Gavin Wraith, re: lua / RiscLua

Hello,

Gavin. I’ll learn Lua and write programs using RiscLua, but ONLY if you want me to.
If you tell me that you want me to do it, I’ll learn Lua.

Let me know.

Patrick

but ONLY if you want me to.

Uh… Shouldn’t you learn something because you want to?
It’s usually much more fulfilling that way.

but ONLY if you want me to.

Golly, not sure whether I can shoulder the moral responsibility here! I have a suggestion. If you can get it working (what RISC OS platform do you have?) why not play around first and have some fun? I recommend trying Lua scripting with StrongED first because that gets you the most bang for the fewest bucks. For example, to strip all the markup out of a webpage, load the webpage into StrongED and SHIFT-drag to the apply icon a file containing this script:

#! lua
for line in io.lines (arg[1]) do
   print (line:gsub ("%b<>", ""))
end

On a completely different topic, I have just spilled a mug of tea onto my Maplin N69JX wireless keyboard and it has stopped working. I think it is dry now – I used a hair-dryer – but it still does not work. I am not too worried as it was very cheap. But Maplin is no more. Has anybody managed to rescue a drowned keyboard who can give me advice?

Gavin, right section for off topic!

I’ve knocked drinks on to my hardware too many times. Did it to both a keyboard and mouse in the past few weeks. I rushed the mouse so it’s not 100% rejuvinated but I took more time with the keyboard.

What I did (YMMV and disclaimers about wrecking your hardware) is put demineralised water in a flat bottomed plastic tub and thoroughly washed the hardware in it.
In the case of the mouse I stripped it and washed the board in sections, being careful not to wet the optical sensor. I’ve found they don’t seem to survive immersion for some reason. maybe I’m just unlucky.

When I stripped the keyboard for cleaning I removed the membrane layers first and hand cleaned them separately. Experience has taught me once liquid gets in between them it’s disaster.
The rest I just washed in demineralised water.

because I’m impatient I sat the keyboard right on the outlet of a dehumidifier for a few hours after drying it as best I could.

The mouse board I just sat out in the sun for a day.

I said I wasn’t as thorough with the mouse. There’s still stickiness in a couple of the microswitches.

Re: Lua, I still use it like a generic programming language because I haven’t found the right guide for me yet. But it really is a pleasure to use. Only caveat, which I believe is mentioned is that it gets cranky with implicitly defined globals so a lot of tutorials don’t work OOTB, so to speak.

Only caveat, which I believe is mentioned is that it gets cranky with implicitly defined globals so a lot of tutorials don’t work OOTB, so to speak.

This feature is new to RiscLua7 . If you don’t like it you can turn it off by commenting out the last line (by putting a | at the front) of !Run, so it becomes

|set LUA_INIT_5_4  @rlua7:prelude

The dead keyboard is a little Maplin Mini. Underneath the batteries are two small screws, but even with them out I can see no way of opening it up. The Rpi3B+ has Bluetooth, I believe. Maybe I should see if I can get a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse working with it.

Thanks for the tip on RiscLua7!

In many cases (ha) there are screws hidden behind stickers or at worst, adhesive feet.
Occasionally cases are designed with a couple of holding screws and the case halves slide apart, but I have never seen a keyboard like that. Sections may be clipped together too. A spudger of some variety is best to pop them apart.
I do feel that there may be hidden screws on your keyboard though.

When it’s behind a sticker it’s easy enough to find by just running a finger over it feeling for an indent.

Something to watch for is what it is washed with. Just demineralised water is usually okay. Different manufacturers use different lubricants for the keys for cost, availability and of course materials reasons. If this lubricant is lost, it’s either a case of picking a lubricant, pulling ~100 keys, reassembling and hoping for the best or using a keyboard that is reminiscent of forcing wooden pegs into holes with the fingertips. My PC keyboard is like that. I tried white lithium grease spray. that was not the correct answer.

screws hidden behind stickers

Thanks for the tip. It is just as you say.

I have given up on the tea-drowned Maplin keyboard. I have just received an Rii RK700 wireless kbd/mouse. It is incredibly cheap, but discounting the manual it is very good quality for the price. Sadly, the mouse seems not to work for RISC OS, but it works well enough with Raspbian. The excuse for a manual is evidently intended for a different model, because it talks about LED of Keyboard will start blinking but the keyboard has no LED! It describes the key caps as chocolate but they are black as far as I can see. It addresses its readers with Sinic courtesy as Dear Distinguished Customer. But how do they know, I wonder? The mouse has an on/off switch, but, from reading reviews of the product, I see that other people appear to lack this feature. The sensitivity of the mouse can be varied from a button behind the scroll wheel. So far, so very good.