Summary: Disc 5.30

Summary of changes to the RISC OS 5 Disc image (5.28 to 5.30)

• The following are the headline changes to modules or components in the HardDisc4 for 5.30.
• For brevity only the top 9 changes have been described, because many of the 347 changes in the full change logs are administrative in nature or a result of other work, but they all contribute to stability and ease of use.
• Alarm, ShellCLI, FileSwitch, DOSFS, SDFS, FPEmulator, AsmUtils, OSLib, RISC_OSLib, TCPIPLibs, mbedTLS, remotedb, Freeway, Net, AcornSSL, HTTP, URL, Dialler, PPP, NetTime, OmniClient, LanManFS, OmniNFS, FrontEnd, HostFS, Squash and !Internet are all now configured to use Continuous Integration in GitLab so that developers can get immediate feedback on how proposed changes look during analysis.
• Freeway, Net, HTTP, URL, PPP, NFS, NetTime, OmniClient, LanManFS, OmniNFS, !Boot, !Internet, TCPIPLibs, remotedb have dropped support for Internet 4 (pre RISC OS 3.70) as part of the TCP/IP bounty work to make maintenance easier going forward

!ChangeFSI

• Can now export in Portable Network Graphic (PNG) format, as well as sprite and JPEG as previously, an enhancement enabled by the PNG bounty work
• The maximum image width has been raised to 8000 pixels, and maximum area 8000 × 8000

!Maestro

• Chords are now shown on the stave, and beams are added dynamically to barbed notes
• Tie handling has been greatly improved

!SciCalc

• Toggling the sign on numbers in exponent (scientific) notation now works correctly

!SparkFS

• New to disc, the full read/write version
• Thanks to David Pilling for making this key application Open Source for the community

!Omni

• LanManFS can now optionally show (or hide, the default) files marked as hidden
• LanManFS can now preserve the full load/exec addresses of an untyped file
• NFS now uses the MimeMap to preserve filetypes, in a similar manner to LanManFS, rather than always appending a “,ttt” extension to the name when viewed on the server side
• NFS can now preserve the full load/exec addresses of an untyped file

!Printers

• PostScript printing of colour JPEGs to a monochrome printer now send the image in greyscale
• PostScript printing of 4k/64k/RGB format sprites in greyscale now works
• A0 and A1 paper sizes are now built in

!HForm

• Will now offer to format NVMe drives when such hardware is present using NVMeFS
• Introduces a simplified filing system selection method when more than 1 filing system is available to choose from

!Boot

• WimpMan, a module which makes it easier to write desktop applications is now provided by default, thanks to Paul Fellows for making the source code to these available
• The Tabs and TreeView gadgets are now provided by default, thanks to Rik Griffin for making the source code to these available
• An updated ABCLib is provided with thanks to Pineapple software
• The SharedCLibrary now includes hooks to support static constructors and destructors in C++ applications and modules as part of a drive to improve high level language support, coverage of the atomic operations specified in the C18 standard, and more robust safety checks that clients match the capabilities of the C library in use
• Adds support for RISC OS 5.30 and removes the need to keep hook directories older than the current major version, so for RISC OS 5 only RO500Hook upwards are needed
• Both !Scrap and Choices can be moved out of !Boot to the root of the boot drive
• Properly integrates awareness of the SoftLoad tool to load ROM images temporarily into RAM from a menu at startup
• The HTTP module has much improved cookie handling and fixes to chunked transfer encoding
• Provides the RMFind utility even if TCP/IP networking is disabled
• The PPP driver no longer crashes when using the SerialDev’s blockdrivers

Boot resources

The !Internet resource

• The disc based utilities (ping, ifconfig, sysctl and friends) have been replaced by new versions based on the latest sources from FreeBSD 12.4 as part of the TCP/IP bounty work
• Up to date Certificate Authority certificates are provided, and can now be kept up to date using package management

Boot setup plug-in

• Will now merge changes to Choices even if Choices have been relocated outside of !Boot, for example to $.!Choices

Filer setup plug-in

• Gains an option to hide system folders such as !Boot from the display

Pinboard setup plug-in

• The Pinboard setup plugin will now try to save images relative to !Boot if possible, rather than using the name of the disc explicitly, causing problems when the disc is renamed

InetSetup plug-in

• The plug-in now manages the AUNMap, in support of the !Internet resource being added to package management
• Changes its application sprites depending on the active desktop theme