Snippets – 24th March 2012

Mar 242012
 

It’s been a busy month again here, which means there have been no posts to RISCOSitory for a while – so here’s a quick round-up of recent goings on in the world of RISC OS.

RISC OS 5.18

RISC OS 5 has seen its latest ‘stable’ release in the form of RISC OS 5.18, which features some 340 improvements since the last such release (version 5.16). The full list of improvements can be found on the RISC OS Open website, but this list isn’t written in ‘typical user-speak’. In response to requests for a more user friendly list, Rob Sprowson posted one to usenet, which Steve Revill has since posted on the RISC OS open forum. Continue reading »

Snippets – 24th February 2012

Feb 242012
 

Basalt and the Toolbox

Steve Drain, prompted by a discussion in the RISC OS Open Ltd forum about AppBasic, has written a document about the using the Toolbox with Basalt which, he explains, has never been very well described. Basalt (“BASic ALTernative keywords”) is a module that extends BASIC by providing “alternative keywords by extending the use of actual keywords and adding new keywords, both of which are used completely as native BASIC keywords.”

The document is available online, at the link given above, and it is also included in the download for the prototype application, BasaltApp.

Steve explains that “a program is event-driven from a machine code wimp poll loop under the keyword POLL. Events and messages are registered against functions called to handle them. Apart from the use of ResEd to design the user interface there is no need for any other development environment.” Continue reading »

Snippets – 14th January 2012

Jan 142012
 

Following the release of version 1.32 of DrawPrint, Sine Nomine Software have announced version 1.34, which fixes a number of bugs, crediting Harriet Bazley for finding most of them, and offering apologies to users who have downloaded version 1.32 or 1.33 in the last few days, who will now need to download version 1.34 instead.

“Even if you don’t expect to use the new page export features,” explains Hilary Phillips, “you should still download the new version as it fixes a couple of bugs which have been around for a while.”

And Harriet Bazley has herself announced a “tweak” to SideDiff, her application to display the differences between two versions of a text or BASIC file, side-by-side in a colour-coded format. Continue reading »

Snippets – 24th December 2011

Dec 242011
 

Version 1.01 of Kevin Wells’ Simon Clone, Kevmon, is now available. An new ‘expert’ level has been added in this version, featuring eight coloured lights along with the usual four in the normal game.

According to Jeff Dogget, Fat32FS, the filing system for USB mass storage devices on the IYONIX and BeagleBoard based computers, is now at version 1.39. This release fixes a bug with drives greater than 256GB.

In My Diary, the Organizer-like program by Kevin Edwards for Windows, Mac and Linux, is now able to use Organizer’s Journal files – Continue reading »

Snippets – 19th November 2011

Nov 192011
 

Following on from the news that Pipedream is now free to download, Gerald Fitton has announced that Fireworkz for RISC OS is also now free to download. Fireworkz is an integrated word processor and spreadsheet package, with some very powerful and useful facilities, which works in a fundamentally different way to PipeDream. Both are very powerful and useful pieces of software and, if you haven’t used them before, they come highly recommended. A mailing list has also been set up for the software on Google Groups by Stuart Swales, the programmer responsible for updating the software. Continue reading »

Snippets – 9th October 2011

Oct 092011
 

Pi in the sky – or, at least, near Heathrow Airport

For those interested in the Raspberry Pi, the RISC OS London Show (29th October, 2011, St Giles Hotel, Feltham) will be well worth a visit, since the tiny, low cost computer is set to make an appearance. It’s not known at this stage if it will be running RISC OS by the time of the show, but it seems likely that it will be on the RISC OS Open Ltd stand, judging by comments in their forum.

Speaking of the Raspberry Pi, in my Snippets post of 6th August I mentioned a logo competition. Well, that competition is now closed and an excellent winning design chosen.

There’s gold in them there web pages

Continue reading »

Snippets – 10th September 2011

Sep 102011
 

QuadDioph is a new piece of software from Martin Carradus. It’s an application that solves or finds “solution of certain Quadratic Diophantine Equations, of the form x^2 + B.x.y + A.y^2 = z^p, (e.g. x^2 + y^2 = z^2, two squares adding to a square, or x^2 + y^2 = z^3, two squares adding to a cube).” The application is free to download from Martin’s website.

Martin Wuerthner has announced that an ARMv7 compatible version of InterGif. Version 6.18 can be used on the BeagleBoard, ARMini, etc. InterGif is an application for converting graphics from RISC OS Sprite and Draw formats to GIF format with optimised palettes, allowing them to be viewed on other platforms, and used on websites. Originally written by Peter Harley and now maintained by Martin Wuerthner, the software also allows GIF animations to be created from a series of Sprites, and can also convert from GIF to Sprite format.

Continue reading »

Snippets – 29th August 2011

Aug 292011
 

Christopher Martin has announced the availability of version 1.20 of FFmpeg and FFplay. FFmpeg is a versatile, open-source, multi-platform video and audio conversion system and FFplay is a very simple media player built upon FFmpeg and SDL. Christopher has also released a new version, 2.13, of Murnong, an application for fetching and decoding videos from YouTube, this update having been made necessary due to changes implemented on the video sharing website.

Continue reading »

Snippets – 6th August 2011

Aug 062011
 

Dorian Computing have made available from their website one updated and one new piece of software. Originally written by Philip Macfarlane in 1991 and “released into the public domain,” DragCom is an application designed to provide a desktop front-end for star commands, making it easier to specify arguments (often files) by allowing them to be dragged onto the main window. This not only reduces the potential for errors when typing the path and filename, but it also removes the need to repeatedly type it if a series of commands needs to be applied to it – you drag the file in once, then type each command into the relevant icon in turn, executing them as you go. There are other ways of achieving the same goal, for example by setting the commands in an obey file, but the WIMP front-end presented by DragCom might seem a more user-friendly approach to some, although it could be greatly improved – particularly in terms of compliance with the RISC OS Style Guide.

Continue reading »

Snippets – 16th July 2011

Jul 162011
 

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.

Continue reading »

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