|-------------------------- Acorn News Service --------------------------| | http://www.ans.org.uk/ | | ISSUE 281 8 January 2012 | | | | An independent monthly newsletter for the Acorn world. | | Send your news items or comments to ans@acornusers.org. | |------------------------------------------------------------------------| |Featured site this issue: http://www.RISCOScode.com/Pages/Item0116.html | |------------------------------------------------------------------------| Contents -------- 1) General news 2) Commercial news 3) PD/Shareware news 4) Club news 5) ANS information General News ------------ 1) RISCOScode Awards RISCOScode has continued the tradition of annual awards for the best of RISC OS. The results for this year's awards can be found at: 2) RISC OS London Show 2011 The videos of the theatre talks from the 2011 London Show are now online: They are available in Risc PC friendly MPEG format and can be played with KinoAMP. The date for this year's London Show has already been set: Saturday, 27th October 2012. Commercial News --------------- 1) ARMini CD/DVD drive support now available R-Comp Interactive is pleased to announce that the ARMini computer is now available with an internal a CD/DVD drive that works correctly under RISC OS. The optical drive allows discs to be read via the standard CDFS icon on the iconbar, and written to using the latest version of CD/DVDburn. Existing ARMini owners who originally elected not to have a drive fitted can contact RCI to order a simple, self-fit upgrade kit. 2) Epson GT20000 version of TWAIN now available 4D can now supply a version of David Pilling's popular RISC OS TWAIN software for the Epson GT20000 A3 scanner, for GBP60 including UK postage. Refurbished Epson GT20000s are also available. The Epson GT20000 is a professional A3 scanner offering high quality digital files to print, share, or archive. It can be connected via USB or SCSI. 3) Drag 'n Drop Volume 1 and 2 bundles PDF magazine Drag 'n Drop is now available to purchase in money saving bundles: * Volume 1, Issues 1 to 4 - GBP9 * Volume 2, Issues 1 to 4 - GBP9 The current issue is also available from the Drag 'n Drop web site, and includes articles on the 8-bit games scene and running Messenger Pro 6 as an IMAP client. PD/Shareware News ----------------- 1) jpegtran for BeagleBoard There are a number of applications that carry out various transformations on JPEG files, for example JCut, JClean, Jigwas. These make use of IJG (Independent JPEG Group) software to do the transformations. Unfortunately the jpegtran module supplied with these apps will not run on the BeagleBoard. The IJG software (version 6b, as originally used by the above apps) has now been recompiled using BeagleBoard compatible options, and is available from: 2) Updated software summary * Calibre v3.23 Design a wide range of calendars. Now compatible with ARMini, Beagleboard, and FAT32 filing systems. * DrawPrint v1.32 Splits Draw files for printing over several pages. This version can save the individual pages as new Draw files. * Fat32fs v1.39 A filing system for USB mass storage devices on the Iyonix and BeagleBoard. This release fixes a bug with drives greater than 256GB. * Kevmon v1.01 Clone of the memory game Simon. This version features a new expert level which has 8 coloured lights. * LaBella v6.43 Prints labels and envelopes. Bug-fixes, small updates to manuals, new envelope sizes (Christmas cards). Now compatible with ARMini and Beagleboard and FAT32 filing systems. * Longs BASIC library v0.32 The Longs BASIC library provides routines for handling long integers referenced by normal integer variables. All the standard integer keywords and operations are emulated and work with any combination of normal integer variables and expressions and long integers. * meDDLe v2.21 Converts Ovation Pro's DDL files into HTML. Now compatible with ARMini and Beagleboard and FAT32 filing systems. * OpenVector, OpenGridPro, DrawPlus v3.37 Open-source enhancements to Draw. The main reason for this release is that, in response to user feedback, merging has changed again. The usual action when a file is imported is still to place the imported objects on the current layer. However, when importing files of type VecFile (&c56), the layering of objects is preserved as much as possible given the layers that are already defined in the receiving document. Bug fixes. * Structs v0.70 The Structs BASIC library provides routines for handling structures. Prototypes of structures are defined and new structures are created from them, or they can be applied to existing blocks of memory, such as window information. * UnitConv v2.32 Converts between various units, generally SI and Imperial but there are also some more specialised conversions, such as energy equivalents. There is now an inbuilt editor to allow changes to the default unit conversions. Club News --------- 1) Upcoming meetings * SAUG (Southampton), 10th January * ROUGOL (London), 16th January * RONWUG (North West), 18th January * WROCC (Wakefield), 1st February * SASAUG (Sussex & Surrey), 13th February ANS Information --------------- 1) Contact ANS To send in your news items e-mail or use the form on the ANS website . More information about ANS and other contact details are available on the ANS web site . 2) How to subscribe to ANS If you are reading this on the ANS web site, or have received a forwarded copy of ANS and would like to subscribe to the mailing list, simply send a blank e-mail to . Alternatively use the form on the ANS web site at . For details of other commands e-mail . ---------------- Acorn News Service, http://www.ans.org.uk/ ----------------