The Application Tutorial and Listings Book – a review

Richard Ashbery takes a look at the latest publication from Chris Dewhurst Towards the latter part of last year, Chris Dewhurst of Drag’n Drop fame published a new book for RISC OS users. Priced at £20.00 (plus £3.00 for postage and handling), the book is aimed at RISC OS users who are familiar with BBC BASIC and wish to write RISC OS desktop applications by learning to program the WIMP. The information and example programs are fully compliant with RISC OS 5 systems, and this brief review covers the first…

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News nybble: Another BBC BASIC graphics video

Richard Ashbery has been at it again – ‘it’ being converting graphics programs from other sources (or writing some inspired by them) to run on a Raspberry Pi in BBC BASIC, and chaining them together to produce a video of the output, which he’s uploaded to YouTube. This is part 2 of a selection, and some of the original versions were written in BBC BASIC for Windows, some from the Creative Retro Coding site (aka a gallery of programs that were posted on Twitter to be run by the BBC…

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News nybble: Find out how to create animated GIFs on thanks to Richard Ashbery

The Simple Graphics Programming in RISC OS BASIC website set up by Richard Ashbery now includes a useful tutorial for people who want to make animated graphics using RISC OS. The newly added tutorial doesn’t cover the entire process, but does demonstrate how to produce, from within a graphics program, the individual frames that would be used for the eventual animated GIF. The final part of the process, mentioned but not covered, would then be to use InterGIF to turn those sprites into a single animated GIF. Three additional animated…

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News nybble: Parametric equations on graphics programming website

Richard Ashbery has added another section to his website on the subject of simple graphics programming in BBC BASIC V on RISC OS. Section 8 (which sounds ominously like some top secret government black ops outfit until you discover that it…) covers parametric (not paramilitary) equations. Ahem. Anyway… According to Richard, these equations can be used to draw standard geometric shapes such as circles, squares, triangles, etc., along with more intricate patterns such as astroids, rose patterns, fish curves, hypo-cycloids, etc. There are twelve example graphic illustrations included at the…

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News nybble: Butterfly screen saver now available on !Store

If you look at Richard Ashbery’s Graphics Programming website, and in particular at the Animated Graphics examples, you’ll notice an animated GIF that isn’t included in the programs that can be downloaded from the site – but if you want to see the program in action, it is now possible to download it via !Store, in the form of a screen saver. That GIF is described as a Butterfly Curve. The shape is formed from parametric equations – in this particular case, discovered by mathematician Telple H. Fay – which…

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News nybble: Animated graphics examples land on Graphics Programming website

Richard Ashbery has updated his Graphic Programming Website, on which he provides a handy introduction to writing graphical ditties in BBC BASIC. This update inserts a section 6, entitled Animated Patterns, on which there is a zip file to download containing over thirty programs to run, edit, and just enjoy. Referring to the page, Richard tells me he’s been “looking at the numerous and sometimes remarkable curves that can be created from parametric equations” – highlighting in particular the Butterfly Curve. Discovered by Overpuddlian mathematician Temple H. Fay, just two…

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