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So the Wakefield show has been and gone, yet we’ve still enjoyed a solid stream of activity, which is surprising considering the biggest show of the RISC OS calendar has just passed. Here’s another exciting edition of Newsbuzz for you folks to take a peek at…

DrawPrint – Sine Nomine Software have announced a new version of DrawPrint, version 1.78 to be exact. This new version adds the option to position the Draw file in the same location as Draw would place it, rather than trimming off the margins. It also improves DrawPrint’s handling of files containing ridiculously large numbers of objects.

DrawPrint allows you to print a Draw file (or Sprite or JPEG) over several pages at the scale of your choice. You can set margins and overlap between pages, or have page breaks inserted more intelligently. You can also export individual pages as Draw files for use with other applications.

You can download DrawPrint from Sine Nomine’s website.

OpenVector, OpenGridPro and DrawPlus - OpenVector, OpenGridPro and DrawPlus version 3.41 are now available for download courtesy of Christopher Martin.

These applications are all open-source enhancements to Draw. Vector and GridPro were originally developed from DrawPlus as commercial applications for 4Mation by Jonathan Marten. Vector included layering and object library capabilities. GridPro was customised for drawing grids and other regular object layouts.

This release compensates for a bug in RISC OS which can cause text-to-path conversion to corrupt memory resulting in unpredictable behaviour and crashes. For this reason, version 3.41 is a highlyrecommended upgrade for all users.

You can download these applications from Chris’ website.

Impulse module – The Impulse module, which provides a framework for inter-application command execution and data transfer, has been updated. The module is used by Impact, Powerbase and other databases in conjunction with Impression, ImpEmail and Ovation Pro for mail merging and report generation.

The previous version (0.20) was released in December 2002 as the first 32 bit release. Version 0.21 has now been released to fix some issues to do with the Impulse module interfering with messages sent by a task to itself (including broadcast messages). These issues came to light during the development of ImpEmail, the new mail merging email software supplied with Sine Nomine Software’s Impact database application. Software developers should include this version of the Impulse module from now on for obvious reasons.

You can download the module from Sine Nomine’s website.

DigitalRenderer – Christopher Martin has updated the DigitalRenderer module to version 0.56 beta 7. This release fixes a bug that surfaced with the recent release of HHeretic and HHexen. The module is used to provide sound support for applications and games ported to RISC OS using the SharedUnixLibrary, including FFplay and MPlayer.

You can download it from here.

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Chris Gransden has a released a test version of a Duke Nukem 3D port for RISC OS.

Duke Nukem 3D, originally released in 1996, features the adventures of an overly macho Duke Nukem, who single-handedly fights off an alien invasion.

The game picks up directly after the events of Duke Nukem II, with Duke returning to Earth in his space cruiser. As Duke descends on Los Angeles in hopes for a vacation, his ship is shot down by unknown hostiles. While sending a distress signal, Duke learns that aliens are attacking Los Angeles and have mutated the LAPD. So understandably, Duke then feels the need to go out and begin a violent onslaught on his attackers…

A port of the game to RISC OS was originally in the works around a decade ago, R-Comp were working in conjunction with a number of programmers with the aim of releasing the first-person shooter commercially. Although the port was running, albeit not very stable, the game was never released due to a then diminishing RISC OS games market.

This new port runs well on a Pandaboard running RISC OS 5, so as a result will perform at a decent rate on a Beagleboard, ARMini and even an Iyonix or RiscPC. You can download an early version of Chris’ port from here. Keep in mind that the port is not yet considered stable. The game’s data files are not supplied and you will need to source them yourself as they are still commercial.

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Last weekend saw a horde of RISC OS users flock to the Cedar Court Hotel in Wakefield for the biggest show of the RISC OS calendar, Wakefield 2012.

The RISC OS newsgroups, mailing lists and news sites like this one have all been hectic over the last week, the sheer amount of new updates and releases was astounding and the flurry of activity didn’t end there. This year’s show saw an increase in the overall attendance over previous years, even though last year’s show was up in attendances also!

The Raspberry Pi was present at the show, Andrew Hodgkinson and Ben Avison of RISC OS Open Ltd displayed the tiny computer, but unfortunately it still isn’t running a complete RISC OS port. The first batches of the Raspberry Pi went out to customers this month so the pressure really is on RISC OS to have a complete port running on the device. Work on the Pi has been advancing however, and is rumoured to even have a full-time developer working on getting the port complete as soon as possible.

The biggest attraction of the show was undoubtedly R-Comp‘s presentation, Andrew Rawnsley talked about the ARMini’s speed increase (from 800Mhz to 1Ghz) to a standing room only theater audience. The operating system update that allows the computer to run at a faster pace can be downloaded from the ARMini website.

As well as this, Andrew has revealed that parts of RISC OS are being rewritten in Neon: “We’ve always had a soft spot for RISC OS Audio and the Neon code has resulted in a speeded up audio system”.

MusicMan 2 was also demonstrated at the show, Jon Robinson discussed some of MusicMan’s most impressive features in his show report for RISCOSCode: “A particularly nice feature of the new MusicMan is that it allows a user to shrink an audio CD down to about a third of its size, using a lossless compression system called FLAC.

“The boffins at R-Comp are working on some hardware acceleration on the ARMini, to get FLAC conversion working faster. So, exciting Audio developments available to buy now, with more in the pipeline. Andrew also mentioned that a New Zealand audio company had adopted RISC OS and MusicMan as their preferred way of ripping CDs, for use with their high-end hi-fi systems.”

R-Comp also demonstrated their latest hardware release, the R-Comp tablet, a 10″ tablet computer based on a Cortex-A8 ARM processor running the Android Linux operating system. Yes it doesn’t run RISC OS, but the R-Comp tablet is quite impressive when it comes to web browsing and it even has a flash player built in (something that even the latest iPad lacks). Andrew Rawnsley was very keen to emphasize that you can connect the tablet to any RISC OS machine that has a USB port, so Iyonix and ARMini machines will have no problem and even a RiscPC with a Unipod can read the device.

Martin Wuerthner, sharply dressed as ever.

As you might expect, questions were raised during R-Comp’s talks regarding the tablet not running RISC OS. Andrew was eager to point out that his company made a loss on developing their software applications last year and they need to make up for that with revenue from hardware sales.

Martin Wurthner of MW Software was in attendance at the show, he was demonstrating his productivity applications TechWriter and EasiWriter as well as a brand new version of ArtWorks, their premier image manipulation application, which was launched at the show.

The folks behind Organizer were present at the show and were busy promoting their new Organizer on a Stick, a USB memory stick with an already set-up RISC OS emulator with Organizer installed, so you can keep track of your meetings, plans etc. on any computer.

Archive Magazine were as present as ever, showing off the latest issue of their magazine. As well as this, the charity stall, sponsored by the Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club was as packed with stuff as usual, with all proceeds of sales going to the Wakefield Hospice.

CJE Micro’s also had their usual wide range of new and second hand RISC OS software, they were busy showing off a brand new version of their photo manipulation application Photodesk, which was launched at the show. As well as this, they had a number of Raspberry Pi accessories on sale and even a few Iyonix PCs and an A9home.

So the biggest show of the RISC OS calendar has been and gone, and boy was it an action packed one. Now it’s time to look onwards at the Midlands show in July.

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APDL and iSV Products have worked together to bring us a new version of Easy Font Pro.

Easy Font Pro is a font management system for RISC OS systems, it is compatible with older 26-bit computers like the RiscPC and Omega as well as newer machines like the Iyonix.

APDL’s Dave Holden discussed this new update in his press release: “Users of  EasyFont Pro have reported problems after installing RISC OS 5.18 on the Iyonix.

“We have now fixed this problem and also made some other modifications to ensure that EasyFont Pro now works on the BeagleBoard. Users of  32 bit versions of EasyFont Pro, namely v 5.11 or better, can now download the upgrade to the latest version from the APDL website.”

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Paul Sprangers has released a brand new and in his own words “probably completely useless” program for RISC OS, it’s called MonopolyCal, and surprise surprise, it’s a Monopoly Calculator.

Paul described his latest application in his press announcement: “The most attractive part of the old game of Monopoly is the exchange of banknotes – at least for children, especially when they see their piles grow. For parents however, those subsequent exchanges are the most daunting quality, to be held responsible for at least half of the game play duration.

“This is where !MonopolyCal comes to rescue. Never be short of certain banknotes again. Never again tedious calculations or bitter battles about whose money that pile is. Never again confusion about the 1000 and 10000 notes, which (for some unobvious reason) are both yellow – at least in our Dutch edition. Just a few mouse clicks, and all the finances are settled – crispy, clear and concise.

Until recently, I never wanted to play Monopoly. Since I created this calculator my children refuse to play. This is what we call: a win-win situation.”

You can download MonopolyCal from here.

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The Wakefield show has been and gone (don’t worry, a show report is in the works!), now here’s a few freeware software updates to keep you going until that report is online.

Kevin Wells has updated Lcheck to version 1.07, which is a lottery syndicate checking application, for the UK National Lottery, Thunderball and Euro Millions. New in this version is the ability to get the last 11 draws from the main lottery, thunderball and plus 5 draws and check those numbers to see if you have any winning lines.

Lcheck will check to see if your syndicate numbers match the numbers for the above mentioned draws and if you have any lines that meet the criteria then it will let you know which lines and the number of numbers matched.

Chrisopher Martin has updated his Draw utilities suite, version 3.40 of OpenVector, OpenGridPro and DrawPlus are now available for download from his website. These applications are all open-source enhancements to Draw. Vector and GridPro were originally developed from DrawPlus as commercial applications for 4Mation by Jonathan Marten. Vector included layering and object library capabilities. GridPro was customised for drawing grids and other regular object layouts.

This release includes the following new functionalities and improvements:

• When OpenVector is editing a path, as a shortcut to ADJUST clicking a point and selecting “Set origin” from the Edit menu, hold down Shift when ADJUST clicking. There are a couple of advantages to this method. The point used to set the origin need not first be selected for editing, and bezier control points may also be used to set the origin. Note that a Shift-ADJUST click to set the origin will normally take grid locking into account, but not when clicking on a point on a path being edited.
• When editing a path, points that overlap can be cycled through by Adjust double-clicking.
• The Library window can be resized so as to increase the visible portion of the list of objects.
• In the Library window, a MENU click over the list of objects will select the object (if any) under the mouse pointer if no object is already selected.

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It’s pretty safe to say that this month has been one of the most hectic I’ve seen in the RISC OS world for a long while, and in the last two days things have exploded in anticipation of Saturday’s Wakefield show, the biggest event on the RISC OS calendar.

Here’s what you all have to expect for tomorrow’s big event, and if anyone who is attending that would like to provide the RISC OS Blog with live twitter updates throughout the day, please get in touch!

Theatre Presentations

The Presentation Theatre will be open on Saturday and will feature a number of talks from a number of different companies and individuals. MW Software will be taking to the theatre at 11.30am, with R-Comp taking over at 1.15pm and Wiki Project RISC OS taking place at 2.30pm.

Exhibitors: Who’ll be there?

Archive Magazine - Archive was established in 1987 in support of the then-new Archimedes computer from Acorn, and today seems to be the only printed magazine for the users of that machine’s successors. It’s more than a magazine, though, Archive is a community of RISC OS users who support one another, the magazine’s mailing list is a very active source of discussion, help and general chitchat.

Both the founding editor, Paul Beverley, and the current editor, Jim Nagel, will again be at Wakefield to meet and greet old friends and new. With luck, a new issue and the new DVD (and double-CD equivalent) will be hot off the press at the show.

Charity Stand - The charity stall is sponsored by the Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club this year, with all proceeds going to the Wakefield Hospice. They can only accept a limited range of hardware due to the WEEE regulations. This includes old mobile phones and used inkjet cartridges, but please ensure that they are securely bagged (and, in the case of phones, without their SIM card) before leaving them.

CJE Micro’s - CJE Micro’s and 4D will have their usual wide range of new and second hand RISC OS software, hardware and peripherals available at special show prices. CJE will be launching a brand new version of their image manipulation application Photodesk at the show, for more details see the bottom of this article. CJE also hope to have a wide range of Raspberry Pi related items too, and thanks to David Heath, they’ll be demonstrating an actual Raspberry Pi in the flesh!

Luafox – A brand new version of Luafox will be launched at the show. Luafox is a program for scientific data analysis. It is somehow similar to a spreadsheet program just that it is not so focused on cells but on larger amounts of data. You can import data from ods files (OpenOffice / LibreOffice), xlsx files (new MS Excel) and from CSV files. You can export in the own luafox file format or save tables as ods files. You can manipulate the data (sort, rearrange, move columns/rows), apply mathematical functions and plot the data (scatter & line plot, bar chart).

Mike Cook - Mike will be showing a selection of his latest RISC OS and general technology related projects, including the very intersting SpoonDuino.

MW Software - MW Software will demonstrate and sell a brand new version of ArtWorks, the platform’s most powerful graphics illustration package. The EasiWriter/TechWriter family of structured word processors, the Gutenprint high quality inkjet printer drivers and the PostScript 3 printer driver suite will also be present at the show.

NetSurf Developers - The developers of RISC OS’ most popular (an open-source!) web browser will be in attendance, taking donations and general feedback from users.

Organizer 2 - Organizer 2 is a personal information manager for all RISC OS platforms, new or old machines. As well as the standard CD/Download based package, Organizer on a Stick will also be on sale at the show. See the bottom of this article for more information!

Orpheus Internet – The RISC OS friendly Internet Service Provider will be in attendance at the show, they would also like to announce the availability of their new FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) service which is now becoming more available as BT have been upgrading their exchanges. Speeds are up to 40Mb download and up to 10Mb upload.

Andrew Rawnsley of R-Comp

R-Comp & R-Comp Interactive – R-Comp will be demonstrating their range of ARMini, RISCube and RISCBook computers as well as their huge range of RISC OS software and games. They’ve got a huge amount of new releases for this year’s show, so take a peek at the bottom of this article for all the details!

Retro Software - Retro Software will be in attendance at the show, they develop a number of brand new games for retro computing platforms such as the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. They’re also working on a brand new commercial Repton game for modern RISC OS computers!

RISC OS Open Limited - RISC OS Open Limited (ROOL) manages the source code to RISC OS. They are an organisation run on a largely voluntary basis and also offer professional services to anyone who is interested in developing commercial products using RISC OS. They’ll undoubtedly be very busy discussing their port of RISC OS to the Raspberry Pi, so go on, go pay them a visit!

Sine Nomine Software - Sine Nomine will be demonstrating their Impact database software, a new version of which will be released at the show. There will also be updated versions of their other pieces of software and games, including a new release of Wrangler, the mathematical puzzle application, with even more puzzle types.

Soft Rock Software – Vince Hudd of Soft Rock Software will be on hand to demonstrate the latest updates to WebChange, the website maintenance tool for RISC OS, as well as a version of the adventure game, Quicksand, running in the desktop. An early ‘walk-around’ of another adventure game might also be running at the show.

Steve Fryatt – Steve will be demonstrating his range of software for RISC OS, including his free and very productive CashBook application, which is a very handy desktop personal finance manager.

Usable Range – Chris Dunlop will be demonstrating the RISC OS multimedia experience running on the newest and fastest native hardware, i.e. MusicMan 2 running on an ARMini!

Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club – Formed as the Wakefield BBC Micro User Group in April 1983, the Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club is one of the longest running RISC OS user groups and now has members all over the UK. WROCC will also be launching their new Newsletter Back Catalogue CD at show, so pay their stand a visit!

WikiProject RISC OS – Trevor Johnson will be in attendance promoting WikiProject RISC OS, a project that aims to involve as many RISC OS users as possible, working together to develop RISC OS’ presence on the world’s biggest encyclopedia Wikipedia further.

Updates and Releases

We have had an unbelievable amount of news, updates, releases etc. in the days leading up to tomorrow’s show. They’ve all had coverage outside of this preview, so here’s a few links just in case you haven’t read them all yet!

Photodesk 3.12 unveiled 

ArtWorks 2.X2 released 

Organizer on a stick launched

Genealogy Records updated 

NetFetch 3.5 launched

New Hexen port released 

DataPower 3 updated 

SafeStore 2 updated 

WROCC back catalogue CD

Impact and ImpMail updated

MusicMan 2 updated

New Heretic port released 

Draw utilities updated

Luafox 1.40 released

ARMini gets the 1Ghz treatment

Bumper Drag ‘n Drop issue arrives

Newsbuzz: GCC, OLEsupport 

Behold, the R-Comp Tablet 

Newsbuzz: DigitalCD, BBFlash 

MAME port released

Newsbuzz: FFplay, PlayIt

SNES emulator ported 

Mednafen released 

It’s (almost) showtime! 

See you all at the show!

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The 4th Dimension have announced that version 3.12 of Photodesk will be released at the Wakefield Show on Saturday.

Photodesk is the premier photo retouching and painting package for RISC OS, and is fully compatible with all RISC OS computers having RISC OS 3.5 or later, including the BeagleBoard and R-Comp’s ARMini. Version 3.12 contains several improvements and bugfixes, most notably the inclusion of support for Interactive Help, previews of brush shapes and new scaling options for the crop/extend tools.

This new update has seen a number of improvements to Photodesk’s Montage tools Crop and Extend features, three additional edit features of the crop and extend frame function have been added. Dragging one of the middle handles of an edge with Adjust moves the opposite as well. Dragging a corner handle moves all four edges. So dragging with Adjust means the reference point of the movement is the frame’s center. Dragging inside the frame with Adjust will scale the frame whereby the same amount of change in x is used for y. Dragging inside the frame with both Select and Adjust pressed will (try to) scale the frame preserving its aspect ratio. Move the pointer in ±x-direction to achive this.

This new version also features an improved equalise dialogue box, if an equalize process is done the histogram display of the image is updated automatically. You might still press the Update button if in doubt of course. Clicking with Adjust on the Auto button the margins are reset.

Photodesk also now supports longer file names as well as having an improved interactive help feature, it currently supports both English and German languages.

Chris Evans of CJE Micro’s, who are responsible for distributing Photodesk, had this to say regarding the sale of this upgrade at tomorrow’s Wakefield show. “If you are going to the show please bring your latest Photodesk CD with you. If ordering online or by email please email us the two files !Photodesk.!RunImage and !Photodesk.Data we will then post you the CD, or we can email the upgrade on request.”

For a full list of the major changes in this new Photodesk update, visit Photodesk’s official website. All orders/upgrades placed now will receive version 3.12). A demo copy of Photodesk 3.09 can be downloaded here. German RISC OS users can purchase this update from A4Com.

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MW Software have launched their latest version of ArtWorks, RISC OS’ industry standard and most powerful advanced vector graphics package. The latest version will be on sale at tomorrow’s Wakefield show.

ArtWorks is an advanced vector drawing package for RISC OS created by Computer Concepts (now Xara) in 1991. It has been developed by MW Software since 1996. ArtWorks 2 builds on the strength of an unrivalled and mature feature set resulting from more than fourteen years of development by MW Software, incorporating many suggestions by home and professional users and making it the ideal tool for the creation of graphics for the Web, home printing and professional printing.

ArtWorks 2.X2 main new features are so-called “Artistic Lines”: These are lines with a variable thickness that offer a lot more variation and creative possibilities than the usual constant width lines so far available in RISC OS vector graphics packages.

ArtWorks 2.X2 will also feature in the MW Software theatre presentation provisionally scheduled for 11:30am at tomorrow’s show, so if you do not want to miss it, please make sure that you do not arrive too late. Upgrade and new user prices are available from MW Software’s website, alternatively visit them at tomorrow’s show!

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North One Communications will be launching a new version of their personal data management application Organizer, pre-loaded with a RISC OS emulator on a USB memory stick!

Coining it as “A new solution for those want to access their personal information on other systems”, the 512MB memory stick will come loaded with a fully working copy of RPCEmu running a fully licensed copy of RISC OS 5, and running Organizer of course. The emulator will load quickly and run on all recent versions of Windows, from the memory stick on which it is supplied. The Organizer data file is saved in the HostFS file, accessible to both the emulator and to native RISC OS systems (though the file type may have to be changed to access it).

Organizer 2 is the personal information manager for RISC OS systems, and includes Diary, Address Book, Calendar and ToDo sections, plus a Notes section and Journal facility. Version 2.1 allows users to add many more user-defined fields to the Address Book, to list entries by Organisation and to add thumbnail pictures.

The latest version of Organizer included with the package, version 2.15, offers a greater range of colours to highlight information. Until now a palette of only 16 colours has limited the colour-coding of different types of information. A new Colour selection menu allows a greater number of colours to be chosen from a fixed menu (30 in all), or for users to make their own colours from the 16 million-colour palette.

Organizer on a Stick currently uses the latest version of RPCEmu (v8.9), with RISC OS 5.17 and Organizer 2.15. A special purchase of good-quality 0.5MB memory sticks means that we are offering the whole package for just £12 at the show to existing users of Organizer 2.1x.

For a full range of prices on not only Organizer on a stick, but of Organizer as a whole, visit either Organizer’s website or pay the Organizer stand a visit at tomorrow’s Wakefield show.