Questions from someone who last used RISCOS on an A310

Steve – like you, I also cannot now find it. Yet it was available a couple of weeks ago. Maybe I’m blind. That’s the charitable assumption, anyway. I need a cup of tea.

Steve – like you, I also cannot now find it. Yet it was available a couple of weeks ago. Maybe I’m blind.

No you aren’t blind, it was there it isn’t now.
I have an add-in on Firefox that monitors pages for changes and the removal just before 5.28 went live was one of those changes.

If you want a copy of the last version before final edit update then you’d need to ask someone who collects such things. The editor does, and at least one other obsessive character. As, joint, owner of the IP you should be able to access a copy and ensure it becomes available.

If you’re trying to find out why the User Guide isn’t visible on the site in its normal location of Miscellaneous Downloads then the question needs to be addressed to ROOL.
All I can say is that the run up to RO5.28 release followed the same pattern as RO5.24 in that the UG appeared, had edit suggestions submitted and disappeared just before the stable release went live.

The PDF you have is the digital copy of the guide, the only difference between the printed copy and the PDF is a quantity of dead tree.

I’m not sure how many times this needs to be written, but NO IT IS NOT.

In fact I don’t think the paper copy has been reprinted since the 2016 edition

There wasn’t a 2016 edition. The first 5.24 edition was published in 2018, two years after the very early draft which is bundled with Direct. The version bundled with Direct has many “issues” compared to the real thing, including lots of “TODO” references, the “blah blah blah” stuff, and bits which relate to features last seen in RISC OS 3.

it may be the revised 2020 and therefore more up to date than the dead tree.

You’re aware that there’s a new 2020 dead tree version? It was announced at the London show.

Also it would be nice to have an app to display it.

A PDF Reader, you mean?

Why put the “Discs” app up since it doesn’t do anything useful for 99% of people it seems – just confused me.

This is an aspect of the “It’s useful to me, and I’ve used RO for years” theme.¹
For new users, with no RO shared devices it’s lost space on the iconbar.

You can reclaim the space by disabling Access (the application) thus:

1. Mouse menu button over switcher icon at far right of iconbar
2. click “Configure”
3. click “Network” in the Configure window
4. click “Access” in the Network window
5. Untick the “Enable Access” button
6. Click “Set”
7. Click “Save”
8. Answer prompt message with “Reset Now”
   Reboot occurs and the “Discs” on the iconbar is gone.

BTW. Thank you, on behalf of all here, for providing useful feedback on what is confusing, easy or hard. Improvements always follow from constructive criticism.

¹ Are we catering to the “used RO for years” group at the expense of confusing new users? or are we catering to all with a less confusing setup and allowing the “used RO for years” group to do what they already know and configure the setting when they need it?
I’m sure we could drop in a text file labelled “Network_HowTo” with sections in it like “How to enable Access networking for shared RO drives” just in case some “Used it for years without having a clue how to set up Access”

You’re aware that there’s a new 2020 dead tree version? It was announced at the London show.

I’m aware that it was stated that a new version would be available.
Not aware that it was currently available.

In Steve D’s case – save a tree and the lives of SA postal workers.
I’m pretty sure he’d be up on murder charges if he ordered a copy, and SA postal moved it around until they found storage in a termite hill…

In my case, until that bedroom 4 tidy up is complete there’s no chance of shelf space to house it (after I’ve created shelf space for about 20-30 board feet of books the wife and I collectively have)

Hi, I’m enjoying the thread

It does have shades of “Names not Bruce? Mind if we call you Bruce?”

SteveP thanks for the howto to remove the Discs app. I don’t think I would have easily discovered what to do. I see now that there is an “Access+” submenu but my ROS exposure is too long back to know that that is.

SteveF: “You mean like a PDF viewer?”

Well there is of course a PDF viewer which works pretty well (but how do I get a zoom somewhere between 100% and 140% since 140% is a teeny bit too big to see a whole page of the guide on by 1920×1200 screen)

But what I had in mind is a “Docs” app which provided access to the guide, the PRMs and other info as a library. (Hmm – I’m sure I had the PRMs – too bad I have moved countries twice since then and they are gone gone gone). Also those PROGRAMMING RISC OS notes from Martyn Fox. My top of the head design is that you could make bookmarks, maybe highlight passages and make margin notes. That sort of thing. Maybe it’s my project to put effort where my mouth is.

Probably enough now – but if ROOL would like to sell me a digital copy of the up to date user guide that would be great!

There wasn’t a 2016 edition.

I took the date from the text on the bottom of “page ii”

“Published by RISC OS Open Ltd.
Issue 1. March 2016 (updates by RISC OS Open Ltd)”

I can’t really argue with the date ROOL put in the document.

I trust you, who are all Steves, are aware that there’s actually a trope about exactly this? ;-)

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfSteves

And the counterpart:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OneSteveLimit

I trust you, who are all Steves, are aware that there’s actually a trope about exactly this

Yes, but I’m not one of the Steve’s, I’m Steve.

I can’t really argue with the date ROOL put in the document.

It depends on how you define ‘edition’. The PDF that you’re looking at is a draft that, as far as I can recall, was only given to editors and not to the general public*. It’s not a ‘released’ document and therefore isn’t really a published ‘edition’.

But we’re probably splitting hairs :)

*While later revisions of the draft were available from the Miscellaneous Downloads page, they also had ‘Draft – not for commercial use’ on the title page.

The PDF that you’re looking at is a draft that, as far as I can recall, was only given to editors and not to the general public

The earliest version on line at ROOL (AFAIK) was the PDF of the RO3.7 UserGuide intended to form the basis of a new RO5 guide which appeared at or around 02 June 2015 with revisions through the remainder of 2015, throughout 2016, 2017 and into 2018 (14th March 2018 to be exact)

Text in that last release:

“Published by RISC OS Open Ltd.
Issue 1. March 2018 (updates by RISC OS Open Ltd)”

It would be possible looking through the editions to determine which starts the clearly labelled RO5 guide with a release date that runs in sequence from then on, but the 1st November 2015 is a good candidate.

Quite why the March 2018 wasn’t used for the PDF in Direct is an interesting question.

However I can state with certainty that over 50 different versions of the PDF were made publicly available and a nice sequence of front pages that do not say draft.
Possibly a divergence of intent and action.

Quite why the March 2018 wasn’t used for the PDF in Direct is an interesting question.

Possibly because it had “Draft – not for commercial use” plastered on the front cover.

Possibly because it had “Draft – not for commercial use” plastered on the front cover.

Hmmm, post 2017-03 feature.

Anyway, given away isn’t commercial.

Yes, pedantry.

With 8 titles released, it turns out publishing books is an expensive exercise: from mastering in Adobe FrameMaker, through buying ISBNs, to having to send multiple copies to the Legal Deposit libraries.

Once a new title is ready any spend is added up, an estimate made of the number of copies to print, and that sets the effective cost price – more than just buying blank paper! For the User Guide for 5.24 a PDF was made available as promised once the project broke even, up until the time it became obsolete (when RISC OS 5.28 came out). Then we start over collecting community additions and corrections for Issue 3.

The User Guide isn’t included by default in the RISC OS Pi image because (especially so for the User Guide with the character table appendices) the books contain a number of unusual fonts which require licensing and those licenses are non-exclusive, non-transferrable, and limited in various ways. For example: say we bought 8 fonts at £75 each that might cover you for 10k downloads, or 5 titles, or 3 desktop machines, or some combination therein; those 10k downloads would only last a few weeks for the Pi.

It isn’t right to say ‘…ROOL made the User Guide freely available’, it was made available subject to the terms (given in the inside cover of each title) for personal use when downloaded directly from the ROOL website where we can keep count of the number of downloads. To date, no distribution or dealer has requested or been granted permission to redistribute any of the books. If a PDF came on a system you bought or downloaded from somewhere other than RISC OS Open it shouldn’t have been – please let us know if yours did.

We’re very receptive to other tenable schemes to cover publishing costs beyond selling lumps of thinly sliced tree. That’s the lowest admin model for ROOL – you receive a beautiful book to keep in exchange for slightly reducing the debt pile, and that in turn gives confidence to start to tackle the next biggest hole in the RISC OS documentation.

SAPO is a member of the Postal Union and participates in EMS Mail they totally fail to meet the standard

Steve Davies: we send to South Africa by courier (not Royal Mail) for which we charge £18.50 (not £50). If you’re a regular donor to the ROOL General bounty then you qualify for free carriage too regardless of where you live.

With 8 titles released, it turns out publishing books is an expensive exercise […]

Thanks for the detailed explanation, which all makes complete sense to someone who does similar stuff when not wearing a RISC OS hat.

Just one question: you say that

For example: say we bought 8 fonts at £75 each that might cover you for 10k downloads, or 5 titles, or 3 desktop machines, or some combination therein; those 10k downloads would only last a few weeks for the Pi.

The 10k downloads is for website use, isn’t it? PDFs are covered in the “5 titles”, so long as they’re “static” and the complete fonts aren’t included in the PDF, I think? (And yes, that could be interesting for an encoding table.) You still have to licence the fonts, of course, and that cost needs to be covered from somewhere.

If a PDF came on a system you bought or downloaded from somewhere other than RISC OS Open it shouldn’t have been – please let us know if yours did.

As already noted, the RISC OS Direct image (from here and here) appears to have a draft PDF included at $.Documents.UserGuide.UserGuide.

To be honest, having read this simple explanation, I’m all the more irritated by Andrew’s comment yesterday of

Yet it was available a couple of weeks ago. Maybe I’m blind. That’s the charitable assumption, anyway.

It seemed inappropriate to have been written by a director of ROD yesterday, but in the light of the above seems even more unhelpful. I presume that RISC OS Developments could easily have contacted ROOL off-line to ask these questions, so why make such barbed comments about ROOL’s motives in a public forum without explaining the other side of the story?

It just implies that ROD aren’t actually working with the other bits of the RISC OS market – on the basis that if they were, they would have been in touch to ask all of this before Direct came out – and comes over as hugely unprofessional. Not a good look for the platform.

Thanks for the detailed explanation, which all makes complete sense to someone who does used to do similar stuff when not wearing a RISC OS hat.

Snap(pish)!

Only one small query: would it not be sensible to give up using fonts that need to be licensed, and switch to public domain ones? There’s no shortage of them.

As already noted, the RISC OS Direct image (from here and here) appears to have a draft PDF included at $.Documents.UserGuide.UserGuide.

Apologies if I stepped out of line – I took the boilerplate at the front to be old Acorn hangover material. The use of licensed fonts never occurred to me. That said, as Steve said the complete fonts wouldn’t be in the PDF so that issue may be moot.

When I’ve looked, checked and commented on the content I’ve done so largely on the results of a process involving an export of the plain text from the PDF to make automated processes like spell and grammar check a lot easier. (Let’s just say my ability to see wrongness isn’t matched by my ability to re-punctuate so pressing a key gives a few hints). So, for that, the font is irrelevant.

A number of things come to the front of my mind at this point:

• If the Direct image was done after break even, then this: “For the User Guide for 5.24 a PDF was made available as promised once the project broke even, up until the time it became obsolete” implies that the image should actually have the complete March 2018 revision, but it only has the March 2016 revision.
• If the image was done before the break even then surely by the rules/guidelines in play there should have been no User Guide in the image, yes?

As already noted, the RISC OS Direct image (from here and here) appears to have a draft PDF included at $.Documents.UserGuide.UserGuide.

On that I assumed on first seeing the RPCEmu bundle that the content is, sensibly, a direct lift of the HD portion of the ROD image¹ incorporated with the RPCEmu build so being identical is no surprise.

Communication between ROOL and ROD, dunno, can’t comment.

¹ That would have been, no doubt, after Peter had a discussion with ROD about the project/proposal.

If the fonts aren’t in the public domain, then presumably they ARE there, complete, in the PDF – otherwise you wouldn’t see them (unless you had the fonts, with a licence, yourself).

If the fonts aren’t in the public domain, then presumably they ARE there, complete, in the PDF – otherwise you wouldn’t see them (unless you had the fonts, with a licence, yourself).

Generally, just the characters used – hence my comment about the encoding tables. In the User Guide, with the character tables at the back, the font would be largely complete – which whilst legit, might tickle bits of the licence that otherwise wouldn’t be a problem.

The main concern in the font licences that I’ve read is to differentiate use in a “static work” like a book from something dynamic like display fonts on a website, or “build and download your own custom PDF with your name in it”. In the latter case, the end user can much more easily end up with a version of the font that’s complete enough to be useful in its own right.

And before anyone says that RISC OS font licences are so much easier, consider that EFF and the like didn’t have to worry about this internet thing. I would guess that these days, their licences would look very similar.

Only one small query: would it not be sensible to give up using fonts that need to be licensed, and switch to public domain ones?

Part of the aim seems to be to keep the look and feel of Acorn’s documentation department. Personally, I’d actually be happy to pay a little to retain that.

ETA: Oh, and some PD fonts can leave “surprises” at the printing stage. In something like the User Guide, that could be expensive compared to licensing “professional” fonts.

If the image was done before the break even then surely by the rules/guidelines in play there should have been no User Guide in the image, yes

I had the alternative thought that, if RISC OS Developments had actually contacted ROOL to ask about including the User Guide in Direct at any stage following publication in 2018, there could have been a discussion about what it might cost to offset the financial implications for ROOL (ie. paying the difference left to break-even, or “licencing it”).

Had that conversation happened, then presumably Direct could have had a useful User Guide included… or at least Andrew would have known why it couldn’t happen, and wouldn’t have had to muse about the motivation of the ROOL team in the way that he did here yesterday.

To be honest, having read this simple explanation, I’m all the more irritated by Andrew’s comment yesterday of

Yet it was available a couple of weeks ago. Maybe I’m blind. That’s the charitable assumption, anyway.

It seemed inappropriate to have been written by a director of ROD yesterday, but in the light of the above seems even more unhelpful. I presume that RISC OS Developments could easily have contacted ROOL off-line to ask these questions, so why make such barbed comments about ROOL’s motives in a public forum without explaining the other side of the story?

It just implies that ROD aren’t actually working with the other bits of the RISC OS market – on the basis that if they were, they would have been in touch to ask all of this before Direct came out – and comes over as hugely unprofessional. Not a good look for the platform.

I would disagree with you. a) the inital build of Direct did not involve Andrew and he has made this clear several times in previous postings.
b) A user guide is needed in the Direct build as it aimed at new users, and a PDF version makes sense in this situation. c) ROD are intitled as owners of the OS to do as they wish. Obviously it would have a good idea to let ROOL know about the PDF version in Direct (but Andrew was not involved in the inital version)

To be honest I prefer a PDF book now rather then physical one, they could always raise money by making it a Kindle book and selling that way and removing the licensed fonts even better. Time to move into the modern world.

Oh by the way I am currently looking at the RISC OS 5 User Guide PDF from March 2016 Issue 1 – no markings to say its a draft.

the inital build of Direct did not involve Andrew and he has made this clear several times in previous postings.

RISC OS Developments published it. You don’t do that if you don’t know what is in it, because it can lead to all kinds of unpleasant surprises… like this one, apparently, where it ends up looking as if you’re working against ROOL.

ETA. Oh, and RISC OS Developments[edited] did all of the licencing stuff for Direct. I know this, because it was them who contacted the software developers to arrange approvals to include items in the distro – the emails came from “RISC OS Dev Team” @riscosdev.com. It was also stated clearly at the South West Show, by the person who did the initial build.

RISC OS Developments published it. You don’t do that if you don’t know what is in it, because it can lead to all kinds of unpleasant surprises… like this one, apparently, where it ends up looking as if you’re working against ROOL.

Steve, Andrew is not the only person involved in ROD, other people are like Richard etc. Andrew has pointed out he was not directly involved in the build of the inital version of Direct, but he is now working on the update, due to some of the issues raised elsewhere.

Personally I think the User Guide should be available now as a download or available with new computers as standard (with maybe the builders of the computers paying a fee to ROOL to do so). Then get rid of the licensed fonts out the Guide to reduce costs.

To be honest I prefer a PDF book now rather then physical one, they could always raise money by making it a Kindle book and selling that way and removing the licensed fonts even better.

My feelings precisely.