Acorn News Service Newsletter

Issue: 256 (29 November 2009)

Featured site this issue: http://www.mug.riscos.org/show09/

General News

MUG RISC OS Show 09

The RISC OS Midland User Group 2009 show is taking place on Saturday, 5th December, at Birmingham University, Guild of Students, B15 2TU.

The show will be a mixture of: - the old, with the Retro Software stand showcasing software and developments for the 8bit range of Acorn machines; - the familiar, with all the usual RISC OS companies and developers attending; - and finally, the new, with at least one exhibitor showing off RISC OS running on the ARM Cortex-A8 powered Beagleboard, which opens up a potential new platform to run RISC OS on.

In addition there will be at least two hands-on demonstrations and talks on how to program on and for the RISC OS platform. These developer sessions will be undertaken by Dr Michael Gerbracht of Luafox fame and Richard Windley of The Really Small Software company.

There will also be two prize ticket draws to win copies of either Serious Statistical Software or the January 2010 edition of the PDF magazine Drag'n'Drop.

The show starts at 11:00am and costs GBP3 to enter, with children and students gaining entry for free. Details of the exhibitors and how to get to the show can be found on the show website: <http://www.mug.riscos.org/show09/MUGshow.html>

Wakefield 2010 Show

The Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club is pleased to announce that the Wakefield RISC OS Computer Show will be taking place once again in the new year. On 24th April, Wakefield 2010 will be returning to the Cedar Court Hotel near Wakefield, which has been the show's home for the past couple of years.

More information about the event, including the location of the venue and how to get there by car or public transport, can be found on the relaunched show website at <http://www.wakefieldshow.org.uk/>.

RISC OS London Show videos

Videos of the theatre presentations from the London show are now available as Risc PC friendly MPEG files. The videos can be downloaded from: <http://legless.jellybaby.net/rougol/RISCOSLondonShow2009/RPC/>

They can be played using KinoAMP, which can be found here: <http://www.riscos-digitalcd.net/image/kinoamp/kinoamp.htm>

RONWUG's recommended RISC OS websites

At their October meeting, RONWUG asked members to recommend websites that might be worth a look by other members and RISC OS users. The results can be found on the RONWUG web site: <http://www.ronwug.org/Useful>

Commercial News

Draft New Photodesk manual available

A new manual is being written for Photodesk, the premier photo retouching package for RISC OS, and is approximately 85% complete. To enable users to benefit from the new manual now, the draft version is available to download. Users of Photodesk 3.09 & 3.09x can download the manual for free from <http://www.cjemicros.co.uk/photodesk>.

Anyone with Photodesk prior to 3.09 can upgrade to the latest release of Photodesk (version 3.09x) which now comes complete with the draft manual on CD:

3.09 to 3.09x: Free download or GBP5 on CD
3.08 to 3.09x: GBP17
3.05 or 3.06 to 3.09x: GBP27
3.00-3.04 to 3.09x: GBP42
2.xx to 3.09x: GBP63
Full copy: GBP84

PD/Shareware News

New software summary

BAABE, text adventure interpreter
A freeware interactive fiction interpreter and framework for RISC OS. The script files are written in ordinary BASIC for ease of adventure creation and maintenance, with several veneers and informational variables made available from the main interpreter. Documentation from both the gamer's and programmer's perspective is included in the archive, along with some examples for you to play with. The headline feature is the engine's extraordinary capacity for translation and internationalisation.
<http://www.starfighter.acornarcade.com/mysite/games.htm#baabe>

Updated software summary

BookMaker v2.13
Address book manager for RISC OS browsers, and e-mail, telnet and FTP clients (unfortunately not NetSurf). This version includes a new preference, "Sort books to top" that modifies the behaviour of the address sorting tool.
<http://www.bookmaker.riscos.org.uk/>
Calibre v3.21
Design and print calendars of various formats in all shapes and sizes. This version corrects a bug in v3.20 which wrongly stripped the final two characters from Red Letter Day text, when using 'old' RLD files.
<http://www.rayfavre.me.uk/dwapps.html>
MBBack v5
Backdrop randomiser. MBBack can now automatically recalculate the current backdrop whenever the screen mode changes. Other features include a configuration option to load the companion application at the same time, and bugfixes include the fixing of the scaling routine so that it no longer redraws the whole screen.
<http://www.starfighter.acornarcade.com/mysite/utilities.htm#mbback>
Missile v0.01
Control USB missile launchers. The update was precipitated by the discovery of a new version of the launcher, looking exactly the same as the old one, but with an entirely different control protocol. The new application can control both launchers.
<http://www.apts04.dsl.pipex.com/Progs/Missile.htm>
Murnong v1.40
Fetch videos from YouTube. This update introduces code that will try to use the DDEUtils module to allow much longer filepaths on RISC OS 4 or later.
<http://www.users.on.net/~belles/software/murnong/>
SiteMatch v2.40
Website management tool that compares local copies of your websites with the previously saved states and uploads any new or changed files to the web server using FTPc, sFTP, or psftp. Clicking Adjust now reverses the effect of the auto-compare flag on Upload and Reset instead of simply forcing a rescan of the local site.
<http://www.richardporter.me.uk/riscos/sitematch/>
SuperDoku v1.20
An advanced Sudoku generating and solving program. This version introduces Hitoshii or KenKen puzzles, which feature arithmetic in addition to standard Sudoku logic. Shareware: GBP5.
<http://sinenomine.co.uk/software/>
Twirl v0.09
Changes the Task Manager icon to an animated acorn. Now 32 bit compatible.
UnitConv v2.23
Converts between various units, generally SI and imperial.
<http://www.chris-johnson.org/software/>

Club News

Upcoming meetings

WROCC (Wakefield), 2nd December - Festive fun
<http://www.wrocc.org.uk/>
Midlands User Group Christmas show, 5th December
<http://www.mug.riscos.org/show09/MUGshow.html>
SAUG (Southampton), 9th December
RONWUG (North West), 16th December
<http://www.ronwug.org/>
ROUGOL (London), 21st December - Informal Christmas meeting
<http://www.rougol.org.uk/>
ROUGOL (London), 18th January - (provisional) Lua and RISC OS
<http://www.rougol.org.uk/>

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