2020 Awards poll initial discussion

John:

I have a problem with Python being in the Best Development Tool category.
The 3.8 release is a really significant RISC OS innovation. but it is too much of a “work in progress” to win the Best Development Tool prize.

It’s available. You can write programs in Python that can then be run. These strike me as the key things that qualify it.

If you think it should be discounted because of it being a ‘work in progress’ then I’d like to know why you haven’t also made the same point about NetSurf.

It would get my vote in either of the Best new development, or Best show of initiative categories.

Both already have six items. What do you propose I remove, and why? (Not that it matters, because you’ll have a tough job convincing me to move it from where it is now.)

And Jon:

Yes, please remove ADFFS. If/when it supports Wimp tasks so it can cover apps, we can review.

I’ll make one last case to keep it in: There is nothing to say the ‘best solution for backwards compatibility’ category is only for things that allow wimp tasks or applications. You are providing backwards compatibility for games, and that counts just as much as anything else.

If you still want me to remove it, I will – but I’d much rather keep it in. In my opinion it deserves to be there just as much as the other options.

But even that’s from 2017

News doesn’t travel fast in the world of RISC OS. ;-)

In my opinion it deserves to be there just as much as the other options.

+1

Aemulor is aimed at Wimp tasks. ADFFS is aimed at games. There may be a small degree of overlap at the moment, but probably not that much. They’re both dealing with the backwards compatibility angle from entirely different directions, and they both do a pretty good job at what they’re intended to be used for. That, coupled with your efforts, Jon, at securing and bug fixing older games means that we have a growing selection of things to do with our machines. You’ve pretty much single handedly kept at it and improved the system and the games it supports. You deserve a little graphic of a ribbon.
Keep ADFFS in play. I’d vote for it.

PS: Vince, no ‘h’ in Jon. ;-)

PS: Vince, no ‘h’ in Jon. ;-)

There is in John, though.

Look more carefully at the two people I was replying to. :p

Aemulor is aimed at Wimp tasks. ADFFS is aimed at games.

I use Aemulor for HOMM2. ADFFS works perhaps faster, but I don’t remember how, since there is a Wimp frontend.

Right, over two weeks since I last commented and not much further discussion. I’d like to get the poll up and running ASAP, so I’ll make a couple of executive decisions:

1. I’m not 100% sure on this yet, but I think my inclination will be to replace Diderot (in Best Development Tool) with the git client, which I think has more import to the platform.
2. Since my opinion is that ADFFS is a valid option for the category it’s in (solution for backwards compatibility), and Jon hasn’t commented after I said that, I think I will keep it in.
3. I notice Andrew hasn’t answered me about the TCP/IP stack credit, and I don’t like the idea of an award option with no identity behind it (general items in the Broken Cog being the exception) and the only other thing that springs to mind is to credit it to ROD. That doesn’t quite sit right with me based on the explanation, but it’ll have to do. (The other option would have been to remove it, but would feel even more wrong to me in this case.)
4. I’ll merge the ROOL item in the Broken Cog with the poor announcements in general.

I’ll leave it a week in case anyone wants to challenge me on these points, but otherwise next weekend I’ll update the spreadsheet to match all the changes, and then run the program that generates the poll from it – and probably discover that my small changes to the spreadsheet have broken it.

(The fact that the program has never been written properly as intended doesn’t help – it’s still the temporary/prototype program I wrote at the start with subsequent changes because I keep breaking things!)

Additional note: New categories for next year (before I forget, and to remind myself when I read this next year). Paolo suggested one for music/audio products on the ROUGOL meeting general chat recently, so it’ll be that and one specifically for graphics software.

I know one for demos was mentioned in this thread, but as I said I can see flaws in that – and I suspect not much interest – but music and graphics, I think, are quite complementary, so adding them as the two new categories works for me. This decision is now set in stone for next year.

Afterthought: Rather than think about writing a better program to generate the poll, I should just rewrite the poll so that it can simply read the options from a file that I upload when it’s time to go live. Given that I want to change it from a single long list anyway, it would make sense to do that at the same time.

I sadly suspect I’ll have more free time later this year. If that turns out to be the case, I’ll work on this ready for next year.

The voting form is now live for people to double check it and test.

You can cast your real votes now, or if you’d prefer to just send a test vote, just bung the words ‘test vote’ into any of the text fields (or use a fake email with testvote in it). If test appears anywhere in a cast vote, I’ll discount it (but don’t forget to then cast a real vote when it’s made officially live).

I’ll hold off updating the site’s front page and actually announcing the poll for a few days to allow time for testing and fixing anything as necessary.

And, yes, as I expected, the small changes to the spreadsheet did break my program for generating the form. It wouldn’t be right if it didn’t go wrong in some way, TBH! ;)

Did a test voting and it seemed to work OK,

Put Test in the email field

Thanks Kevin – and any others who have tested. I’ve done some more final tests myself¹, and everything seems in order, so I think it’s safe to go live. (So anyone that marked their vote as a test can now vote for real.)

I’ll switch machines now and set up the front page, then I’ll start sending out announcements. I’ll hold some back and send them out more gradually, though – just trying out a different approach. (Also because I didn’t set up my planned announcement system because of hectic stuff going on.)

1. It helps to remember the alphabet – my sudden inability to do so caused a little head scratching; one of my tests each year is that I tick the first option in the first category, the second in the second, and so on, and put the relevant letter in the text field, so the results come in as A,A for the first category, B,B for the second, and so on. The sixth category is therefore F,F, and for the seventh it’s back to A,A.

When I did that test, the result came back with a jump from D,D to F,F – and I thought I’d broken it. After said head scratching, I eventually went back to my completed form and realised I’d simply jumped from fourth option + D in the box for the fourth category, to sixth option + F in the box for the fifth. Duh!

Amusingly, redoing that test I realised that neither categories 6 and 12 – the two that would be F,F – actually have a sixth option.

Would it be possible for all those nominated to have a Nominated Rosett iamge?

Simliar to yhe winners ones in the past awards but with Nominated year and category?

That’s not a bad idea. When I modify the graphics this year to say 2020, I’ll create a copy set with ’Nominated for.." preceding the category.

It might take a little tweaking of font sizes to make it work, but that’s not a problem.

(And planning ahead, as this bit is fairly quick and easy – putting aside the fitting in the additional text to a second set – I’ll knock up the 2021 ones at the same time.!)