If you think your RISC OS desktop is looking a bit bland and in need of a lick of paint, Paolo Zaino has the tool to help with that task in the form of ExtTheme – and he’ll be presenting it to the RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) at the group’s next meeting, on 20th April.
A theme is a package of graphics and related items designed to give your desktop a particular appearance – and the ExtTheme application is intended make installing and switching between different themes as easy as possible. There is already theme support built in to [some versions of] RISC OS, and Paolo’s application integrates with and expands upon this, while maintaining backwards compatibility with older theme formats.
Paolo will be showing off some of the themes he has designed to work with ExtTheme, including a dark mode – which puts lighter foreground text and icons, etc., on a darker background. This type of theme is quite popular because some people find them easier to work with, suggesting they suffer less eye strain and tiredness than they get from looking at a brighter display – and, depending on the type of screen in use, can reportedly reduce the overall power consumption.
In addition to Paolo’s own designs, there are other themes available, such as Martin Eastwood’s Frosted and Obsidian, which don’t stop at just the main desktop appearance, but also include new icon sets for many commonly used applications – and if there is time, the group will take a look at these.
As usual, the meeting will be a hybrid one, with some people attending in person and others attending online. If you can make it to the venue, your destination is:
The Duke of Sussex
(Upstairs in the Chichester or Petworth Room)
23 Baylis Road,
London,
SE1 7AY.
There are directions to the venue on the ROUGOL website, and you can expect to find members lurking from around 6:30pm. The meeting proper will commence from around 7:45pm.
If you can’t make it to the pub, but can make it to your own desk, you can use Zoom if you have a device that can run the software. You’ll also need the log-in credentials, which remain the same as previous meetings – so if you’ve already joined one you should have them, but if not you can get them by contacting ROUGOL. The Zoom meeting should be open for people to join from around 7:30pm.
Looking ahead
- 18th May: Jim Mitchell managed the ARM development team and was head of the Acorn Research Centre in Palo Alto. Jim and his team were developing ARX, which was the original operating system planned for use on the Archimedes, and will be talking to the group about his time there.
And looking back!
- A recording of last month’s presentation – Matt Godbolt, who visited the group last month to talk about JSbeeb and Compiler Explorer – is now available to watch on YouTube.
