New software releases

NetSurf 2.8

Version 2.8 of the NetSurf browser was released last month. The major new features in this release are a new cross-platform system for handling frames and iframes, and an improved image cache.

Charm 2.4

Peter Nowosad's Charm programming language also saw a new release last month. Version 2.4 is the first version of the language to be 32bit compatible, so if you're looking for something a little bit different from your programming languages then now's a good as time as any to give it a go.

StrongHelp 2.86

A new version of StrongHelp was released to the StrongED mailing list, featuring several bugfixes, mainly for ARMv7 compatability. Download it here.

CDFaker now 32bit

Steffen Huber has released a 32bit version of Andy Armstrong's CDFaker utility, which allows you to mount ISO images and read their contents via CDFS. Apart from being 32bit compatible, this release is also fully ARMv7 compatible.

InterGIF 6.18

Martin Weurthner's popular InterGIF utility has also seen an update. The main focus of this release was to make the utility ARMv7 compatible.

DigitalCD updates

Music player DigitalCD and related modules (TimPlayer, DiskSample) have been updated to add support for more tracker music formats, along with a few bugfixes.

New C/C++ tools release

And last but not least, RISC OS Open have released version 22 of the C tools package. The main development focus for this release was on improving objasm, to add support for the full ARMv7 instruction set, and to add support for some features offered by the assembler available in ARM's RealView package (which has a shared heritage with objasm and the other 'ROOL' tools).

For purchasing information, see ROOL's announcement.

RISC OS 5 news

OMAP4 ROM now available to download

As mentioned in the previous news roundup, Willi Theiss has been working on porting RISC OS to TI's OMAP4. This work has now found its way into ROOL's CVS, allowing them to add a (Pandaboard-compatible) OMAP4 ROM image to the downloads page. However as this is a first release, expect to see a fair number of bugs and missing features.

Raspberry Pi port on the cards

Veteran developer Adrian Lees has expressed an interest in porting RISC OS to the low-cost Raspberry Pi computer. Previously the possibility of a port was put into doubt by the question of whether anyone would have access to the required hardware documentation, but since Adrian works at Broadcom alongside Raspberry Pi Foundation members it sounds like lack of documentation will be the least of his issues.

Bounty pot reaches £1K

The amount of money available to developers through the ROOL bounty system has now reached £1000. However none of the bounties have yet hit their (secret) target values, so it looks like any budding programmers will have to wait a bit longer before they're able to take on any of the tasks listed (unless they want to do it for free!)

Correction: As has been pointed out by ROOL, bounties don't have any target funding values. Instead, interested parties merely need to get in touch and say that they're starting work once they feel that the money in the pot has reached an acceptable value. For more info on the workings of the bounty system, see here.

Filesystem bounties

On the subject of bounties, developer Rob Sprowson has recently had a go at analysing all the different filesystem wishlist items and boiling them down to a list of defined bounties, which can be found here. It's probable that this list (or something close to it) will be adopted by ROOL and added to the bounty area of their website in the near future. Not to be content with just making a bounty list, Rob has also had a go at fixing a few filing system bugs recently, mainly focusing around making sure FileSwitch and the filer are happy with files between 2G and 4G in size, as well as fixing a couple of bugs in RPCEmu that stopped large files from working there.

London show approaching

And finally, this is your official reminder that the 2011 RISC OS London show is here in just under two weeks time, on the 29th of October. Apart from the usual names on the exhibitors list it's worth pointing out that there'll be a pre-release version of the Raspberry Pi board on show. And if Adrian hasn't got it running RISC OS natively by the end of the show, it sounds like the RPCEmu team will be there with a copy of the RPCEmu emulator as a fallback. Unfortunately one notable absentee from the exhibitors list is RISCOS Ltd, who are unable to attend due to a clash with another commitment.

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The introduction

Several splash screens interspersed with artwork serve as the introduction to Burn 'Out. This introduction also shows off the two of the strongest points of the game - the art style and the music. Unfortunately, it's mostly downhill from there.

The game

If you've played any other faux-3D racing games like E-Type or Lotus II then you'll know what to expect from Burn 'Out in terms of gameplay. You have to steer your car to the left and right as you drive along the track, avoiding other drivers and all manner of obstacles that are in your path. However instead of driving a sports car you're driving a beach buggy, and the tracks have more in common with roller coasters than they do with public roads.

In total there are 40 tracks available, which must be completed in a fixed, linear order. In order to proceed to the next track you must finish 3rd or better, and without running out of time on the clock. Most races only take a couple of minutes to complete, and there's no save game system, so if you're planning on playing the game to completion you'll need at least a couple of hours spare.

Inbetween each race you'll be taken to the garage, where you're given the opportunity to spend your race winnings on upgrading the three core components of your buggy (engine, gearbox, tyres), or to respray the bodywork to a colour other than the default gray. Curiously the garage screen has a hidden time limit imposed on it - if you spend too long deciding which upgrade to purchase next then you'll be kicked out and into the next race without any warning.

As previously mentioned, one of the strong points of the game is the music. I'd guess that there are between 10 and 20 music tracks in the game, spread across the 40 race courses, resulting in a great deal of variety. It's rare to see a home-grown RISC OS game where so much attention has been given to the music. Unfortunately the game engine lets the music down somewhat, as whenever a sound effect plays it will cut out part of the music. I often fear collisions not because of the effect they'll have on my speed, but because of the effect they'll have on my enjoyment of the music. There is an option to disable the sound effects, but it has no effect on the music cutting out - it's as if all it does is mute the volume of the sound effects instead of stopping them altogether.

Another failing point of the game is the difficulty. The majority of the tracks are easy - assuming you've spent your money on the right upgrades there's absolutely no reason why you won't finish in first place, with the 2nd and 3rd place drivers miles behind, and with ample time left on the clock. But then there are the tracks featuring time bonus gates. The gates are barely any wider than your buggy, making them almost impossible to hit, especially considering the way the buggies bobble up and down and side to side as they drive along the track. Some of the time gate tracks are tuned so that if you miss even one or two of the gates you're almost guaranteed to run out of time before completing the race. The only other tracks that cause me some difficulty are the final few tracks of the game. Apart from being a bit more twisty and turny than the previous tracks they also feature quite harsh time limits, harsh to the point where one crash is all you need to ruin your chances.

The verdict

Burn 'Out is a fun and attractive game, but it seems like too much time was spent on the art and music and not enough on the code and gameplay. With some extra time spent to tune the difficulty the game could have been an all-time great, but as it is it's just a pale immitation of the arcade game it was inspired by.

The full version of Burn 'Out can be downloaded for free from Ian Jeffray's website. StrongARM/RISC OS 4 compatible.

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Meanwhile, RISC OS Open have secured permission to release the SharedSound module. This should improve the situation regarding sound support for owners of modern ARMv7 powered RISC OS systems.

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ROOL bounty scheme

ROOL officially announced their bounty scheme, and then followed up that announcement by beginning a process of doubling-up the first £1000 worth of bounty payments - for every pound you contribute towards a bounty (except the ROOL admin bounty), ROOL will also contribute a pound.

Although none of the bounties are yet to reach their (hidden) donation targets, it's worth noting that the biggest bounty so far has over £300 allocated to it. So although the bounties aren't likely to come close to the average hourly wage of a professional programmer, they're certainly not going to go for chump change either.

And also

Jim Lesurf has announced that he is offering a £300 bounty prize to the first person to add USB audio support to RISC OS.

BBC Domesday site

No more hunting down rare laserdisc players - the BBC have launched a new section of their website containing the content of the 1986 Domesday system.

Show videos

Proving that online videos of Acorn shows aren't just a modern thing, Mike Cook has pointed us towards this video he uploaded of the 1985 Micro User show. Ah, the memories.

More news sites emerge

In what's possibly an attempt to plug the gap left by our lack of updates, several new news sites have sprung up:

• Vince "One C or two" Hudd has turned RISCOSitory into a news site, which he looks to be updating on a fairly regular basis.
• For those who despise reading and just want a list of links, Martin Hansen has just the thing for you - he's added a section to the RISCOScode website that he's using for quickly linking to newsworthy things.
• And then there's the newest contender, riscos.blog.com, which seems to be updating at a faster rate than RISCOSitory but with shorter articles as a result.

GCC 4.1.2 crawls closer to release

With the first prerelease being over a year ago, you'd be forgiven for thinking that we'd all be using GCC 4.1.2 by now. But to prove that good things come to those who wait, it was only in April of this year that work began on the release preperations. The GCC team are still no doubt after your feedback, so if you're maintaining a RISC OS program that relies on GCC, please have a go with the latest version and report your findings.

RISC OS 5 development

Apart from the bounty announcement, plenty of other things have been happening with RISC OS 5 recently:

• Tom Walker has sneakily sneaked some sources into ROOL's CVS: A S3C2440 HAL and a S3C6410 HAL, targeting the Mini2440 and Mini6410 respectively. Although the ports are very rough around the edges, what's interesting is that (a) the S3C2440 is the same SoC as used in the A9home, and (b) the S3C6410 is the first ARMv6 device to natively run RISC OS.
• Not to be out-sneaked, Willi Theiss has recently announced that he's been working on a port of RISC OS to the PandaBoard, a development board closely related to the BeagleBoard but with a cutting-edge dual-core Cortex A9 processor instead of the BeagleBoard's ageing Cortex A8. Although the port is currently only using one core, early benchmark results suggest that the out-of-order execution and improved VFP hardware are enough to deliver a significant performance boost over current hardware.
• TBA software have been keeping themselves busy by releasing a test version of an updated BBC BASIC with VFP/NEON assembler support.
• Chris Wraight has released test version of his revamped Calc/SciCalc application.
• Rik Griffin has also been hard at work on an improved Filer_Action module.
• And finally the IOMD (i.e. RiscPC) version of RISC OS 5 has also seen a few improvements recently, making it much more usable on real hardware (although there's still plenty left to be done)

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Unicode has been developed as a standard way of representing the characters in all the world’s basic languages.

It was designed to make it easier to exchange files, between computer users who write using different alphabets, and to make documents that do not use the Western, Latin alphabet, readable all over the world, regardless of which program, or operating system is used to view them with.

Before Unicode was introduced, people used standard eight bit (one byte) fonts, which allowed the representation of only 256 different characters. When creating complex documents which included, for example, special symbols and foreign-language characters, you would have to use several different fonts to get all the required characters.

The problems would start when you emailed this to somebody else, and they didn’t have the same fonts installed on their system, that you had used to create it with. Parts of the document would be unreadable.

A further problem arises when two different encodings are used for the same set of characters.

For instance, Cyrillic web pages are often encoded in either KO18-R, or Windows 1251, which both have the same characters, but in different positions in the font table. If you sent a KO18-R document, or email, to somebody whose system was set up for Win 1251, they might not be able to read it.

Unicode was designed to get around these problems by using more than eight bits to represent a character. By using more than one byte, virtually every symbol, or character that exists in any language, can be allocated its own, unique number (or code point), so that the character can be represented by the same number, whatever operating system, or program you are using anywhere in the world.

If your system supports Unicode, a word processor or web browser that loads a Unicode document, will check all the code points in the document against a look up table, which tells it whether that character is defined in any of its installed fonts. If so, it retrieves the character’s details, and renders it to the screen.

Unicode makes the sharing of documents and web pages, across national boundaries, much easier, and is a God-send to those who regularly communicate with people who don’t use our alphabet, or are interested in studying foreign languages.

So how does RISC OS bear up to the challenge of supporting this international standard ?

To Install Unicode on RISC OS 4

1. First download a copy of the Cyberbit font from here.
2. Now download a copy of John-Mark Bell’s font converter from here. Extract the program using !SparkPlug.
3. Load TTF2f, and Select-click on its icon to open the dialogue box.
4. Drag the Cyberbit file icon into the top writeable box, and change the RISC OS name to Cyberbit.
   
   
5. Click on the drop-down menu, and select !Boot.Resources!Fonts as the destination for the converted font.
6. Now click on the Convert button.
   
   BE WARNED, however, it takes about ten minutes to complete on a StrongARM RiscPC, and, for the first two or three minutes, nothing appears to be happening!
   
   Do NOT assume that the program has crashed, and hit the On/Off button. Just be patient, and wait for it to finish.
7. Now download the Fonts (Unicode Font Manager) module, from the Video section of the downloads area of the RISC OS Open website, and get ROMFonts as well.
8. Extract Fonts and RomFonts, using SparkPlug.
9. Find the !Boot application on your hard drive, hold the Shift key down, and double click on it.
   Double click on Choices, Users, Single, Boot and then PreDesk.
   Drag Fonts and ROMFonts into PreDesk.
10. Create a little Obey file with the following two lines -
    
    

    RMEnsure ROMFonts 0.75 RMLoad <Obey$Dir>.ROMFonts
RMEnsure FontManager 3.66 RMLoad <Obey$Dir>.Fonts

    and save it in PreDesk.
11. Do Ctrl-Shift-F12, (or select Shutdown from the Task icon on the iconbar), to reboot your computer.
12. Now, load NetSurf and head on over to the webpage of Nippon Television, to check you’ve got it working properly.
    If so, you should see something like this:
    

Unicode and !PDF

In quite an important development, Chris Gransden has released a new version of his popular PDF reader (version 3.02), which can display Unicode characters in PDF files.

To do this, you have to click on the Render as Sprite icon on the PDF toolbar, and wait for the current page to open in Paint.

Previously, you would just have seen rows of ‘garbage’ where the Unicode characters were.

There is still the problem that the resulting sprite file is not nearly as useful for high-quality printing, as a draw file would be.

But it is an important step forward.

Getting Unicode Text into a Word Processor

Although at the moment, NetSurf is the only major program on RISC OS, that fully supports Unicode, there is one very useful trick that allows you to get Unicode text off the web, and into a word processor, like EasiWriter.

With the required page loaded in NetSurf, click Menu, and then go Page->Export->Draw.

Load the Draw version of the page, and click on it with the Selection tool.

At the moment, everything on the page is grouped into one big object. But, if you hold down the Control key and press U a few times, the page will begin to break up into separate objects, which allows you to select only the part of the screen that you want, with the Selection tool.

Now click Menu, and do File->Save->Selection, to save just the part of the screen you want to use.

If you want to change the size of the text, double click on the new file, select the text and use Transform->Magnify to do so.

Et viola! The resulting Draw file can now be dropped into EasiWriter.

Unicode imported into EasiWriter, courtesy of Draw

At the moment, we still cannot edit the text, but by using NetSurf’s Export Draw capabilities, we can effectively cut and paste from the internet into EasiWriter. And because Draw is a vector format, we can not only resize the Unicode text, but should also get much better print quality than we would, if we simply snap-shotted part of the screen with Paint, and used the resulting Sprite file in EasiWriter.

For The Future

Although viewing Unicode documents is becoming much easier for RISC OS users, thanks to the efforts of Chris Gransden and the NetSurf team, we still have a long way to go. We still have no easy way of actually creating Unicode content.

What we really need is a !Chars type application, which can be configured to present useful sets of all the Unicode characters, and which allows users to enter them into a document by clicking on a palette. (Luckily, since I started writing this article, Paul Sprangers in the Netherlands, has started work on such a program, called KeyMap).

What we also need, is for at least one of the RISC OS word processors (TechWriter being the obvious candidate) to be upgraded, so that it can handle Unicode characters internally, and save Unicode documents as well.

At the moment, we can extract blocks of Unicode text out of NetSurf, and drop them into TechWriter, but we cannot edit them.

However, if enough users request this as a feature they’d like to see, maybe this will change . . .

Finally, don’t take continued software development on RISC OS for granted. If you regularly download the latest version of NetSurf from their web site, and bits and pieces from RISC OS Open, make sure you make a donation to one of the bounties set up by the latter, to finance further development of the operating system. And remember to buy one of the £5 CDs from NetSurf, next time you see them at a RISC OS show!

If you want software development on RISC OS to continue, find a way of showing your support for it.

Many thanks to John-Mark Bell of the NetSurf team, and Steve Revill of RISC OS Open for help researching this article.

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TBA Software are sharing their progress on a new blog. Already they have released a 32-bit only version of their high performance image filing system, TBAFS.

They have started to produce a 32-bit version of their 3D graphics library and game runtime, TAG, and they are working on using extra features of modern ARMv7 CPUs to make it run even faster.

Another member of the TBA Software team, Martin Piper [Interview], has managed to render levels from BHP on Windows. Alan is hoping to get BHP running on the BeagleBoard XM in the near future.

In other news, the excellent RISC OS classic Inferno [Review] has been released for Apple iOS devices. There's no mention of support for Android devices. Paradise's website claims that Inferno is their "very first iPhone title", so perhaps we will see Overload [Review] and the long awaited Pocket Money / Toybox Dreams [Preview] make their way over to modern handheld devices too.

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• R-Comp/RCI - Apart from the other wares they'll be bringing to the show, expect them to also take the opportunity to officially launch their new ARMini computer.
• RISC OS Open and RISCOS Ltd - Providing you with the latest OS updates, no matter which side of the fence you're on.
• Mike Cook's Gadgets stand - If you've ever wanted to find out what he's been up to since his Micro User/Acorn User days, now's your chance!
• WikiProject RISC OS - Meet the people who aim to put RISC OS back on the map (on Wikipedia, at least).
• Also look out for lots of new software releases, including (but not limited to) new versions of Organizer 2 and Impact.

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^* Terms and conditions apply.

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Like the first meeting, this one will be entirely informal in nature - a group of like minded individuals meeting in a pub for a drink and a chat, so if you are a RISC OS user in or around Bristol and think you can make it, we look forward to seeing you there.

• Theme : The RISC OS South West Show
• Date : Wed 16th Mar 2011
• Time : 19:15 for 19:30
• Venue : Air Balloon, Filton, Bristol, BS34 7PY (northwest of the A38/A4174 roundabout)
• Admittance: free

We look forward to seeing you there.

Vince Hudd & Trevor Johnson

The Bristol RISC OS Users Mailing List

The 'BRU' mailing list is open to all RISC OS users in or around Bristol and the wider surrounding area - current subscribers being spread as far affield as Cheltenham in one direction, and Glastonbury in the other. The list was set up to support the possibility of a new user group, and to provide a forum for discussion for those people in the area.

Joining is as easy as sending and replying to an email:

• First, send an email from the address you would like subscribed, to bru-list-request@riscository.co.uk, with a subject of 'subscribe'
• Second, reply to the confirmation email you will receive shortly after - or click on the link contained within.

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Arche Acorn User Club - Germany

First up is the return of the Arche Acorn User Club, which is based in Germany. Says group leader Holger Palmroth:

After some years of hibernation, the Arche Acorn User Club organizes a user meeting again. The reason, and the topic, is of course the BeagleBoard.

The meeting takes place at the 19th March, 2011 in the Unperfekthaus, room 104, Friedrich-Ebert-Str. 18 in 45127 Essen. It start at 1:00 pm (UTC+1).

Detlef Thielsch, producer of the BIK (BeagleBoard in a box) will be there, presenting the BIK as well as PhotoDesk 3.10. Steffen Huber, author of CDVDBurn and Herbert zur Nedden, editor of GAG-News, THE German RISC OS magazine will most
likely also attend the meeting. Martin Würthner unfortunately can't come, but provides us with a BeagleBoard compatible demo version of ArtWorks 2. Currently we expect to have 4-5 BeagleBoard system to show.

The Unperfekthaus is an unique place with it's own, special rules.

1. Every visitor pays 5,50 Euro, not at entrance, but at leaving the house.This fee includes a flatrate for softdrinks and coffee.
2. Those who want to enter and leave multiple times would need to 9,50 Euro, athough there is no need to leave the house to eat. The Unperfekthaus offers a good buffet for as low as 5,50 Euro for a small dish up to 12,50 Euro for all-you-can-eat. These expenses will be paid the leaving the house, too.

We welcome every spontaneous visitor, but due to room constrains we want to ask everyone who intends to come with a computer to inform us via email.

Updates to the meeting you will find at http://forum.acorn.de/ in the thread "!RiscOS & Arche Treffen am 19.03.2011 im UPH Essen".

PS: We would be glad if someone could provide us with a fullHD monitor which can deal with 24 pictures per second. Some Flatron models from LG, for example, accept a 24Hz signal at their DVI input.

Big Ben Club - The Netherlands

The second piece of news is that for the fourth year in a row, the Big Ben Club will be organising The RISC OS eXperience. This years show will be held on Saturday the 14th of May, between 10:00 and 16:00, at its usual location:

Wijkgebouw de Vuister
Molenwerf 44
1541 WR Koog aan de Zaan
The Netherlands

For more information, check the club website.

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