Gates definitely knew of Acorn since he tried to sell them MSDOS.

Our mistake ­ and it was a large one ­ was not realising we were so far in front. If we had recognised we had the world's best computer, and had we gone out to set a standard with it, maybe the world would be Acorn-compatible rather than Wintel-compatible [Windows and Intel]. We also had the best operating system, better than Microsoft's MS-Dos. When Bill Gates was trying to sell MS-Dos to me I could clearly show him that we couldn't take such a retrograde step because we had something that was a lot better.

I've just made a couple of other minor edits (mainly just wording improvements) and was going to upload a screenshot I've taken of my icon bar with a selection of apps running - and a few directories added with AddTinyDirs - but I apparently can't upload images (yet).

Edit: I've attached the image to this if anyone who already has an account can do the business. (Or they can upload their own screenshot if they have one).

Edit 2: Splitting it in half and representing the LHS and RHS separately might not be a bad idea.

[Edited by VincceH at 16:35, 31/8/2008]

[Edited by VincceH at 16:36, 31/8/2008]

Heya, sorry about the late reply, it was my birthday yesterday, im now 21 woo!

Iv had my account there for a while, so able to upload images, im off to town now, so will upload them when im back.

I'm going to take a proper look at the article myself now.

http://www.marutan.net/guis/

not only did RISC OS invent the task bar/dock, but it also invented hibernation! (citation needed)

http://www.marutan.net/guis/

Did RISC OS 2 really have the hard disc icon on the right hand side?

Also: Ref AddTinyDir being added in RISC OS 3 - are we sure that's the case? I mentioned it upthread, and the article mentions that, but the document on the WSS page I linked to further upthread, which mentions it, is dated 1989; RISC OS 3 was 1991, wasn't it?

(Oooh... I can check this later. I spotted my A3K user guide last night! I can probably lay my hands on it when I pop home later).

http://www.marutan.net/guis/

Did RISC OS 2 really have the hard disc icon on the right hand side?

Judging by the 'HardDisk' naming I'd wager that was taken from RedSquirrel/VirtualAcorn. So it's presumably a nuance with the HostFS code rather than the OS itself.

Also: Ref AddTinyDir being added in RISC OS 3 - are we sure that's the case? I mentioned it upthread, and the article mentions that, but the document on the WSS page I linked to further upthread, which mentions it, is dated 1989; RISC OS 3 was 1991, wasn't it?

http://www.marutan.net/guis/

Did RISC OS 2 really have the hard disc icon on the right hand side?

http://www.houseofmabel.com/puters/RISCOS2/medium/p98.gif
hard disc on left.

Please feel free to stealuse any screenies from my site in said article. I could even change copyrights, although I guess that would require me to upload images via my account?

No, it was on the left.

The fact that the icon says HardDisk instead of HardDisc4 is also odd.

On RISC OS 2 TinyDirs was IIRC a Basic program, that when run allowed you to manually drag stuff to the iconbar.

With RISC OS 3 it was integrated into the new Pinboard module and the *AddTinyDir command introduced.

What might work, I think, is creating a new section detailing the history of the bar - how it changed from one version of RISC OS to the next.

The slight problem is that for this week my only internet access is while I'm at this office because I'm not staying at home, and I'm quite busy here.

Would make sense, I guess. Even if we can't find much to say about each version it would be a sensible place to show the pictures of the different versions.

I'll also dig up my Arthur/OS 2 ROMs so we can do first-hand checks of what the bars were capable of.

I'll also dig up my Arthur/OS 2 ROMs so we can do first-hand checks of what the bars were capable of.

I wonder if there was a TinyDirs or equivalent for Arthur? Unfortunately, my switch from 8bit happened with RISC OS 2 on the A3K.

I'll also dig up my Arthur/OS 2 ROMs so we can do first-hand checks of what the bars were capable of.

I'll also dig up my Arthur/OS 2 ROMs so we can do first-hand checks of what the bars were capable of.

I'll also dig up my Arthur/OS 2 ROMs so we can do first-hand checks of what the bars were capable of.

Careful you don't fall foul of "No original research".

Tonight I'll try hunting around for information about that Master Compact GUI to see if it had any bar-ish features. I suspect not, but we might find something interesting anyway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:BBB_MC_GUI_2.jpg

No sign of an icon bar in that screenshot - just an Apple-y menu bar. So it's fairly safe to say the icon bar was invented with Arthur.

^{Okay, so I'm not being 100% serious.}

I'll also dig up my Arthur/OS 2 ROMs so we can do first-hand checks of what the bars were capable of.

I wonder if there was a TinyDirs or equivalent for Arthur? Unfortunately, my switch from 8bit happened with RISC OS 2 on the A3K.

I've got a copy of the TinyDirs app somewhere (I think), so I'll run it and find out.

Is that the submenu for Calculator showing - "Display/Remove"? And if you can "Remove" something from that menu, then can things be added to it?

Are programs (from the Programs menu?) added to it by running them - which would make it an ancestor of the icon bar, or just added as a shortcut to running them from the Programs menu - which would make it a dock of sorts?

If they're also running, why can we not see them?

arthur-cmds....
22.4KB

arthur-swis....
4.1KB

What I'll actually do is save the article out and take it with me - that way, when I've nothing to do this evening (or tomorrow evening - I'm elsewhere tomorrow, and don't know if I'll have internet access), I can actually play around with it offline, then edit any changes into the real thing on Thursday.

and ended up spending the rest of the evening with her, so I didn't get 'home' until late.

and ended up spending the rest of the evening with her, so I didn't get 'home' until late.