Cloverleaf Kickstarter includes a pledge for RPCEmu

Just to let you know:
Our second Kickstarter offers some improvements for the RPCEmu. The donation ask for is 19 Euro/ 16 UKP.
Visit Cloverleaf Kickstarter page

Programming package to implement the following features for RPCEmu

• Scroll-wheel support
• Clipboard support to interchange content from Windows/Linux to RPCEmu vice versa.
• Mimemap support (This makes RISC OS understand the Windows/Linux file types)
• Full screen startup option
• Auto exit when RISC OS is shut-down.

Changes will be given to the open source project RPCEmu after complete financing.
The Kickstarter is still open for 19 more days.

Full screen startup option

Already have that, load Anymode and set my RO screen size to match the X/Y dimensions of my display unit.
Actually I leave the Windows task bar uncovered for convenience.

Auto exit when RISC OS is shut-down

There are occasions when you want to shut down and restart, rather than the equivalent of a power off.

Clipboard support to interchange content from Windows/Linux to RPCEmu vice versa.
Mimemap support (This makes RISC OS understand the Windows/Linux file types)

macOS?

Mimemap support (This makes RISC OS understand the Windows/Linux file types)

This won’t get committed to head, it is too much of a support burden for us (basically you can not program it to work well enough).

Changes will be given to the open source project RPCEmu after complete financing.

Emphasis mine. The kickstarter has reached its goal, the rewards that people have pledged for have to be delivered. This has nothing to do with the ludicrously low target price you picked or those daft “Price Tag” you put on items.

This won’t get committed to head

While this is a subtle but darkly funny no-sell, it does raise a disturbing question regarding how much contact Cloverleaf has had with the RPCEmu maintainers before coming up with all the things to be done to the project.

Emphasis mine.

It’s almost as if they’re using it as some sort of bounty scheme without having to deal with ROOL and the existing bounties and, you know, actually talk to others.

Looking at the linked page, I notice a few things, such as the RK3399 port. Risk – none (their words) as development started in 2019 and will succeed in 2021. As this is already underway, why is it even featured?
I notice also that it is not marked as open source. Will the RK3399 code not be merged into the master repository at ROOL for automated builds?

In numerous places it says “License will be for two personal RISC OS systems”.
How quaintly old fashioned. Sadly, for me, something like this will be either ignored or I’ll walk away (given on how draconian the enforcement is).
Why? I have an emulator on two different PCs (depending on whether I want a full PC or a Netbook). I have the Beagle xM, and I have the Pi2 that I use most of the time.
I consider stuff to be licenced to me, not to the machine. I don’t feel that it should be your concern if I install it on one machine or four, only that I use it myself and don’t give it to others.
It’s worth noting – this is the approach that Google Play takes regarding purchases.

ArtCube says “It should also be the base for a module that will enable all RISC OS app access to bitmap images”. This has already been done. CJE is selling ImageFS2, which I think was made 32 bit by Colin? This is a transparent process for software that can load sprite files. I believe it can also do the reverse for saving, but I’ve not used ImageFS since RISC OS 3.10 so I’m not really the one to say… however, I will point out that this problem has already been looked at. It might be worth getting in touch with whoever owns this to see about what sort of features it actually has (does it support PNG? does it cope with GIF/PNG transparency? both ways? can JPEG quality be adjusted on the fly?) with a view towards extending support within the existing framework.

This won’t get committed to head??

While this is a subtle but darkly funny no-sell, it does raise a disturbing question regarding how much contact Cloverleaf has had with the RPCEmu maintainers before coming up with all the things to be done to the project.??

I must admit after I saw Peter Howkins post that was similar to my thoughts.

I notice a few things, such as the RK3399 port.

I believe R-Comp have said they have it sort of working already on a Laptop.

It does raise a disturbing question regarding how much contact Cloverleaf has had with the RPCEmu maintainers before coming up with all the things to be done to the project.

Whilst I had some contact with Stefan before the first kickstarter (and been treated fairly shoddily to boot), there was no contact before the second one where he’d decided he wanted to fund changes to RPCEmu.

As such the first time I saw the above list of changes was when everyone else did.

Mimemap support (This makes RISC OS understand the Windows/Linux file types)

This won’t get committed to head, it is too much of a support burden for us (basically you can not program it to work well enough).

I’m a little unclear what the feature means. MimeMap seems to work as expected in the Windows version of RPCEmu I use, by which I mean a type alien to Windows gets a comma hex suffix on the end (RISC OS “Sprite” is Windows “Sprite,ff9”), and a type alien to RISC OS is looked up in the MimeMap and displayed correctly in the Filer (Windows “image.png” is RISC OS “image/png” with file type &B60). Feature complete!

I’d imagine OS X and Linux would do the same since HostFS is common to all RPCEmu hosts.

I notice also that it is not marked as open source.

Yeah. We might have been here before, though…

I wonder what version of RPCEmu you’re using ….

I’m a little unclear what the feature means. MimeMap seems to work as expected in the Windows version of RPCEmu I use, by which I mean a type alien to Windows gets a comma hex suffix on the end (RISC OS “Sprite” is Windows “Sprite,ff9”)

Yep that works fine

and a type alien to RISC OS is looked up in the MimeMap and displayed correctly in the Filer (Windows “image.png” is RISC OS “image/png” with file type &B60). Feature complete!

And there’s no code to do that, so I’ve no idea where this has come from …

and a type alien to RISC OS is looked up in the MimeMap and displayed correctly in the Filer (Windows “image.png” is RISC OS “image/png” with file type &B60).

That is certainly not the case with all RPCEmu versions I have ever seen and used.

file.zip in HostFS is shown as type text on RISC OS, so cannot properly be used without explicitly filetyping it. If filetyped, it gets its ,ddc or whatever filename suffix, so can no longer properly be used from the Windows side of things.

This was discussed previously, and I understand Peter’s reasoning why this is for some use cases the least problematic behaviour, but for cross-platform work it is a constant nuisance.

So the only solution to suit both worlds seems to be to maintain a RPCEmu fork.

@Gerald Holdsworth
We will try to make it work on macOS too. But we have no Mac available for testing.

@Steve Pampling

Already have that, load Anymode and set my RO screen size to match the X/Y dimensions of my display unit.
Actually I leave the Windows task bar uncovered for convenience.

So maybe that could be easily resolved by your way but just add it as on options in settings.

Mimemap support (This makes RISC OS understand the Windows/Linux file types)

What we could do with is consistent handling of this across all types of storage; local (Fat32FS), remote (LanmanFS/98, SunFish) and emulated (HostFS). Including untyped files, which are still important for some programs, but are handled incorrectly by many filing systems.

A question for Peter:
This screen dimensions matching between the hosted RO and Windows is apparently easy to add, negating the need for AnyMode – why isn’t it already in RPCEmu?

I have a feeling about the answer…

A question for Peter: This screen dimensions matching between the hosted RO and Windows is apparently easy to add

Is it? Can you explain how you see it working, how would you implement it?

negating the need for AnyMode – why isn’t it already in RPCEmu? I have a feeling about the answer…

Was the feeling “Because this is the first time someone has suggested it as a feature?” :)

I’ve a question for you Steve. Given it appears to be a feature you want and that it is apparently easy to add, why haven’t you sent me the patch for it yet? :)

why haven’t you sent me the patch for it yet?

🍿!

What we could do with is consistent handling of this across all types of storage.

A specification would do. Like how do you display a windows directory with ‘file’, file,ffb’ and ‘file.ffd’ in it.

I’ve a question for you Steve. Given it appears to be a feature you want and that it is apparently easy to add, why haven’t you sent me the patch for it yet? :)

I used the word “apparently” for a good reason. The reason being the item behind my feeling.
I have this feeling it isn’t as easy as just an afternoon spent altering the RPCEmu source, and Anymode works to do what I want so like many others I just use what is there if I’m using RPCEmu.

I also have a feeling you knew what my earlier feeling was :)

I used the word “apparently” for a good reason. The reason being the item behind my feeling.
I have this feeling it isn’t as easy as just an afternoon spent altering the RPCEmu source,

It would really help here if you say what you mean.

I also have a feeling you knew what my earlier feeling was :)

I had no idea, my thought that was that you were being deliberately insulting and acting like a massively entitled c**t. Because that’s what you’d written.

🍿!

Under non-pandemic conditions that might be an answer. A combination of being “blind”¹ for months and then Lockdown / working from has contributed to me not having seen the inside of a pub² since March of “The Interval”³
No, simple diversion onto other things. I think it would require work on the Windows side of things anyway and my limited talents don’t venture that side (they only make a discreet visit to the RO side).

¹ Apparently the legal classification is vision impairment, and I was at a level that was about as bad as it can get and still not be 0

my thought that was that you were being deliberately insulting and acting like a massively entitled c**t.

Who’s the one being insulting here?

I was at a level that was about as bad as it can get and still not be 0

It can never be zero. They might have had to give you a free TV licence or something…

and is best referred to as “The Interval”

Yeah, things were naff in 2019 and pretty much fell apart in 2021. The year in between? What year in between?

A specification would do. Like how do you display a windows directory with ‘file’, file,ffb’ and ‘file.ffd’ in it.

You cannot have a user-friendly covering-all-cases-on-all-foreign-FSes solution. The sooner you accept this, the easier the spec gets.

For your example, I would expect to be shown “file” with filetype ffb and “file/ffd”. But I guess you mistyped the one point and would like to replace it with a comma :-)

If you play around with the current HostFS in RPCEmu (or any other FS like LanManFS or SunFish, possibly with different server implementations), you will soon find out that they behave in very strange ways when encountering the border cases. Think about case sensitive vs. case insensitive host file systems. Or different encodings of file names. You cannot sensibly map all cases to RISC OS. So if you encounter files that would map to one file name, you just pick the most specific one (i.e. the one with a specified ,xxx type), and if there are multiple of those, you pick the first alphabetically. If you want, you can provide a special mode (like LanMan98 did with the NoTypes special field) where you do a user-unfriendly-but-1:1-mapping mode so that you can access all files.

The most important thing you need to handle is to make it impossible to do something to a file on the RISC OS side that will end up in an inconsistent state. Start RPCEmu and !Edit and save two files called “File” and “File,fff”. See the problem? This MUST lead to an error, or the second file overwriting the first file.

I had no idea, my thought that was that you were being deliberately insulting and acting like a massively entitled c**t. Because that’s what you’d written.

Oh, well. I’m familiar with being misunderstood.