A trilogy worth of reading matter
Posted by Steve Revill Sun, 04 Oct 2015 20:44:00 GMT
First previewed in the theatre presentation at the Wakefield 2015 show in April, ROOL are now shipping from stock three more books for developers, along with another print run of the Style Guide which sold out recently.
Three box set
The Desktop Tools manual is the companion text to the Desktop Development Environment and has been further updated for the printed version to include the new tool !A8Time (a timing simulator for the Cortex-A8 pipeline) as well as long absent chapters on !ModSqz and !UnModSqz. A new desktop tool, !Xpand, is described and the detail on !SrcEdit has also been updated to refer to the cut and paste version featuring on DDE26, swelling it to some 342 pages in total.
The Acorn Assembler manual was updated as part of the major update the tool itself in version 4. The assembler now supports all of the extra instructions ARM have added up to and including ARMv8, and is in fact the assembler that is used to build RISC OS itself. The manual has been extensively revised, comprising a total of 166 pages.
The Acorn C/C++ manual covers all of the mysterious switches that the Norcroft C/C++ compilers use to produce lean optimal code from C and C++ sources, including modules with the CMHG tool. The C99 library extensions are now formally documented for the first time since the compiler additions back in 2005, making it over 450 pages of essential reading for developers.
Each manual’s index allows easy lookup of detail during a late night debugging session, and the manuals also cross refer to eachother where appropriate. For this reason the 3 manuals have been grouped together as a set of 3. Housed in a overall slip case, with prices starting at £54 plus P&P (for UK delivery), you’ll need a sturdy set of shelves to hold nearly 2kg of reading matter.
The grand vision
Documentation is one area that hasn’t managed to keep up with recent advances in RISC OS itself, and these represent ROOL’s ongoing efforts to bring things back up to date. The money from book sales is an indicator of whether other long out of print titles are viable (or not) to revisit.
Getting your copy
Order online now from the ROOL store. Anyone with a registered developer number which starts with ‘DEV07’ can purchase the books with an exclusive 20% discount by quoting their developer number in the notes field during PayPal checkout – the difference will be refunded just before despatch.
The box set of guides can also be purchased through Amazon, though please note the developer discount cannot be applied when purchasing through this channel.
Great work, everyone.
Any chance of collecting at the London show to avoid postage?
Yes, you can buy this box set from us at the London Show to avoid the P&P cost – we’ll be bringing a few along.