Snippets – 16th July 2011

Chris Gransden has announced the availability of version 3.02.1.24 of PDF, allowing users to view files in the ever prevalent Portable Document File format from Adobe. Changes in this version include better interaction with Paint and better facilities when saving images.

PDF can, of course, be used to view Drag ‘n Drop, a PDF based magazine aimed at Acorn 8-bit and RISC OS 32-bit communities – and volume 2 issue 4 is now available to purchase online for £3. Features in this issue include part 9 of Dave Stratford’s series on sorting, an article about upgrading to Messenger Pro 6, a selection of photographs from the 2011 Wakefield Show, along with a number of other articles.

Combining those 8-bit and 32-bit communities, Beebit, the freeware BBC Micro emulator from Michael Foot, is now on version 0.62. Emulating the Model B (which I believe turns 30 years old some time this year, only a few short years after Acorn’s 30th anniversary), B+ and Master range, will now run on all RISC OS computers, from the 17 year old RiscPC, through to the current nipper in the family, the Beagleboard (and, therefore, R-Comp’s ARMini). Improvements in this version include the addition of AMX Mouse emulation, a fix to the corruption of MODE 2 screens (16 ‘colours’ – 8 + 8 flashing combinations, at a resolution of 160 x 256) when running on the Iyonix, correction to alignment load issues and higher resolution plotting routines to allow it to run on the BeagleBoard.

Alan Peters from TBA Software has been busy with the BBC BASIC sources from the RISC OS Open website, and has released test versions with an updated assembler, supporting VFP/SIMD instructions. These test releases are up to version 0.03, with various fixes and changes since the first release.

And echoing my final comment in the last snippets post, on 21st June 2011, the website at acorncomputers.com has changed yet again, and is now a small Flash based site featuring an ‘About’ page that contains some text taken from Wikipedia’s page on Acorn Computers, and a ‘Contact’ page giving the same address that can be obtained by doing a WHOIS lookup on the domain, which remains registered to Julien Clairet.

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