Reviews

The Application Tutorial and Listings Book – a review

February 27, 2022February 27, 2022 Richard Ashbery

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…

SprEdit by Richard Swetman reviewed

February 26, 2022February 26, 2022 Richard Ashbery

Does anyone remember the excellent bitmap editing program ProArtisan 24 from Clares? Richard Swetman has written a simple bitmap editor program called SprEdit which performs some impressive sprite operations. The application can be installed via Packman, or directly from Richard Swetman’s website, where Richard has also provided some useful 256 colour test sprites – scroll down to section (m) under the Graphics heading.

Dozer screen saver reviewed

July 18, 2021 Richard Ashbery

Introduction PackMan, the package management program for RISC OS computers, features an interesting screen saver program called !Dozer. Written by R.A Swetman it consists of a number of graphic savers that after a user-selected delay are automatically displayed on the screen. Having explored this program, I thought people might like know about it.

Mathematics in BBC BASIC on RISC OS

May 21, 2019 Richard Ashbery

Introduction “Essential Maths” was a book covering the programming of mathematics concepts like Trigonometry. The book was published thirty five years ago for owners of the BBC and Electron computers – remember those? The writer, Czes Kosniowski, wouldn’t be surprised to know that the principles are as relevant today as they were when he wrote it. Did you know for instance that in a ‘prime sequence’ the only even number is two?

Review: 55 BBC Micro Books on CD ROM

May 20, 2018 Richard Ashbery

Introduction Christopher Dewhurst, the Drag ‘n Drop Publications editor, has released an excellent compilation of 55 BBC Micro Books, all together on one CD ROM. For any RISC OS user who wants to have a go at BASIC programming these are an essential buy. Although biased towards the BBC Micro, quite a few of the programs will run on current RISC OS machines, or can be edited to do so quite simply. Some of the subjects covered in the books and programs are: