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Home > Archive > Issue 168 Current Issue: No. 260 (28 March 2010)
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Acorn News Service Newsletter

Issue: 168 (3 October 2004)

Featured site this issue: http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact1177.html

Commercial News

VirtualRPC-SE for GBP99

To celebrate VirtualRPC's first birthday as a stand alone product VirtualAcorn are running a special offer.

Customers can now buy VirtualRPC-SE for GBP99 inc VAT (plus P&P: GBP1.50 UK, GBP3.50 overseas). VirtualRPC-SE allows users to run RISC OS and RISC OS applications on PCs running Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP.

VirtualRPC-SE comes complete with RISC OS 4, which normally costs GBP85 on its own, along with many RISC OS applications including Ovation, DrawWorks Millennium, Mr Clippy, SiteWriter and WebFX3D.

VirtualRPC-SE is easy to install using the Microsoft front end on the CD. VirtualRPC-SE includes networking support so you can easily share files with a real RISC OS machine, you can even browse the web using a RISC OS browser on a PC. Also included is a power management plugin that significantly increases battery life on portable computers.

For more details on VirtualAcorn products, or to order, contact 3QD Developments Ltd, 86 Turnberry, Home Farm, Bracknell, Berks., RG12 8ZH; tel: 01344 452868; web: <http://www.virtualacorn.co.uk/>.

ArtWorks 2.3: graduated transparency and CMYK ink simulation

In May 2004, ArtWorks 2.2 was released with its new powerful dynamic clipping capabilities. Now, more exciting features have been added to the most popular advanced vector graphics illustration package for RISC OS.

The next major release version of ArtWorks (version 2.3), to be released at the South East Show in Guildford, will feature graduated transparency (linear and radial) with additional controls to customize the transparency graduation (offset control and a selection of profile curves). This allows much more sophisticated transparency effects to be added to illustrations.

Professional users producing artwork for CMYK colour separated printing will enjoy radically improved screen display of CMYK colours and CMYK colour graduations giving a much better on screen approximation of the final printed results using CMYK ink simulation technology as seen in OvationPro (kindly provided by David Pilling).

The third major new feature is the return of the Arranger module, once a popular third-party plug-in module for ArtWorks 1, allowing magnetic objects to be defined to which editing operations snap like to the grid. When moving objects, the new improved Selector tool allows their bounding box edges and midpoints to snap to magnetic objects, making object arrangement much easier.

In addition to these major new features, ArtWorks 2.3 comes with a number of minor improvements added due to popular demand, e.g., the ability to convert text areas to shapes and to ungroup several group objects in one go. Finally, there are a number of bug fixes and stability improvements.

Some example screenshots can be found at <http://www.mw-software.com/software/artworks/aw2features6.html>

ArtWorks 2.3 will be a chargeable upgrade from earlier versions:

  • ArtWorks 2.3 upgrade from 2.2: GBP 30
  • ArtWorks 2.3 upgrade from 2.0/2.1: GBP 60
  • ArtWorks 2.3 full version: GBP169

Prices include VAT, and are subject to change. Upgrade options from ArtWorks 1.x will be announced at release time. Full versions ordered now include a free 2.3 upgrade.

<http://www.mw-software.com/>

PD/Shareware News

Updated software summary

  • BookMaker v2.05
    An address book manager for most major RISC OS web browsers, and e-mail, telnet and FTP clients. It is fully 26/32-bit neutral and will run on all versions of RISC OS from 3.1 onwards. This version corrects a number of bugs; in particular, it should no longer fail to restart after it has been killed off with Alt-Break. This version also supports keyboard accelerators (hotkeys) for some of the common functions.
    <http://www.bookmaker.riscos.org.uk/>
  • IEurl v2.51
    Use Microsoft Internet Explorer 'Favorites' files (.url) with RISC OS web browsers. This version uses the officially registered filetype &1BA (IEURL).
    <http://www.quantumsoft.co.uk/files/internet/>
  • KinoAmp v0.33
    An MPEG movie player. No new features this time, but thanks to Andre Timmermans, some speed optimisations. The file loading time from disc has been improved. This has most effect on larger picture sizes as these require more data to be loaded for each frame.
    <http://www.everett9981.freeserve.co.uk/pete.htm>
  • Q-Lock v1.4, Mail-Lock v1.4
    Q-Lock enables you to encrypt all your sensitive files or directories, or to retrieve the data, in a very simple manner. Mail-Lock enables users of Marcel in the ANT Internet Suite to encrypt sensitive mail folders, or to retrieve them, in a very simple manner. The two applications have the same look and feel. They not only encrypt the data with one of the strongest known ciphers, but also destroy all traces of the original data, making recovery impossible without a knowledge of the passphrase. The main new features in these versions are as follows:
    • The 'b' versions are 32-bit compatible.
    • The IDEA cipher and the MD5 hash function used in earlier versions have been replaced by the more secure Blowfish and SHA-1, respectively.
    • Some small security and cosmetic enhancements.
    Please note that, because the new versions use a different cipher, data encrypted by earlier versions cannot be decrypted by the new versions. It will be necessary to re-encrypt any such data by means of the new versions.
    <http://www.queen.clara.net/pgp/acorn.html>
  • SpamStamp v1.00
    Uses Bayesian filtering techniques to detect spam and adds headers to suspect e-mail, allowing a mail client to treat it accordingly. New in this version:
    • Performance window shows up to 4 progress bars for background jobs.
    • 'Info on hashtable' in the utilities menu.
    • Alternative educate window.
    • Removed a bug that made hash tables bigger than 2MB actually only use 2MB and hash tables smaller than 2MB probably crash.
    • Removed some multitasking issues.
    • When processing mail and the resulting files must be removed, the files are renamed before processing. By doing this, a new mail transfer will hopefully not fail because the file it wants to open is the same one that is being processed by SpamStamp.
    • New commandline option '-cache' to fill the cache.
    • Bugfixes.

    <http://home.c2i.net/jjvdgeer/riscos/spamstamp.html>
  • Tock v0.03
    A Desktop clock. This version fixes the chime maker problem and should correct other issues with the sound playback. It also includes some requested options.
    <http://www.everett9981.freeserve.co.uk/pete.htm>

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