|-------------------------- Acorn News Service --------------------------|
| http://www.acornusers.org/ans/ |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| The Acorn News Service is an independent service. |
| It is in no way connected with, or supported by the Acorn Group PLC. |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| ISSUE 24 10 January 1999 |
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| To send in your news items or comments, use the ANS website, |
| or e-mail them to ans@ans.acornusers.org. |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Random site this issue: http://www.archivemag.co.uk/ |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| >>>> 1999...The Year For Acorn! <<<< |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------|
Contents
--------
1) Editorial
2) General News
3) Commercial News
4) PD/Shareware News
5) Club News
6) ANS information
Editorial
---------
1999 is bound to be exciting for Acorn users world-wide. It's either going
to be take off...or landing. Whatever it is, let's hope it's good! With
RISC OS 4 just around the corner, and many more exciting projects from
committed Acorn companies, it's just time to wait and see.
Don't forget that ANS are doing their part as well. With the new
discussion list which has been named ADL, you can have your say on any
Acorn matter... just subscribe with two clicks on the ANS site. Many new
features are in development. One you are sure to have seen and heard of by
now, is the new feature article being hosted on the ANS site each month,
courtesy of the best Acorn magazine... ARCHIVE MAGAZINE.
Keep on using the Classified ads section on the ANS site, and keep the
site bookmarked to check for future features.
Keep on sending in those news items...which never seem to come! Remember,
even if you "think" someone else may have sent in the same article, send
it in anyway. It's bound to help. Any new versions of software, hardware,
new developments etc... we want it ALL!
Thanks
Eytan
Editor, ANS
General News
------------
1) Acorn sells stake in Xemplar
8 Jan 1998 - http://www.acorn.com/acorn/news/press/xemplar.html
Acorn Group plc, the technology holding company, today announced that its
wholly-owned subsidiary, Acorn Computers Limited (ACL), has sold its 50%
interest in educational IT supplier, Xemplar Education Limited, to its
joint venture partner, Apple Computer. The transaction values Xemplar at
GBP6m and ACL's cash proceeds are GBP3m.
During 1997, Xemplar recorded a pre-tax profit of GBP0.2m and its net
asset value at 31 December 1998 is estimated at GBP4.2m, with ACL's share
at GBP0.1m and GBP2.1m respectively.
Proceeds will initially be placed on deposit but will be used to finance
further development of ACL, which, during 1998, announced its intention to
focus on the multimedia and digital TV markets.
Commenting on the deal, Stan Boland, Chief Executive of Acorn Group plc
said: "The disposal of our stake in Xemplar was a natural step, given
ACL's business focus. It reinforces our commitment to becoming a major
player in the rapidly growing digital TV market."
2) Frobnicate Issue #18
Issue 18 of Frobnicate, a pro-ARM technology and RISC OS magazine released
as an Ovation file, was recently published.
Contents includes:
* Editor's Page, discussing Acorn futures
* Dictionary - part 'C'
* A matter of sorts (an article on sorting methods by Jon Ripley)
* Announcing: The Lincs AUG
* Ovation Pro (demo version available from WWW site)
* Frobnicate Awards 1998
The "semi-serious magazine for semi-serious Acorn enthusiasts" is
available from http://www.heyrick.co.uk/frobnicate/ . Ovation readers are
available from http://www.beebug.com/software/ovation.html or for high
memory machines http://www.netlink.co.uk/users/beebug/software/ovpro/ .
3) Acorn BBS List
An updated list of Acorn BBSs is now available from the Arctic BBS website
http://www.arcticbb.demon.co.uk/ . Acorn BBSs with web sites include:
* Arcade (London) http://www.arcade.demon.co.uk/
* Arctic (West London) http://www.arcticbb.demon.co.uk/
* CCl4 (Hull/London) telnet://fish.ccl4.org/ http://www.ccl4.org/
* Heaven telnet://heaven.affection.net/ http://www.heaven.affection.net/
* Plasma Sphere (Cheshire) http://www.tpsphere.demon.co.uk/
4) Acorn Comic Relief Auction update
More software has been added to the the Great Acorn Auction in aid of
Comic Relief:
* OwlArt Unlimited have donated 3 copies of their OwlArt package.
* Serious Statistical Software have donated a copy of their brilliant
1st Jnr package (and if you're and educational establishment, they
will include a GBP250 site licence for free)
* Akalat Publishing have given a subscription for Acorn Publisher and
also a copy of their TaskForce ClipArt CD.
Make a bid for these items or any others now! For details and a list of
items and current bids see http://www.acornusers.org/comicrelief/ . So
far bids worth over GBP740 have been received. The closing date is 5th
March 1999.
Commercial News
---------------
1) New Artex webpage, news about Artex games
The Artex webpage has been re-designed. New information about TEK for the
NetStation and the RiscPC, a well as brand new information about the now
well known Iron Dignity can be found at: http://www.artex.oaktree.co.uk/
Also the release of the tactics and jump'n'run game 'BotKiller 2' is
scheduled for January 1999, so you should be able to buy the game in a few
weeks. You can now also find information about this game on the website.
2) Clares are on the move
From tomorrow (Monday 11th January 1999) Clares Micro Supplies new contact
details are:
Clares Micro Supplies
75a Webbs Lane
Middlewich
Cheshire, CW10 9DS
Tel. 01606 833999, fax 01606 836111
Email. sales@claresmicro.com
Web. http://www.claresmicro.com/
3) New Digital Art CD Tutorial from Spacetech
At BETT 99 Spacetech will release a new tutorial for Photo Processing and
Artwork on CD-ROM. This will complement the existing Photodesk Accessory
CD-ROM but does not reproduce any of the material on it. Included is a
comprehensive tutorial for Acorn's Draw - the vector based line art
package.
David Cowell of the Digital Art Centre in Dartington, Devon, has produced
this package in response to many requests for learning material to
complement Photodesk. Although he uses Photodesk for all his work, the
principles he discusses and illustrates are general ones and would apply
to almost any reasonably well featured bitmap editor, not only on RISC OS
platforms.
He also includes a 3 part (beginner, intermediate and advanced) tutorial
about how to produce attractive and sophisticated artwork using vector
based drawing packages. Again, although he uses Draw from Acorn, the
techniques he demonstrates should apply to most drawing packages.
Included on the CD are copyright free images to illustrate the tutorials.
These are of sufficiently high resolution to be printed and framed for
display. The tutorials which are presented in Multimedia Textease are
reproduced as OHP carousels for those who might like to use them to
illustrate talks or demonstrations.
The Introduction to Digital Art CD by David Cowell is available from
Spacetech Ltd for GBP24.95 inc. VAT. For details see Spacetech's web site
http://www.spacetech.co.uk/ .
4) Spacetech at BETT 99
Spacetech are showing their range of studio quality graphics software for
RISC OS, along with associated hardware at BETT 99. A new version of
Photodesk, PHOTODESK 3 LAYERS, the award winning photo-retouching and
original artwork package is to be demonstrated at BETT along with 2 new
accessory CDs which include extensive tutorial material and school
worksheets.
Entirely new models of Digital camera from Olympus are also on show with
PhotoLink software for Acorn, MS Windows and Mac. Another new software
release from Spacetech at this year's BETT is OHP, a brand new CD-ROM
based Presentation package for RISC OS.
For details see http://www.spacetech.co.uk/
5) LOOKsystems Winter Sale
LOOKsystems have gone completely mad this year and combined the discounts
that would have applied at Acorn World with their usual seasonal discounts
to come up with some very special offers.
PRODUCT RRP SALE
Monotype Library (Packs 1-8) 480 125
Monotype Pack 60 20
Font Directory Pro v3.03 65 35
Font Directory v2.01 45 25
Disc Rescue v1.52 45 30
All prices are in GBP and include VAT and UK P&P. Note LOOKsystems do not
have credit/debit card facilities. Sale ends 14th January 1999. Contact
adrian@looksystems.demon.co.uk, tel/fax: +44 (0)1326 318279.
6) Acorn User magazine contact details
All e-mail addresses have changed from @idg.co.uk to @acornuser.com. The
full list of new e-mail addresses can be found on the Contacts page at
http://www.acornuser.com/contact/contact.html.
Also a page of new information, of interest to both new and current
advertisers, is now up and running at the Acorn User website. The page at
http://www.acornuser.com/issues/ads.html contains all the information you
need to know about the types of adverts AU can accept, and the deadlines
by which they should be submitted.
PD/Shareware News
-----------------
1) New releases form Skullsoft
* New Version of Nomen
Nomen is a filename tidying program. It can tidy file names so that, for
example, 'nOMen' becomes 'Nomen' etc. It can also optionally strip
filename extensions. The new version (1.03) fixes several bugs that were
present in the last version. http://www.eganc.demon.co.uk/skullsoft/ for
downloads.
* Partial solutions for 'Arya: The Dragon's Quest'
'Arya: The Dragon's Quest' is Skullsoft's shareware text adventure. It
has lots of digitised graphics, interactive puzzles, people you can talk
to and much more. See http://www.eganc.demon.co.uk/skullsoft/arya.htm
for details.
A partial solution for the unregistered version is available from
http://www.eganc.demon.co.uk/skullsoft/aryasw_solutions.htm
* Xenocide update
If anybody still has version 1.00 of Xenocide, they should upgrade to
v1.01. The new version fixes two small, but significant bugs that caused
the game to crash.
There is a (small) patch available to upgrade version 1.00 to 1.01:
http://www.eganc.demon.co.uk/skullsoft/software/xpatch.zip
Xenocide is a shareware upwards scrolling shoot'em up. It can be
downloaded from http://www.eganc.demon.co.uk/skullsoft/
2) Web site management utilities
Updates to local website management utilities:
* Validator v0.37
Easy to use "Linter" for checking web pages for embarrassing HTML
errors, locally before uploading. Now generates "Throwbacks" (to eg Zap;
if you have DDEUtils).
* LinkCheck v1.29
Checks all links and references within (the local copy of) a website.
Originally devised for a "modest" site (eg, < 100 pages, plus a couple
of hundred other files); but an editable "!Choices" file enables this
limit to be extended to a few hundred HTML pages and a few thousand
total files.
* CopyAfter v0.08 (new addition)
Originally devised as a sort of "Copy if newer" backup utility but with
greater flexibility on choice of "borderline" date; this is particularly
suitable for creating an "incremental upload" from the latest changes to
(the local copy of) a site.
These, and other utilities by John Alldred, are freeware available from:
http://www.protovale.co.uk/john/
3) Announcing Wimp2, a preemptor for RISC OS
Niall Douglas has announced that the first release of the preemptive
multitasker for RISC OS, Wimp2, should be available on 20th January 1999.
This module permits the construction of preemptively multitasked programs
for the Acorn RISC OS desktop and is fully compatible with the existing
cooperative multitasker present in RISC OS.
Wimp2 is fully compatible with all versions of RISC OS from RO2 to RO3.8
(the forthcoming RO4), and existing cooperative applications can be ported
to the new preemptive multitasker usually without much difficulty.
Also included in the release is a patch for normal Wimp calls, making them
call the preemptive multitasker SWIs instead. This allows a minority of
existing unmodified applications to be preemptively multitasked.
4) FreeTime V1.10 released
Version 1.10 of FreeTime, a small program that will connect to an Internet
time server and then set your computer's clock to the correct time, is now
available.
The main changes since the last version are support for autosetting the
GMT/BST flag, a StrongHelp manual, better accuracy over slow connections,
and a configuration program.
The 'normal' version is available at:
http://www.ping.demon.co.uk/distrib/f-time110.zip
There is also a companion module available that can act as a server for
FreeTime - useful for running on the gateway machine between the Internet
and your internal network, to serve FreeTime clients on the rest of the
network. This is called 'Tserver', and is unchanged from the first release
(0.01 / 26-10-97), except that the archive now includes the source code as
well.
Both of these, and other programs, are available from:
http://www.ping.demon.co.uk/acorn/download.html
5) New BBC Emulator released
BeebIt, a new BBC Model B Micro Computer emulator for RISC OS, has been
released. It can be downloaded from http://www.voyager.co.nz/~mikef/ -
just follow the BBC Emulator link.
Being a first release, this is intended to show what work has been done on
it so far, and what it will be able to do in the future. It is by no means
complete but will run a good many BBC games, even Elite. So far it has
only been tested on a RiscPC with StrongARM processor.
Any feedback on the emulator would be appreciated. You can contact the
author at mikef@voyager.co.nz .
6) WritableUtils version 0.23
WritableUtils version 0.23 is now available at
http://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~rav21/writable/
WritableUtils is a module which provides two features to writable icons
under RISC OS.
The first is that it allows keys to be remapped - particularly useful for
those who sometimes use other operating systems in which the roles of
'delete' and 'end' are significantly different. Much software allows the
function of each key to be defined, and Olly Betts' LineEditor allows this
for the command line. This module allows it for writable icons.
The second is that it provides an interface to the global clipboard, so
text may be copied to and from other compliant applications such as Zap.
This is a beta release and the author rav21@cam.ac.uk would be very
grateful for feedback on it.
7) AutoFocus, TitleMenu, Nice, ShiftResize and other utilities
Here is the current status of some of Vincent Lefevre's patches/utilities
(and a description, for those who do not know them), all available from
http://www.ens-lyon.fr/~vlefevre/acorn/riscpc_eng.html
* AutoFocus 1.09 (03 Jan 1999)
No need to click on windows any more to get the focus! This module has a
special support for panes, dialogue boxes (with writable icons) and
block selection.
* TitleMenu 2.05 (22 Nov 1998)
This utility allows you to bring up a menu consisting of a directory and
its ancestors by clicking on the title bar of a window with the Menu
button. The leaf directory is either given by the window title (filer
window or an editor window) or the application directory; in the latter
case, the Help file is added to the menu if there is one, to get help on
the application.
* Nice 1.00 (24 Nov 1998)
Nice is a small utility that provides a very simple priority system on
Wimp tasks, a bit like under Unix. Written because the RC5DES client was
slowing down the author's machine, and Nice solves this problem quite
well.
* ShiftResize 2.00 (07 Sep 1998)
If you click on the toggle size icon while the shift key is pressed, the
icon bar will not be obscured. A bit of the CMOS memory allows to invert
this behaviour. This patch allows to change this bit and extends this
feature to any kind of resize.
* WatchTV 1.03 (22 Aug 1997)
A small application allowing to watch TV (or, more generally, video
images) full screen for the owners of an Eagle M2 card (and a TVtuner).
Miller's algorithm (Siggraph 84) is used to improve the image quality.
* DMPatch (08 Aug 1997)
Patch for RISC OS 3.7 that allows you to choose the frame rate from the
Display Manager.
* TopIconBar (10 Aug 1997)
Allows to bring the icon bar to the foreground with the mouse.
* Other utilities
rbd (random backdrops), crc (16-bit CRC of files), logring (logs the
phone ringings if you have a modem), accounter 1.03 (system usage
accounting utility).
All the programs are distributed with their ARM source. They have been
written for RISC OS 3 (and optimized for RISC OS 4), but some of them
should work (or partly work) under RISC OS 2.
8) Socketeer 0.14 beta
There is a new release of Socketeer, the Internet dialler, for those who
are not on the mailing list. For details and to download see
http://www.soup-kitchen.demon.co.uk/software/socketeer.html
Club News
---------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Brought to you with The Association of Acorn User Groups*
The AAUG website provides details of all the user groups worldwide, and
how you can benefit from becoming a member. For more information, visit:
http://www.argonet.co.uk/scs/AAUG/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) North Kent Amateur Computer Club
The next NKACC meeting will take place on Thursday January 14th 1999 at
Petts Wood Memorial Hall. This will be an OPEN EVENING, so please bring
along your machines to show off, or to discuss any little problems you
might have - we can have a play and probably confirm that you DO have a
problem! If you are extremely lucky, you might even find someone who knows
what to do about it (although getting a sensible solution out of them
sometimes proves to be a bit of a challenge!).
For details see http://www.humperdink.demon.co.uk/nkacc/
2) Southampton Acorn Users Group
The next meeting of Southampton AUG will be held on Monday 11 January 1999
at Itchen College, First Floor, Middle Road, Sholing, Southampton from
1900 to 2100 hours. All are welcome! Entry is free.
For further information, please contact either Dave Higton, e-mail
davehigton@arcade.demon.co.uk, on Arcade BBS, or 'phone 01703 222312
(evenings/weekends); or Ted Lacey, e-mail tedell@argonet.co.uk,
01703 325560.
ANS Information
---------------
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