News from RISCOS Ltd No. 28 July 10th 2003 ============== Well I don't know where this year has gone to! In fact where have the last 4 years gone to? For anyone who is new to the RISC OS scene it is now 4 years since we launched RISC OS 4 at the Acorn South East Show at St Albans on the 1st July 1999, and it is just over two years since we announced the RISC OS Select Scheme. Since then we have sold over 4,400 RISC OS 4 upgrades, along with about 1,500 new machines with RISC OS 4 pre-installed. The last couple of years have however been frustrating with the knowledge that there were many opportunities for the RISC OS market to expand, but with no co-operative way for that market to be tapped. That is until now..... CASTLE BUYS RISC OS TECHNOLOGY FROM PACE ---------------------------------------- Issued by Castle Technology Ltd 4th July 2003 - Castle Technology Ltd today announced the purchase of the RISC OS technology from Pace Micro Technology plc. The transaction involves the payment of an undisclosed cash sum, ongoing technical support for Pace`s existing products and the grant of a licence back to Pace for intellectual property rights. Castle, based in the UK, have been developing and supplying RISC OS products for over 10 years and this acquisition will ensure that RISC OS products continue into the future. Castle have also formed a joint venture with Cambridge based Tematic Ltd who will develop, market and support an embedded version of RISC OS which has been designed for use in the new generation of smart multimedia products for the high volume consumer electronics market, while Castle will continue to service the desktop market. Anthony Dixon, Company Secretary of Pace commented, "We are delighted to have concluded this transaction with Castle. This allows Pace to maintain the necessary intellectual property rights and technical support for our RISC OS based IP gateways through these new licence agreements. We wish Castle every success for the future". Jack Lillingston, Castle`s Managing Director, said, "The purchase of this technology combines perfectly with our expertise in manufacturing and marketing RISC OS computers (illustrated by our recent success with the launch of the IYONIX pc). This deal will allow us to be at the heart of exciting new products." Jack concluded, "RISC OS provides a proven, small-footprint solution, for cutting edge products such as handheld media devices; we are all very excited with this new development and relish the future for RISC OS" About RISC OS RISC OS development was started in 1988 by Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge and acquired by Pace in 1999. RISC OS is a unique combination of hardware and software technology developed for desktop computers . It is also deployed in a number of commercially successful, consumer electronics products including Pace`s DSL4000 gateway, Internet TV devices and a variety of specialized embedded systems. Over 1 million units have been shipped with this technology. RISC OS technology is ideal for the new generation of ARM-based smart embedded devices because it is the most sophisticated and highest performance software environment currently available. It has been designed specifically for high volume, low-cost products that need to support a market-winning set of features with the absolute minimum memory and processor requirements. About Castle Technology Ltd Castle is the leader in the field of RISC OS desktop products, with a 10-year track record of year on year growth and a proven expertise in this area. In 1999 Castle took over the production of the Acorn range of desktop computers. Their latest development is the IYONIX pc - the first desktop computer in the world to use Intel`s XScale© processor. Castle is based near Ipswich in Suffolk. For further information please visit Castle`s web site at About Tematic Ltd Tematic Ltd offers comprehensive production-ready design solutions for consumer electronic companies. The Tematic team has a proven track record for creating and delivering innovative products for their clients. Tematic can provide a complete, fastest time-to-market solution for companies who need to turn their ideas into revenue generating products in the shortest possible time. Tematic`s web site is at About Pace Micro Technology plc Pace Micro Technology plc (LSE: PIC) is a leader in digital television technology. The Company`s primary focus is the development of innovative home gateway (set-top box) solutions for operators, broadcasters, telecommunications companies and retail markets worldwide. In addition, Pace develops edge of network devices for service providers, in particular digital IP gateways for low-cost integrated voice and data services. Pace`s head office is in Shipley West Yorkshire, with further offices in Bracknell, Cambridge, the USA, France and Hong Kong. For further information, please visit Pace`s web site at What does this mean for RISCOS Ltd? ----------------------------------- Well fundamentally it opens up the market for RISC OS to be exploited in far more areas than ever before. In practise for RISCOS Ltd it will initially mean the opportunity to include support for the Iyonix Computer into the RISC OS Select Scheme. Over the past 4 years since Pace became involved in the RISC OS market there have been many improvements in all manners of technology, and RISCOS Ltd has helped by providing expertise on a number of different projects. No-one could have predicted the sudden collapse of the global set top box market last year, with the obvious effect on major companies such as Pace, and the knock-on effect on its employees and other companies involved in supporting Pace and the RISC OS market. With Pace no longer being actively involved in the development of RISC OS, its future development is now in the hands of those software engineers who have the necessary in-depth experience of the core RISC OS components. A number of ex-Pace engineers last year formed Tematic in order to exploit their skills in ARM processor technology, and it is they who are providing the core development work on RISC OS 5. Whilst RISCOS Ltd might have seemed the obvious vehicle to use to exploit any changes in the development of RISC OS, the fact was that Pace engineers had converted most of RISC OS for 32 bit operation as much as 3 years ago. At the RISCOS Ltd AGM in 2002 an ARM 9 development system running a 32 bit version of RISC OS was shown to attendees. When the time came to exploit the developments that they themselves had made, the Pace engineers decided to go it alone freed from the problems of having to satisfy many different vested interests that RISCOS Ltd has to deal with. For various reasons the Pace 32 bit version had been developed from a different branch of the RISC OS source and had a number of fundamental differences to RISC OS 4. When Castle decided to use the Pace 32 bit version of RISC OS, they had the advantage that since all software would have to be converted to work with RISC OS 5, they could make a number of fundamental changes to RISC OS without worrying about backwards compatibility. With RISC OS 4 we did not have the same options, as to have implemented the same features - such as moving RISC OS to high memory - would have broken much existing software. RISC OS Select includes many advances over RISC OS 5, and despite some slightly knocking and inaccurate comparisons between RISC OS Select and RISC OS 5 on the Iyonix website http://www.iyonix.com/iyonix/features/503notes.shtml we believe that the feedback from existing Select users shows that Select is offering features that users and developers actually want to help them get the best out of RISC OS. I sincerely hope that current Select users will want to renew their Select subscriptions as a result of the changes that have occurred and we shall be making special offers to Iyonix users who are not already subscribers to the Select scheme to join, and help us further develop Select for all RISC OS users. RISC OS Product Price Changes ----------------------------- Due to recent Postage changes and the costs of some of the consumables used in RISCOS Ltd products, we are currently reviewing the prices of all RISC OS products. This is likely to result in price changes to many products. Existing prices will remain in force until the 1st of September and new prices will be announced during August. I can let on that the cost of RISC OS 4 upgrades is one item that will see a rise and therefore if you are still undecided about upgrading any existing machines to RISC OS 4, then you have a limited time left to purchase at the current low prices. Printed versions of Select Articles ----------------------------------- A number of people have expressed an interest in having printed versions of the Select CD Articles in the form of a book that could be used as a reference manual. We don't have any firm idea of cost, but it is possible that it could reach £25 - £40 dependent on the volume of a print run and the quality of the print. Before we proceed any further we need to get some firm indication of likely interest. If anyone is interested in such a book could they please send an email to mailto:admin@riscos.com with the subject "FRU Book". In a similar vein we are also considering a fully detailed updated user guide covering all the new features in Select. If you would be interested in such a book please send an email to mailto:admin@riscos.com with the subject "Select Book". Other news ---------- GIF Patent ---------- Friday 20 June was dubbed Gif Liberation Day as net users the world over celebrate the end of a costly patent agreement. The patent for the Lempel-Ziv-Welch, or LZW, compression algorithm is expired in the US on Friday 20 June 2003. It also expires in Europe, Canada and Japan in June of 2004. The patent claiming ownership of the file squashing format was lodged by Unisys in 1994 and underpins one of the web's most popular ways of encoding graphics files. LZW forms the basis of the popular Gif format (Graphics Interchange Format), a way of storing and sending images on the internet. The Unisys patent, which has the number 4,558,302, has caused a fair share of controversy over the years. Web developers were dismayed when Unisys began demanding fees for the already hugely popular format in 1994. It could also sound the death knell for a rival format called the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format, which was developed specifically to provide a free alternative to royalty-laden Gifs. Some PC experts say that the PNG format has never been as popular as Gifs and has now lost a substantial part of its raison d'etre, however Anti-patent activists are likely to maintain their allegiance to PNG as a symbolic gesture against patent holders such as Unisys. The fact that the Unisys patent is still in force until next year and that Unisys refuse to offer affordable rates for small volume users has meant that the planned GIF support for the ImageFileRendering system in RISC OS Select has had to be temporarily removed. Updated MakeModes Documents --------------------------- Frank Watkinson mailto:frank@aaug.net has produced revised documents for the Acorn "MakeModes" application used to generate Monitor Definition files. http://www.wattys.fsnet.co.uk/sof.htm#mamo The notes are available in the following formats: Impression, EasiWriter, Ovation Pro and HTML. The constituents of the above are also available as Plain Text with Draw and Sprite files. The Zipped file sizes range from 363 to 554KB for the Manual and 9 to 34KB for the Application Note. Please also note that these revisions are based closely on the former Acorn documents authored by Dean Murphy in 1994. They aim to guide users over the main bug in !MakeModes and to make the instructions clearer. RISCOS Ltd support the issue of these revised documents and will in due course make them available from their "server", thus providing an archive. SpamStamp --------- Jan-Jaap van der Geer mailto:jjvdgeer@c2i.net has just released a new version (0.12) of SpamStamp. This new version has the capability to cope a lot better with MIME, quoted-printable, base64, HTML and binaries. You can find the new version here: http://home.c2i.net/jjvdgeer/riscos/spamstamp.html For those that don't know: SpamStamp is a program that attempts to detect if a mail is spam or not. Some headers are added to the mail with the result of that check. Your mail client can then decide what to do with the spam. Deciding whether mail is spam or not is being done by bayesian filtering techniques (see http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html). This means that you do not need to set up all kinds of rules, but the system figures it out by itself. It does this because every time it makes a mistake, you tell it that it took a wrong decision. This then increases SpamStamp's ability to detect spam. Ant Suite mail Delivery Module hack ----------------------------------- Paul Vigay has done a quick hack to allow a separate input directory for the Ant Internet Suite, to allow filtering using SpamStamp. http://www.vigay.com/inet/upgrades.html Basically, it alters the default directory into which InetSuite delivers the raw mail downloaded from the remote server. Instead of being inside InetSuite.Internet.Spool.Input, It is changed to InetSuite.Internet.Spool.rawIN The additional file called 'FilterMail' will execute SpamStamp in order to perform the filtering of the mail which has been delivered into the rawIN directory, then move the filtered mail into the Input directory, which was the original destination for the raw files. Thus, mail applications such as Pluto and MessengerPro can still detect and debatch the mail as normal - but it will have been filtered. NOTE: This method will not work with Marcel yet, because the AntSuite does automatic debatching and delivery. Paul needs to find a way of intercepting this so that SpamStamp will perform it's filtering in between debatching the mail and delivering it to local users. Subject: Printers+ 1.91 released -------------------------------- Printers+ 1.91 has now been released, and is available for download from http://roprinters.sourceforge.net/ Printers+ 1.91 is the first release of open source Printers+ to be made through SourceForge.net. Printers+ 1.91 is functionally identical to the previous version 1.90b4 released through RISC OS Select, but is being released as a common starting point for open source Printers+ development. Sourceforge.net --------------- Printers+ is hosted as an open source project on SourceForge.net. SourceForge.net provides the ability to track feature requests and bug reports for hosted projects, and the Printers+ project will be making use of these features. To report a bug in Printers+ visit: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=71687&atid=538622 To request a new feature for Printers+ visit: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=71687&atid=538625 Mailing lists ------------- The Printers+ project has three mailing lists. The announce list is a very low volume list for announcement of new releases of Printers+ only. The users list is for discussion of the use of Printers+. The new development list is for discussion of the development of open source Printers+. To subscribe to any of these lists please visit the project mailing list page at: http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=71687 John Kortink Application updates -------------------------------- John Kortink has announced that he has updated his applications Translator, Creator, GreyEdit, PackDir, DiscInfo, ModeInfo, EarthMap, FileAct, ZIDEFS and ZeriLink. - ZeriLink 2.44 and ZIDEFS 1.02 are maintenance releases (there are only minor internal changes). - Translator 8.21 and Creator 3.41 have had a few minor bugs fixed. - GreyEdit 1.40, PackDir 2.10, EarthMap 1.10, FileAct 2.30, DiscInfo 1.30 and ModeInfo 1.20 have all been rebuilt, thoroughly cleaned up in all sorts of ways, and tested (about time too, the last versions were 6 (PackDir, EarthMap, FileAct, DiscInfo) to even 10 years old (GreyEdit, ModeInfo). In particular : - GreyEdit has had a major facelift and is no longer restricted to pre Risc PC machines, and is now Freeware. - ModeInfo also got a major overhaul, is no longer restricted to RISC OS 2.00 (!) machines, and even supports ViewFinder. - DiscInfo now understands RISC OS 4 maps. To those that don't know any or some of the apps, a brief intro : - Translator is a powerful image viewer, processor and convertor. - Creator is an image format convertor. - PackDir is a very fast file archiver. - EarthMap is an electronic globe. - GreyEdit is a greyscale image editor. - FileAct provides easy multi-file operations. - DiscInfo provides extensive information on discs. - ModeInfo provides extensive information on screen modes. - ZeriLink provides fast file transfer via the parallel port (PC compatible). - ZIDEFS is a replacement filing system for the Ian Copestake IDE interface. http://www.inter.nl.net/users/J.Kortink Forthcoming Shows ----------------- The next RISC OS Show is the RISC OS South East Show on Saturday 18th October in Guildford. http://www.fillin.co.uk/seshow/index.html for further details. NB RISCOS Ltd will be attending despite our apparent absence from the exhibitor list. User Group Meetings ------------------- A reminder that I am always happy to visit User Groups to demonstrate RISC OS Select or just talk generally about the RISC OS market. Standing Order Renewals ----------------------- In the last newsletter I pointed out that we have had a large number of problems with administering Standing Order payments. Common problems are Banks who don't pay the Standing Order, subscribers not changing the amount due to match the latest price, people who forget they have paid by Standing Order and renew by Cheque or Credit Card as well, etc etc. Checking that payments have been made has been taking an increasing amount of time, so we have reluctantly decided to not accept any new requests for payment by Standing Order. I am now asking that all existing Standing Order payments be cancelled and other payment methods are created. New Credit card security checks ------------------------------- A reminder that as from March 2003 most Credit Card companies have new security arrangements in place to help curb the fraud losses from Mail Order and telephone sales. The new measures include Address Verification and a Card Security Code. In order to process a Mail Order Transaction, we will now require the Three Digit Card Security Code which is present on the signature strip on the reverse of your Credit Card. This code is not printed on any Credit Card receipts and therefore can only be obtained by someone who has the actual Credit Card. Secondly you must provide your registered address that the credit card companies have listed for you, before we can process any transactions using your card. NB We are registered with the Data Protection Registrar and we do not store your Credit Card details on any Electronic Media. Replying to queries from this Newsletter ---------------------------------------- If you are responding to a specific query in this newsletter please use the appropriate mailto: address to reply rather than replying to the sender of this email. Also don't reply to the general foundation or admin email addresses as your enquiry may not get dealt with promptly. We try to reply to all enquiries within 5 days. But at peak times it may take longer to reply. regards -- Paul Middleton RISCOS Ltd 3 Clarendon Road Cardiff CF23 9JD Tel 02920 492324 Fax 02920 492326 mailto:paul@riscos.com Copyright ©2003 RISCOS Ltd. RISC OS is a trademark of Pace Micro Technology plc. Certain other product names, brand names, and company names may be trademarks or designations of their respective owners.