RISC OS Awards 2017 - discussion before finalising poll

Ridiculously late because I’ve been stupidly busy (though, sadly, this hasn’t translated into cash in the bank) – I’ve now skimmed through my list to try to get an initial idea of what to put in each category, keeping the options down to six for each.

As usual, my initial list is formed from stuff I’ve written about in some way on RISCOSitory – but there may be stuff I’m not aware of.

This is what I have at the mo:

Best commercial software

• Font Directory Pro – Elesar / LOOK Systems
• AMCOG Development Kit – AMCOG
• DiscKnight – Dave Ruck
• OBrowser – RISC OS Developments. (Given to investors, made available “for a donation” to others – I think that just about classes it as commercial!)
• Impact – Sine Nomine
• ePic – ROOL

Best non-commercial software

I have far too many options for this category – but I’m thinking these for the six:

• DPlngScan – Chris Johnson (was David Pilling)
• RDSP – AMCOG
• PrivateEye – David Thomas
• Otter Browser – ported by Chris Gransden
• MiniTime – Fred Graute
• SatNav – Chris Hall

Best game or diversion

Similarly, I have too many options – so my thoughts…

• Equinox – Jason Tribbeck
• ScummVM – Cameron Cawley (for porting it to RO)
• Doom Trilogy – R-Comp
• Manga – Rick Murray
• SpaceShip – Patrick M (other options: Dr Dave Johnson, Magic Maze)
• Mop Tops – AMCOG (other options: Cyborg, Mutant Penguin, Protector)

Best hardware

• RISCOSbits have various things to choose from – PiSSD/PiSSDup, Wispy, etc. I’d be inclined to include Wispy.
• R-Comp released a new version of PiFi – so this to compete with Wispy? (Another option might be their RAID solution)
• The S&P HAT from Elesar
• RaspberryRO Lite from CJE (other options include the graphics tablet)
• Micro One – Ident

That doesn’t include the usual options like the Pi, or Titanium, obviously – but by excluding things that normally get most of the votes, other things get more of a chance.

Best solution for backwards compatibility

Pretty much the same as last year:

• ADFFS – Jon Abbott
• Aemulor – Adrian Lees / Spellings.net
• ArcEm – various
• ArchiEmu – Jan de Boer
• RPCEmu – Matt and Peter Howkins
• VirtualRPC – VirtualAcorn

Best new development

• RDSP and the sound benefits it brings – AMCOG
• Experimental multi-core support thanks to Jeffrey
• Partitioning support and/or larger drive sizes – ROOL (and/or whoever did the work)
• High vector builds of Aemulor (and/or Aemulor becoming free for all platforms)
• Linux port of RISC OS (Timothy Baldwin)
• The formation of RISC OS Developments and its successful fundraising efforts

Other possibilities include 256 colour screen mode support in Titanium, as well as dual head support.

Best Show of initiative

• David Feugey/RISC OS FR for the BASIC programming initiaitive
• Elesar for stepping in to sell Ben’s (Piccolo’s) software
• Chris Bazley for releasing his updated versions of Schema 2 and WimpBasic, pending it finally appearing on the APDL site.

If something else is preferred for best new development, RDSP could be moved to this category.

Best website or online resource

• Archive Online
• Acorn News Service
• ROOL forum etc
• The Icon Bar – previously gathering dust, it’s now become active again. Most (if not all) posts are by Mark Stephens, so perhaps his putting the effort in could go as a best show of initiative?
• RISC OS packaging project/repositories
• PlingStore

i.e. without checking, mostly as last year, I think – Icon Bar being the main change.

Best publication or offline resource

• Archive
• Drag ’n Drop
• GAG News
• New BBC BASIC manual

Best foreign language resource

• Arcsite.de
• Big Ben Club website
• RISCOS.fr
• Steffen Huber’s blog

Best Show or Event

• Acorn World Exhibition
• London Show
• Recursion
• RISC OS eXperience
• Southwest Show
• Wakefield

Most innovative or interesting project

I’ve not listed anything for this – make suggestions. What about Richard Ashbery for resurrecting and updating Jan Vibe’s graphics programs? This could also be another valid category for AMCOG/RDSP.

Best overall contributor – text field like before, so no suggestions needed.

Broken cog of the year

• Me, for being behind with everything! :)
• ROOL for the ePic announcement which, while the product is a good move, saw a notable amount of disappointment at Wakefield.

I think last year’s included Archive for deserving the title Lesser Spotted Archive, Richard Keefe for not setting up a website for Imp-X, and people who won’t move on from the late 1990s with their primary RISC OS platform.

As usual, suggestions welcome – which I may or may not take on board, or explain why I’ve suggested this, or not suggested that, etc.

I’m on holiday from next Friday, coming back the day before Recursion, then setting more or less straight off to my hotel for the show. I can’t see this being wrapped up by next Friday, so I’m going to tentatively suggest that if possible, I want to run the program that turns my CSV file into the actual poll on Sunday 18th (the day after Recursion). It can remain live then until Wakefield.

As usual, suggestions welcome – which I may or may not take on board, or explain why I’ve suggested this, or not suggested that, etc.

Are we voting for the year since the last poll closed or things in calendar year 2017? otherwise somethings might be missed

Partitioning support and/or larger drive sizes – ROOL (and/or whoever did the work)

I’d say those are two separate things.

• 4K sector support, from the first filesystem bounty (→ larger hard drives, as long as you stick to 4K sector ones)
• Partitioning support for ARMX6 (→ make better use of large 512B sector drives), wasn’t performed as part of the 2nd filesystem bounty

Best new development

Depending on how new (i.e. lacking in polish) we want things to be, Qt5 + RPCEmu on RISC OS could count. (a combination of the work of the RPCEmu developers, GCCSDK developers, and Chris Gransden)

As usual, suggestions welcome – which I may or may not take on board, or explain why I’ve suggested this, or not suggested that, etc.

People seem to be enjoying my work on the VNC server, maybe it’s time that got a look-in somewhere? Although it would probably belong in the best non-commercial software category, which as you’ve said seems to be overflowing (is there any way it can be broken down into more categories? open-source vs. closed-source, maybe?)

n.b. you seem to have lost the riscosawards.co.uk domain which was used for last year’s awards.

n.b. you seem to have lost the riscosawards.co.uk domain which was used for last year’s awards.

Eh? Registered to SRS, last updated Aug 2017, good until Aug 2019?

OK, everything’s still there, it’s just suffering from broken link syndrome.

Old riscository articles link to http://www.riscosawards.co.uk/vote2016.html, which produces a generic domain holding page.

“riscosawards.co.uk
This domain name has just been registered.”

(One more tooth knocked off of Vince’s broken cog?)

Manga – Rick Murray

Whoo!
But… Look at what I’m up against…

(and/or Aemulor becoming free for all platforms)

This isn’t too be listed under best show of initiative. That we can all get most¹ 26 bit era software running can’t be understated. Remind me, what’s the excuse for sticking with a power hungry quarter century old machine with limited memory potential and even more limited processor performance? Rounded icons? ;-)

Best publication or offline resource

You know there was an issue of Frobnicate made? Okay, granted, it was in French but… still a publication / offline resource.

Broken cog of the year

ROOL for seemingly forgetting DDE28?

open-source vs. closed-source, maybe?

Hmm, we already have game/diversion (which makes no distinction between free/commercial). I can see more categories being both useful and a pain to administer… Don’t categories have a free form “something else” field where we could vote for Jeffrey’s VNC server…?

¹ AcornDTP crashes and burns; but then having been happy when somebody at school stole the floppies from the computer room (went out and bought Ovation and never looked back), I can’t say that it’s failure is a great loss to the world…

Mike:

Are we voting for the year since the last poll closed or things in calendar year 2017? otherwise somethings might be missed

The period will be the same as the last few years – November 2016 to December 2017. That creates a small overlap at the end of the year between one poll and the next, and is therefore the period I skimmed through RISCOSitory looking for contenders.

Jeffrey:

I’d say those [partitioning support/larger hard drives] are two separate things.

Yes – I put as one point with ‘and/or’ because it is two different things, but I wondered if we could lump it as one and call it improvements to the filing system. Or something. I should have explained my thinking on that – but I’m rushing a bit.

Depending on how new (i.e. lacking in polish) we want things to be, Qt5 + RPCEmu on RISC OS could count. [in best new dev] (a combination of the work of the RPCEmu developers, GCCSDK developers, and Chris Gransden)

Good suggestion – but it would mean dropping something else (as would separating out the partitioning/larger hard drives).

VNC server [non-comm software]

Another good option. As for one to drop, perhaps SatNav? It saw a few updates this year, but it’s directly related to the GPS gizmo, which Chris won the project category for last year. Now that I think about it, I think both DPlngScan and SatNav were in the non-comm category last year.

Ah… which I can now confirm because I’ve just opened the results page.

Broken link syndrome

Uh, yeah – when the poll’s closed I remove the old voting form, which does mean RISCOSitory contains broken links¹. I should make them redirect to the site’s home page or something.

All the options that were on the form are listed with the results, though – so see the link above.

¹ This is a wider problem though. There are plenty of broken links on RISCOSitory where other things have vanished (and where I’ve just got them wrong and not noticed). I have considered creating a link db (for internal use only), and even setting up a domain for the job – I quite fancied rogo.to for the purpose, but then I saw the price of .to domains! =:o

Subsequent edit: I don’t see a domain holding page, though, just a blank page. That’ll be my Javascript blocking. :)

(One more tooth knocked off of Vince’s broken cog?)

I could probably populate the entire category with my own mistakes – wrong dates in posts about user group meetings, the time it took from the SW and Wakefield Shows until the reports appeared (although that’s covered by being behind with everything), STILL not getting around to analysing the survey reports for the last ‘n’ years (also arguably covered by that one entry), fixing the scroll text in one of my old games so that it’s slow enough to be read, then on the day of the London Show realising that the condition in my timing loop used = rather than > resulting in a complete freeze on the Pi having burnt it on loads of CDs, and so on.

But if I did that, I’d guarantee winning myself, and that would be cheating. :)

Rick:

(and/or Aemulor becoming free for all platforms)

This isn’t too be listed under best show of initiative.

Yes, good point. The high vector aspect is probably less relevant (that’s just a logical development path) – while becoming free for all platforms is significant, and could go there.

Which also benefits the best new development category, because it makes room for Jeffrey’s suggestion.

You know there was an issue of Frobnicate made? Okay, granted, it was in French but… still a publication / offline resource.

Being in French, I didn’t read it, so I don’t know how relevant it was. :p

ROOL for seemingly forgetting DDE28?

In what way did they forget it? I appear to have it on my ARMX6.

(And yes, the form is generated with a free form ‘additional option’ field for each category).

I should add, I feel that it’s better if the each category only has any given company/organisation/person once. Where there are multiple possibilities for any given company etc, if they express a preference as to which of their products is listed, they should say.

For example, for the games I chose Mop Tops for AMCOG because that’s by far my own favourite of the possibilities, but other people may have different views – and Tony might prefer it if the most recent one (Protector) was the option.

realising that the condition in my timing loop used = rather than > resulting in a complete freeze on the Pi having burnt it on loads of CDs, and so on.

Oh that sinking feeling…

… My own (thankfully ancient) is fiddling around in my A5000 with it powered up. The screwdriver slipped out of my hand.

…

…

And landed pointy tip down on the flimsy lid of the harddisc. The harddisc that was instantly turned to scrap metal and data never to be recovered…

It’s good to learn from our mistakes, but not so good when the learning process is akin to dropping an anvil on the head (cartoon style, though anvils are surely something of an anachronism these days, like water tanks beside railways or those little round adapters that were intended for 45s).

All I can say to that is “Like” “+1” – or whatever the method for your social media site of choice!

In what way did they forget it?

It was apparently made available last October, but an actual announcement (with list of changes etc) wasn’t posted until a couple of weeks ago.

Thinking about this (and not really relevant to any discussion of the options):

Broken link syndrome

Uh, yeah – when the poll’s closed I remove the old voting form, which does mean RISCOSitory contains broken links

Given that I use /year/index.html for the results, I should probably use the same for the polling form itself instead of voteyear.html – that avoids the problem altogether in future. (And therefore, when I fix things I should redirect the old voting form addresses to the relevant results.)

DDE28

It was apparently made available last October, but an actual announcement (with list of changes etc) wasn’t posted until a couple of weeks ago.

Oh, right, that explains their mailshot about it a couple of weeks back. I hadn’t put two and two together, and just thought someone had accidentally triggered a resend of a previous message. Presumably, then, it wasn’t accidentally triggered, and there was no ‘re’ or ‘previous’ involved. :)

I’d guarantee winning myself

With a prize like that, how many entries would you expect? :)

May I suggest NetFetch 5 for the commercial software please? With its emphasis on SSL mail support on RISC OS and multiple SMTP servers, it is a major upgrade to a piece of software that most of us use every day.

There was a major upgrade to Artworks in 2017. While I like Impact, I don’t remember a big feature addition in 2017 – did I miss something? Same for DiscKnight, which is surely an indispensible tool and it got an update in 2017 IIRC, but I would suggest that only applications that got major updates should be nominated. So I agree with Andrew’s suggestion of NetFetch.

Not sure about OBrowser. Is it commercial just because it has a price tag? It is “just” a minimal improvement (although well done and valuable nevertheless!) for Otter. Is this enough “added value” for this category?

Suggestions for best non-commercial software: PhShpLyrs by Toni Reiser, MapView or HomeCntrl by Thomas Milius.

I actually swapped out NetFetch for OBrowser as a last minute decision before posting the initial list here – that’s why I noted in brackets about ‘just about’ counting as commercial; I wasn’t 100% convinced it was a perfect fit.

So, okay, I’ll reverse that swap.

I’d have to check, but I’m pretty sure Impact did get a notable update – in particular in the importing facilities, benefiting from work done for RiscOSM. I think Matthew talked about it in one of his show talks – either London or Wakefield.

DiscKnight also saw an update, in August, bringing it into line with the the filing system improvements. It may not be a “major” update, but I think it was a fairly important one! The Artworks update was also just a keepy-uppy, wasn’t it – the fix for the LTRGB modes? Ah, just remembered – the new vector shape brush. Okay, I’ll swap those two.

(I’m also a bit loathe to lay down a “major update” rule, tbh, because in such a small market, that could be a very good exercise in foot shooting for future polls!)

Current revised list:

Best commercial software

• Font Directory Pro – Elesar / LOOK Systems
• AMCOG Development Kit – AMCOG
• Artworks – MW Software
• NetFetch – R-Comp
• Impact – Sine Nomine
• ePic – ROOL

Best non-commercial software

• DPlngScan – Chris Johnson (was David Pilling)
• RDSP – AMCOG
• PrivateEye – David Thomas
• Otter Browser – ported by Chris Gransden
• MiniTime – Fred Graute
• VNC server – Jeffrey Lee

Steffen has also suggested PhShpLyrs (which I considered, but didn’t include because of the need to decide, purely arbitrarily, on six), MapView, and HomeCntrl – as I said in my opening post, there is plenty to choose from here.

DPlngScan was included last year, so that could reasonably be swapped for one – and I’d personally choose PhShpLyrs, because that was brought to my attention and thus got mentioned on RISCOSitory!

Best game or diversion

Similarly, I have too many options – so my thoughts…

• Equinox – Jason Tribbeck
• ScummVM – Cameron Cawley (for porting it to RO)
• Doom Trilogy – R-Comp
• Manga – Rick Murray
• SpaceShip – Patrick M (other options: Dr Dave Johnson, Magic Maze)
• Mop Tops – AMCOG (other options: Cyborg, Mutant Penguin, Protector)

Best hardware

• RISCOSbits have various things to choose from – PiSSD/PiSSDup, Wispy, etc. I’d be inclined to include Wispy.
• R-Comp released a new version of PiFi – so this to compete with Wispy? (Another option might be their RAID solution)
• The S&P HAT from Elesar
• RaspberryRO Lite from CJE (other options include the graphics tablet)
• Micro One – Ident

That doesn’t include the usual options like the Pi, or Titanium, obviously – but by excluding things that normally get most of the votes, other things get more of a chance.

Best solution for backwards compatibility

Pretty much the same as last year:

• ADFFS – Jon Abbott
• Aemulor – Adrian Lees / Spellings.net
• ArcEm – various
• ArchiEmu – Jan de Boer
• RPCEmu – Matt and Peter Howkins
• VirtualRPC – VirtualAcorn

Best new development

• Experimental multi-core support thanks to Jeffrey
• Partitioning support for ARMX6
• Support for 4K sectors, meaning greater hard drive sizes.
• Linux port of RISC OS (Timothy Baldwin)
• The formation of RISC OS Developments and its successful fundraising efforts
• RPCEmu being ported to run on RISC OS by Chris Gransden.

Best Show of initiative

• David Feugey/RISC OS FR for the BASIC programming initiaitive
• Elesar for stepping in to sell Ben’s (Piccolo’s) software
• Chris Bazley for releasing his updated versions of Schema 2 and WimpBasic, pending it finally appearing on the APDL site.
• Adrian Lees – for making Aemulor free to download for all platforms
• Tony Bartram for developing RDSP to make our sound capabilities more usable! (Moved from best new development)

Best website or online resource

• Archive Online
• Acorn News Service
• ROOL forum etc
• The Icon Bar – previously gathering dust, it’s now become active again. Most (if not all) posts are by Mark Stephens, so perhaps his putting the effort in could go as a best show of initiative?
• RISC OS packaging project/repositories
• PlingStore

i.e. without checking, mostly as last year, I think – Icon Bar being the main change.

Best publication or offline resource

• Archive
• Drag ’n Drop
• GAG News
• New BBC BASIC manual
• The French issue of Frobnicate. Apparently. ;)

Best foreign language resource

• Arcsite.de
• Big Ben Club website
• RISCOS.fr
• Steffen Huber’s blog

Best Show or Event

• Acorn World Exhibition
• London Show
• Recursion
• RISC OS eXperience
• Southwest Show
• Wakefield

Most innovative or interesting project

I’ve not listed anything for this – make suggestions. What about Richard Ashbery for resurrecting and updating Jan Vibe’s graphics programs? This could also be another valid category for AMCOG/RDSP – in fact it was listed here last year, although the first alpha version was released last January.

Best overall contributor – text field like before, so no suggestions needed.

Broken cog of the year

• Me, for being behind with everything! :)
• ROOL for the ePic announcement which, while the product is a good move, saw a notable amount of disappointment at Wakefield.
• ROOL for ‘forgetting’ about DDE28

(I prefer it if any one company etc appears only once in each category – but this is the pinch of salt category, so what the hell!)

Some possible changes suggested to me by email:

1. Commercial software: RiscOSM instead of Impact. I opted for Impact because RiscOSM has been included for two or three years, but RiscOSM has had some very good updates; certainly moreso than Impact.
2. Best game: Protector instead of Mop Tops. The latter was actually released in 2016 – I thought it was at SW 2017, but it was actually London 2016.
3. Best new development: Partition support is tied to SCSIFS (hence ‘for ARMX6’ in my list) – so other possibilities are completion of the EDID work in March, the RPi RC15 release, and completion of USB phase 1 (announced January, but the last CVS entry in November).

Note for future reference: When using # for a numbered list, don’t use a blank line between each entry, unless you want the list to go from 1 to 1, with each one being number 1, no matter how many there are.

I would prefer if you just listed it as iconbar as it has always been a joint effort and the interviews all involve very active contributions from our interviewees

If you’re going to remove OBrowser from the list, may I suggest it is mentioned in the RISC OS Developments section?

I’d include version numbers in the Commercial Software list, as most products are updates as opposed to original versions.

Perhaps mention what feature/new thing occurred in 2017 with these programs to explain why vote for it. For example, Artworks is unquestionably one of RISC OS’ best programs period, and should dominate any list (along with other heavyweight things like PhotoDesk, Impression, Ovation Pro, Sibelius and DataPower), but it might make things more balanced by mentioning what new feature it gained in 2017 (eg. support for RGB/BGR modes and freehand mask capabilities, I think, but do check).

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking the way I’ve written things above is how the poll will read. I’m just listing things here in a fairly rough way for the purposes of discussion.

FTR, the way the poll is generated:

I create the categories and options in a spreadsheet. When I’m ready to go live, that’s saved as a CSV file and a BASIC (for now) program parses it to generate all the PHP files. I’m not going to load the sheet now to check the specifics, so from memory:

It has five colums. The first contains a directive for my program – for example, “Category” indicates the start of a category, with the next column containing the name of the category, the next the variable associated with it, and so on.

After that come the various options, one per line. The second column is the ‘name’ field – a short piece of text that will form the text in a link. So here it’s just the application name, or the website name. The next column is for who or why. For applications, this will be the people responsible – a company, like R-Comp, a person, like Chris Gransden – but for categories like most innovative project, or broken cog, this is a (short) explanation for the entry. The next column is the indicates the nature of the link – if it says “Link” the final column contains an actual link, and if it says “Search” the final column will contain a search term that will form part of the link.

Where the item in is mentioned on RISCOSitory, if it’s a specific, notable mention, the link will be to the relevant post – so for the various shows, the link is to the relevant show report if there is one, otherwise it’s to an announcement, otherwise it gets a search link.

Mark: I’ve specifically mentioned you above re Icon Bar because of the suggestion that your efforts on the site might be deserving of an entry in the best show of initiative category – i.e. to open that possibility up for discussion here. The text for the actual entry under online resource will just be the site name. The entry in my spreadsheet, as it will be exported to the CSV file, is something along the lines of:

,The Icon Bar,,Link,www-iconbar-co-uk/

(Automatic link by the ROOL forum, so I’ve deliberately broken it)

Which will result in a radio button and the linked text The Icon Bar

If I was to put you in the initiative category, it would say something like

,Mark Stephens,For his efforts in turning the Icon Bar into an active site once again,Link,iconbar-co-uk/staff/#markee174

Which would produce a radio button and the text: Mark Stephens, for his efforts in turning the Icon Bar into an active site once again.

(Incidentally, you aren’t listed on the ‘staff’ page – and I’m surprised the page doesn’t include a way to list all a given individual’s articles, along the lines of this.)

Andrew: Yes, I’ll make the Risc OS Dev entry mention OBrowser – it’s in a category where the format is for a description, so no problem.

As for including explanatory text about features etc that were added to apps in the year, that’s the purpose of the links. More specifically, it’s why I use search links rather than linking to something specific.

These are to search on RISCOSitory itself, such as Font Directory Pro – it’s not just plain text as given in the draft list above. The most relevant results come first, which will be posts about the item in question, with the most recent first, then posts in which the search term is mentioned – so show reports, for example.

Hey Vince, any further news on this front? I’m ready to vote! :-)

Yes, I need to get back to this ASAP.

Things became a bit hectic for me since the holiday and two shows in February (I knew I’d have some catching up to do, but other crap has come my way as well.)

I have some running around to do today and tomorrow (including popping up to the Midlands User Group meeting), and some client work to do over the next few days – but if I can squeeze the latter in around the running around, with a bit of luck maybe I can get it all done and dusted, and I can then get back to the awards on Sunday.

(And I can see I have some more stuff to post on RISCOSitory – your Japanese language program, Patrick M’s latest game, and the ROUGOL meeting! They’ll all have to be no more than nybbles, I think.)

Setting up the form is a two minute job – run the CSV file through my program and upload the results – but glancing at the stuff above, there’s nothing solid for the innovative/interesting category.

thinks

Steffen mentioned HomeCtrl as a suggestion for non-commercial software – but I reckon that could perhaps go in the innovative/interesting category, so there’s something.

ISTR Dave Higton’s been doing something along those lines as well with his own Central Heating system. Dave (if you read this!) – is there anything online about that?

And I’ve also just realised I’d ‘starred’ a thread in my feed reader – Raik’s ‘biggest’ RISC OS portable – that can go in as well. (That’s probably why I marked the thread in the first place, before promptly forgetting I’d done so!)

edit

Timothy Baldwin’s Linux port can be copied into that category as well, thinking about it!

ISTR Dave Higton’s been doing something along those lines as well with his own Central Heating system. Dave (if you read this!) – is there anything online about that?

No. I’ve thought about it on several occasions, but that’s as close as I’ve got.

Note that, when I did the original Drobe article a few years back, it was Slashdotted and brought Drobe down.