News from RISCOS Ltd No. 20 February 8th 2002 ================= New look Acorn User ------------------- The first edition of the new look Acorn User recently landed on my desk. It looks different, and will probably mature over the next few issues as the new Editor finds his feet. The good news is that they are now using RISC OS machines to do all the page layout. Maybe Acorn Publisher will do a Site Visit to Tau Press to see how they do things behind the scenes! We have sponsored this issue and I hope everyone reads my editorial on Page 3 and takes notice. We intend to take RISC OS into new markets this year and I hope that everyone who comments about RISC OS on NewsGroups, Web Sites or Magazines will take notice and start being positive about RISC OS rather than negative. RISC OS needs to be seen as a community where companies work together and where RISC OS is used because people want to use it, not just because it is forced on them by their employers. We really don't need people whose sole aim in life is to denigrate the work of everyone else. There is a job for people like that and it is called being a politician! If you like using RISC OS then start telling other people about it rather than just letting the few moaners have their own way. But try not to let yourselves go down to the level of attacking or "flaming" people just because they don't do things the way you prefer. I don't personally have any religious views, but I do believe that the world would be a nicer place if everyone learnt to respect their neighbours and to live together, rather than trying to get rid of their neighbours if they don't behave exactly the same way as they do. Embedded RISC OS ---------------- Work is now progressing on developing a new version of RISC OS which will primarily aimed at the embedded products market. Target devices will include ARM 7500, SA110 and eventually the SA1100/SA1110 (as a result of the Ron project). The embedded version of RISC OS (which will probably be marketed under a different brand name) will be a componentised version aimed at dedicated hardware applications such as point of sale devices, internet / network terminals, portable dataloggers, process controllers etc. Embedded RISC OS will be targetted at volume products which require a limited range of features. This will provide a faster development cycle than products which require the full range of facilities expected of a desktop version. In principle it will be similar to the NCOS derivative of RISC OS previously used in Network Computers, but with the added advantage of being customisable to support the addition of third party applications as part of the ROM image. A typical example would be Point of Sale Unit, which would have the necessary POS software in ROM and would give very fast switch on time to boot straight into the POS software. The first product to use Embedded RISC OS is being developed by Castle Technology using their Neuron system. Blank emails ------------ If you have been confused by receiving odd emails that are either blank, or contain snippets of emails that seem to be aimed at someone else, and are not junk emails that usually contain masses of HTML code, then it is probably the result of the sender using a PC that has been infected by an email virus. The usual clue is that the return email address starts with an underbar character. e.g if you get a mail from <_sender@yahoo.com> or something similar, then it is fairly safe to assume it was not sent knowingly by the sender. The best bet is to reply to the sender (after removing the underbar character) and ask them to check if their machine has been infected by a virus. SmartGroups email delays ------------------------ The SmartGroups email system was hit by a denial of service attack on 11th January. As a result there was a considerable backlog of email built up on servers that feed into SmartGroups. Dependent on the settings of those servers, emails sent to SmartGroups since that date, may have been bounced back to the sender, deleted, or still be sitting in a queue waiting for delivery. The functioning of the SmartGroups servers is out of our control, but please accept our apologies if you have sent emails to the SmartGroups and not seen them appear on the system yet. If you get a bounce message from your ISP or your message has not appeared within the next week or so, then you will need to send it again. Full details of the status of Smartgroups is at http://www.smartgroups.com/vault/sgsupport.manager/20010121_1145.html How do I read SVG files on a PC / RISC OS? ------------------------------------------ The RISC OS Select version of !Draw can now generate SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic) files. To view these on a PC, they will first have to be given the svg file extension. e.g save a file as drawing/svg under RISC OS. This will then appear as drawing.svg on a PC. To view SVG files on a PC Browser you will usually need to install an SVG viewer plugin from Adobe or another source. To edit SVG files on a PC you will need a Drawing package such as Corel Draw or Xara. To import SVG files into RISC OS there is a program called !SVG by Warm Silence Software, which works either as a standalone program or as a browser plugin. RISC OS Select Discussion SmartGroup ------------------------------------ If you have not received an invitation to join the RISC OS Select SmartGroup, it is probably because we do not have a valid email address for you. If you have subscribed to RISC OS Select and would like to join the Group and have not received an invitation then please send an email to mailto:select@riscos.com and you will be sent an invite. There are currently over 70 people to whom messages sent by SmartGroups now bounce. So if you are a Select SmartGroup subscriber and haven't been getting emails, then please check that you have informed us of your new email address. We will then be able to issue you with a new invitation to the SmartGroups using your new email address. RISC OS Select Announce SmartGroup ---------------------------------- Following requests from people who only wanted to get announcements from RISCOS Ltd, we have set up a separate SmartGroup purely to receive announcements. It does not contain discussion items from RISC OS Select Users and therefore has a much smaller bandwidth requirement for those that don't want to spend hours downloading detailed discussions about RISC OS Select. Membership Renewals ------------------- A reminder in case you missed it in the last Newsletter that we are changing the costing of the Foundation as from 31st May 2002. Anyone renewing their membership before 31st May 2002 will be able to do so at the old rate. To cover the increased cost of sending CD's overseas there will be different charges for non UK members according to standard postalzones. There will also be a rise for UK based subscribers. Subscriptions to European Community countries will be raised to £35.00 + VAT = £41.13 Subscriptions to Non-EC countries in Europe will be £35.00 (No VAT) Subscriptions to Zone 1 Postal Countries, such as South Africa will be raised to £37 (No VAT) Subscriptions to Zone 2 Postal Countries, such as Australia will be raised to £39 (No VAT) UK subscriptions will be raised to £33 + VAT = £38.78 Forthcoming Shows ----------------- The next RISC OS Show is the RISC OS South West Show at the Webbington Hotel, Loxton, Near Weston Super Mare on Saturday March 2nd 2002. http://www.argonet.co.uk/acornshow/sw02/ I hope to see you all there. I am also attending the German Hobbytronic 2002 Show in Dortmund on February 21st - 23rd. So if you are in Europe and want to say hello please come over to the WestFalenhallen Exhibition Centre. Dortmund has good rail and air links. http://www.westfalenhallen.de/ The Wakefield 2002 show takes place at the Thornes Park Athletic Stadium on May 18th and 19th 2002. http://www.wacg.org.uk/ The Wakefield group has recently changed their name to become the Wakefield RISCOS Computer Club. User Group Meetings ------------------- I visited the SASAUG meeting in Horsham on Monday 14th January. Since nearly everyone had visited the Bracknell Show we spent the evening just talking about the future for RISC OS rather than my usual demonstration of the features of Select. My next trip will be to the Hemel Hempstead RISC OS User Group (HHRUG) on Wednesday February 20th. Anyone in the area who would like to attend should check out their web site at http://www.hhrug.org.uk/main.htm If other User Groups would like a visit please contact me mailto:paul@riscos.com RISC OS emulators ----------------- After my section in the last Newsletter there has been even more discussion about the status of Acorn Emulators and RISC OS. In March 1999 RISCOS Ltd entered into a Licence Agreement with Element 14 Ltd for the future development and marketing of RISC OS within the desktop market. That Agreement means that no other company can have a licence to distribute any version of RISC OS within our target market. Use of RISC OS on a desktop or portable PC falls into our target market. RISCOS Ltd does not Licence earlier versions of RISC OS to anyone as we do not have the source code to be able to support those versions. The only exception to the usage of earlier versions of RISC OS by third parties is Castle Technology who already had a manufacturing agreement to use RISC OS 3.7 prior to our Agreement with Element 14. Castle do not however have source code access to RISC OS 3.7. I hope the above information will put an end to the discussion as to who can legally distribute RISC OS. The answer is that for the desktop market, all licensing must be done by RISCOS Ltd. A further point that must be made is that there is no allowance within the End User License Agreements for RISC OS upgrades or RISC OS based computers for the copying of RISC OS ROM images from a Risc PC, A5000 etc for use on a PC. Any such use is software theft and is illegal. Just because you happen to have an A5000 in a cupboard at home does not give you the right to "rip" a copy of the ROM image from it to use on any form of Emulator either for your own use or to supply to other people. Anyone posting requests on NewsGroups or Web Sites to be sent a RISC OS ROM image or a copy of a piece of software is inciting other people to commit software piracy. We have taken steps to get certain web site owners to remove any copies of RISC OS ROM images they may have from their sites, and similarly we have notified current Copyright owners about the presence of any of their software we find on the same web sites. Unless you have permission from the copyright owner you should not include anyone else's copyright material on your own web site or attempt to distribute it for profit or gain without their written permission. In many cases you may find that companies and individuals are happy for their old products to be distributed on a non- profit basis. However if you attempt to make any money out of someone elses copyrighted material without their permission then that is illegal. Beware. You have been warned. The protection of intellectual property rights is a very important issue for all companies. Other News ---------- Robin Saxby KBE --------------- Robin Keith Saxby, Executive Chairman of ARM Holdings plc has received a Knighthood (KBE) for services to the Information Technology Industry. Advanced Risc Machines ARM¨ was founded out of a joint venture between Acorn and Apple back in 1990 and has grown to be a major world player in the Silicon Design business. Cerilica Insignia ----------------- Cerilica have launched Insignia which enables the quick and easy creation of illustrated text for use as Logos / Web Titles / Web Buttons etc. Think of it like the original TypeStudio from Beebug, but with a vast range of colouring, texturing, shadowing and other effects. A demo version is available for download from their web site. http://www.cerilica.com/insignia/index.htm Cerilica are building a great portfolio of publishing tools that are offering a viable alternative to the very expensive bloated PC offerings. If you are into Web or Printed design you should be checking out their products. 100 Base T Network Cards ------------------------ Castle Technology are to produce a 100 Base T network card. 100 Base T means that theoretically it can deliver 100 Mega bits (12.5 Mega Bytes) of data per second, over a Twisted Pair Category 5 cabled network. To do that you must have a 100 Base T Switch or Hub to connect two or more computers, and 100 Base T network cards in the other machines. If the other machine only has a 10 Base T card it will only be able to receive data at 10 Mega bits (1.25MB) per second. Due to limitations of the internal data bus of current Risc PCs it will not be possible to transfer data at the maximum speed of 12.5 MB per sec. The Castle product codes are NET20 for the Ethernet Podule and NET21 for the NIC (Network Interface Card) version. Prices are £99 + VAT for the podule version and £94 + VAT for the NIC version. A picture of the podule version is at http://www.castle.uk.co/castle/graphics/Upgrades/100Podule.jpg RiscStation portable -------------------- RiscStation have now finalised the specification of their new portable and have started taking deposits for it. The design has changed considerably since the first announcement that RiscStation were to produce a portable back in 2000. The basic price starts at £999 + VAT for the version with 8.4" 800 x 600 Touchscreen display, 64MB RAM, 10GB Hard Drive and ARM 7500 processor. Further details are available at http://www.riscstation.co.uk/html/portable.html VProtect -------- The latest version of the VProtect module is now available for download from the Pineapple Web site. VProtect will guard against the activities of known viruses but for full protection to be able to eradicate viruses you need to subscribe to the Pineapple Virus Protection Scheme. The cost of which is now £20 + VAT to joint and then £15 + VAT per year thereafter. The latest version of !VProtect is available from http://www.pineaple.demon.co.uk/VirusD.htm Replying to queries from this Newsletter ---------------------------------------- If you are responding to a specific query in this newsletter please use the appropriate mailto: address to reply rather than replying to the sender of this email. Also don't reply to the general foundation or admin email addresses as your enquiry may not get dealt with promptly. We try to reply to all enquiries within 5 days. But at peak times it may take longer to reply. If you have received this email in error, or wish to be removed from this list then please send an email to mailto:foundation@riscos.com with the subject REMOVE regards -- Paul Middleton RISCOS Ltd --------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright ©2002 RISCOS Ltd. RISC OS is a trademark of Pace Micro Technology plc. Certain other product names, brand names, and company names may be trademarks or designations of their respective owners.