London Show - why no barrage of announcements from R-Comp/RCI

Hello everyone,

As you may have realised, this weekend (Saturday) is the Virtual London Show.

Normally, a show is preceded by a barrage of R-Comp / RCI announcements to prime visitors for things they might want to look at and/or buy at the show.

With a virtual show, everything is rather different. There are no stands for you to visit and purchase from, or computers to have demos on. It is quite a different experience.

Therefore, rather than ruin all the surprises by posting before the show, we have decided to focus on the presentation and Q&A session on the Saturday.

Since it is online, and doesn’t require you to travel to London, it is much easier for everyone to “attend” (or watch the youtube videos), so really the turnout should be as large as possible. We really hope you’ll make the effort to watch and participate somehow!

This makes it doubly important to make the presentations interesting and worth watching. So, let’s keep the announcements a surprise, with a big reveal on the day :)

IMPORTANT NOTE – we’ll be announcing a special offer code during our presentation, giving a tasty discount on all our software (passing on the savings of not having to travel to London and stay two nights in a hotel). If you don’t join in, you’ll miss out, so be on time!

R-Comp/RCI will be presenting at 2pm – 3pm, but we’d encourage you to join at 1.30pm for the RISC OS Developments talk, as there will be benefits to watching both.

Of course, we hope most of you will join from the 11am start onwards, as there are a host of other presentations to watch which I’m sure will be just as interesting, and probably better presented too!

So, grab some tea/coffee and biscuits, and enjoy a day of surprises related to All Things RISC OS :)

Have fun!

PS, I can tell you that we will be showing several new computers, and various new and upgraded software applications. I think/hope there will be something for almost everyone!

There are no stands for you to visit and purchase from, or computers to have demos on.

So all the more reason to have the sales pitch with pretty pictures on a website…

it is much easier for everyone to “attend”

I’m working tomorrow. Booooooo!
(it’s our high season, the run up to Christmas… but, uh, hasn’t it pretty much been cancelled this year?)

Time, Rick, time! There’s a few minutes under 24hrs until the talk, and there’s about 48hrs of work left to do! Website+pics is certainly on that list. Whether it happens is, erm, still open…

Shockingly, I will defend Andrew here. The web site can wait, but the show cannot. No harm results from the web site waiting a week or two.

I also like the idea of hyping a show (even virtual) or presentation. But I hope that those doing commercial presentations can reach for the stars. Those I have seen from physical shows, although interesting, are not exactly flashly presented when you watch online. Good equipment, and perhaps some slides are very important.

Good luck to everyone involved. I hope to catch the footage later.

The web site can wait, but the show cannot. No harm results from the web site waiting a week or two

ROFL

The web site can wait, but the show cannot.

Not for those of us for whom the website is (some of) the show presentation, it can’t. :-)

I have watched most of the show video footage now.

Andrew, you knocked it out of the park! I thought your presentation was excellent (they all were, to be honest). Pinboard 2 looks excellent. I have always thought that newbies simply wouldn’t understand why you couldn’t treat the Pinboard as a directory. Top marks for that!

One thing I thought of was to forget about the manual ‘save’ option. Just auto-save on any update.

I cannot remember how we get it. Is it an exclusive? Or will it find its way into ROOL’s GitLab repo?

Thankyou for your kind words, Richard – very much appreciated :)

Manual save is currently left in for two reasons. Firstly, the new behaviours can be turned off, because we know some users will prefer “classic” pinboard. The idea is (as much as possible) to make Pinboard 2 “downgrade-able” to feel like Pinboard 1.0 if users prefer the non-interactive version. Second reason is that sometimes users like the positive re-inforcement of saving. That being said, if there’s a trust that things will be auto-saved, it could probably disappear unless the user is in legacy mode. Will give it thought.

It isn’t exclusive – nothing RISC OS Dev does is intended to be exclusive, although sometimes we do control the beta-phase to avoid excessive support burden. In this case, just email me and ask to be added to the email beta distribution list.

Once it is out of internal-beta it will be offered for inclusion in the main Gitlab. Indeed, the source is provided with each beta for just that reason. Obviously I cannot predict if/when it will replace Pinboard 1.0 in ROM. I imagine that it could exist in the source tree as a parallel branch with distributions deciding which version to use (IIRC things like !Configure exist in this manner). I would hope it is adopted generally, of course, as I really like it! :)

PS, I also thought the other talks were superb – the whole thing far exceeded my expectations. I missed the first couple, though, as I worked that extra bit to get web content ready to please Rick! The 4te and TiX Duet info went live within 30 mins of the end of my talk, I think. No doubt I’ll be tidying it up over the next few days, but I tried to go the extra mile.

+1 on the Pinboard 2
+1 on the presentation.

I was particularly interested in your, brief, mention of JF being active again. It may have passed by others but I most certainly see that as a good thing.

When you mentioned the micro-kernel and RO on various hardware I suddenly twigged that something discussed around here was a bit more than a personal project.

The 4te and TiX Duet info went live within 30 mins of the end of my talk, I think. No doubt I’ll be tidying it up over the next few days, but I tried to go the extra mile.

I’m sure you will see some of the benefits from that in due course. We only prod you for your own good :)

I’m poking around in the keyboard code etc. Thought I’d found a quick and easy alternative to your Keymap stuff, but that little bundle of convoluted “stuff” is still fighting me.
Rick’s suggestion that you need to be insane to start looking in there is close – if you aren’t at the start you may be by the end…

they all were, to be honest

I think there may be something to be said for not attending a physical show – more time to concentrate on perfecting the presentation, less stress of having to “be there” and one could get the wife/children/dog to hold up cue cards.

Andrew – the hell was that backdrop? A big projector screen? Some sort of chromakey? It was pretty impressive.

get web content ready to please Rick!

Yeah, ’cos pleasing some whinging ex-Brit is more important than, you know, resources to help with selling stuff. 😂

The 4te and TiX Duet info went live within 30 mins of the end of my talk,

Whoa! Nice! Let’s hope the effort is suitably rewarded.

It may have passed by others

Something I’m surprised hasn’t been talked about more (I didn’t spot it in the talks myself as I hopped around to watch it all in about an hour) was something that David brought up on the French mailing list – the forthcoming enhancements to BASIC.
If anybody remembers who said that and when, I’d be interested in watching.

if you aren’t at the start you may be by the end…

Somebody (Clive?) mentioned the other day that IKHG doesn’t work. Is this just a matter of 32bitting it, or has underlying stuff been changed so that it no longer has a hope of working?

[and… I’m not entirely sure – what does/did IKHG actually do?]

the forthcoming enhancements to BASIC

IIRC that got a mention towards the end of the ROOL presentation.

I thought the online show was excellent. You could tell a lot of effort had gone into all the presentations and content shared with the audience;

Another real positive to takeaway from the online show was the usefulness of being able to communicate with each other so easily and quickly to resolve issues and to discuss future plans.

I know people have spoken about RISC OS developer meetings and workshops in the past, and I don’t believe they happened (although I could well be wrong), but this zoom online meetings seemed to work really well. Is is possible that this could be a more regular method for RISC OS developers to work together and plan things? I think it could be, and would result in faster decision making.

Anyway, thanks to everyone involved in the show; organizers, presenters, youtube streamers and everyone in attendance. Looking forward to many more of these shows.

Yes, I also liked it very much. Could not be online during the show but watched the video (most of it) on sunday. Would also like to see something similar but more focused on developers as Alan suggested.

Thanks to the organisers and presenters!

Andrew – the hell was that backdrop? A big projector screen? Some sort of chromakey? It was pretty impressive.

A feature in various conferencing applications Zoom, WebEx, MS Teams, etc.
Just feed the PC with an image and it covers out all the non-human moving bit with your image.
You will note that when Andrew did the holding up the 4te for inspection that the system got a bit confused and blanked it out unless it was directly in front of the human shape and moving a little, similarly the edge of Andrew shifted in and out of view at times.

the forthcoming enhancements to BASIC.
If anybody remembers who said that and when, I’d be interested in watching.

Not certain, I think it was Steve Reville in the ROOL session. (On which we should perhaps say that Sprow needs to employ the same setup as Steve because the sound, and video to an extent, on Rob’s feed was nowhere near the quality of Steve’s)

Somebody (Clive?) mentioned the other day that IKHG doesn’t work.

Well others said it a while back and the speculation was that it was a 26/32 issue, however…

Is this just a matter of 32bitting it, or has underlying stuff been changed so that it no longer has a hope of working?

The latter. The source format is now textual so the IKHG code can’t understand it but humans can¹. The recent mention you probably recall was me quoting the text in the source (a readme) that points you at using the text files and keygen & keyconvert.

[and… I’m not entirely sure – what does/did IKHG actually do?]

Generate new keyboard map/translations – all that UK, Italy, Belgium, France keyboard response when the same physical key is pressed.

The source file format is explained in the file call FileFormat riscos.sources.internat.intkey.doc.FileFormat to be precise.

Someone, in a part of France with farm connections, said something about being mad if you looked at that lot. It’s not affected me too much yet :) wibble.

¹ Of course, you need to know exactly what the system does in response to any alterations of the text and that means you need to follow the keypress up from the hardware, through the kernel into the keyhandler and on into the base OS (low key) and WIMP (wimpkey)

Thanks for the info on Pinboard 2, Andrew.

For anyone who had their eyes opened by the talks, I can recommend checking out ROUGOLs back catalogue of video talks. And the ABUG ones from the StarDot crowd.

There is a trick to presentations. I think you either need to:

1. prepare well
or
2. Be an absolute expert in the subject and regularly make such presentations

What I enjoyed was the fact that I could watch on YouTube when it was convenient. It was more engaging than reading a show report, and I admit I have not been to a show since 1997!

It might be worth having a general/user show, and perhaps a separate one for developers?

Once it is out of internal-beta it will be offered for inclusion in the main Gitlab. Indeed, the source is provided with each beta for just that reason.

Is it written in C or assembly?

There is a trick to presentations. I think you either need to:
1. prepare well
or
2. Be an absolute expert in the subject and regularly make such presentations

I’d split the last and also add an interest/passion for the subject.

1. Prepare well
2. Be an absolute expert in the subject
3. Regularly make such presentations
4. A solid interest/passion for the subject with the ability to convey that.

Without the 4th item the information goes out, but no interest is generated in the listener.
Andrew did quite well on the 4th.
The effect of this one can be rather powerful, examples abound – not going to invoke Godwins Law, so we’ll go with “I have a dream”…

I also enjoyed the various presentations greatly. Thumbs-up to everyone involved!

@Rick/Steve

Not certain, I think it was Steve Reville in the ROOL session.

Yes, it was in Steve’s talk (at 5h41m). The BASIC improvements mentioned were structures and dynamic memory allocations. The slide also ‘said’ they were in discussions with Sophie which makes it even more intriguing.

@Chris

Is it written in C or assembly?

Pinboard2 is written in C.

Excellent; assuming it ends up with ROOL then that’s another assembly component knocked out… and in the long run a step closer to 64-bit :)

special offer code…

Yep, very good.
But !Store server is down :)

Just to confirm, yes, Pinboard 2.0 is all in C. That is one of ROD’s design goals for new stuff. Unless absolutely necessary, C is our language of choice, and doubly so for anything produced with ROOL/RISC OS gitlab in mind.

It might be worth having a general/user show, and perhaps a separate one for developers?

Some sort of “virtual” Developer thing might be good. I wasn’t able to “attend” the Virtual London show but have been watching bits on iPlayer.

But !Store server is down :)

It is and its apprently due to a serious ISP related problem. As confirmed by Andrew Rawnsley to me just now by email.

Some sort of “virtual” Developer thing might be good. I wasn’t able to “attend” the Virtual London show but have been watching bits on iPlayer.

There was talk in a follow up chat by Andrew Rawnsley during the show they were planning regular monthly meeting between various parties.

Watched via iPlayer? was the meeting on the BBC as well.

Aw, and there we were thinking the show videos/talks slashdotted it…