Cloverleaf Campaign is Live

This come with a dark & high contrast setup?

Damn I knew it would lead to a new thread looool

So YES I have an half-backed high-contrast prototype.

Coding for Dark mode is starting soon (but NO commitments until I have something working)

Comes with a new “Theme Manager” fully written in BBC BASIC so to be hackable and improvable by anyone, so YES I went back to BBC BASIC just for you guys. The Theme manager should be compatible with the ROOL one and should also work on RISC OS 3.00

It comes with nostalgia Themes (RISC OS 3 and RISC OS 4), standard RISC OS 5 and new “modern” themes:

• Modern Archie White
• Modern Archie colour
• Clean White
• Clean Light grey
• Clean Grey
• High Contrast

I still have quite a lot of code to finish, because it also introduce new controls for windows and, n the future, also font scaling (should be useful on the ARMBook if it works)

However saying that is in alpha state is being extremely generous, so for now let’s start to review the themes and as soon as I have a fairly stable release I’ll put it on my risckpkg repo and people can start testing it.

Also I think I need better names for the themes, so suggestions are welcome! will publish an announcement soon, as soon as it still stop giving me some error on start.

@ Andrew

Paolo – bit confused by your comments. An SMP module? Doesn’t work on imx6? I’m confused because AFAIK the only platform to have a shipping multi-core test build for developers is imx6 (I could be wrong here). And in that case it is a specially compiled ROM, not a separate support module.

Jeffrey kindly provided me the SMP module in a zip file, obviously the first thing I did was testing it on my mini.m :D did not load and quit immediately. Then tried on my RPi3 and loads fine and started to test there.

I think people should address questions to Jeffrey, not me, I am merely a user of his work.

Spirit of the amazing Jeffrey Lee if you are here please give us a signal (ermmm a sign!) helpppp!!!! :D

@ Andrew

the only platform to have a shipping multi-core test build for developers is imx6

So, can I have this shipping multi-core test build for developers? Or I am not a developer? Lol I am pretty sure I was last time I checked my CV :D

It’s in the beta folder on the download site, Paolo. There have been about five releases over the last two years+
Ach, I bet I know the problem – John only builds hi/lo roms for minim/cubox due to the limited interest (they have subtly different hardware to wandboard). I’ll need to request a minim build with smp – hopefully that is simple.

Edit – request made… watch this space.

(Honestly, I thought you were already running multicore imx6!)

I’ll need to request a minim build with smp – hopefully that is simple.

Thx, and no hurry I can wait if you guys are busy, but if you have time then I’d like to try it out please :)

(Honestly, I thought you were already running multicore imx6!)

Last time I asked you via email you did not feel confident with it, given that you have way more experience than me I always follow what you suggest! :D Then (as always) we all get busy and things slips away!

Anyway, no worries, all good and yes I’ll run the multi-core OS ASAP on my mini.m!!!!! :D

Back on topic, I backed the campaign for the laptop. I already have a great desktop so as great as the all in one looked I went for portability. I hope the campaign succeeds. Success breeds Success after all. It could lead to other exciting crowdfunded projects. RiscOS could really use a boost right now to bring in some more users. RiscOS Direct was a nice step in the right direction but there needs to be more noise and I think Cloverleaf is a great barometer for the potential of the platform today. Even if it falls short of it’s goal it might at least make all the Raspberry Pi Owners try the OS again and that can only lead to better things. Especially if Wi-Fi and a modern browser come to fruition during the Cloverleaf timeline.

I’m very excited and I felt that I should put my money where my mouth is, so I did. If it all fails at least I can say I stood up to be counted when the chance came.

Good luck Stefan and Alexy!

@ Andrew

It’s good to read that it seems that cloverleaf will try to combine existing efforts rather than reinventing the wheel. I have the impression that the RISC OS developers seem to work together more than it was the case in the past – which is of course a good thing.

@Paolo

Would also be interested to try the new theme! (BTW: I liked the rounded buttons and the ability to change their colour)

The SMP library is distributed as a module OR as source code to be recompiled (you’ll find latest source in the same link as for the examples.

I did not find the module. I guess I’ll simply have to recompile it.

It’s in the beta folder on the download site, Paolo. There have been about five releases over the last two years+

Since the processor is the same, can I suggest a multicore version for the ARMbook too?

Simple AMP multicore is really just near us :)

David – sadly not same CPU in ARMbook as in mini.m/imx6.

Also, whilst I talk of it “being available” (which is true), it really only exists for developers to kick around with. So much of RISC OS isn’t yet thread-safe that it is a minefield unless you’re careful. I make the ROMs available because they pop out of the build tree, and I figure that some folks might like to check them out for novelty value. I couldn’t recommend anyone using them “for real” beyond as an experiment for trying a bit of threaded code to see what happens when all cores are brought up and available under RISC OS.

@ Daniel J
bq. I’m finding it all rather cynical :( €30 for the freely downloadable RPCEmu, ludicrous markups on pinebooks and raspberry pis, it’s all building on other people’s work without adding anything substantive.

I love people that can talk only negative stuff without knowing what is really behind what they are nagging about. But I am always ready to enlighten peoples minds.

1. We don‘t sell the RPCEmu and it is not part of the package as it might effect our crowdfunding in a negative way as Peter Howkins insisted that I put the link to RPCEmu on our Kickstarter page. The funders will get the link to the RPCEMu when they get the distro delivered.
I think people that offer software for free should be happy when their software is used by someone. We spend a lot of work and money into social networking and advertisement to find NEW people that are interested in RISC OS. Some other people then think that we should throw away all our efforts and give it for free. So the 29 Euro is for our Cloverleaf RISC OS distribution with a wide collection of software. In the future this will also include the improvements of RISC OS what we hope to achieve.
Furthermore I must point out that we do that campaign for people that want to support the development of RISC OS and to find new users for RISC OS. And if they are not willing to support that with 29 Euro then….never mind…

I can tell you what I invested into that project and therefore into the development of RISC OS:
- 2 years of preparation (30% to 50% of my work time; so estimated 20.000 Euro)
- 3500 Euro for different hardware
- 2000 Euro for traveling
- 8000 Euro for crowdfunding
- 6000 Euro for advertisment
- 20.000 to 30.000 Euro for my two programmers learning how to program in RISC OS, programming ChatCube and some other task.
Makes a total of 59.500 to 69.500 Euro.

2. Yes we will use hardware that is available for multiple reasons:
a) With available products you have a low technological risk.

b) With available products you can deliver also smaller quantities at any time.

c) To develope our own hardware will cost a fortune and the resulting products prices will be not affordable for most people. Lets say we develope our own SBC board then we have to produce a minimum of 1000 units. These will cost a minimum of 200 Euro (maybe even 300€ to 400 €). So that results in 200.000 Euro just for the boards. This doesn‘t include engineering cost etc. Furthermore the drivers and HAL must be programmed for that board which is minimum full time job for 6 month at 3000 Euro (very cheap programmer) = 18.000 Euro. So 18 Euro per board.
On top of that will be computer case (40 Euro), power supply (10 Euro), packaging (5 Euro), shipping cost (10 Euro)resulting in a Total: 283 Euro. So we are now at 302.000 Euro investment. So if you want to do that for desktop PC, Laptop and All-in-one PC then we are at 3 × 302.000 Euro = 906.000 Euro. Actually the cost will be higher as in laptop (14“) and All-in-one PC (24“) is also included a display. So lets say 1.000.000 Euro.

So if you want to sell/fund that products in Kickstarter then additional fees have to be added like warrenty 2 years (10%), profits 30%, VAT (19%), payment services 4%, Kickstarter fee (5%). Resulting in 283 Euro x 1.1 × 1.3 × 1.19 x 1.04 × 1.05 = 526 Euro for the Desktop PC.
This does not include SD card, NVMe or EMMC storage or webcam (laptop/all-in-one PC) or display (14“ / 24“).
Speaking of the funding amount: 1 mill Euro x 1.1 × 1.3 × 1.19 x 1.04 × 1.05 = 1.858.256 Euro.
So if I would try to fund 1.9 mill Euro in a Kickstarter crowdfunding then you have the right to tell me that I am an idiot. But I didn‘t.

@Rick Murray
bq. Six core board? Nice. Under RISC OS? Not to much…

Jefree Lee is finalizing his multi-threading module now. So hopefully we soon can enjoy some more cores than one. We have started to program a new photo editor that will use his multi-theading module. Also playing videos, web browsing and AI application will profitate from it.

@Clive Semmens
bq. What would an office suite on RISCOS have to offer, that LibreOffice on Mac or PC doesn’t offer?

I agree. Nobody will buy/opt for RISC OS because of an office suite. BUT some people might opt against it because of the lack of an office suite that is compatible with standard file formats like .docx and .odt

@Doug Webb
Thanks for your supporting comments. And yes anyone in the RISC OS community should benefit from my project only not the ones that want to keep what RISC OS now with any changes and improvements. And I promise nothing as my achievement depend 99% on the support and results of my crowdfunding project. (No money – no honey). But I do my best to achieve something instead of some people that are only talking about it.

@Chris Hughes
bq. I see the target is 50,000 euros

The 50.000 Euro will not pay for all those targets listed. The 50.000 is only a lowest amount needed to continue and we hope that we get a much higher funding by this Kickstarter than just 50.000. Even if we just get that it will be only the start as we will do also a funding on Indiegogo and then later on Kickstarter again when we can show already some more results . So the success will be measured only end of 2021 and not just only end of this Kickstarter in January 2021.
Also I point out that not only my company needs to be involved in achieve all this. Luckily there are still many RISC OS programmers that are willing to commit their work force for the greater good of the RISC OS community such as Jeffrey Lee (multi-threading), Jason Tribbeck (new sound system), Nemo (UTF-8 support) and even Peter Howkins (even if he is pissed at me right now). And I hope that I can motivate some more to close gaps and get improvements of RISC OS. So if YOU are willing to participate in improving RISC OS then please send me an email info@riscoscloverleaf.com. Not only low level drivers must be programmed but also programs updated or new ones ported.

Cloverleaf Kitten is limited to 25 computers
That is a limited time marketing decision of the crowdfunding manager. It will be increased as we get close to the limit.

@Paolo
bq. The ZX Spectrum is one of the most sold micro computers in the history
I will blame Acorn when our crowdfunding fails as they didn‘t sale enough Archimedes! :-D
It shows once again that only quality is not the main reason for success. A RISC OS computer for sure does offer more than a Spectrum Next.

@Rick Murray
bq. Duke Nukem is available for RISC OS? That passed me by…
That comment got me into hot water.. did I make a mistake? Luckily not! Chris Gransden seems to have ported it:
http://www.cgransden.co.uk/eduke32.zip
https://www.cgransden.co.uk/games.html

IPP Everywhere or AirPrint
Well we should somewhere collect good ideas, wish lists and error reports. But I think currently there is already enough programming to do for 1 or 2 weeks..
I guess something like AirPrint would work already when WIFI is available and use RComp‘s UniPrint – “Universal” Network Printer Driver?

@B Clark
Thanks for your support!

@several bq. road map
The road map is more a visual display of what issues must be solved. Concerning driver development of WIFI, Bleutooth, USB3, NVMe the Cloverleaf project cannot deliver that just by ourselves but only in cooperation with the other players (ROOL & RISC OS Dev. & all RISC OS programmers). Delivery time is a function of the funding amount. You give us 10 million Euro then you get it done next month. You give us 100.000 Euro then it will be done in xx month, You give us 1 Euro then it will be done in the next 10 years.
We can work on one task only at one time and it is also not yet decided which one we should work on first. Which is easiest to solve and where we can get good results in a short period of time. Which one gives the greatest benefits? WIFI first of course. But which one is next? Investigations still ongoing.

1. We don‘t sell the RPCEmu and it is not part of the package as it might effect our crowdfunding in a negative way as Peter Howkins insisted that I put the link to RPCEmu on our Kickstarter page. The funders will get the link to the RPCEMu when they get the distro delivered.

I’m willing to take a certain amount of abuse on risc os forums, it’s expected. I would like to point out Stefan that the link to the RPCEmu page was your suggestion in August, all I insisted on was that you didn’t go back on that suggestion in November.

Luckily there are still many RISC OS programmers that are willing to commit their work force for the greater good of the RISC OS community such as Jeffrey Lee (multi-threading), Jason Tribbeck (new sound system), Nemo (UTF-8 support)

Ah, well that answers a question posed elsewhere and drops the answer in as being my Option 1 note.

I’m willing to take a certain amount of abuse on risc os forums, it’s expected.

I’m saddened to hear that this happens. Abuse should not be ‘the norm’.

@Stefan

The problem I have (which I think I articulated previously) is that if I came along as a newbie, thought I was getting something tangible for my €29, then later discovered that I’d paid for something I could download for free or purchase for less, then I’d be somewhat put out and feel misled, and consequently not very sympathetic towards the cause. Telling creators of open source software that they should be grateful that you’re charging money for it is a bit off really.

In so far as recouping money, all money spent thus far on this has been your choice, and for something you want to do. Which is fine! But you can’t then be put out when people are suggesting that they don’t feel the way everything is being framed is as open as it might be.

If you want money to fund development I personally think you have to make it absolutely explicit that’s what you want. At present it looks like you’re selling expensive products that people can get elsewhere for less, or nothing, and consequently being less that straight forward about what people are getting for their contributions. “If you buy an x from us you’ll help us develop y” as I said up there somewhere ^{^}. It’s sort of in there if you read everything in a certain way, but it’s really really not clear as the entire campaign is product-driven.

It’s sort of in there if you read everything in a certain way, but it’s really really not clear as the entire campaign is product-driven.

That’s one of the aspects of English as a second language – sometimes the nuances aren’t there or quite as a native speaker would expect.

Americans get it wrong every day, most English people aren’t much better. I wonder if I got all that right?

Americans get it wrong every day, most English people aren’t much better. I wonder if I got all that right?

I’m an American. Who exactly made the British the sole arbiters of the English Language? ;)

Anyway, it’s nothing to do with language, but it’s everything to do with what’s being presented and offered.

Please remember that Kickstarter is exactly what you asked Stefan to be explicit about – a way to fund ideas. It isn’t a shop, a pre-order, a way to buy things cheap or any other vending system. It is, by design, and as a stated purpose, a money-making system to make creative projects happen. That’s literally what crowd-funding is. Backers then (hopefully/usually) receive rewards depending on their investment. Note that these rewards are basically to encourage larger donations. They aren’t a shop.

As someone pointed out, some crowdfunding campaigns like to give the impression that you’ll get more value out of the Kickstarter, typically by adding in a lot of (usually cheap-to-produce) backer-extras that you wouldn’t necessarily buy otherwise. The purpose of this is to activate the “fear of missing out” (FOMO) parts of peoples’ brain chemistry! But, fundamentally, it is about raising money to make something happen.

For example, in video games, it is not uncommon for a game to cost (say) 30$. When it reaches beta (ie. still not released) it’ll go on Early Access on Steam publically, so others can buy. Often it will then have a discount, or be in Steam Sales, for up to 50% off. In other words, you could get it for (say) 20$ before it even came out properly. This sucks for people who paid 30$, but equally, the game may not have been made (or made to that quality standard) if they didn’t pay the 30$.

So, Kickstarter is weird for all of us used to the traditional “buy an item” approach to selling. A lot of people do try and use Kickstarter as a shop, but it is often a negative experience if they do. If you don’t feel excitement at making projects happen by pledging your money to them, then Kickstarter is probably not a good place to be – I think you’ll be disappointed. However, for those that do, they get the opportunity to be part of something cool :)

Maybe the project goals are too ambitious / not 100% properly communicated (we only will know, if the project gets finally funded), However, I think Stefan‘s approach has some very interesting aspects …

1. Stefan managed to get some attention outside the typical RISC OS community – e.g. the related FB group grew quickly to >1.6k members, with most of the members not being active RISC OS users. At least on FB this is the biggest RISC OS group I‘m aware of. It seems that a Kickstarter is a good „tool“ to get noticed.
2. Kickstarter seems to be a proper tool, to collect further investments – in particular if you want to collect funding outside the community, too. As stated by others before, staged/stretched goals could be an extra leverage in this regard.
3. What I found most interesting is that Stefan did not rely on the „typical suspects“ in the RISC OS community only, but found skilled coders (likely in lower cost countries), to get some parts of the job done. As Steffen mentioned, this is probably some completely ignored potential (so far) – in particular for applications development.

Due to the effort taken already, I really hope Cloverleaf will be successful … if not, I hope the aforementioned is considered and the possibility of another Kickstarter is explored, maybe with the support of more/all parts of the RISC OS „scene“.

So far, neither Iconbar nor Riscository have even mentioned that a RISC OS related Kickstarter went live …

I’m an American. Who exactly made the British the sole arbiters of the English Language? ;)

Good use of an emoticon there. Even though we are not in Aldershot I think I can answer your question. The British have suffered for a long time from a poisonous class system, which is intimately bound up with language. What else can explain the Great English Vowel Shift of the Middle Ages? But this nasty aspect of our linguistic character may sometimes conceal something more innocent, which I believe it does here: a childlike obsession with linguistic nuances. I confess to frequent and irrelevant indulgence of it myself. :(

Good use of an emoticon there. Even though we are not in Aldershot I think I can answer your question. The British have suffered for a long time from a poisonous class system, which is intimately bound up with language. What else can explain the Great English Vowel Shift of the Middle Ages? But this nasty aspect of our linguistic character may sometimes conceal something more innocent, which I believe it does here: a childlike obsession with linguistic nuances. I confess to frequent and irrelevant indulgence of it myself. :(

In the interests of transparency, I should reveal that I’m also British. I absolutely agree with that though from class thru nuance :). Anyway!

@Andrew – to be honest, taking my thoughts through to their natural conclusion I’d argue that a kickstarter that was explicitly about raising money to buy developer time and possibly gave people beta access and a vote on prioritisation would be rather more in tune with the kickstarter ethos. As soon as you say “I didn’t want to link to RPCEmu because it might detract from me raising money if people realise they can get it for free” you’re actually admitting that you’ve put together a kickstarter that looks like it’s selling things to people.

@Daniel J
Well we have here a good example that more detailed information make something clear(er). Your comments before have been also not clear or “abusive”.
I will see what I can do to make it clearer in our Kickstarter page. General problem there is that space is limited and should not bore people to death with details they are not interested in. In fact the whole thing is to motivate people to fund for RISC OS. I have no intention to capitalize on Peter Howkins work and brand it as mine. The RPCEmu is an important tool to faciliate the access to RISC OS. But RISC OS should be more than just a hook-on of another OS. And for that we need RISC OS hardware. You can say that exists with Raspberry. Yes it does but it means that we will rely forever on what “god” Raspberry will offer to the RISC OS community. RISC OS users have nothing to say and Raspberry doesn’t support development of RISC OS nor the promotion of RISC OS. (Sorry getting off topic)

@Peter Howkins
Yes I offered that formulation but I think some discussion before inside the Facebook comments have lead to that. Because there is no communication in the private messages prior to that. The problem is that your website and downloads and installation is not that user friendly for Windows users as it could be. That makes me worry that they would get pissed at the result and back off from my project. So I have choosen to minimize the risk which is a normal step when you do a project as you want it to succeed and not to fail.
I planned to do a Windows installer so it will be a one click installation. But currently that is scrapped due to infighting of the RISC OS community.

But this nasty aspect of our linguistic character may sometimes conceal something more innocent, which I believe it does here: a childlike obsession with linguistic nuances.

Is one suggesting that little ol’ me would tweak words to derive amusement?

Actually the comment about nuances and second language is totally serious. In a language as mongrel¹ as English the speaker/writer can often say something they didn’t mean merely by misplaced punctuation. How on earth is someone who normally thinks in another language supposed to convey exactly what they mean without possible misinterpretation?

Stefan ² has taken time to try and clarify the original text. I’m still concerned that the timeline is rather aggressive/ambitious. Time will tell.

¹ Mongrel because of the massively mixed derivation, although the habit of “borrowing” words from elsewhere does border on kleptomania.

But currently that is scrapped due to infighting of the RISC OS community.

And there we have it, 3 days to make my musing about a new RISC OS war to come about.

Someone has the vision and drive to try something different and what does this community do focus on the odd negatives, because it doesn’t fit how RISC OS has done it for the last 30 years, rather than the positives and the fact someone is trying to improve things before the old community imploads as we all meet our maker.

So lets get back to normal service moaning about why we haven’t got Wifi or Bluetooth etc and why RISC OS doesn’t run on x or y system.

At least we will all be comforted by the fact that nothing has changed and our blue directories are once again safe.

It may be I change my mind on this but I can see why so many have been driven out and prefer to do stuff that makes them happy

nor Riscository have even mentioned that a RISC OS related Kickstarter went live …

I’m sure Vince may answer this himself but it may be something to do with the fact that it is aimed at new users.

So far, neither Iconbar nor Riscository have even mentioned that a RISC OS related Kickstarter went live …

Has Stefan sent them a press release to them plus Archive?

I planned to do a Windows installer so it will be a one click installation. But currently that is scrapped due to infighting of the RISC OS community

What is wrong with the current installers for the bundles of RPCEmu, they made it very easy to install.

I do not see any infighting as you put it Stefan, but concerns of if the message in the Kickstarter is clear enough. I think we all hope it will be a success at the end of the day, and it helps the community.

I think we all hope it will be a success at the end of the day

+1 Agree.

I hope you are right about it being concerns not infighting and hopefully I am being overally negative myself, which is entirely possible :-)

But there are times that we just have to get onboard and move forward as I would rather be debating how an implementation is going to be done rather than discussing why it is not available as at least then we have moved foreward.