Having been developing and showing off his SatNav application and RISC OS GPS device at recent shows, Chris Hall will be taking visitors off in a new direction at this year’s Southwest Show. The event takes place just four weeks from today, and as well as the GPS device Chris will be launching a new genealogy application, FamTree, which will be available to purchase for £15.00. As its name suggests, the application builds and displays a family tree. However, rather than working from data previously entered into a rigidly structured…
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News nybble: Updated Linux for Titanium now available
The version of Linux available from Elesar Ltd for the Titanium motherboard has been updated, bringing it up to version 8.10 of Debian (Jessie), the specific distribution used. The last release was based on version 8.7, and Elesar says this is a maintenance release that benefits from both security and bug fixes, with details of the changes available from the Debian website separately for version 8.8, version 8.9, and finally version 8.10. The updated version is available either to buy from the company on a ready-to-use micro-SD card, or for…
Read MoreNews nybble: RISC OS Open holds up a finger
No, not THAT finger – one to indicate counting to, er, one! The first of RISC OS Open’s bounties to overhaul the USB stack has now been completed, bringing a number of benefits to the operating system, including the ability to use power-on-keypresses to recover the system when things go a little awry at boot; something that was present on older hardware, but lost when we made the shift to USB for our input devices. The plans for updating the USB stack were broken down into two steps in order…
Read MoreNews nybble: Build your own virtual keyboard
Kevin Wells has released a new version of VKeyboard, his application that presents the user with an on-screen ‘virtual’ keyboard, driven by the mouse. A click on a given key causes the relevant character to be inserted in the keyboard buffer, and thus sent to whichever running application has the cursor, just as if the equivalent key had been pressed on a physical keyboard. The update adds the ability to create and edit new keyboards, with the number allowed in theory limited only by the number of files that can…
Read MoreNews nybble: Fifth beta of RDSP released
RDSP, the free sound module from AMCOG Games that provides modern RISC OS systems with a greatly enhanced sound system, has been updated. Version 0.40, the fifth beta release of the module, adds a digital chorus effect, a 365 note queue for each of the 16 sound channels, and stereo sound placement. Although considered beta quality, the Wavebox-inspired module has proven to be reliable in the field, and is in use in a number of titles – from free games such as SpaceShip, written by Patrick M with sound added…
Read MoreFont Directory Pro update reaches The Village
Can now be used by Number 6. I mean on RISC OS 6! A new version of Font Directory Pro has been released by Elesar Ltd, bringing the software up to version 3.22. Originally developed and sold by LOOKsystems and now being looked after by Elesar, Font Directory Pro is a popular font management package, and makes it much easier to deal with large collections of fonts than it would otherwise be using the standard font manager that comes as part of RISC OS. The package is actually a suite…
Read MorePoint and click adventure system ScummVM 2.0 released
Now, where are my Simon the Sorcerer discs? And how do I get the contents onto my ARMSX ARMX6? A major new version of ScummVM has been released, including a version for RISC OS. The software is a ‘virtual machine’ that makes it possible to play a raft of classic “point and click” adventure games – including a great many that were never ported to our platform in the first place.
Read MoreNews nybble: Access Photoshop PSD files
Plus a new version of rRaw. PhShpLyrs is an application from Anton Reiser that makes it possible to pull the image and individual layers from a Photoshop PSD file and save them as a RISC OS-native image format. There are some limitations as to the type of PSD file, but when such a file is loaded into the application it allows the main image and any layers to be saved as sprites (with a full alpha channel). It’s also possible to wrap all of the layers (though not the main…
Read More20th birthday update for PIC suite
If you are designing or developing a piece of hardware and need to use a microcontroller, you will need a way to program it. There are many tools to do this available for other platforms (x86 in particular) – but there is also a solution for RISC OS users in the form of Rob Sprowson’s PIC suite. PIC Suite is a set of applications that make it possible to develop for Microchip’s range of 8-bit PIC microcontrollers, and it has reached its 20th birthday. To coincide with this, Rob has…
Read MoreAMCOG Games compilation now available from Elesar
With a growing catalogue available from AMCOG Games, it should come as no surprise to anyone that there would eventually be some kind of compilation available – and that has been the case since this year’s Southwest Show, when the company began selling a CD featuring their first five games. The individual games continue to be available via !Store, but if you wanted to buy them as a compilation, on CD, the main way to do so has been to pop along to a RISC OS show and hand over…
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