Software information: User Guide (Rev #2, changes)

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RISC OS User Guide

About this download

This is a copy of Acorn’s original RISC OS 3.70 User Guide exported as a PDF . There are a couple of glitches with missing images that we can sort out another time but that should be sufficient for people to start looking at what edits need to be made.

The PDF we have uploaded was generated from RISC OS Open’s master FrameMaker document, which was copied straight off a DO (the Acorn Drawing Office) backup CD, there only seemed to be one issue number in there so presumably is presumed to be the latest. As far as we can tell, Acorn didn’t print the 3.7 3.70 User Guide on paper, it was only ever released asHTML (presumably (likely exported from FrameMaker).

About the update project

We have uploaded this document to allow the community to assist RISC OS Open with the work involved in updating this (rather large!) document to address everything that has changed in RISC OS 5, which is almost twenty years of development… From time to time, ROOL will upload a newer version of this User Guide, as updates are folded into the master document.

This is our suggested plan of attack for bringing the User Guide fully up to date:

1. Delete the dead chapters (eg.!PhotoView) & fix up any cross references
2. Note new sections required where dead chapters were relevant (e.g. !CDPlayer is now integrated into CDFSFiler but we just deleted !CDPlayer chapter)
3. Add new chapters for wholly new stuff
4. Rework existing chapters where radically different, e.g. !Configure
5. Integrate relevant text from the Welcome Guide, this covers primitives like using the mouse to control the filer, and is presupposed by the filer chapter (which just says “in the Welcome guide you learned how to…”)
6. Tone down dated references, e.g. “RISC OS 3 PRMs” → “RISC OS PRMs”
7. Edit technical inaccuracies (e.g. the description of how to map out a defect predates large >512MB drives)
8. Review whether the chapter grouping still makes sense (it may not any more) in light of new material
9. Top and tail with new Copyright blocks & trademark boilerplate, etc.
10. Scan the cover image
11. Check the nesting of the PDF index is sane, sprinkle index markers on new text
12. Review cycles
13. Make the cover artwork & print

Our strong suggestion here is that the community would be most valuable contributing to items 2, 3 and 4 of the above. Please send submissions to userguide@riscosopen.org. If anyone wishes to be added to the userguide@ email address, so they too get a copy of emails sent to that address, let us know – via an email to that address. There is also a forum thread for general discussion of this work.

Guidelines for textual submissions

Please read and adhere to the Tech Pubs Style Guide – for example, the text needs to use the correct tense, with no Americanizations, and you certainly don’t want no double negatives.

Each new or updated chapter should be created as a child of this wiki page to allow community updates. Discussion relating to updates can be held on the forum thread.

Please avoid putting too much work into the formatting of the wiki pages; ROOL will need to redo all of this when the work is folded into the master document so anything more than a gentle hint in the wiki pages will just create more work for ROOL (unformatting it all first).

Guidelines for image submissions

Email any updated/new images to the userguide@riscosopen.org address and include information about where they should appear in the User Guide. Toolsprites and iconsprites must be used as specified below in order for the whole manual to be consistent and for there to be consistency across the whole range of RISC OS books the ROOL publish. It is likely that most screenshots will need to be touched to some degree for that reason alone.

You must use the Sovereign as the desktop theme, Homerton 12 point as the desktop font and disable the Wimp’s background tiling for all screenshots because:

a) the icons are bold/iconic and when printed greyscale they can still be distinguished with good contrast
b) neutral window furniture prints well in greyscale
c) flat backgrounds to windows are preferable when printing

Images should be supplied in colour PNG format and have no bleed area around them. Where menu trees are open the void space is solid white, not transparent.

Once an updated image is submitted to ROOL, please mark the relevant location(s) in the wiki document as “updated” so other community members know not to generate/update the same images.