Wake catch up! wake catch up! King news in a Catholic RISCOSitory style.
When I resurrected the Snippets format back in July, I commented that it hadn’t brought me entirely up to date with RISC OS news and, with the Midlands Show fast approaching at that point, I predicted that I would very likely fall further behind again.
In the period after the show, I’ve only been able to publish a few items on RISCOSitory – mainly show news, which I try to get online ASAP, even if I don’t really have the time, because it’s important that people know about such events as they are key to many of the companies and developers in the RISC OS world for promoting their software and products.
Which means that, as predicted, I’ve fallen behind again!
Over the last few days, I’ve been able to devote some time to RISCOSitory and, as a result, some new posts have appeared, and this snippets posts rounds up another small selection, but I do still have a lot to get through.
And guess what? Just as that Snippets post was around a week before a show, so too is this one, with the Portsmouth Show set to take place on Saturday 28th September.
So, once again, this Snippets post won’t bring me up to date, and I’m likely to fall behind again in the coming weeks.
C’est la vie.
“La vie.”
I said “C’est” not “Say”. Fool.
Um. Quite. Anyway – on to the actual round up…
KevSoft has moved!
Kevin Wells announced in early July that the URL at which his RISC OS software could be found has changed.
While still using the same domain name, the software was previously found on a subdomain, riscos.kevsoft.co.uk, but that is no longer the case; the website can now be found at kevsoft.co.uk (with or without the www.)
Software available from the website is includes a lottery results checker, a selection of games, a form filler, and much more.
MonopolyCal updated
Paul Sprangers announced a new version of MonopolyCal, his application for acting as a banking system when playing Monopoly, keeping track of all the financial transfers, and doing away with the need to mess around with the cash and, therefore, speeding the game up and reducing what often turns into chaos.
The update came in mid July, and features a few cosmetic improvements but, most notably, keyboard input – requested by at least one user – is now enabled.
ConvText bug fix
Paul also announced a new version of scripted search and replace utility ConvText, this time in mid-August.
The developer recommends that users update to version 3.13 as soon as possible because the New Script menu option, introduced in version 3.12, can in rare circumstances corrupt the entire script file.
RiscLua updated
A new version of programming language RiscLua was released last month, bringing it up to version 5.70.
Originally ported to RISC OS by Reuben Thomas from Lua 3.2, RiscLua is now looked after by Gavin Wraith, who says (of version 5.70) that “Its only novelty, compared to version 5.60, is the possibility of writing statements like x += y instead of x = x + y” – a syntax that works with the .., +, *, /, &, |, ^^, <<, and >> operators, and brings the Lua syntax more in line with that of Basic.”
WebGen2 updated
WebGen2, the website/gallery generator from Dave Stratford, which was last mentioned on RISCOSitory when it reached version 2.49, has seen a couple of recent updates.
Noting that version 2.50 was only ever released to a small number of testers, Dave announced an update to version 2.51 in mid-August – though the version available to download from his software page became version 2.52 around the same time. As well as fixing some minor bugs, and making the software marginally faster, changes include the ability to pause and abandon a run, as well as finish it part way through.
MTP given some TLC
Mr USB, aka Dave Higton, has been working hard in his lonely garret, updating his MTP/PTP host application, designed to allow users to connect cameras, media players and mobile phones to their USB-equipped RISC OS computers in order to transfer files between them.
The first update, at the end of July, brought the software up to version 0.18. This was followed in mid-August by version 0.19, and version 0.20 (a bug-fix release) a couple of days later.
New features include auto-starting and auto-quitting when devices are plugged in and removed, support for the Sony Experia S, support for files of unknown or unrecognised types, and the choices controllable from a window in the application, and stored in the standard Choices: repository.
From a small Acorn to 37 billion chips
TechRadar, a consumer technology news and reviews site, published an interview with Sophie Wilson in mid-July,as part of their Brit Week.
Additional material is interspersed with Sophie Wilson’s comments, including links to the first part of Micro Men, the BBC Four Drama that tells the story of Acorn and Sinclair in the early 1980s and which can be found on YouTube in eight parts – though it can also be found in one piece with a quick search. Another Brit Week feature is also linked; 10 Britons who shaped the history of computing, which lists Sophie Wilson amongst such people as Charles Babbage, Alan Turing and, er… Alan Sugar.
