Celebrating thirty years of GAG-News with ROUGOL

VinceH

With very few exceptions, magazines that centre on RISC OS have tended to come and go since the operating system first appeared1, and only a very small number have stayed the course and continue to be published today. One of those is the magazine published by the German Archimedes Group, GAG-News, which has been published every two months since April 1992 – making it one of the oldest RISC OS magazines still being published, and the oldest – and only – regularly published German language publication for the platform.

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Archive volume 26 and beyond

VinceH

Back in 2020 when the Archive Magazine found a new home with him after Jim Nagel sadly passed away, Gavin Smith proposed a bi-monthly publishing schedule, with each new issue expected to land on our doormats once every couple of months. Unfortunately, that didn’t come to pass for his first volume for a variety of reasons – not least of which was the timing. When he took over we were already in the throes of a pandemic, with all the ramifications of that, such as lockdowns and homeschooling, and like…

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Wakefield Show homeless, seeking new venue

VinceH

The Wakefield Show usually takes place in April of each year, though recent times have had an impact on that; the pandemic meant the 25th show had to be put off in 2020, and took place in 2021 – around its normal time – as an online one, with the 25th physical event scheduled for this year instead. This year’s event was originally announced for 23rd April, but ongoing refurbishment work at the hotel caused it to be put back by a month to 21st May. However, there has been…

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Midlands User Group meeting – prepping for the Summer Show

VinceH

A handy meeting to join if you’re thinking about exhibiting Later this year, the Midlands User Group (MUG) will be holding their Midsummer Show, resurrecting it as an online event, to be held using the Zoom video conferencing software. Unlike the London and Wakefield shows that have taken place via the software, however, with a run of presentations held one after the other, the group is aiming to make more fuller use of Zoom’s facilities, and make their event more like a traditional show. But online.

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The Application Tutorial and Listings Book – a review

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…

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TopModel – not yet gone, not yet forgotten

Steve Royd-Marker

Steve Royd-Marker on trying to get interest in further development of the 3D design package TopModel is a simple to use, but powerful 3D modelling package that offers real-time previews. Developed by Italian company Sincronia and originally published by Spacetech, exclusive publishing rights were acquired by Cerilica Ltd in late 2000. As with a lot of popular software from that era, development of the software ground to a halt as its developers moved on to other things, and the application was never updated to cross the 26/32-bit divide.

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Show report: London 2021

VinceH

30th October, 2021, marked the return to physical shows in the UK, when the RISC OS User Group of London (ROUGOL) hosted their customary October event at the St Giles Hotel in Feltham – the RISC OS London Show. Understandably under the circumstances, there were fewer exhibitors than in previous years, as well as few visitors; it was a much quieter show than usual – but despite that, it was still an excellent day for finding out what’s happening in the RISC OS world. So what happened? What did we…

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SprEdit by Richard Swetman reviewed

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.

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Terry Swanborough talks Lockdown Diversions in London – 21st February

VinceH

While the last couple of years have been a little less than ideal because of the pandemic, there have been some positive developments, such as the unexpected move to online meetings for some user groups, allowing people to join them from afar. Another useful benefit has been that some people were able to find a little more time for programming, allowing software to be written that might otherwise not have been.

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