|-------------------------- Acorn News Service --------------------------|
 |                         http://www.ans.org.uk/                         |
 | ISSUE 284                                                 1 April 2012 |
 |                                                                        |
 |         An independent monthly newsletter for the Acorn world.         |
 |        Send your news items or comments to ans@acornusers.org.         |
 |------------------------------------------------------------------------|
 |      Featured site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15969065      |
 |------------------------------------------------------------------------|


Contents
--------
 1) General news
 2) Commercial news
 3) PD/Shareware news
 4) Club news
 5) ANS information



General News
------------

 1) Request for commercial developers

  Do you sell software for RISC OS? If so, ROOL are very keen to speak to
  you about an idea that could bring you more customers and bring more users
  and developers to the RISC OS scene.

  ROOL are planning to speak to active developers of free RISC OS software
  over the coming weeks. Commercial developers should send an e-mail to
  <mailto:oem@riscosopen.org> including the following information:
    * Subject: ENQUIRY
    * The name of your business
    * Your web site URL
    * A list of your commercial RISC OS software

  ROOL manages the source code to RISC OS on a largely voluntary basis,
  and also offer professional services to help develop commercial RISC OS
  software.

  <http://www.riscosopen.org/>


 2) RISC OS books on MagCloud

  BASIC V for the Acorn Archimedes and RISC OS 4 First Steps are now
  available as free downloads from:
    <http://alligatamedia.magcloud.com/>



Commercial News
---------------

 1) Updated Fireworkz Pro released

  R-Comp is pleased to announce the release of another update for Fireworkz
  Pro. The big enhancements in this release related to the graph/charting
  features and significantly improved DrawFile export.

  As usual there were improvements to Excel import, as well as refinements
  to the user interface in line with customer feedback.

  Fireworkz Pro is an integrated word processor, spreadsheet, and database
  package for RISC OS, with a superb level of integration - a table in a
  letter is, in fact, a fully functional spreadsheet, which can then be used
  to create a dynamic chart!

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



PD/Shareware News
-----------------

 1) New software summary

  * Fuse, Free Unix Spectrum Emulator
    A port of the Free Unix Spectrum Emulator to RISC OS. It runs at 100%
    emulation speed on a minimum of a Risc PC SA.
    <http://www.riscos.info/packages/EmulationDetails.html#Fuse>

  * PDFTools, PDF utilities
    PDFTools is a set of command line utilities (based on Poppler) for
    getting information from PDF (Portable Document Format) documents or
    converting them to other formats.
    <http://www.riscos.info/packages/DocumentDetails.html#PDFUtils>


 2) Updated software summary

  * PlayIt v1.72
    A disc-based engine for playing sound samples. This release has much
    improved reliability, especially on 26-bit platforms, through the
    correction of several interrupt-handling bugs. All users should upgrade
    to this version.
    <http://www.users.on.net/~belles/software/playit/>



Club News
---------

 1) Upcoming meetings

  * WROCC (Wakefield), 4th April
    <http://www.wrocc.org.uk/>

  * ROUGOL (London), 16th April
    <http://www.rougol.org.uk/>

  * SASAUG (Sussex & Surrey), 16th April
    <http://www.sasaug.org.uk/>

  * RONWUG (North West), 18th April
    <http://www.ronwug.org/>

  * BRU (Bristol), 9th May
    <http://riscository.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/>

  * MUG (Midlands), 19th May
    <http://www.mug.riscos.org/>

  * Midlands Midsummer Mugshow, 7th July
    <http://www.mug.riscos.org/show12/MUGshow.html>



ANS Information
---------------

 1) Contact ANS

  To send in your news items e-mail <mailto:ans@acornusers.org> or use the
  form on the ANS website <http://www.ans.org.uk/newsdesk>.

  More information about ANS and other contact details are available on the
  ANS web site <http://www.ans.org.uk/>.


 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 <mailto:ans-subscribe@ans.org.uk>. Alternatively use the
  form on the ANS web site at <http://www.ans.org.uk/subscribe>.

  For details of other commands e-mail <mailto:ans-help@ans.org.uk>.

---------------- Acorn News Service, http://www.ans.org.uk/ ----------------