RISC OS on the Raspberry Pi

Should Fat32Fs be included on the list?

I would think it is pretty vital, ideally in the ROM itself.

I’m getting responses from some developers setting conditions that their software ‘must not be charged for, directly or indirectly’, ‘not for transfer to other people’ and ‘without modification’. Here’s an explanation of why these are showstoppers for us.

A primary distribution method for Raspberry Pi is on SD card. SD cards do not grow on trees, they are physical hardware and they cost real money. Distribution by SD card therefore involves payment but this pays for the card and the distribution, not for the software. In the just same way a traditional PD library charged for the floppy disc and the stamp, but not for the software. Not everyone is connected to the internet (the RPi model A isn’t), and any non-internet method of transmission involves money.

Second, the primary RPi Linux distribution will be under a ‘distribute it anyhow you like’ licence (as all Free/Open Source software licences are). If we share media with it, we can’t afford to compromise this part of the primary distribution – the idea is as wide dissemination as possible. So restrictions on transfer are difficult for this reason. If someone sets up a shack in their African village duplicating SD cards we want to encourage them doing so, not provide additional legal restrictions.

Finally, modification is partly a matter of interpretation. In the most legalistic sense, unpacking a zip file is modification. Essentially all I’d request on the issue of modification is the ability to move files around – unpack it, make the documentation readable and easy to find (eg convert an Impression manual to PDF format as there’s no 32 bit Impression reader available), have the software with a nice initial configuration (where required), and hold it in a form that enables easy assembly of disc images. If authors want to do this themselves I have no problem with that.

If you write free software you might be motivated by having it used by as many people as possible. So I hope you can see that this also means a certain degree of liberality of its distribution (with appropriate acknowledgement).

having it used by as many people as possible

…possibly leading to a network effect. (Beware, some of the Wikipedia articles on free software are marked as presenting a non-neutral point of view.)

Just out of interest, is the GPL considered incompatible with the terms of the Raspberry Pi distribution?

I ask because I’ve got all my software licensed under GPLv3, and I don’t want people to consider it a barrier to inclusion on an SD card image. (Of course, this is probably more wishful thinking on my part that you might have any interest in my software, but I’d like to help in any way I can.)

is the GPL considered incompatible with the terms of the Raspberry Pi distribution?

I’m sure that’s fine (but stand to be corrected by Theo). GPL is noted in the licensing request communication
.

wishful thinking

Were you thinking of any pieces in particular?

Dear All,
I’ve posted the ‘official’ Raspberry Pi logo in RISC OS ArtWorks format on the piLEARN website. By request I’ve also put conversions to SVG & EPS file formats in the zip.
Regards,
Martin.
http://www.piLEARN.com/Pages/Page0004.html

I was going to say “why not Draw format?” but then I realised that NetSurf will convert SVG to Draw :)

games

…writing them, that is.

I’ve just tried a couple of Andy Jackson’s programs out. Gloop seems to work OK. Not sure about Extractor. A couple of the examples seem to work and the app didn’t crash during my brief test drive just now.

On the subject of games, could someone find 10 minutes to try out Hive please? I’ve only got an iyonix to test on. http://www.btinternet.com/~rik.griffin/

(edited the URL to be correct)

When I click that link, I just get a BT Yahoo login screen :(

Try this for Hive, http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rik.griffin/index.html

On the ARMini, “Error from (unknown): PCI device doesn’t exist”

I noticed on the disc image proposals that there’s a need for a Unicode font. Since there have been a number of fonts I’ve been meaning to convert for a while, I thought I’d get on and do some, in the hope that it may go some way to help with this.

I’ve converted all of the M+ fonts, and the Hanazono Mincho font. See here for the RISC OS files. Note that some of these are large downloads!

Selfishly, they’re CJK orientated, since that’s my main area of interest. There may be more Unicode ranges that others feel need to be included in the font lineup for the R-Pi.

The M+ fonts are particularly nice, IMHO. They’re not so comprehensive as the Hanazono one, but do have Basic Latin, and aren’t so huge. Hanazono is so massive, my 28MB-Wimpslot-nobbled a9home couldn’t cope loading it into FontEd. I had to resort to RPCEmu with 128MB RAM! Still, the glyph coverage in Hanazono is phenomenal. It makes Cyberbit look cute.

The other thing to note is that (AFAIK) there’s no way to specify where RUfl pulls glyphs from if they’re not in the font being painted with. Since the M+ fonts have so many styles and weights, you can end up with some odd-looking mixtures of text. It might be best to install only a medium weight version so you don’t get random bold text in the middle of normal weight text.

Finally, I probably should have put more thought into the RISC OS naming (e.g. “Bold” instead of “Black”). If anyone’s got any thoughts on this, let me know and I’ll change the archives.

Have fun!

There’s been a thread on Usenet about fonts. I’ve uploaded a conversion of FreeSans, FreeSerif and FreeMono to http://sinenomine.co.uk/software/freefonts.zip — these fonts have good coverage of Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and quite a lot of other alphabets. I’m intending to do Claris SIL at some stage: that is also quite useful, and covers the International Phonetic Alphabet, among other things.

There’s been a thread on Usenet about fonts.

Could you point me at it?

I’ve uploaded a conversion of FreeSans, FreeSerif and FreeMono

Good stuff. I know ARMini users have some more fonts converted for them, including the FreeFont ones you mention here.

All credit to John-Mark Bell for !TTF2f of course!

Quick question: Can Fonts be packaged for use with RiscPkg, I wonder?

Dear All
PYTHON – RISC OS- RASPBERRY PI
I’ve been trying to work out the current state of Python on RISC OS.
Following a quick google, I’ve found an old package, 2.4.1 from 2004
which seems to be the latest. Dietmar Schwertberger was the maintainer of
Python on RISC OS but has moved on to other things. I’m in email contact
with David Boddie who did a lot of work on Python on RISC OS but he to
has moved on to other things, (in 2003) He still uses Python on Linux.

I asked him if he thought Python would run under RISC OS on the
Raspberry Pi to which he replied;

It depends on three things:
1. The tools to build it: I think it needed the Acorn C compiler rather
than GCC.
2. Whether or not the latest C source code will build on the compilers
available for RISC OS.
3. Whether there’s a big difference between RISC OS on the old hardware
and RISC OS on new ARM hardware.
You might want to look at getting GCCSDK

and asking the people behind riscos.info for help in compiling Python.
Maybe someone has already done it.

The instructions for building Python for RISC OS are provided in the
regular source archives for Python:

Download a source archive and look in the RISCOS directory inside it.

At the moment, it looks like it should be fairly easy to get started with
Python on the Raspberry Pi, but that’s on whatever flavour of Linux they
end up supporting. On RISC OS, it’s more difficult, especially since it’s
been unmaintained there for a number of years.

The other problem is that RISC OS support was apparently removed from the
Python 3 distribution precisely because nobody volunteered to maintain it.

I thought I’d post this information here as I’m willing to invest some
time and effort in getting to grips with Python and also supporting
it in other ways via articles and tutorials but I think the technical
side of getting it compiled, updated and working well on Pi running
RISC OS is too big a job for me.

I suppose I’m hoping that that side of things appeals to another
RISC OS enthusiast…

If nothing else, this posting is an update on the current state of
play with Python on RISC OS, as I understand it.

Regards,
Martin

It looks as if not all the GPIO pins will be easily available. But is there likely to be any transferable development from the XM I/O module?

If the R-Pi isn’t expected to be immediately used in ICT classes (more after-school clubs ATM I think) ISTR there being talk of its potential interest to D&T depts. So that probably means interfacing.

@David Pitt. THanks but that web site is years out of date. But because I’m no longer a Virgin Media customer, I can’t delete it, and their customer service is as much good as a fart in a jaccuzi.

I’ve corrected the URL in my post above. The web site at http://www.btinternet.com/~rik.griffin/
is up to date, the one at ntlworld.com is wrong.

Thanks.

I’m no longer a Virgin Media customer, I can’t delete it,

What about threatening them for copyright violation?

Quick question: Can Fonts be packaged for use with RiscPkg, I wonder?

I’m not particularly familiar with how RISC OS fonts are installed, but if it is just the case of putting a file or directory inside !Fonts (and !Fonts is in a fixed location on the HardDisc) then it should not be a problem.

What about threatening them for copyright violation?

The thought had occurred!

On the ARMini, “Error from (unknown): PCI device doesn’t exist”

There’s a new version of Hive at http://www.btinternet.com/~rik.griffin/hive.html

This one shouldn’t assume that RISCOS 5 == Iyonix. Silly mistake!

sources from Dalriada

How about Coypu? (Archived site, Shell Centre for Mathematical Education Publications Limited.) Does anyone here remember any previous dealings with October Pen Educational Software?

How about Coypu?

I can’t help with that, but there’s !Tau which does a similar job. I have no idea if it’s ARMv7 compatible, though, I’m afraid.

I’m not particularly familiar with how RISC OS fonts are installed, but if it is just the case of putting a file or directory inside !Fonts (and !Fonts is in a fixed location on the HardDisc) then it should not be a problem.

It’s not quite that simple. The easiest way would be to run the FontMerge utility from Configure and let that do the work. Its syntax is simply:

Can the package manager run an arbitrary command on a file in a package to make this possible?

It looks as if not all the GPIO pins will be easily available. But is there likely to be any transferable development from the XM I/O module?

Trevor, all thats needed is a list of the GPIO’s that are available to be added to the module, as lookup tables are used to access the I/O (and for the board to be added to the list supplied by HALDeviceComms_GPIO call).
So as soon as I can get my sticky hands on one I’ll update the module.