Summary: ROM 5.28

Summary of changes to the RISC OS ROM image (5.24 to 5.28)

• The following are the headline changes to modules or components in platforms attaining ROM stable release status for 5.28.
• For brevity only the top 14 changes have been described, because many of the 344 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.
• The Task Manager, Wimp and Kernel have all had remedial work to support RISC OS systems with more than 2GB of RAM fitted
• PCI Manager, Debugger, USBDriver and underlying host controllers, and the Kernel have had extensive changes to support physical memory located outside the range of a 32 bit variable in support of recent system on chip devices which no longer fit into 4GB of address space
• Paint, Colour Picker, ScreenModes, Boot Commands, DOSFS, Serial, OHCI, and SCSI device driver, Debugger, RTSupport plus toolbox’s ColourMenu, FileInfo, FontMenu and the RISC OS, Unicode, Toolbox and TCP/IP networking libraries have all had previously hidden memory leaks and similar programming mistakes fixed by analysing their source code with cppcheck.
• While over 90% of each of the ROM releases are common, there are a few extra notes specific to each port linked below:
  • Beagleboard (full change logs OMAP3)
  • Iyonix (full change logs Tungsten)
  • Pandaboard (full change logs OMAP4)
  • Raspberry Pi (full change logs BCM2835)
  • RiscPC / A7000 (full change logs IOMDHAL)
  • Titanium (full change logs Titanium)

!Alarm

• Now saves its choices in the Choices directory inside the Boot application rather than in a system variable, and no longer uses valuable CMOS.

!Chars

• No longer reports an error if an unplottable character is found in a font. Instead, a rectangle is substituted.

!Draw

• Supports clipboard cut & paste operations for Draw/Sprite/JPEG/Text objects, interacting with other compliant RISC OS applications.
• Supports drag and drop of Draw/Sprite/JPEG/Text objects, optionally wrapping the objects in a small DrawFile depending on what formats the receiving application supports.
• The former operation to make a single local copy of an object has been moved to keyboard shortcut Ctrl-D to make a Duplicate.
• Additional fixes when transforming text areas and plotting fonts above 240pt.
• A new summary box gives information on the current DrawFile via Misc > File menu item, to complement the similar dialogue in Paint and Edit.
• Now saves its choices in the Choices directory, with the choices dialogue accessible via the icon bar menu Choices… item.

!Edit

• Now saves its choices in the Choices directory inside the Boot application rather than in a system variable, saving can be triggered from the Save choices menu entry
• Edit can now be unplugged, and will disappear from Resources:$.Apps entirely, should you have a preferred editor.

!Paint

• The sprite filer supports clipboard cut & paste operations, interacting with other compliant RISC OS applications.
• Supports drag and drop of Sprites for keyboard-less transfer in and out of Paint.
• Colour handling has been greatly improved
  • Artist friendly colour ordering of 256 colour palette, and option to reorder pixel data for the remapped palette
  • Full 256 colour sprites can be created (as well as 64/16 entry VIDC compatible ones)
  • Colour indicator swatch in the bottom left corner of the sprite window
  • Adjust click on colours to paint with background colour
  • Shift-select as a shortcut to Paint > Select colour
  • Shift-adjust ditto for background colour
• The sprite editor window will zoom if the containing window is resized while Ctrl is held down.
• Now saves its choices in the Choices directory, with the choices dialogue accessible via the icon bar menu Choices… item.
• During a sprite move there is a new option to wrap pixels that have “fallen” off the edge back round to the opposite edge.
• A number of esoteric bugs have been fixed as part of the ongoing improvements to Paint bounty work.

BBC BASIC

• Can now assemble the later ARMv8 AArch32 opcodes using its built in assembler.
• A number of minor bug fixes.

Debugger

• Can now disassemble the later ARMv8 AArch32 opcodes using its built in disassembler.
• Can dump physical memory which is above the 4GB address range.

Filer

• When creating a new directory, multiple levels can be created in one step (using dot separators), using the same destination logic as directory copy.
• The existing Rename shortcut is now marked with ^R in the menus.

Internet

• The insecure T/TCP protocol has been fully removed (previously it was disabled by the Boot application) as part of the TCP/IP security bounty.
• Timeouts on socket operations now timeout correctly for applications that want something other than the default 60s duration.

LanManFS

• Usernames and passwords have been extended to 64 characters.
• Filename translation, file enumeration, and deleting complex directory trees are now more reliable.

RTC

• Now makes the initial clock correction more swiftly than before.

SCSIFS and SDFS’ Filer

• Ambiguous disc name errors caused by swapping discs while they are mounted are now handled correctly, as for ADFS.
• All of the desktop filers now show an ellipsis after the Free menu item in line with the Style Guide recommendation.

WindowScroll

• This is a new module which makes the action of the scroll wheel on a mouse much more configurable.
• The default behaviour matches earlier versions of RISC OS 5, but can be customised through the corresponding Mouse setup plug-in.

Window Manager

• The Window Manager now supports drag and drop (as well as cut and paste via keyboard shortcuts) in writable icons throughout the desktop
  • Any Style Guide compliant application should automatically gain this feature in any suitable icon
  • A new Clipboard Manager task keeps track of the clipboard operations
  • Programmers may wish to consult the draft documentation for details of the interfaces that have changed
• A handful of bugs have also been fixed – consult the full change logs for programmer level detail of what these are.

Iyonix specific

NVidia video driver

• Now supports video modes with unusual line lengths which require padding, such as 1366 wide

Beagleboard specific

HAL

• Fix to UART driver for speeds above 19200bps.
• Fix to BeagleBoard rev C GPIO setup.

OMAPVideo video driver

• Now supports video modes with unusual line lengths which require padding, such as 1366 wide.

Pandaboard specific

HAL

• Fix to UART driver for speeds above 19200bps.
• Preparatory work for using multiple cores in future.

OMAPVideo video driver

• Now supports video modes with unusual line lengths which require padding, such as 1366 wide.

Raspberry Pi specific

HAL

• Adds Compute Module 3+ support.
• Adds Model 4B support.
• Fix for UART handshaking.

XHCIDriver

• Extended to attach to XHCI controllers which are on the PCIe bus
• A number of fixes and stability improvements adopted from NetBSD

EtherGENET

• This is a new module to drive the on chip gigabit Ethernet interface present in the Model 4B

BCMVideo

• Updates in support of the primary video head on the Model 4B

Titanium specific

GC320 video driver

• Now supports video modes with unusual line lengths which require padding, such as 1366 wide.
• Is more lenient vetting some video modes that were previously incorrectly calculated or rejected.

HAL

• Improvement to SATA reset when softloading and PHY settings.
• Fix for left/right reversal on the headphones.
• Fix to UART driver for speeds above 38400bps.
• Fix to PCIe bus master setup.

XHCIDriver

• Extended to attach to XHCI controllers which are on the PCIe bus
• A number of fixes and stability improvements adopted from NetBSD