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London show news

Posted by Steve Revill Thu, 22 Oct 2015 20:04:00 GMT

We’re packing our kit ready for the London show, which starts at 11am on Saturday 24th October 2015 and look forward to seeing you there.

Posted in Press release, Community | no comments

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.

Posted in New documentation, New product | 3 comments

Dip your hand into our bonus bin

Posted by Steve Revill Sun, 04 Oct 2015 14:35:00 GMT

Frequent visitors of the popular Miscellaneous downloads might have spotted the recent introduction of a bonus binaries archive.

If you’re not a developer, it’s probably safe to stop reading now – the HardDisc4 archive contains everything that end users could ever want. Those more adventurous or technically inclined can read on…

CC-BY Chris Parfitt

Posted in New product, Miscellaneous | 1 comment

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.

Posted in Community | 1 comment