EasyFont Pro updated

Font front furthered. A big weakness of the RISC OS font manager lies in the way in which it handles and organises lots of fonts from the user’s perspective – which is to say, it doesn’t, not in a meaningful or sensible way*. Normally, the fonts installed on the computer are presented with only rudimentary grouping – for example, under Homerton there is medium and bold, with an oblique variant of each – and when lots of fonts are installed, the user normally sees them in applications as a very…

Free books and a magazine to download

David Bradforth of Alligata Media has made two books available as free downloads via his Alligata site on MagCloud. BASIC V for the Acorn Archimedes was written by Mike Williams and originally published by Dabs Press in 1989, and was acquired by Alligata Media in 2005. According to the blurb the “book provides a practical guide to programming in BASIC V on the Acorn Archimedes. Assuming a familiarity with the BBC BASIC language in general, it describes the many new commands offered by BASIC V.”

The South West Show is dead – long live The South West Show

This year’s RISC OS South West Show almost didn’t happen. Paul Middleton of RISCOS Ltd, the show’s organiser for the last few years, revealed recently that he normally waits for the Webbington Hotel, the show’s usual venue, to reduce the prices of the rooms in which the show can be held – and it seems even more recently (early January, according to Archive 23:4, p4), Paul said that he wouldn’t be organising another show. Richard Brown of Orpheus Internet soon stepped up, with Andrew Rawnsley and R-Comp joining him to…

Snippets – 6th August 2011

Dorian Computing have made available from their website one updated and one new piece of software. Originally written by Philip Macfarlane in 1991 and “released into the public domain,” DragCom is an application designed to provide a desktop front-end for star commands, making it easier to specify arguments (often files) by allowing them to be dragged onto the main window. This not only reduces the potential for errors when typing the path and filename, but it also removes the need to repeatedly type it if a series of commands needs…

You’re once, twice, three times a shutdown

Shutdown from Kevin Wells

Kevin Wells has released a new application called Shutdown which, as its name suggests, is designed to do one simple thing: Shut the computer down. When launched, the application presents its icon – a red power button – on the left hand side of the icon bar, with the text “Turn me off” underneath it. A single click on that icon will invoke the standard RISC OS shutdown procedure, with the usual warnings; apps with unsaved data will prompt you to save (or cancel), and so on. As such, the…