PRMs released using "shared source" licence?

Hi.

I think it’s great that RISC OS has been relased as shared source. However, an OS isn’t that much use without a PRM, at least if you’d like to develop applications for it.

Currently, you can get the PRM either as a set of books, or as PDF-files with the C/C++ Tools. There’s also a project underway at this site to write up at least some of the PRM information from scratch.

It seems to me to be a terrible waste of preciously scarce resources in the RISC OS community to essentially duplicate all the hard work that Acorn (and later others, like Castle) have done in writing the large body of knowledge known as the PRM.

My question is: Given that Castle have released RISC OS as shared source, does anyone know if they have contemplated doing the same with the documentation (the PRM)? I guess Castle is still the owner of the PRM, even though ROOL now has taken over the development of the C/C++ Tools?

I already have the PRM, both as books (four large books weighting several kilograms), as well as the PDFs, but I think it’s a big shame that when we have them in PDF-format, we can’t share them with others…

It seems so pointless having to write all this information all over again, which – if it’s ever done – could consume man-years, when we have so few resources, and they could be much better spent developing RISC OS software, or dociumenting new things…

Thoughts?

Regards,

Terje

It’s unclear what you’re promoting as an alternative. If you looked at my wiki page on the matter:

http://www.riscos.info/index.php/RISC_OS_Documentation

You’ll see the situation at present is far from ideal. The PRMs including 5a only cover up to about RISC OS 3.6ish. Wikified PRMs would presumably include all this in one place with all the updates and notes. Good documentation is a huge time saver for developers.

Apart from that:

could consume man-years, when we have so few resources, and they could be much better spent developing RISC OS software,

I don’t think your estimation of the time is really correct. A large number of people contributing small amounts of information (which this isn’t, it’s just one person right now) can very quickly add up. In any case, your argument presumes two things:

That documentation writers are both willing and able to develop other stuff, which is definitely not true. And even the most experienced developers certainly get tired of developing, and get frustrated at disjoint documentation. Plus I know that there are actually quite a large number of RISC OS people who are interesting in helping, but aren’t developers and are willing and able to do this work.

Second, the measure of time loss presumes some kind of direction or plan for RISC OS, which really doesn’t exist – this kind of situation would have a project manager (or equivalent) trying to have some kind of coherency in RISC OS development. The little development that is presently being done is most people doing stuff which interests them.

Hi Peter.

Thanks for your reply. Also thanks for the riscos.info link. I wasn’t actually aware of that the PRM PDFs were available for download. That’s great. :) That’s what I was asking for.

I was only aware of the PRM project at this site (https://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/pages/Programmer%27s+Reference+Manuals), and noticed that not much seemed to be there at the moment (at least many of the pages linked to are empty). It seemed that the intention here was essentially to write the PRM from scratch, which seemed like a huge undertaking…

I realise that the original PRM needs updating, and doing that is very benficial for all, but it seemed to me that – if possibly – it would be useful to start with the existing PRM, and updating it where it’s needed, rather than starting from the beginning.

However, I realise that there’s a bunch of stuff I wasn’t aware of, so I’ll read up on the information at riscos.info site.

You’re right: The figure I gave wasn’t even an estimate, and my point was just that it may be better to build on existing documentation, rather than writing everything from the beginning.

One question: When wikifying the PRM at this site, would it be possible to copy from the PDF PRM, or would that not be possible, due to copyright issues? Is that why it’s being rewritten from scratch? (if that is being done)

Yes, the example I gave wasn’t a good one: “better spent updating/wikifying the existing documentation” would be more appropriate.

Yes, the example I gave wasn’t a good one: “better spent updating/wikifying the existing documentation” would be more appropriate.

Don’t forget to look at our own wiki and the fine efforts of Alan Robertson here http://www.riscosopen.org/wiki/documentation/pages/Programmer%27s+Reference+Manuals I’m sure Alan wouldn’t complain if others joined in with his work.