Snapper is a screen capture program, originally written by David Pilling and supplied with his scanning and image processing software, and now maintained and further developed by Chris Johnson. The application allows the user to save areas of the screen as sprites – much as can be done using Paint, supplied with all RISC OS machines, but with added bells and whistles.
Read MoreFree 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.”
Read MorePlayIt 1.72
PlayIt is a tool for playing sound samples, which is used by a number of RISC OS applications, including DigitalCD. Originally written by Rick Hudson, recent updates have been made available by Christopher Martin. The latest update, version 1.72, improves reliability, especially on 26bit systems, due to several bugs being dealt with in the software’s interrupt handling, and Christopher recommends that all users upgrade to this new version. Offering thanks to Rick Hudson and Andrew Rawnsley for making the sources available, and to Willi Theiss and Jeffrey Lee for their…
Read MoreWindows on ARM legacy code shocker
We all know that one of the many reasons for Microsoft Windows being so big, requiring so much memory and disk space, and ever faster processors to be able to cope with each new version of the operating system in order to make it usable, is the fact that throughout its evolution it has always been possible to make old software run on the latest versions. This backwards compatibility, the ability to run legacy code, is one of many important features of the operating system, but for those people who…
Read MoreMoreKeys than you can shake a finger at (updated 31st March, 2012)
Everyone knows the standard ways of entering ‘extended’ characters in RISC OS – those characters that aren’t readily available from a standard keyboard by just pressing a key, or shift and a key – but the approach is arguably not as user-friendly as it might be, since it either means knowing which key combination or sequence will produce which characters (get it wrong, and you have to delete and try again), or it involves switching from keyboard to mouse in order to call up an app like Chars to find…
Read MoreFuse: Free Unix Spectrum Emulator
Back in the 1980s, there were quite a lot of 8-bit home computers to choose from and, while it might seem somewhat surprising to us RISC OS using Acorn fans, some people actually chose other machines than Acorn’s BBC Microcomputer. And enjoyed using them. Strange, I know.
Read MoreFireworkz Pro updated
R-Comp have released another update to Fireworkz Pro for RISC OS, the integrated word processor, spreadsheet and database package previously developed and sold by Colton. This latest development, bringing the software up to version 1.34/05, boasts the following enhancements and fixes:
Read MoreSnippets – 24th March 2012
It’s been a busy month again here, which means there have been no posts to RISCOSitory for a while – so here’s a quick round-up of recent goings on in the world of RISC OS. RISC OS 5.18 RISC OS 5 has seen its latest ‘stable’ release in the form of RISC OS 5.18, which features some 340 improvements since the last such release (version 5.16). The full list of improvements can be found on the RISC OS Open website, but this list isn’t written in ‘typical user-speak’. In response…
Read MoreRaspberry Pi launch causes indigestion
The launch of the Raspberry Pi this morning was either a resounding success, or it was an abysmal failure, depending on your point of view – and for the network staff of two companies, it must have been a nightmare. As expected, the first batches of the Model B device went on sale at 6am GMT, with an order restriction of one per customer. Licenced manufacturing deals were set up with Premier Farnell (see footnote) and RS Components, so that the two companies could deal with the distribution of the…
Read MoreThe early bird catches the Raspberry Pi
According to the latest post on the Raspberry Pi website, “The Raspberry Pi Foundation will be making a big (and very positive) announcement that just might interest you at 0600h GMT on Wednesday 29 February 2012.” This is expected to be the first batch of the tiny computer going on sale; Eben Upton posted a status update on Saturday morning saying that they had “been assured this morning that a first batch of boards will ship to us either today or first thing Monday” – adding that “if you don’t own…
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