Raspista vanhan ajan kotitietokone
Posted by Steve Revill Sat, 01 Aug 2015 13:36:00 GMT
It’s always great to hear of RISC OS users from far flung places – it’s a useful reminder of the importance of internationalising applications for non native English speakers.
One recent example of this is the 5 page review of RISC OS Pico which features in the Skrolli computer magazine. RISC OS Pico was put together to coincide with the 50th anniversary of BASIC and recapture the halcyon days of MODE 7 home computing. The article Raspista vanhan ajan kotitietokone recounts home computers from the 1980’s and how well the feature of the built in BBC BASIC and its built in assembler compares with those original machines.
Ex pat user Kevin, who tipped off ROOL about this article, was pleased to add the Finnish for all sorts of RISC OS concepts to his vocabulary – they don’t tend to crop up in water cooler conversations.
For 9 euros you can buy a copy to read if you’re fluent in Finnish, but the example graphic program from the article (listing 1, listing 2) will run regardless.
The only complaint cited was that the MODE 7 character set didn’t cover the full Finnish alphabet. MODE 7 is emulated in software by the RISC OS kernel rather than using the SAA5050 chip as the BBC Micro did. Although German/Swedish/Italian/Belgian variants of the chip were produced, implementing a Finnish version in software is left as an exercise for the reader.
Skrolli magazine’s English language description is here — another great example of a volunteer “social online project”, as they put it.
And maybe we could add encouragement (in English!) to their Facebook group “Skrolli-lehti” …