Unofficial Acorn / ROOL DDT tutorial series

If anyone is interested, I started to publish a tutorial series of posts on my blog about using the Acorn / ROOL DDT:

Part 0 is out: https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2020/10/17/risc-os-installing-rool-desktop-development-environment-dde-tutorial/

Part 1 is out: https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2020/08/09/risc-os-using-the-acorn-rool-desktop-debugging-tool-ddt-part-1/

Part 2 is out: https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2020/10/05/risc-os-using-the-acorn-rool-desktop-debugging-tool-ddt-part-2/

There is also a previous article that is an introduction to the AIF format linked within the above series.

Comments, corrections and suggestions are very welcome :) (and yes comments here or there are both fine, no worries!)

The tutorial also covers how to compile code for DDT using the relatively new ROOL Makefiles library.

Thanks in advance to everyone for reading it and for comments and suggestions to improve it.

P.S. I am trying to write tutorials for new users/developers, so trying to make these articles as simple as possible and easy to read for everyone, I hope this will help more people start coding on RISC OS.

Dear Paolo, I am just starting to learn C/C++ on RISC OS and so your tutorial probably comes at the right time since I will need a debugger sooner or later. So thanks for that!

Still I wonder whether we need a more central place for such tutorials. I think after some time they are very hard to find so I think it would be good to have a general RISC OS tutorials page somewhere, either directly containing the tutorials or a link collection. Does something like this exist? I also have plans to write a tutorial but I am not sure where to publish it.

Still I wonder whether we need a more central place for such tutorials. I think after some time they are very hard to find so I think it would be good to have a general RISC OS tutorials page somewhere, either directly containing the tutorials or a link collection. Does something like this exist? I also have plans to write a tutorial but I am not sure where to publish it.

Perhaps RISC OS Info would be a good place for tutorials?

@ Michael

Dear Paolo, I am just starting to learn C/C++ on RISC OS and so your tutorial probably comes at the right time since I will need a debugger sooner or later. So thanks for that!

Thanks a lot, hope it will help you :)

Still I wonder whether we need a more central place for such tutorials. I think after some time they are very hard to find so I think it would be good to have a general RISC OS tutorials page somewhere, either directly containing the tutorials or a link collection. Does something like this exist? I also have plans to write a tutorial but I am not sure where to publish it.

To my knowledge there have been quite few attempts in the past to create such an index or such a website having all the tutorials, for an example of a public index there is this page on riscos.org, but it’s empty and not sure if it’s still maintained:

http://www.riscos.org/support/tutorials/index.html

However, it appears (but I did not try it) that you could add your link to a tutorial page yourself there, however if riscos.org is unmaintained at the moment probably your request won’t be added (again guessing).

@ Kevin

Perhaps RISC OS Info would be a good place for tutorials?

Sure, that could definitely be the right place for people who can write there and that like to use mediawiki framework. Personally I believe that some tutorials there need some serious revision to become helpful to new people who wants to learn how to code on RISC OS, here is an example of what I am talking about: https://www.riscos.info/index.php/Norcroft , but this is just my opinion.

In general, nowadays people tend to use Google more than anything else, so another suggestion could be: Let’s define a set of tags to be added to our tutorials in order to make them easy to be found.

Another idea could also be: let’s make the tutorials available as a DataPower DB? That should work also on 310 machines, so helpful also to the RISC OS retrocomputing community.

just my 0.5c :)

FWIW, I’d be more than happy to host tutorials on RISCOSitory – it would be an ideal new section to add on the main menu.

I could just link to them elsewhere, such as Paolo’s above, with the aim of providing a central source of links to them, but that leads to the problem of making sure the external sources don’t change or vanish. Putting actual tutorials on the site seems more practical.

So if people want that sort of thing to appear, write them and send them my way, and I’ll edit them as appropriate for the site and post them. (As with feature-y and review-y type things people have sent me).

@ Vince

FWIW, I’d be more than happy to host tutorials on RISCOSitory – it would be an ideal new section to add on the main menu.

Sounds like a great idea to me :)

I could just link to them elsewhere, such as Paolo’s above, with the aim of providing a central source of links to them, but that leads to the problem of making sure the external sources don’t change or vanish. Putting actual tutorials on the site seems more practical.

Linking my articles would be preferable for me, so I can keep improving the technical content when finding new elements as well as deciding their “cutting” in multiple parts as I go through the unavoidable testing of everything I publish (and for RO this means also testing on multiple systems and multiple RO releases as we all know well).

I am a strong believer of RTFC (not RTFM), so every thing I publish gets retested before being included (which is another reason why it takes me quite few weeks to write my articles/posts).

About disappearing, you made a great point, we indeed have lost quite few resources across the time… which is why I moved my blog to wordpress.com instead of my own domain, in the rare case I would get bored of writing stuff or life events would carry me away from it, it will stay there “forever” regardless. I am using a free wordpress.com site so definitely no way it would disappear, unless wordpress.com dies, but in such a case I have daily backups of my content.

About disappearing, you made a great point, we indeed have lost quite few resources across the time… which is why I moved my blog to wordpress.com instead of my own domain

Fair point – there are certain resources that can probably be considered safe and unlikely to vanish; Wordpress content hosted on their domain is a good example – and YouTube videos spring immediately to mind. (Though I wouldn’t rule out either of them suddenly deciding to change or [cough] ‘improve’ things.)

So on that basis, I’ve cobbled together a quick Work in Progress page. I’ll give it some proper thought and attention soon (properly soon, not my usual type of soon), and then add it to the main nav bar.

Note to self: Ending a blockquote with blockquite is not quite right.

Maybe we could have a ‘getting started’ section here aimed at new or returning developers? We could link to all these various off-site tutorials.

By ‘here’, I of course mean the ROOL wiki.

can probably be considered safe and unlikely to vanish; Wordpress content hosted on their domain is a good example

I bet people said the same thing about GeoCities…

@ Vince

So on that basis, I’ve cobbled together a quick Work in Progress page. I’ll give it some proper thought and attention soon (properly soon, not my usual type of soon), and then add it to the main nav bar.

Looks great already! I think a good value added on that page would be if you could add what is for everyone and what is for a bit more advanced users obviously through time.

@ Rick

I bet people said the same thing about GeoCities…

LOOOL I knew you would say that! :D

@ Vince (again)
IMHO Rick created some really good tutorial for ARM Assembly (https://heyrick.eu/assembler/index.html) so defo to be listed on that page together with Steve F. WIMP C tutorials (http://www.stevefryatt.org.uk/docs/wimp/) also very good work there!

I know Rick is using his own domain, but I am sure he’ll be around way beyond wordpress.com and youtube! :)

Apologies if I am not aware of others, but I am sure there are plenty!

IMHO Rick created some really good tutorial for ARM Assembly (https://heyrick.eu/assembler/index.html)

So now Rick will rush round and check all that is up to date and 26/32 bit neutral.

Rick:

I bet people said the same thing about GeoCities…

Quite. That’s why I said (with emphasis) ‘probably’.

Paolo:

Looks great already! I think a good value added on that page would be if you could add what is for everyone and what is for a bit more advanced users obviously through time.

Good idea, but unless something is ‘obviously’ for advanced users, or equally obviously for beginners, it would largely be subjective; I might say ‘x’ is for beginners, ‘y’ is for advanced users (on the basis it’s something I don’t understand, perhaps), and someone else would say “what were you thinking, you fool – ‘x’ is clearly for intermediate users, and ‘y’ is a piece of cake!”

I’m inclined to say as long as the title is clear, people can judge for themselves whether the subject matter is at the level they need.

IMHO Rick created some really good tutorial for ARM Assembly

Yup – I’ll add that.

together with Steve F. WIMP C tutorials

Steve emailed me last night to remind me of that – which will also be added.

I know Rick is using his own domain

As is Steve, of course. But if I’m going to do it as links, rather than (or in addition to?) hosted content, then I may as well be inclusive rather than exclusive – and as I noted in the ‘to do’ paragraph on that page, I’ll add a disclaimer in case of links going AWOL.

Meanwhile, if anyone has anything else to link to, either post here or email me. I’ll add a generic link to some things (so rather than specific items on ROOL’s site, for example, I’ll include a general link to the documentation section).

But if I’m going to do it as links, rather than (or in addition to?) hosted content,

If you want to grab a copy to keep, feel free to.
Half of China did.
At least, as a fellow RISC OS user, I know you won’t edit out my copyright line.
Half of China did.

There is (was?) a CHM file version around someplace.

:-)

@ Vince

Good idea, but unless something is ‘obviously’ for advanced users, or equally obviously for beginners, it would largely be subjective;

Good point. I’ll try to add some info on the article disclaimer section then, to help.

I’m inclined to say as long as the title is clear, people can judge for themselves whether the subject matter is at the level they need.

Sounds good :)

@ Rick

At least, as a fellow RISC OS user, I know you won’t edit out my copyright line. Half of China did.

Ouch, then let’s enforce your original copyright by re-sharing YOUR original version! Done :) on my post where shared RISC OS Direct videos I added a list of resources for who wants to lear how to code adding your and Steve’s tutorials, one more resource pointing at the originals :)

https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2020/03/28/risc-os-official-video-tutorial-on-how-to-setup-and-use-the-desktop-released/

Check the bottom of the page for the links section, also if someone has other RISC OS resources that should be added to the links section please let me know!

Hi, for anyone interested part 2 of the unofficial DDT tutorial is out and available here:

https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2020/10/05/risc-os-using-the-acorn-rool-desktop-debugging-tool-ddt-part-2/

I also added it to the first post in this topic.

Thanks a lot to everyone for so many visits, hopefully part 2 contains useful info as well.

Again please feel free to comment and correct any mistake I may have made, I always try to test everything before publishing, but issues may always arise :)

Also there were few minor issues on part 1 and they have now been fixed.

Hi everyone,
for anyone interested I added a tutorial on how to install ROOL DDE as promised on part 1. If you are using DDT on RISC OS 4.xy and earlier and you are new to RISC OS then I strongly recommend to have a look at it.

Link here and (obviously) updated also the original first pos ton top of this thread:

https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2020/10/17/risc-os-installing-rool-desktop-development-environment-dde-tutorial/

As always comments and corrections are very welcome and thanks to all the people that are following the series! :)

Cheers!

Returning to this topic, the first published version of the tutorials page (i.e. it’s now on the main navigation menu) is now live.

It still needs work – e.g. I’ve put some stuff in the body further down that ought to be in an intro section, and so on, but for now it’s a good start.