Acorn News Service Newsletter

Issue: 235 (20 January 2008)

Featured site this issue: http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact2179.html

General News

Drobe Best of 2007 awards

Best commercial product: ArtWorks 2.7
Best non-commercial program: NetSurf
Best show of initiative: Castle/RISC OS Open shared source project

<http://www.drobe.co.uk/riscos/artifact2179.html>

RISC OS SouthWest Show 2008

RISCOS Ltd is pleased to announce that the RISC OS SouthWest Show 2008 will again be held at the Webbington Hotel, North Somerset, BS26 2HU, on Saturday 23rd February 2008 from 10am to 4pm.

The hotel is situated 25 miles south of Bristol, approximately 10 minutes drive from Junction 22 of the M5 motorway. The event will be held in the main ballroom and it is expected that there will be the usual theatre presentations.

The event is being supported by RISCOS Ltd and, as with previous RISC OS Roadshows, there will be no admission charge for visitors. However there will not be a free minibus service this year.

All the usual exhibitors will be present - RISCOS Ltd, CJE Micros and R-Comp have already confirmed their attendance.

There will be free Wi-Fi access at the event, and an area for users to bring along their own machines to show off, or look for help if you have problems that you may need assistance with. If you want your machine upgraded then bring it along and the exhibitors will do it on the spot, if the required upgrades have been booked in advance.

<http://www.riscos.com/>

Commercial News

New Year offers from Orpheus Internet

Orpheus Internet have lowered their one-off of broadband setup fee by GBP10 to GBP60 inc VAT, with no minimum contract period. Or if you wish to switch to Orpheus from another broadband supplier, Orpheus are now waiving their GBP20 migration fee. Up to 8Mb/s broadband from GBP19.95.

For more information please visit <http://www.orpheusinternet.co.uk/>.

RCI announce new RISCBook Mini

RISCBook Mini has an A5 footprint, 3 USB2 ports, an SD card reader, wireless and wired networking, and a built-in touchpad.

Storage is provided by solid state technology and can be expanded via USB or SD card. The RISCBook Mini can be ordered in three configurations - Linux (around GBP300), Microsoft Windows XP, or Microsoft Windows XP with RISC OS (around GBP600).

<http://www.rcomp.co.uk/>

PD/Shareware News

New autobuilder web site

A new web site to provide packages built from the GCCSDK autobuilder has been created at: <http://www.riscos.info/packages/>

The packages on the web site are in the format for the RISC OS Packaging Project <http://www.riscpkg.org/>.

Details of the Autobuilder can be found at: <http://www.riscos.info/index.php/GCCSDK>

New software summary

7backup, incremental backups
A tool for performing incremental backups of your files, applications, and directories. It can be driven from the command line or from programs like Alarm or Organizer, and also has a graphical user interface. It includes a number of specialised options which help to address various problems found in other RISC OS backup programs, for example when trying to backup to or from network file systems like ShareFS, NFS, LAN Manager, Sunfish and Samba.
<http://www.7thsoftware.com/software.htm>
add/eml, add file extension
Once installed, dropping a file on its iconbar icon will add /eml to the file's leafname. This may be useful to users of email providers who ask for spam to be returned to them as a MIME attachment with an .eml suffix. The attachment's contents can normally be plain text.
<http://www.timil.com/riscos/>
WordChain II, design doublet puzzles
The MathMagical Software Company is pleased to announce the release of a new desktop application called "WordChain II". The software helps the user to design doublet puzzles, as made famous by Lewis Carroll of "Alice in Wonderland" fame.
<http://www.mathmagical.co.uk/>

Updated software summary

Battle for Wesnoth v1.2.8
Turn-based strategy game with a fantasy theme. As well as the upstream improvements to the game and scenarios, the RISC OS version now plays music using the Tremor integer ogg library so you can run the game with the music on with very few sound break ups.
<http://www.riscos.info/packages/GamesDetails.html#wesnoth>
Calibre v1.41
Design and print calendars of various formats in all shapes and sizes. This version mainly adds two new facilities requested by users: moon phases and the number of days from the beginning of the calendar year.
<http://www.rayfavre.me.uk/dwapps.html>
DosBox v0.72-1
DOS emulator.
<http://www.riscos.info/packages/>
DrawPrint v1.08
Print DrawFiles over multiple sheets of paper. Improvements and bug fixes.
<http://sinenomine.co.uk/software/>
FakeFiles v1.01
Generate an arbitrary number of completely fake, random encrypted files for which you do not have the pass phrase. Now utilises GnuPG.
<http://www.vigay.com/software/fakefiles.html>
LaBella v6.32
Label printer. Bug fixes and interface improvements.
<http://www.rayfavre.me.uk/dwapps.html>
Parmesan v1.20
An MSN / Windows Live Messenger client for RISC OS. The new version includes a new configuration window set, and support for fonts and colours in instant messages, media personal messages and contact cards.
<http://parmesan.recoil.org/>
PrivateEye v2.75
A viewer for Sprites, DrawFiles, JPEGs, ArtWorks, GIFs and PNGs. This version adds JPEG metadata support, so you can view (but not edit) the information stored by digital cameras and image processing applications (Exif, Adobe, IPTC-NAA and JFIF COM data).
<http://www.davespace.co.uk/>
RiscSearch v0.973
Meta search engine. Decoder updates.
<http://www.riscsearch.de/>
Rover v1.0
Keep track of which programs are installed on your computer and the latest available versions of those programs. First full release.
<http://www.avisoft.f9.co.uk/Rover.htm>
SuperDoku v1.15
An advanced Sudoku generating and solving program. Bug fixes.
<http://sinenomine.co.uk/software/>
TuxMath v1.5.8-1
Maths game for children. Dramatically improved over the old version.
<http://www.riscos.info/packages/>
Webgen2 v2.37
Generate a web site gallery from a directory of images. This version fixes bugs in duplicates processing and HTML only generation.
<http://daves.orpheusweb.co.uk/>

Club News

Upcoming meetings

ROUGOL (London), 21st January - RISC OS Connect
<http://www.rougol.org.uk/>
RONE (North East), 7th February - Web development on RISC OS
<http://www.cjemicros.f2s.com/public/HouseFindMap.gif>
SASAUG (Surrey & Sussex), 11th February
<http://www.sasaug.org.uk/>
SAUG (Southampton), 12th February
ROUGOL (London), 18th February - Christian Ludlam & others
<http://www.rougol.org.uk/>
ROUGOL (London), 17th March - Ray Favre
<http://www.rougol.org.uk/>

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