VIX) version.
BookMaker is a hotlist and address book management tool that supports all major RISC OS browsers, most email clients and other internet tools
http://anjackson.org/poot/riscos/xmlutils/
The distribution contains these binaries:
More information can be found at:
http://anjackson.org/poot/riscos/xmlutils/ReadMe.html
The documentation includes examples of how XSLT can be utilized:
If anyone else finds this stuff useful, I'd be glad to hear from you.
I have just uploaded a couple of new utilities to my website.
Windows Keys is a utility to make use of the extra keys on a Windows keyboard under RISC OS 4. The OS now provides support for the Windows and Menu keys, but it has been up to individual applications to make use of them. Windows Keys allows star-commands to be bound onto the various keys, allowing applications to be launched, directories opened, files to be loaded or almost anything else that can be done from the command line. A plugin for Configure is provided to simplify setting the keys up.
Filer Dir Patch is a small module patch that causes the New Directory option of the Filer menu to have a direct effect when clicked: a new directory with the name Directory is created. It's not earth shattering, but I've been using it for a while and felt it might as well be available to anyone else who wanted it. It seems that RISCOS Ltd are thinking the same way, as Select will apparently contain a better version of this; Filer Dir Patch should work on RISC OS 3.1 and up, however (let me know if it doesn't).
Both pieces of software are Freeware and can be downloaded from my website, at http://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/software/utils/
Website http://www.casa1.demon.co.uk/
Home of the Acorn PC software emulator information page, including patches and advice on getting the software to run on a RiscPC.
Home of the Acorn versions of the boardgame clones of RISK. 3 versions detailled and available for download, including a rediscovered originally BBC Micro program.
Also the first new RISK map in a while: !DiploMap, kindly submitted by Jonathan Conner - a European theatre game with excellent gameplay.
Home of the spares and books/ manuals page for Acorn Archimedes and BBC Micro computers.
And, due to advice (thanks everybody concerned) I have moved back to no frames. Hope the site is navigable.
Version 1.64 of BookMaker is now available for download, from
BookMaker is a hotlist and address book management tool that supports all major RISCOS browsers, most email clients and other internet tools.
Version 1.64 includes a number of minor user-requested enhancements, and adds support for GMail, FreeTerm and FTPc.
Here are the results of my little "What is your screen resolution and bitdepth whilst browsing" poll. This poll was specifically targeted at people using/interested in RISC OS, although they would not necessarily have to be using a RISC OS machine to do their browsing with. In short, the results should somewhat reflect the screen settings of people who are the target audience of RISC OS related websites. The results of this little poll have helped me in making some decisions about the new design for our website and I post these results here in the hope that they may be useful to others as well.
Please keep in mind though that at least from 1024x768 upwards many people don't let their browser window cover the entire screen (especially not under RISC OS). On my machine Oregano (demo version) opens its initial window with a width of 812 pixels whilst being in a 1024x768 mode. The 1600x1200's were mostly people with Viewfinder cards and also remember that not everybody uses (solely) RISC OS machines to do their browsing.
Some notes about the count: Resolutions smaller than 640x480 were counted as 640x480. All other 'non-standard' resolutions were rounded down to the nearest standard resolution. Bitdepths smaller than 8 were counted as 8 bit. Bitdepth 15 was counted as 16 and bitdepth 24 was counted as 32.
Bitdepth -> Colours:
8 -> 256
16 -> 32K
32 -> 16M
Count Perc Width x Height x Bitdepth
2 1.7% 640 x 480 x 8
8 7.1% 800 x 600 x 8
7 6.3% 800 x 600 x 16
20 17.9% 1024 x 768 x 8
37 33.0% 1024 x 768 x 16
2 1.7% 1024 x 768 x 32
3 2.7% 1152 x 864 x 8
1 0.9% 1152 x 864 x 16
16 14.3% 1280 x 1024 x 8
4 3.6% 1280 x 1024 x 16
4 3.6% 1280 x 1024 x 32
3 2.7% 1600 x 1200 x 8
1 0.9% 1600 x 1200 x 16
4 3.6% 1600 x 1200 x 32
---+ ------+
112 100.0%
Percentage table per resolution (bitdepth independant)
Perc Width x Height
1.7% 640 x 480
13.4% 800 x 600
52.7% 1024 x 768
3.6% 1152 x 864
21.5% 1280 x 1024
7.1% 1600 x 1200
------+
100.0%
7.1% 1600 x 1200
28.6% 1280 x 1024
32.2% 1152 x 864
84.9% 1024 x 768
98.3% 800 x 600
100.0% 640 x 480
Perc Width x Height
1.7% 800 x 600
15.1% 1024 x 768
67.8% 1152 x 864
71.4% 1280 x 1024
92.9% 1600 x 1200
Percentage table per bitdepth (resolution independant):
46.4% 8
44.7% 16
8.9% 32
------+
100.0%
Many thanks to all who took part in the poll, your input is very much appreciated.
Enigma Simulator for RISC OS version 0.30 is now available from my website at:
A graphical Steckerbrett has been added and some bugs are fixed (not the A5000 bugs yet). Also some of the wheel definitions have been corrected.
A new version of Nettle, the terminal emulator and telnet client for RISC OS is now available for download from the Nettle website.
Full details of all the changes since the previous binary release are available on the website, but highlights include faster redraw, support for blinking characters, loading of textfiles and global clipboard support. Of course, there's been a clutch of bug fixes, too!
Nettle's aim is to be the definitive terminal emulator and telnet client for RISC OS. A range of terminal emulation options will be supported, along with full colour and graphics. An ANSI task window is provided, so that ports of unix programs which provide ANSI output can be run on RISC OS in full colour and form. (Programs such as ncftp2, BitchX, nano, lynx). Other highlights include an optional line editor with history, hotlisting, multiple terminal support and URL launching. Eventually, Nettle will also contain Secure Shell (SSH) support.
To download, and for more info, please visit http://nettle.sourceforge.net/
[Following the previous announcement on 11th August, I have been asked to post a change of venue for the "RISC OS Usergroup Meeting" on 13th October 2001 - Backup Mod.]
The RUM2001 does not take place in the Evoluon but instead in "de Ketting" also in Eindhoven.
(BTW we don't expect that the Omega will be ready on the 13th of October).
I sincerely hope that the Omega will be ready on time for Wakefield and that that team will make it a huge event. I know that David and his team are working very hard to get the systems up and running and I wish them good luck.
We are going to celebrate our first lustrum and we make a nice day.
De Ketting did not demand invitations so everybody is very welcome and the entrance is here free too.
with kind regards,
mit freundlichen Grüsse,
met vriendelijke groet,
Cor v d Heijden
RUM2001 homepage:
http://riscyman.tripod.com/index.htm
R-Comp is pleased to announce that version 1.68 of DialUp has been sent out to customers in the usual way via email today.
The upgrade includes a number of enhancements based on suggestions and feedback from users.
If you think you should have received this upgrade, but have not, please allow 24 hours for the email upgrade to arrive, then if it still has not done so, please email us at rcomp@rcomp.co.uk. Alternatively we'd like to remind users that they may return their disc with a stamped addressed envelope, protected by a piece of card, at any time for the latest version on disc.
As discussed on some of the Acorn newsgroups and mailing lists, some messages have been displaying as blank when using Marcel with the RISC OS Internet Suite (formerly the Ant Internet Suite).
This was due to a buffer overflow bug in the mail transport agent (mta) module inside !InetSuite.RMStore.
I have now fixed the bug in this and released an updated module. This can be downloaded from my InetSuite upgrades page at
http://www.vigay.com/cgi-bin/search?a=inetupgrades
I've tested it with InetSuite 1.32 and there is no reason it shouldn't work with InetSuite 1.31.
Installation instructions are provided inside the archive, but please contact me if you encounter any problems. You may want to take a backup of your existing !InetSuite.RMStore.mta file before you install the new version.
There is now a mailing list for ROUGoI (The RISC OS User Group of Ireland) which members can subscribe by sending a message to <rougoi@eircom.net> and will be added to the mailing list.
Please note this is a private mailing list, but people with interest might be allowed to join.
ExpLAN announce the release of the L17AS model with full RISCOS MDF and instruction manual. Specification:
This 17-inch unit is unusual in having an external 12v power supply, which lends itself for direct use from a battery in emergency power situations or when driving from 'green' electricity (solar etc).
Price ukp579 +VAT (=ukp680.32) + carriage
Those wanting a higher specification unit should consider the Mitsubishi LCD1700M+ with a typical 350:1 contrast ratio and enhanced colour management systems. The price of this model is now reduced from ukp719 to ukp689 +VAT (=ukp809.75) +carr
Both models come with a 3-year swap-out warranty, including backlight.
Further information and details of the L15C 15-inch LCD monitor on
http://www.explan.co.uk/hardware/scrn.html
NB A properly constructed MDF (& appropriate lead) are essential to use an LCD monitor. Unlike a conventional CRT, driving an LCD screen at an incorrect frequency can produce a completely blank screen. The ExpLAN MDF's supplied are checked for accuracy of hor & vert frequency and pixel clock on RO computers with all combinations of VRAM.
We would like to announce txt2pdf 5.2 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 RISC OS. Joern-Erik LEO Burkert developed !txt2pdf: a txt2pdf RISC OS GUI (http://www.burkert.org/leo/acorn/). If you prefer we also distribute executables for Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and FreeBSD. Inside the Windows version is Visual txt2pdf, a VB GUI.
What's new in this version
Now you can execute txt2pdf without txt2pdf.cfg. It'll use the default parameters. The program will advice you but it doesn't abort the execution.
-default to print the default parameters
Test txt2pdf 5.2!
You can find it at http://www.sanface.com/txt2pdf.html
Having just been reminded by somebody that I apparently havn't built a new Slayer scanning engine for 10 months (it warns that it's old, and that you shold upgrade) I have built a new one for the people who don't want to try and do it themselves from the source distribution. It is available from
Simply rename it to remove the ,ffd suffix, and pop in !Slayer.PlugIns, and reload.
I'm currently planning on doing a new version of Slayer (I can't decide to call it v1.00, or v2.00, considering the last released version was 0.64) so I'm asking for feature suggestions, or areas that people think need improving.
You can email me at the address above. It'll get though to me quick if you remove the -news bit, as it won't go though the spam filting stuff.
For those who don't know what Slayer is, it is an anti-virus package in a similar vien to Pineapple's !Killer that myself and Luke Graham wrote under the KiwiSoft name between 1996 and 2000. It was GPLed mid 2000.
And of course, virus samples are always welcome :)
http://www.davidpilling.net/ovationpro/upgrade/op266.zip
You'll need a copy of Ovation Pro 2.60 or later to upgrade from and documents created with 2.66 cannot be loaded into older versions.
They are in a handy A5 wirebound format and weigh 6 ounces (125 pages).
The cost is ukp 5 fully inclusive of postage and tax (wherever you are in the world).
http://www.davidpilling.net/up.html
http://www.davidpilling.net/up.html
http://www.davidpilling.net/up.html
http://www.davidpilling.net/soft.html
Website http://www.casa1.demon.co.uk/
Home of the Acorn PC software emulator information page, including patches and advice on getting the software to run on a RiscPC.
Home of the Acorn versions of the boardgame clones of RISK. 3 versions detailled and available for download, including a rediscovered originally BBC Micro program.
Home of the spares and books/ manuals page for Acorn BBC Micro computers.
Finally, I have moved over to using frames, tested with Arcweb 1.92, Browse, Fresco, Webster and Oregano.
A number of XML tools, ported to RISC OS, can now be found at :
These are not the only XML tools available, but I'm trying to keep up with developments in both expat and libxml2/libxslt. On this site you will find the following archives:
XML is a content-based description format in widescale use in various places where information may be presented or exchanged in a variety of manners. XSLT is a transformation language for XML, which allows conversion from structured XML form to other formats (for example HTML). These ports are based on the expat XML parse by James Clark, and used in various applications including Mozilla and the libxml2 and libxslt libraries maintained by Daniel Veillard. The libxml2/libxslt ports are of the latest released versions, and to update them in line with base source releases.
I'm not doing very much in the RISC OS world these days, and these ports are a spare time activity for my own experience and for fun. If you don't get fun out of them, then you've more life than me :-)
At some point, these files will migrate to the movspclr site, but I've not yet had a chance to reorganise them to there.
If anyone has any queries or comments about these ports, please email me. I know the documentation is sparse, but I've got other things to be doing, unfortunately.
The CodeCraft Acorn Coding competition is over. The competition had 4 categories:
All entries can be downloaded now from the Icebird Demo Server at
http://212.99.129.82/cc3/cc3.html
Please support us by voting at the site for the best entries in each category.
!NurseW, the DrWimp macro inserter, has now been upgraded to match DrWimp version 3.60. It can be downloaded from http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/riscos/soft.html
[ for reference, XFCE has been downloaded over 45 thousand times in the last month, according to the SourceForge statistics ]
ROX-Filer 1.1.6 also features on the cover CD of this month's Linux Magazine (UK), along with the rest of the ROX desktop components (you can't miss us, we're right at the top of the index page!).
It's a developer release, so you may wish to stay with the current stable version, although the new one should be OK.
Please report any bugs found.
Changes since 1.1.6:
New features:
Options:
Translations:
Compiling:
Bugfixes:
Other changes:
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.
The filer comes with translations for Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish and Russian.
You can read more, download ROX-Filer, read the comments people have made, and look at some screenshots here:
There are two mailing lists; rox-users and rox-devel. You can subscribe here, or look at the archives:
A selection of tutorials on writing ROX applications is available on-line:
More tutorials may be written if there is demand...
Thanks to people digging around in disc boxes, the Archiology site now has a full set of test discs for Archimedes, A5000 and A30x0/4000 machines, as well as various developer discs.
URL: http://www.eclipse.co.uk/gilberts/archiology
Anything you have that might be relevant, check by email to the address above, or on the site.
The latest version of !Webgen, a small utility to create web sites from a directory of images, has just been uploaded to my website.
http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/daves/software.html
Added a user defaults option
Added an auto captions option
Moved the generated images into sub directories so that RO3 users are now limited to 70, rather than 22, images. (This can be got around by using any of the various image filing systems such as x-files are webfs etc)
Fixed a minor bug whereby the generated HTML files were not being types as such if no browser had been seen.
If you have any problems, or to submit bug reports or change requests,
email support@starfiend.co.uk
The latest version of Account2 (1.16) the freeware home accounts application is now available from
http://www.ksedwards.ukgateway.net/account2/
Added running balance to sub-account windows. Printing of sub-accounts is now possible.
Added DETAILS Search and Replace facility.
Added extra safeguards when selecting NEW.
Changed !Sprites22 to MODE 20 sprites for the benefit of OS 3.5 (and earlier) users. (There is an original set of 16 colour sprites in sprite-ex directory)
Quicker redraw of main and sub-account windows.
User preferences can be set from the new 'Choices' in iconbar menu.
Selecting PRINT with no driver loaded no longer crashes.
Today sees the launch of a new browser for RISC OS, to complement the new telnet client, Nettle.
Lynx, the popular Unix text-based browser, is now available for RISC OS from the following URL:
"Lynx is a fully-featured World Wide Web (WWW) client for users running cursor-addressable, character-cell display devices (e.g., vt100 terminals, vt100 emulators running on PCs or Macs, or any other character-cell display). It will display Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) documents containing links to files on the local system, as well as files on remote systems running http, gopher, ftp, wais, nntp, finger, or cso/ph/qi servers, and services accessible via logins to telnet, tn3270 or rlogin accounts (see URL Schemes Supported by Lynx). Current versions of Lynx run on Unix, VMS, Windows3.x/9x/NT, 386DOS and OS/2 EMX."
In addition, I'm happy to announce the following Unix-ported programs for RISC OS:
ncftp2 - console based ftp client.
nano - simple text editor, very similar to the popular pico.
less - console text pager.
UnixHome - A RISC OS application designed to provide a location for a Unix-style home directory, setting system variables required by Unix ports, and holding configuration files.
All these programs require Nettle to run properly - their use outside of Nettle is either limited or not sensible. Nettle is available from:
At this time, all these ports are to be considered experimental, and are shipped with only minimal documentation, although most have extensive help built-in. This will change in future. For this reason, I cannot provide support for _any_ of these programs at this time. As such, they may not be suitable for users not familar with these programs on other platforms.
In addition, I have provided two more ports, which will operate effectively outside Nettle:
whois - domain name "whois" database lookup.
These programs, and the previously mentioned ports are also available from:
Many of these programs were cross-compiled with gccsdk in Unix, and would not have been feasible without it. Thanks to Nick Burrett for making this available. gccsdk is available from:
There are also a number of other ports in the pipeline, which we soon hope to make available once they are ready:
TinyFugue - Popular Unix "talker" client.
bash - Bourne again shell, a very powerful command line shell.
Hi, I'd like to announce a new version of !GraphTask the graphic taskwidows application, that allows you to run many non desktop graphical programs in a window. The new version has the following enhancements:
Also updated are my operating system statistics garthering packages !APPstat, !SERVstat and !VECstat, which provide information on applications, service calls and vector usage respectively, plus the !CPUload monitoring utility. They only change is to use a registered SWI chunk, but if you download any, please make sure that you also get the others, or there will be problems if old and new ones are run together.
All the programs can be found at http://www.armclub.org.uk/free
I'll be on holiday for the next week, so if there is any feedback I wont be able to give the usual prompt repsonse.
Nettle is a terminal emulator and telnet client for RISC OS.
Nettle's aim is to be the definitive terminal emulator and telnet client for RISC OS. A range of terminal emulation options will be supported, along with full colour and graphics. An ANSI task window is provided, so that ports of unix programs which provide ANSI output can be run on RISC OS in full colour and form. (Programs such as ncftp2, BitchX, nano, lynx). Other highlights include an optional line editor with history, hotlisting, multiple terminal support and URL launching. Eventually, Nettle will also contain Secure Shell (SSH) support.
This version has been completely rewritten in C (the last released version was in BASIC), so should be much faster in general use than the old version.
For more information, please visit http://nettle.sourceforge.net/
I'm about to redesign our website and was just wondering about what screen resolution and bitdepth people use when browsing. The statistics at www.thecounter.com show that just 5% uses a resolution of 640x480 and only 4% are still browsing in 8 bit colordepth.
The 'problem' with those statistics of course is that they do not necessarily represent the percentages among RISC OS users. I mean, for all I know /all/ RISC OS users could be browsing in 640x480 and that wouldn't even acount for 1% on thecounter.com
If anybody would like to tell me what their screen settings are whilst browsing then please send a short mail to:
You don't have to greet me or anything, just something like:
res=800x600,bpp=16
in the mailbody will suffice. If you use more than one screen setting (for instance at home and at work) then just enter two or more of those lines.
If I get enough replies to make me feel that they are representative of the RISC OS community then I'll also post back the results here.
We are delighted to announce that, on 10th September 2001, APDL/ProAction will be launching the GEK compilation CD-ROM, containing every commercial title the GEK team developed for RISC OS. Whatever your taste in retro gaming, there's pretty much guaranteed to be something for everyone on this CD-ROM.
We're hopeful that the CD-ROM will also contain the various freeware offerings produced by GEK, to bring the total number of games within this collection to about ten.
This exclusive CD-ROM collection will cost 9.90ukp, plus 1ukp postage and handling. To take advantage of all the games on this CD-ROM, you'll need to have at least a RISC OS 3.5 machine [Risc PC 600 or later] and 8Mb of RAM.
To order, please call APDL on 020 8778 2659, email info@apdl.co.uk or write to APDL, 39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London SE26 5RN.
We are delighted to announce that, from mid-September Studio24 Pro will be available in a newly repackaged CD-ROM version. In addition to the standard Studio24 Pro package, we're expecting to add a small selection of photographic images, fonts, drawfiles and other resources to further enhance the creative potential of this fantastic package. The full features list is given below, for those who are unfamiliar with the package. A demonstration version of Studio24 Pro does exist, and will be included on the next RISC World [September] and RISCDomain [October/November] magazine discs.
The new edition arrives on CD-ROM, together with a printed - colour where applicable - manual, and is priced at 49ukp. Upgrades to the new edition are available at 10ukp, but should you wish to obtain a new manual this will cost an additional 10ukp. We will require the original program discs returning before an upgrade will be supplied.
To order, please call APDL on 020 8778 2659, email info@apdl.co.uk or write to APDL, 39 Knighton Park Road, Sydenham, London SE26 5RN.
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