The next friendly fireside chat for people interested in RISC OS software development will take place at 7:30pm on Saturday, 5th July. Taking place online via the Zoom video conferencing service, these meetings are intended as an informal way of allowing RISC OS programmers, and anyone interested in the subject, to get together online to discuss relevant matters.
Fred Graute has released version 2.00 of his Pinboard support module, ToggleBD, which can be used to raise the background of your desktop to the top of the window stack – effectively bringing it to the front of the display, with any open windows behind it – so that you can access anything pinned to it, such as iconised windows, shortcuts to files, and so on. Once you’ve got at what you need, the backdrop can be lowered again so that all your open windows can be accessed as normal.
WimpInfo is a small application that was previously supplied by Quantum Software, and is now hosted here on RISCOSitory after Stuart Halliday announced he was shutting down the software house.
If you sometimes find your RISC OS desktop a bit cluttered (which speaking personally would make it much like my real desktop) one solution is to close a few windows (or in the case of my actual desk, put some stuff away). Another solution is to run a piece of software that expands the size of the desktop beyond the visible area shown on screen, and move some of your windows into other spaces, ready for access when necessary.
Fred Graute has released version 2.01 of a utility called Makro, which allows simple string sequences to be defined, and then played back as often as needed as though they had just been typed in – much like we used to do with the BBC Micro function keys.
And one from Kevin Wells for budding programmers The Midlands User Group (MUG) held their re-branded summer event on 1st July. What used to be the Midlands Midsummer MUG Show eventually came to a close due to low attendance numbers, but in 2022 it was resurrected as an online event, and this year held again under its new ‘MUG Mega Meeting’ banner – billing it, in effect, as an extended MUG meeting, with a spread of five different speakers over its five hour running time.
Fred Graute has released a new version of MiniTime. The software displays a discreet window on the RISC OS screen with the date and time, and can be configured in various ways to make it useful yet unobtrusive.
Originally developed by Joe Taylor, AppBasic is a tool for writing Toolbox-based BASIC applications, and an update – version 3.03 – has now been released by Fred Graute.
The Midlands User Group (MUG) meeting will take place online, via the Zoom video conferencing system, on Saturday, 4th February at 2:00pm. John McCartney will be taking the main stage for the meeting, to discuss Dr Wimp’s Surgery – a book published by the late Ray Favre that provided an introduction to programming the RISC OS desktop using the Dr Wimp BASIC library.
Version 1.10 of MiniTime has been released by Fred Graute. The software provides a means to display the date and/or time in a small icon or window, with configuration options for its position on screen, the colours it uses, whether it appears above other windows, and more besides. Its goal is to provide quick and convenient access to a clock and calendar, without getting in the way.