25 years since Black Thursday

Well that is new XD

Complimented and argued in the same post…

The RISC OS users making videos and writing articles teaching people how to program on RISC OS

The people dedicated to RISC OS having a viable future and either giving their time and expertise to achieve that end

As per RISC OS tradition, some people derive notable satisfaction from negativity, and focus on what they see as failings in the system or availability of software.

Dude, it’s not about “derive notable satisfaction” and non-sense like this. It’s about avoiding folks overselling RISC OS that:

a) Damage RISC OS more than anything else
b) Is literally trying to make it look like what it is not

If it works for you, that’s great, but that doesn’t means it’s “amazing” as an objective judgement or it’s “revolutionary” or “innovative” or (and that is when some folks realy goes way too far) “better than Linux, macOS etc.”. This sort of nonsense only damages the OS because gives false promisses.

Nobody hates anything here or have “notable satisfaction from negativity”, so please stop trying to post this complete non-sense.

Please stop this nonsense yourself.

Nobody serious around here describes it as “amazing”, “revolutionary”, or “innovative”.

When anybody mentions that, like “the world’s fastest BASIC”, or “the first personal RISC computer”, we’re referring to circa 1987, and probably lamenting how easily that crown was lost.

It is not damaging to like or support a platform. Every machine (yes, even the Oric 1) has advocates. I would imagine there are even some people around who are like “you’ll have to pry RISC OS 2 from my cold dead fingers”. That they still have a use for such an old machine is entirely up to them. It’s no different than owning a PDP-11…

Most of us are well aware of the situation and the limitations. Those individuals who think it is entirely suitable as a modern mobile phone OS… inhabit a reality that only briefly intersects with ours. ;) Don’t pay too much attention to that sort of thing, unless you like prodding trolls with a stick.

In the end, for whatever reason and whatever opinion, we’re all here by choice. Nobody is forcing us to use RISC OS, and god knows there are a multitude of alternatives. But, preference, nostalgia, distrust, or just satisfaction – we all have our reasons.

Anyway, how’s your theme manager coming along? I did a quick rummage around the internet to find some new backdrops (https://heyrick.eu/blog/index.php?diary=20230913) so would be interested in being able to theme the system to match it. My default of not-quite-white icon text is okay for the darker themes, not so much for the lighter ones. And the windows… just look the same regardless. There’s definitely scope for improvement there, isn’t there?

Will there be an ability to customise the theme set programmatically? I could add some code to examine the chosen backdrop to work out how to adjust the theme – either simple picking dark or light, or complex finding the most predominant colour – depending on the capabilities of the theming system.

Prodding trolls with a stick – I like it – someone’s been watching ‘Merlin’ :-)

It’s no different than owning a PDP-11…

Many years ago I was offered, for free, a fully working PDP8, a machine I was very familiar with in the late 1960s.

I declined.

I also got rid of my RiscPCs as soon as I had my first Pi up and running.

On the other hand, I accepted this machine as a gift… https://www.deviantart.com/coshipi/art/Anything-Dad-can-do-2-11200041

I could add some code to examine the chosen backdrop to work out how to adjust the theme – either simple picking dark or light, or complex finding the most predominant colour – depending on the capabilities of the theming system.

I seem to remember you doing something in the same vein for my Pic_Index program over 20 years ago. Gosh, is it only that long ago?

someone’s been watching ‘Merlin’

No, but the expression has probably been around since Arthurian days. Usually in the context of poking dragons, lions, or angry gods.

I also got rid of my RiscPCs as soon as I had my first Pi up and running.

I have a suspicion my RiscPC got rid of itself.

On the other hand, I accepted this machine as a gift…

That’s a bit of a cold way to describe an autonomous biological processing unit. Usually we give them names and talk to them in much the same manner that we talk to cats.

Gosh, is it only that long ago?

Depressing, isn’t it?

There is a plan to send a probe to take photographs of Alpha Centauri. It’ll use high power lasers or something as a source of propulsion, getting up to an estimated 20% of the speed of light. It’s all very theoretical at the moment. I think it’s supposed to take a decade to build. So call it two to actually get it working. I think AC is around 4.7 light years away, so that’ll be… let’s round it up to 25 years. And… another ~5 to get back a photo of a distant star (and maybe planets around it).
That’s about 50 years.
I won’t be alive in fifty years.
<cry>

[on the plus side, I am around to appreciate the results of the JWST]

That’s a bit of a cold way to describe an autonomous biological processing unit.

I suspected someone might misinterpret my post that way. The APBU in the picture is now about to turn 38, and is functioning very well. The “word processor” already wasn’t, but the golfball typewriter built into it was once I’d extracted it and fixed it. Exactly how much word processing you can get out of a machine with 256 bytes of RAM, no ROM, no disc drives, a paper tape reader and punch, and a golfball typewriter I’m not sure. Apparently you had to load its program into that wee RAM from paper tape, and then you could type away, backspacing and typing over any errors (as long as you noticed them reasonably soon), and you could then print out a clean version from the paper tape. But by the time I got it that wasn’t working.

It’ll use high power lasers or something as a source of propulsion, getting up to an estimated 20% of the speed of light. It’s all very theoretical at the moment.

I have a very strong suspicion that it’ll remain very theoretical. The lasers need to be not only very high power, but also have a very wide aperture and extremely flat wavefronts or the beam will spread out too much to propel anything as far away as the vehicle will be long before it reaches a significant percentage of light speed. There are other issues, but those are the most intractable ones.

Nobody serious around here describes it as “amazing”, “revolutionary”, or “innovative”.

Exactly. It has many virtues which can be lost in discussing its failings, and there are even scenarios where it is the best choice of OS (and in others a perfectly viable one), but you’d have to go back about twenty years to find many examples of blind advocacy.

It is not damaging to like or support a platform.

Especially not on forums dedicated to the platform.

That’s a bit of a cold way to describe an autonomous biological processing unit. Usually we give them names and talk to them in much the same manner that we talk to cats.

That was actually quite hilarious.

Perhaps Rick will live to over 100 :-| there was talk about using nuke charges chucked out the back of a space craft for propulsion – perhaps we should ask AI.

[Edit]
Perhaps a Arc 310 set up front :-))

Please stop this nonsense yourself.

I am sorry Rick, but when people say things like: “some people derive notable satisfaction from negativity”, beside of being trolling (well of course), it’s also offensive, especially after all the hours put into support RISC OS for real and helping people to have a better experience on it (althought if the 2nd part of this last statement is done to make myself have a better experience on it mostly).

Oh and, in the absurd case that comment was refered to Peter, let’s remind his contribution with the work on RPCEmu is problably one of the most unvaluable one to date.

Anyway, how’s your theme manager coming along?

Given that people don’t seems to want to help with icons redraw (not blaiming people, it is a tedious and boring task!), I had to get “seriously creative” (lol) and develop an AI that helps me “regenerating” each and every RISC OS icon into the desired theme.

Details on the state of this here (and yes, this also kickstarted a set of ideas on developing various AIs to help me build my ideas):

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/5/topics/18762?page=2#posts-142958

On top of that, I had to ensure that the Theme Manager back-end works on RISC OS 5.30 (which introduces new parameters for themeing, finally! and thanks ROOL for all these changes!)

My Theme Manager uses a lot more options than Skinny can produce right now, my thought was to contact TRSSC when I have a beta and see if we can extend Skinny.

It combines all the work done by Nemo, Richard Goodwin and The Little Yellow Moon Software (as well as the work done by ROOL) into a single Theme Manager that actually does the work of a Theme Manager and deals with all the crazy bits in RISC OS. That means that there is also a lot of “edge cases” that needs addressing. But I am moving forward.

Right now there is a “bug” with Pinboard 2.0 if a user sets transparency for the iconbar in Pinboard 2.0, Pinboard and my Theme Manager (or maybe RISC OS 5.30) don’t seems to agree on which tile has to be used on the icon bar, so the tile Pinboard seems to be trying to use is not the same as the tile a theme is trying to “install”. I haven’t had much time to look into this yet.

I did a quick rummage around the internet to find some new backdrops (https://heyrick.eu/blog/index.php?diary=20230913) so would be interested in being able to theme the system to match it. My default of not-quite-white icon text is okay for the darker themes, not so much for the lighter ones. And the windows… just look the same regardless. There’s definitely scope for improvement there, isn’t there?

There is always room for improvements :) – So, my Theme Manager uses a format that is an extened version of what !Skinny can produce, so you can start working on your theme now:

https://www.reallysmall.co.uk/Pages/categories/riscos/themes.php

I wish RISC OS would implement parameters to specify System wide font colours and other pieces of proper theming as well as allow fonts to be set in arbitrary sizes. Maybe after the release of the DME Theme Manager ROOL will want to have a look at that (this is not just for aesthetical reasons, very high resolution monitors DO require a way for us to scale up the desktop)

Will there be an ability to customise the theme set programmatically? I could add some code to examine the chosen backdrop to work out how to adjust the theme – either simple picking dark or light, or complex finding the most predominant colour – depending on the capabilities of the theming system.

Absolutely :) this is the whole point of the DME project, create components that a user can customise as much as possible and, with the nice feature it has of storing everything in !DeskCfg (in Choices:), makes it easier to then reproduce the customisation just by copying that pseudo app on all your RISC OS systems (old and new).

Plus it’s going to be Open Source, so everybody will be able to add features to it. I have been contemplating if it would be a good idea to make also this one in BBC BASIC (instead of C), given it has not much logic to execute, it’s just a complicated system configurator really that makes it very easy to create themes for a theme designer. Would this be considered of value? BBC BASIC vs C I mean. But please everyone, express your opinion on the matter only if you’re willing to help with the code. Don’t say BBC BASIC (or C for that matter) when you have no intention to help with the code.

Sorry for the off topic, if more info are needed on the Theme Manager or the DME, or there are more questions, let’s please open a new topic. Thx

I am sorry Rick, but when people say things like: “some people derive notable satisfaction from negativity”, beside of being trolling (well of course),

One line that ruffles your feathers in a positive post is not generally considered trolling.

it’s also offensive

I think we might have different ideas on what constitutes being offensive. Anyway, the same post lists people contributing useful coding to the RISC OS cause as a positive thing so I think it’s in context.

The people who rewrite modules in C, who write partition managers, who maintain software, who port things like Python over… they’ve inspired me to learn, and they’ve inspired me to use RISC OS again. RISC OS never disappeared but it was a hideously expensive system about twenty years ago, and my own circumstances with it caused me to leave. It’s the people who kept it all going and are making it better, in combination with affordable hardware, that have inspired me to return. RISC OS itself was always there.

Those people contributing useful stuff make me wonder how I can try and help, but when someone jumps in and disses RISC OS or an idea someone has when not in the spirit of guiding them, it is kind of uninspiring. I hope that puts it more firmly in context.

there was talk about using nuke charges chucked out the back of a space craft for propulsion

Yup. Quite serious talk, even. The Orion project – the first one, there’s been another one, rather more sensible, since that one. It is, to put it mildly, a bloody stupid idea…the size of the springs and dampers you’d need to smooth out the acceleration, and the mass of the “pusher plate” at the hot end of those springs and dampers, is an interesting thing to calculate. And then the whole shebang (bang, bang, bang…) couldn’t get anywhere near fast enough for a trip to Alpha Centauri. It could get around the Solar System a bit faster (not actually a great deal faster) than a chemical rocket, and require (in proportion to its payload) somewhat less mass raised off Earth for its “fuel” – but that would only be of benefit if its service life was long enough to amortise the cost of lifting the beast itself off Earth in the first place.

so the tile Pinboard seems to be trying to use is not the same as the tile a theme is trying to “install”

Hmmm. When I have picture expanding on, Pinboard2 lightly merges the iconbar texture into a snippet of the bottom of the picture, and then uses that as the iconbar background. It’s ingenious and clever, but might cause you some problems…

Hmmm. When I have picture expanding on, Pinboard2 lightly merges the iconbar texture into a snippet of the bottom of the picture, and then uses that as the iconbar background. It’s ingenious and clever, but might cause you some problems…

Indeed. It’s most likely that Pinboard 2 tries to cache a tile (maybe the default one?) and use that one, I need to have a call with Andrew abou tthis, but had no time yet to sit and call him (and ANdrew is always available to help BTW). The thing is i could also have a look at Pinboard 2.0 code, but I am having a busy time at work, so RISC OS time at this point (the time you can sit an focus on coding) is very little, so have to prioritise a lot.

In any case, for everyone interested in update on the entire DME, at the bottom of this page you get updates and with date, so you have an idea of the progresses. The site works on NetSUrf (countrary of GitHub), so shouldn’t give you any troubles to check it out from time to time:

https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/portfolio/risc-os-desktop-modernisation-project/

Nobody serious around here describes it as “amazing”, “revolutionary”, or “innovative”.

You’re right. Of course they don’t…

I suppose it depends on how you define “serious”, but this kind of stuff is worryingly common at in-person discussions, IME.

Of course they don’t…

I’m pleased you seemed to have made sense out of that message.
I read it and was like “nope, I do not have enough tea in me”.

I wanted to reply “You’re amanfrommars1 and I claim my £5”, but felt the reference might be lost.