News from RISCOS Ltd No. 24 December 24th 2002 ================== MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE Iyonix PC --------- For anyone that hasn't heard yet, Castle have recently started shipping their new X-Scale based computer - The Iyonix. The full details are to be found at http://www.iyonix.com/ There has been a considerable flurry of updated software which has been updated for use with the 32 bit only Iyonix, which is nice to see. A common misconception about 32 bit development is that you need to buy the new Castle 32 bit C/C++ tools in order to develop 32 bit applications. However that is not the case as the original Acorn C/C++ pack has been always been capable of outputting 32 bit code by specifying the appropriate APCS 32 flags. RISC OS Select Issue 2 Release 3 available for download ------------------------------------------------------- The latest version of Select has been distributed to subscribers on CD and via the Web Site. The features of the latest version are Graphics -------- Much of the focus of the Select 2 development has been focused around the enhancement of the graphical facilities of the operating system. The associated document 'GraphicsSystem' provides a more general overview of the graphics system and some of the changes that have been made. Particular changes of note are : * CMYK sprites are now supported CMYK sprites can be created, manipulated and plotted. The current implementation is functional, however certain applications which manipulate sprites directly may be provoke undefined results. Refer to 'SpriteExtend-CMYK'. * Sprite, JPEG and DrawFile rendering may use 'colour mapping' Colour mapping allows arbitrary functions to manipulate the colours as used within the graphics. Refer to 'ColourMap-DrawFile' and 'ColourMap-Sprite'. * JPEGs rendering system has been improved The number of variants of JPEG that are handled has been improved, including the rendering of progressive JPEGs. Refer to 'GraphicsSystem', 'CompressJPEG', and 'SpriteExtend-Errors'. * Sprites may be rendered translucently Sprite operations which would previously generate a solid image may now be rendered at arbitrary degrees of translucency. This new facility is used by the DragASprite module to provide translucent dragging of objects within the desktop. Refer to 'SpriteExtend-Translucency'. * Sprite generation from PNGs Sprites may be generated from PNG imaged using the new ConvertPNG module. Refer to 'ConvertPNG'. * Generic image file rendering Image files may be rendered through a plugin interface provided by the new 'ImageFileRender' module. Refer to 'ImageFileRender'. * System sprite pool changed The system sprite pool is no longer maintained by the Kernel. All manipulation of the system sprite pool is now delegated to the SpriteUtils module. Refer to 'SystemSpriteArea'. * Generic blending tables can now be generated The new BlendTable module has been created to generate tables for blending between different colours in shallow colour modes. Refer to 'BlendTable' and 'InverseTable' for more details. During the testing of Select 2i1, a small misfeature was observed in the translucent sprite rendering in 16 bit screen modes. This was most apparent when dragging a sprite within the desktop. The image being dragged would have a noticable red tint when held against the background. This was due to a bit error in the processing of this channel and has been corrected for Select 2i3. The ImageFileRender component, which provides generic file rendering, was developed with the initial intention of providing a toolbox gadget for rendering such objects. This gadget has nearly reached maturity and has been included with Select 2i3. Documentation for this component will follow in a future release. A change to the JPEG information call to comply with the documentation in the PRMs was found to conflict with a number of applications who also did not follow this documentation. This change has been reversed. Sprite rendering where dithering was not requested was incorrectly given dither effect (and vice-versa) for certain rendering operations. This has been addressed and dithering should only occur where requested. Input ----- In order to support the 'Wheel' mice which are now prevalent, parts of the system have been modified to provide a new interface for accessing such devices. The kernel issues additional requests to pointer devices to discover the state of such devices. Support for PS2 and quadrature wheel mice is now provided. A PS2 wheel mouse can be used via the standard RiscPC quadrature interface by using an STD PS2 mouse interface. The STD mouse interface must be configured to 'driver' mode (consult documentation supplied with the PS2 interface) and the relevant mouse type selected in the mouse configuration. Alternatively, use *Configure MouseType 10 to select the STD PS2 mouse interface driver. Within the desktop, new flag bits and icon validations have been defined to allow applications aware of the new interface to take advantage of the new input method. Toolbox 'Slider' gadgets and ColourPicker 'Slider' gadgets have been enhanced to support the new interface. In order to allow other clients to replace the default scroll behaviour, the component providing scrolling facilities - the WindowScroll module - can be disabled. With it disabled, scrolling will have no effect unless another controller is installed. The PS2 wheel support within Select 2i1 had been left with an experimental feature for handling dual-axis scroll wheels. This made scrolling difficult on systems which used such mice. In addition, mice without wheels would be misidentified and would scroll erratically. These issues have been corrected. Outside the PS2Driver, the Kernel itself contained a fault in the scroll wheel handling. This caused random failures during mouse operations whose symptoms generally included random data aborts. This has been addressed. The default scroll handler, the WindowScroll module, can now be disabled. This allows other user components to provide alternative scrolling facilities. Window manager -------------- In keeping with the core graphical changes, the WindowManager has been enhanced to ensure that these graphical changes are used where applicable. * Disabled icons algorithm improved The colours to which icons now fade when disabled are now slightly different to those previously used. Disabled icons will now fade toward the background colour of the window, rather than toward white. * Deep shaded sprites Sprites in icons with 32 thousand or 16 million colours will now fade correctly in the same manner as their shallow colour counterparts. * Furniture tool order configuration The window furniture tools can be configured to use different a different order to that which RISC OS has previously used. A simple configuration tool is provided within the Window configuration group. * New interface for sizing text Text sizing of italic fonts has been improved to allow for the printable area to be determined for desktop fonts. Previously, italic fonts might be truncated by sizing routines using the standard operations. * Revised icon highlighting algorithm Icon highlighting previously was applied using an effect which was intended to provided a representation of the sprites and text which was a little like a photographic negative. Invariably, however, the image which was rendered was black silhouette. In order to rationalise this and bring sprite rendering in line with other changes to the window manager, the highlighting algorithm has been modified. Highlighted text in icons will invert as before. Highlighted sprites within icons will be faded toward the highlight background. In addition to providing a better rendition of the highlighted image, this also ensures that where the background colours of such icons are used, the highlighted sprite follows this colour scheme. * New 'Special icon highlighting' feature. Selected icons within Filer (and other, similar applications) follow the standard behaviour of displaying highlighted icons in using the standard highlighting methods. However, experience has shown that using colour for such selections is a much better indicator and is more visible to the user. Attempts to accomodate this and maintain a consistent behaviour across all icons with all colour schemes would be impossible. Thus, a 'special' icon highlighting feature was introduced. At the users discretion, icons which use the 'standard' colours may be displayed in configurable colours when selected. The effect of this is to allow icons selected within the Filer to be shown with a coloured background, rather than merely becoming darker. In addition, a long-standing fault with the widths of menus containing sprites has been addressed, allowing such menus to be displayed reliably. Where tinting was applied to icons, this would only apply to the colours of the sprites. Due to changes for the above features and in order to ensure that this feature is more useful, the tinting of the icon is now applied to the text of the icon as well. Networking ---------- Networking operations have been improved where they have been found to be lacking. The changes are necessarily not as large as those which took place for Select 1, but are still important. * Automatic configuration of network interfaces Network operations have been improved to allow the automatic configuration of network interfaces. A new configuration command and a related option in the interface configuration tool have been added. The InetConfigure module takes on the job of performing this automatic configuration, and has necessitated the removal of the old FWAutoAddress configuration command. * A(corn) Universal Network support In order to support certain applications which require support for 'AUN' networking, the NetI and related components have been updated to support the facilities offered by Select. 'AUN' refers to the support for Econet operations over Ethernet. New configuration tools have been developed and can be found within the 'Network' configuration group. In keeping with the automatic configuration changes, network maps used by AUN systems can be automatically configured from the network address. * Internet pollwords A new 'ioctl' operation has been added to allow applications to flag changes on a socket when operations occur. This alleviates the requirement for additional shared code just to notify multitasking applications of activity on sockets. * Fix for ShareFS authenticated objects Authenticated shares were issued incorrectly in Select 1. This fix allows objects to be shared using authentication. * Large disc free space support in ShareFS ShareFS is now capable of providing information about the free space of remote discs of over 4G. Kernel ------ The Kernel has been changed to support a number of the changes described elsewhere in this document, in particular for handling of CMYK sprites and mouse wheel. In addition, parts of the kernel have been reworked in anticipation of future developments. * RiscStation support The hardware used within the RiscStation machines is now supported by the kernel and such machines will now function with the same ROM image as other machines. * Addition of function signatures Certain parts of the kernel have been updated to use function signatures. This is an on going process which should allow for simpler debugging. It should be noted that many of the modules within Select are now built with function name embedding enabled such that developers can identify problem locations. * Rationalised module operations Certain calls (Unplugging and Inserting modules) were only possible through CLI commands under previous versions of the OS. Select makes these available as SWI calls to simplify their interface. A new operation has been added to allow the enumeration of modules with their private words pointers - an operation which was previously impossible. A module service has been added to allow clients to be aware of the state of modules. * Fix for 1bpp sprite mask operations Certain operations on 1bpp masks would fail. * Removal of OS_SubstituteArgs This call now lives in the OSSWIs module. * Dynamic area delegation Font and System Sprite dynamic areas have now been delegated to the FontManager and SpriteUtils modules respectively. Desktop ------- The Desktop components have been improved slightly to allow for issues raised in Select 1. * Filer text strings are now sized more reliably Text in filenames on icons is now sized correctly using the new Wimp_TextOp calls (see above). * Random requests for unshared discs fixed. Previously an interaction between special fields on discs with filers open and shared discs would cause directory viewers opened on to directories which had become unshared to request the unshared discs. This has been corrected. * Reduced memory usage for selection of large numbers of files Previously, attempting to drag a large number of files would use a large amount of memory. This has been reduced substantially. * Moving files on ImageNFS no longer faults directories When moving directories on ImageNFS, an error about directories containing objects is no longer generated. * Pinboard can use Drawfiles as background images Strictly Pinboard can use any file format supported by the ImageFileRender module. At present, this means DrawFile or JPEG in addition to Sprites. Toolbox ------- The toolbox components have been updated to support some of the wheel mouse additions, and to address some issues raised by Select 1. * Scrolling lists are now faded in a better manner Although the algorithm is not identical to that used by the WindowManager, it more closely matches it than previously. * Scrolling lists can now use column headings It is possible to use the column lists together with headings to allow lists of related elements to be grouped together. Documentation to follow. * Improved resizing on scrolling list transitions The extent of the scrolling list windows was not always being correctly calculated as changes were made between different display formats. * Scrolling list help is now provided Previously, help messages were not provided where they had been provided by the client. They will now be provided. * Scroll wheel support for sliders Slider gadgets can be modified by using the scroll wheel, if supported by the mouse driver. Configuration tools ------------------- The configuration tools have been updated to address a few issues raised in Select 1 and to provide the configuration of the extra facilities which Select 2 offers. In some cases, components have moved in the structure, but only to the extent that they now live within sub-groups. The configuration groups can now provide a 'full info' mode for displaying more information about the tools. The Tool order configuration tool has been updated to make use of the new ImageFileRender gadget, thus allowing different tool orders to be selected, with visual representation of the tool order being shown. The Window configuration tool has been completely re-written from scratch. The new tool provides a much more organised view of the configuration options and provides new options for configuring the use of dithering on deep sprites, dithering on icon backgrounds (a long standing feature which has not been provided externally) and configuration of the new 'Special Icon Highlighting' feature. * Access configuration renamed ShareFS The name 'Access' was confusing to some users and so the component has been renamed to ShareFS. * AUN configuration tools provided To configure the AUN networking components provided within Select 2, two new tools are provided - AUN and NetFS. * Boot configuration tools improved. Configuration tools can now change display format (large and small icons), be resized and can open directories. * New input configuration group The 'Input' group allows configuration of input devices. The mouse and keyboard tools have been moved here and a mouse scroll configuration tool has been added to this group. * Automatic interface configuration In interface configuration tool, the old AUN auto-configuration option has been extended to cover the new auto-configuration options. * Pinboard configuration tool reflects changes in Pinboard The tool has been updated to support the ImageFileRender component, allowing it to render any image that Pinboard can use. * New time and date configuration tool The Date and Time tool can configure the date manually, or configure network time fetches on startup. This function replaces the 'Set clock...' option which would normally be accessed through Alarm. * Users configuration now allows auto-logon The 'default user' can now be selected, allowing automatic log on with as a user without supplying a password. * New windows configuration group The old Window configuration tool has been replaced by two new tools. The 'Tool order' plugin allows the configuration of different orders of icons around windows (the close icon, for example, can be moved). The bulk of the window configuration options have been moved to a more modern looking configuration tool which is much better organised and provides facilities for changing new options provided by Select 2. * Sound frequency configuration tool A rudimentary tool for configuring the loading of RateTracker is provided. Applications ------------ The applications supplied with Select have not changed significantly with the exception of Paint and, to a much lesser extent, Draw. Draw can now use ctrl-D to 'duplicate' the current selection in a similar manner to the prior, non-clipboard, ctrl-C operation. In addition, ctrl-V now pastes the clipboard at the pointer, fixing a rather annoying fault in the previous version. Paint has had what can only be described as a major overhaul. In line with some of the graphics changes described above, Paint has been extended to use CMYK sprites and has improved PNG import capabilities. Many other changes are documented in the related documentation. Note: Because of the significant number of changes which require the enhanced graphics system provided by Select 2, Paint will not function on earlier versions of the OS. You should make a backup of the previous version if you intend to use it with earlier OS versions. ResEd has had a few updates to cater for the additional options provided by the window system. A fault in the SVG export feature of Draw was causing objects to become filled incorrectly. This was due to an incorrect default 'fill-rule' being specified by the creator, and has been addressed. JPEGs created by Paint might be generated as empty files if insufficient memory was available. This has been addressed. Library ------- The library has not changed significantly for Select 2. A new JPEG transcoding tool, 'MiniJTran' has been created to use the features provided by the transcoding CompressJPEG module. This allows JPEG files to be converted to and from progressive images. Updated modules --------------- The modules provided within !System have been updated to include the common ethernet drivers. This should alleviate some of the issues involved in upgrading. VProtect has been updated to the latest version, and a version of RateTracker has been provided. Miscellaneous boot updates -------------------------- The Boot sequence components have been updated to support the use of AUN components within the Internet resources. The Boot sequence should not be able to be run from remote machines or where it has not been used to boot from the machine which is trying to run it. In order to address an incompatibility with the ArcFS Memory Manager module, the PatchApp component has been updated to patch the module as it loads. A similar fix is applied to the ImpressionSpell module which suffered a related problem. Forthcoming Shows ----------------- RISC OS South West Show 2003 ---------------------------- The next RISC OS Show is planned to be the RISCOS SOUTHWEST on Saturday 22nd February 2003. The venue is once again the Webbington Hotel in Loxton, near Axbridge, North Somerset. Wakefield 2003 Show ------------------- The Wakefield RISCOS Computer Club has announced its intention to run another show in 2003. The show will be on Saturday, 10th May 2003, and open to the public between 10 am and 4:30 pm. It has been decided to run only a one day event this time, due to the low attendances on the Sunday in the past. Although they had looked at some alternative venues for this years smaller show, they have again decided it will be back at its usual venue of the Thornes Park Athletic Stadium. It is again intended to have a show theatre, but this will be in a different location within the building to previous years since the room used before is no longer available. There will also be the usual charity stall, and this year everything must go by the end of the day, so there will be some real bargains to be had. There will be no advance ticket sales available this year, in order to help to keep costs down. Tickets will cost £5 (under 16's will be free if accompanied by an adult), but large parties of under 16's arriving together will be subject to the normal entry charge. More details will be released as soon as possible. A website will also be going active as soon as possible. http://www.wakefieldshow.org.uk The show will again be run and organised by the members and volunteers of the Wakefield RISCOS Computer Club in their spare time. Please do support both the dedication of these volunteers and the exhibitors attending. RISC OS Select Subscriptions ---------------------------- A reminder that if you haven't yet joined the RISC OS Select Scheme that you have until 31st December to subscribe at the current price of £99 for Foundation members. Any new subscriptions from 1st January 2003 will cost £150 for the year. Please note that any renewals due in 2003 will still be at the current price of £105 (or £99 for Foundation members.) New permanently low price for RISC OS 4 upgrades ------------------------------------------------ Following the securing of further OTP ROM supplies RISCOS Ltd is pleased to announce a new permanently low price for RISC OS 4 upgrades. With immediate effect the full RISC OS 4 ROM pack is now available for ukp85 including VAT. For users who want to upgrade more than one machine a set of ROMs only is available for ukp75 including VAT. Discounts are available for Dealers, Authorised Installers and User Groups who place orders in bulk. Orders may be placed by Cheque or Credit Card by Post to:- RISCOS Ltd 3 Clarendon Road Cardiff CF23 9JD Tel 02920 492324 Fax 02920 492326 sales@riscos.com Filetypes Allocations Database ------------------------------ As part of the RISC OS Select Scheme we intend to introduce a method whereby a RISC OS Filetypes database can be interrogated to provide information about the features and availability of programs to handle specific RISC OS filetypes. Our desire is to make the database of filetypes as complete as possible, and to that end we need to know if anyone has registered filetypes with Acorn in the past that they do not wish published for whatever reason. We are also aware that there are apparently a couple of Registered filetypes where the same filetype number is being claimed by different developers. If you have registered a RISC OS Filetype and are happy for its details to be published, could you please send a confirmation email to mailto:developer@riscos.com detailing :- 1. The Filetype Descriptive Name e.g Postscript 2. The Filetype Number e.g FF5 3. The Filetype Text String e.g PoScript 4. The Company/Person that registered the filetype 5. The date of acknowledgement of registration by Acorn 6. Your preferred Sprite design. 7. Brief description of the filetype 8. Identifying features of the filetype. i.e how can the file be identified if it has lost its RISC OS filetype stamp? 9. Web or other contact details as to where a user can obtain the necessary program to utilise the specific filetype. If you do not want any details of a Registered Filetype to be made public, then please let us know. Otherwise our intention is to acknowledge that a specific Filetype has been allocated to a Company, without giving a Filetype name or further details, unless confirmation has been received to the contrary. Obviously this is a good promotional opportunity for all developers and we hope that everyone will provide the above details as soon as possible. If you have already sent in details of any allocated filetypes could you please send them again, as due to a recent slip of the finger the original replies were accidentally deleted from the incoming mail folder. Other News ---------- Acorn Publisher under new ownership ----------------------------------- As from Volume 9 issue 1 Acorn Publisher is under the new ownership of Finnybank Ltd and the editorship of John Cartmell. In addition to the printed version of Acorn Publisher there will be a new online magazine - AP On-Line. http://www.acornpublisher.co.uk/ BBC Domesday project revisited ------------------------------ CAMiLEON is a project to preserve the BBC Domesday project - a social record of life in the 1980s that is in danger of loss through technlogical obsolescence. A full write up of a recent meeting to discuss the work of the project is covered on http://www.iconbar.com/news/features/camileon.html The main project pages are at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/camileon/ We have an almost complete system here at RISCOS Ltd, however we are missing the 65C102 Turbo Processor card for the BBC Master that is an essential part of the package, so if anyone has an old BBC Master that happens to have a 65C102 Second processor card we would love to hear from you. Viewfinder Updates ------------------ Windfall are now producing the Viewfinder cards again. The cost is now 240 Euro instead of the previous 360 Euro John Kortink has also resumed the production of updates to the Viewfinder software. Version 1.50 is available Free of Charge from the Windfall web site at http://www.windfall.nl/ However all future versions must be paid for. The cost is 20 Euro for version 1.52 (23rd December 2002). TinyThumb 1.02 (17th December 2002) ----------------------------------- http://www.precedence.co.uk/downloads/tinythumb/index.html TinyThumb is not a complicated program. It is designed to do one task and do it well. It will produce small versions (thumbnails) of a series of JPEG images. The thumbnails will all have the same height or width. It will recurse through a directory tree. Finally, it can generate a series of HTML pages with the thumbnails displayed so that they can be clicked on to download the original image. TinyThumb is particularly useful for use with digital cameras as they can often produce very large images with cryptic filenames which can take a long time to search through if you want to locate a certain photo. StrongED 4.65 Alpha 3 --------------------- The changes that were made between version 4.64 and 4.65 of StrongED. * All modes have been made directories, read UpdateCfg manual for details * ModeWhen has been split up, each mode can have its own ModeWhen file * WriteProtect section no longer supported, use FileLock file instead * Folding code no longer stops if it finds a fold end before a fold start * Spell code rewritten * Source now uses throwback to report errors * Source placed in a pseudo-application called: !StrongSrc * All sorting is done by internal HeapSort instead of OS_HeapSort * Partly converted to be 32-bit compatible * EndOfExpr would only colour first match on a line correctly * Lines ending with (") showed as white line when in VDU mode. * If client of external edit sent an EditCursor request, cursor was not placed correctly * Reformatting text quoted with '> > ' went wrong * Correcting multiple instances of the same spelling mistake only worked for the first word * List of spell suggestions could disappear if cursor moved inside word checked * StrongED refused to start up on machines with lots of memory (128+MB) * Message_DataLoad canonicalised the filename but failed to adjust the message size * StrongTask module no longer adds -ctrl if -task is specified. * Ctrl-F12 caused crash if StrongED was booted but not running * Following ADRs, in Dumpmode, that point backwards didn't work * Echos of the caret appeared at regular intervals through out a file * FindNext function ignored case setting * One character strings in advanced search got case sensitivity wrong * Saving a modefile caused modes without ID_Middle to use punctuation colour for IDs * Fixed check for SWI table offset being inside module * Caret could disappear in dump mode when goto target address wasn't a multiple of 4 * Entering F2, F1, Esc in quick succession resulted in a terminal error * Look up messages send to StrongHelp were not properly truncated if they were too long * Opening a savebox using F3, and then another using menu left first savebox dead * Last word in a text would sometimes be coloured as a function * Clicking in a sorted List-of-Module moved to wrong line * StrongED would hang if AutoSave list contained comments * New function , sets wrapwidth to length of longest line in a file. * New override options: StrongED$WrapWidth = Auto, StrongED$WrapWidth = Line * AutoSave remembers mode a file was in * function extended with extra /howrun/ parameter: 'Exit' * Grab menus are now sorted alphabetically * LoF on modules can now be sorted * Blocksort extended so that lines that start with Tabs are sorted correctly * Block editing will honour insert/overwrite setting * Duplicate words are removed from list of suggestions in spell box * Option to give spell box input focus on misspelling * Mode menu has a submenu Extra modes which can be used to hold rarely used modes * Reports 'No spelling mistakes found' rather than 'String not found' * Uses small fold icons when 8*8 bitmap is selected * now also sets Tmp$Tool, points to global tools * Can now use tokens for help on functions in mode submenu * When chosing a different colour scheme sample icons weren't updated * Checks for duplicate files when loading files through OpenDoc message * Redraws complete textline instead of changed wrapline only * Filetype menu in savebox has been given a submenu that lists all known filetypes * PC-relative LDR/STR added to instructions that can be followed in Dump mode * When switching to ASM display in Dump mode caret is placed in disassembly section * Reinstated headers/footers when printing * Added 'Numbers' element to SyntaxOptions, controls the colouring of numbers * Extended module header with Message file offset and Module flags word * Now accepts drags to toolbar, Tmp$Drag contains name of dragged file * Interactive help updated, extended and corrected * Help for undefined groups changed to 'This group not defined in the Modefile' * New fonts: Kappa (Steve Drain), FJG * New modes: ASM, AVR, C64, Document, FrontEnd, Haskell, ObjAsm, PHP, S-Base http://stronged.iconbar.com/ Partis Computing on the Move ---------------------------- Partis Computing has recently moved. Their new address is : Partis Computing Holystone Cottage Holystone Tyne & Wear NE27 0BZ http://www.partis.co.uk/move/main.php !CDrip 0.10 / Shine ------------------- Roger Darlington mailto:rogerarm@freeuk.com has released a new version of !CDrip, a WAV to MP3 converter. Using the recently released Shine module, this will convert a directory full of WAV files into MP3 files, at any bit-rate from 32kB/s to 320kB/s. Speed is 1.3x real-time on a 233MHz StrongARM RiscPC for 128kB/s bit-rates. It will now incorporate ID3 data from !CDviewer (via freedb). It can also use Lame or Blade encoders, but these are much slower, Blade especially so. There is also a new version of !ID3toName on the website. This one is more useful with CDrip because it renames MP3 files with the track number first, so that all the MP3's appear in original CD order. Available from http://rogerdarlington.members.beeb.net/ PDF v 1.01.1.09 --------------- A new version of !PDF has been released by Colin Granville. mailto:colin.granville@gmx.co.uk It has the following changes * Document outlines added - see help (under buttonbar) * Better display of type1c and truetype fonts. * Rectangular screen mode sprites added !PDF is a public domain PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file viewer for RISC OS. http://www.pdf.iconbar.com/ Google Toolbar 0.62 ------------------- After a while of no development, Andrew C. Poole mailto:andrew@andrewpoole.org.uk has released the latest beta of !Google, a version of the Google Toolbar for RISC OS computers. The Google Toolbar for RISC OS is an attempt at making the Google Toolbar, which is an add on to Internet Explorer which allows the user to search the Internet from any Internet Explorer window without going to the Google website, available for the RISC OS platform. It allows the user to search for web pages, images, usenet articles, open directory links and news. This new version contains a few updates to the previous release version, such as the option to search in the .co.uk domain rather than the .com domain, the option to hide the iconbar icon and the option to start small. Please note that the homepage for this version has changed to the http://toolbars.andrewpoole.org.uk Director 0.32 ------------- Philip Ludlam mailto:philip@philipnet.com has posted a stable release of version 0.32 of Director to its repository on SourceForge. All the archives can be downloaded from: http://director.sourceforge.net or http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/director Director is a general purpose desktop tool. It allows you to customise your desktop by creating menus of useful commands and icons to attach the menus to. Any number of menus or icons can be created and attached in any order to each other. Director also allows an alternative and faster view onto files in the form of directory menus and allows these menus to be attached to other menus also. Director has some other useful features such as remembering the most recently used files, the ability to add key strokes into the keyboard buffer and the ability to produce directory menus over drive icons. Director is fully customisable by the user, and can do many or all of the functions of Pinboard+, TreeMenu (AKA DirMenu), Filer-, QuickDir, DeskUtils, Memorizer, Menon and some of the functions of Filer+. Nettle 0.2032r released ----------------------- Alex Macfarlane Smith mailto:alex@archifishal.co.uk has released Nettle version 0.2032r. Nettle is the terminal emulator and telnet client for the RISC OS operating system. It utilises the ZapRedraw module for speedy display and is a fast, clean native implementation. Notable items in this release: New Features: French messages Ctrl-F2 closes disconnected sessions Added "linux" terminal type Changes/Improvements: Improved method for detecting URLs Menu ticks added Selection-pasting only adds newlines at line end Small change to selected-area highlight colouring Caret drawn in window when it first opens Bugs fixed: Corrected pasting of large amounts of text to ANSI tasks Various optimisations and speedups Data load ack now sent Country lookup fixed Terminal scrolling on NEL Fixed memory leak on URI loading Fix pasting of large files Don't report errors twice It's available for download from http://nettle.sourceforge.net/ 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.