RISC OS News

Home

RISCOS.org

csa.announce

Some news summaries maybe truncated. This is a limitation with GoogleGroups RSS feed and beyond our control unfortunately.

• DrawPrint 1.21 released - Some people have noticed a bug in DrawPrint 1.20 (or earlier) which
  sometimes caused DrawPrint to freeze when run. This has now been
  fixed and version 1.21 can be downloaded from
  [link]
  DrawPrint allows you to print a Draw file (or Sprite or JPEG) over
  several pages at the scale of your choice, with page breaks inserted
• Snapper version 1.13 - I am pleased to announce that version 1.13 of Snapper is now
  available.
  Snapper is a versatile screen capture program. It allows you to save a
  specified area of the screen as a sprite. The modes of operation of
  Snapper are
  1. Save the entire screen area
  2. Save the complete window under the mouse pointer
• RONWUG Reminder Wednesday 21st July - RONWUG - RISC OS North West User Group - 21st July 2010
  At this months RONWUG, we will be taking a look at manipulation of PDF files
  using RISC OS. We'll be looking at PDF production as well as reading and
  extracting information from existing documents.
  Don't forget - it's this coming Wednesday, see you there.
• PackIt Package creation helper released - PackIt version 0.1 first beta has now been released.
  PackIt is a tool to help create RISC OS Packaging Project packages.
  It is designed to create the most common types of Binary Package.
  If more advanced features of the packaging system are required it
  can still be used to make a start on the package which would then
• RISC OS Open Everywhere at London user group, Monday 19th July 2010 - The next meeting of the RISC OS User Group Of London will be:
  RISC OS Open Everywhere
  presented by Ben Avison of RISC OS Open Ltd
  Monday 19th July 2010, 7:45pm
  The Blue-Eyed Maid (upstairs in the Spice Lounge restaurant)
  173 Borough High Street
  London
  SE1 1HR
  Recent developments on RISC OS 5 mean that in addition to running on

Drobe

• BBC4's Micro Men: an interview and review - Ahead of tonight's Micro Men programme, which charts the rivalry between Sir Clive Sinclair and Acorn Computers in the early 1980s, drobe.co.uk spoke to the film's producer, Andrea Cornwell, to find out more about the show - and now you can read our review of the film
• 'Threaded' Firefox for RISC OS build released to test - An experimental build of the RISC OS port of Firefox that promises a smoother experience has been released for people to test. You'll need the latest 2.0.0.20 version and then replace its executable with the one from here. The technical bit: developer Peter Naulls has moved the browser's polling for user interaction into a separate thread to aid multitasking with the rest of the RISC OS desktop.
• In brief: Acorn World show this weekend - Archive editor Jim Nagel summarises what to expect at the retro-themed show. Official website here [Update 2] A report by iconbar.com's Phil Mellor of the sell-out show is here - with pictures
• RISCOScode.com webzine publishes autumn issue - Drobe man Martin Hansen has updated his personal web publishing endeavour, RISCOScode.com, with a new issue for the autumn. It includes interviews with an organiser of the inaugural London RISC OS show, to be held in October 2009, and Richard Hallas, plus more bits and pieces. Go check it out. It's free.
• Tanks a lot! Double USB toy driver joy - RISC OS USB guru Dave Higton has released drivers for two remote-controlled gadgets: an 'executive mayhem' tank and a mini car. Get ready to order your armoured, missile-firing kit into position and destroy your office colleagues, or instead swap your computer's circuits for your own race track with a remote-controlled banger. The source code is available and the software should work on Simtec and Castle USB stacks.

IconBar

• Midlands RISC OS Show - This Saturday sees the Midlands User Group Midlands Midsummer Mugshow in Kenilworth, Warwickshire. All the usual suspects will be there including [commence lazy cut and paste] RISCOS Ltd, ROOL, RComp, CJE, Drag 'n Drop, Soft Rock Software, Orpheus, Qercus, Steve Fryatt Software, Netsurf, MathMagical, Serious Statistical Software [end cut and paste] and of course the Midland User Group themselves.
• RISC OS on The Register - Tech-centric news site The Register have an article up that gives a brief overview of Acorn, the BeagleBoard, and the fact that RISC OS runs on it. Not exactly new news to the average RISC OS user, but the article is still worth a look just for to see the comments from old hands such as Eddie Edwards, Heyrick, and Hugo Tyson, and some extra trivia tidbits linked to by commenter jlocke.
• Wakefield 2010 photos and tweets - Thanks to the Wakefield RISC OS Computer Group for putting on another great show - the turnout was good and the atmosphere was relaxed and friendly. Sorry, there's no detailed show report from me this year, but to give you an idea of what went on here's a summary of the tweets that I posted throughout the day, interspersed with various comments from the peanut gallery Scroll down for my photos from the show (and Joel Rowbottom has uploaded more here).
• Wakefield Show this Weekend -
• Easier video playback on RISC OS? - Watching video on RISC OS isn't very easy. We've run an article here on how you can download and convert YouTube videos into a format RISC OS can understand. Though it's very clever, and the tools involved are actively developed, it's not as simple as clicking 'Play' in a browser window.

MyRISCOS

• RISC OS 6.20 released - After previewing it at the recent Midlands show, RISCSOS Ltd. have posted the latest version of RISC OS (6.20) out to subscribers.
• Wakefield Show 2010 details - For those whom might have missed it (as I did despite being someone who's got little excuse), the Wakefield RISCOS Computer Club have launched their website a short while ago.
• MUG Show News - Yesterday's MUG RISC OS Show went off without very much of a fanfare and there's not been too much news about the show but we do have a little bit of news for you...
• Midlands Christmas Show 2009 - The RISC OS Midland User Group (MUG) 2009 show is taking place on Saturday5th December and is again at Birmingham University, Guild of Students, B152TU.
• Health warning for RISC OS 5.15 softload on Iyonix - Anyone running the RISC OS 5.15 softload on their Iyonix "should treat it with extreme caution!" according to Steve Revill.

RISC OS Open

• Roadmap for the future of RISC OS - Following from the publishing of the source code on the ROOL site, RISC OS development has gained momentum over the past couple of years. We are close to a point where we can say one flavour of the OS, RISC OS 5, can run on most of the current platforms: Beagle Board, IYONIX pc, RiscPC, A7000 and emulation.Within ROOL, we don’t want things to stop there. What we would like to see is for all of the talented developers out there to be paired up with tasks that they are interested in working on which contribute to the ‘greater good’ of the system.As a tentative first step in that direction, we have published a list of the sorts of tasks which we feel could be adopted in order to move things along. We haven’t prioritised them or done anything more than simply enumerate everything (significant) that we can think of.We’re sure there are more good ideas out there and there is probably some stuff in our Wish Lists forum that we’ve missed. We would very much welcome feedback from the community – so add the things to our list that you think are important to the future development of our favourite operating system.
• Birmingham MUG Show, Sat 10th July - RISC OS Open will be attending this year’s Midland User Group (MUG) show on Saturday the 10th July at:St John's Church Hall205 Warwick RoadKenilworthWarwickshire CV8 1HYThis will be a great opportunity for you to come and find out what the latest developments are in the RISC OS scene and see some demos of RISC OS running on new ARM-based hardware platforms, emulators and native RISC OS machines.For more information, take a look at the official MUG Show site.
• RISC OS in The Register - They say that any publicity is good publicity, but it’s even better when it’s good publicity to start with! We were surprised and pleased to see that the efforts of the RISC OS community have been noticed by the mainstream press.To have a look at this coverage, take a look at The Register.
• RISC OS Open at Acorn World - This weekend, RISC OS Open will be attending the Acorn World part of Britain’s largest celebration of vintage computing: the Vintage Computing Festival in Bletchley Park from 19th-20th June 2010.We will be proving that RISC OS is still alive and well with a range of demonstrations, including:RISC OS on the Beagle BoardRISC OS under emulationFuture RISC OS hardware platforms (Touch Book)Come along and find out what all of the fuss is about! You can also help support the cause and pick up some ROOL merchandise, including:MugsT-shirtsShow CDs with the latest software and sourcesDeveloper toolsThe Acorn World section is supported by the RISC OS User Group of London.
• ARM Ltd. FPEmulator sources published - RISC OS Open (ROOL) are pleased to announce the immediate release ofsource code supplied by ARM Ltd. (ARM). This sourcecode has been published as Open Source software under the New BSD licence and it comprises the FPA supportcode (FPASC) and emulator (FPE).The FPE is a key part of the RISC OS operating system and as such theavailability of these components in source form is a key step towardscompleting the publishing of the full sources to RISC OS. You can findthe new FPASC source code within the ROOL CVS repository as part of theFPEmulator module.Until now, the FPASC and FPE have only been available to the public inbinary form. This is equally true for other operating systems, such as theBSD derivatives. ROOL will be contacting the maintainers of various ARMBSD projects in due course.Note to editors: this press release does not constitute an endorsement ofRISC OS or of the FPE by ARM.