Category: Applications

Blasts of the Xtreme have now released their second commercial map pack for Heroes of Might and Magic 2.

This new pack has been released just in time for the SouthWest Show at the Webbington Hotel in Loxton, where you will be able to purchase directly from Blasts of the Xtreme.

Jochen Lueg has updated !NoButton to version 2.1 and is available from his website: http://www.jochenlueg.freeuk.com/english/sharewar.htm

!NoButton is a frontend for various printers to enable functions like nozzle cleaning and nozzle test to be carried out from the computer.

It can be used from the Iyonix and this new version displays the currently selected printer on the icon bar.

Peter Naulls from the Unix Porting Project has ported the open source email client, Thunderbird to RISC OS, this is a demonstration version and is not yet fully functional.

You must own a A9Home or Iyonix (Virtual RiscPC?) machine in order for this to work,

RiscPC,RISCStation etc. machines will not run Thunderbird at this early stage in development.

To download, visit:

http://www.riscos.info/unix/firefox/

Message from Sion Cleaver of Blasts of the Xtreme "We are very proud to announce the release of our first RISC OS demo, !Chuckle."

Chuckle is a rather simple demo where an alien presence hacks in to FBI computers and threatens to destroy the earth due to missiels being launched by accident at their home planet.

Chuckle can be downloaded from the downloads section of our site: www.blastsofthextreme.50megs.com

Ray Favre has updated !LaBella with some features and bug fixes that were recommended to him by various show attenders, you can download it for free from Ray's website: www.rayfavre.me.uk/dwapps.html

7th Software have released version 1.11 of MoreDesk, the program that allows you to you to organise your windows on over a space which is larger than the normal desktop. It does this by creating a grid of desktop space and by allowing you to select which of these is the one you are currently looking at.

A new version of GCCSDK is now ready for download from: http://www.riscos.info/index.php/GCCSDK_Releases#GCCSDK_GCC_3.4.6_Release_2

In this new version:
* Correction of Release 1 filename handling regression with GCC.
* Enabling of throwback for C preprocessor.
* Pass gcc include paths through to 'as' assembler. There are known limitations on the current assembler include path support concerning Unix and RISC OS style pathname syntax so we recommend using path variables when you want to specify assembler include directories.
* Allow suffix swapping in its include filenames and adding hdr/Hdr suffixes to its default suffix swap list. This allows RISC OS and cross compilation of same assembler sources which include OSLib headers.
* No longer supporting GCC @ comments. This is no longer needed for the GCCSDK build procedure and allows the @ as built-in variable by default i.e. without having to resort to the -objasm option.
* Assembler now supports all ARMv5E (XScale) instructions (i.e. not including the Thumb instructions).
* Fixed several miss-assemblings or unsupported corner cases: LFMFD, LDC/STC, PLD, LDR/STR(H,SH,SB), etc.
* Added testcases for future regression tests.
* Replacing AOF object in ALF file didn't work.
* Several code fixes improving its stability.
* Fix for C++ using SharedCLibrary. Examples Makefile updated to build hello world examples in different ways.
* Various documentation updates.
And lots more!

Steve of 7Th Software has now updated MoreDesk to version 1.10, this new version contains many bug fixes and tweaks so it's more usable.

Taken from CSA Announce post "MoreDesk allows you to organise your windows on over a space which is larger than the normal desktop. It does this by creating a grid of desktop spaces and by allowing you to select which of these is the one you are currently looking at.

Gavin Wraith has updated his great application, Weave.

What is weave?
Taken from Gavin's homepage "Weave is a language for describing tagged text and, in particular, webpages. Why not use HTML? Because it has no provision for variables or functions. It has no abstraction facilities. By contrast Weave can be used as simply as HTML, but gives you a lot more descriptive power. You can create a whole website with a single Weave script. Alternatively you can split a website description up among various Weave scripts, each specialised for different aspects, e.g. content versus page furniture, site structure from the visual aspects of the navigation furniture, and so on. Objects common to more than one page need never be duplicated. In a word, Weave is a lot more powerful and abstract than HTML."

Steven Simpson has updated his front end and back end for his Draw-to-SVG Converter.
They can both be downloaded from his site: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/users/ss/software/draw2svg/ and are quite small in size.

Draw-to-SVG Converter converts vector-graphic Drawfiles on RISC OS to SVG.

Draw-to-SVG Converter should work on any machine running RISC OS 3.1 on an ARM3 Archimdes right up to the latest Iyonix running RISC OS 5.11.

Malcom Ripley has released Version 5.4f of Thumbcat, a application for viewing, converting and printing files.

Murklesoft have released Version 4.01 of Z80Em thanks to Colin Ferris.

Marc Zinnschlag has released V0.10 of DScript, a new data compiler from the author of Graphite.

DScript is handy for writing map or level editors and has lots of other uses too.
DScript is currently in the beta stage so it's quite buggy and more features will be added soon.

If you want more information on Marc's projects visit his website: http://www.zpages.de/

If you want to keep up to date on his project then why not visit his blog: http://zpages.blogspot.com/

Mike Glover of Icon Technology wrote to us a little while ago about the availability of Easiwriter and Techwriter 8.31, thanks to the efforts of Martin Wuerthner.

The new versions are fully 26/32 bit compatible meaning they will run on anything from RISC OS 3.5 to RISC OS 5.

A new version of my Background Control application is now available for download via the downloads section of Myriscos.

For anyone who's not used the Myriscos Downloads section before, it's as easy as downloading from any other website, only on Myriscos, things are sorted into categories and come from many different sources. Additionally, you as users within the Myriscos community can submit your own downloads for inclusion in our database.

Well, the frenzy to go over to 32 bit is hotting up. So far, we've had announcements from RComp that lots of their products will be available (at a small charge for upgrades) for 32 bit machines, Cerilica are there already, the 32 bit developer tools are already available, Icon Technology had a 32 bit happy version of their amazing TechWriter/EasiWriter products ages ago.. A 32 bit version of CDBurn (called CDBurnLite) will be shipped with the Iyonix.

David Pilling is making his software available as 32 bit, as is a new version of ArtWorks from Martin Wuerthner. Abacus Training, the bods behind PipeDream have already made FireWorkz 32 bit and have plans to do the same with PipeDream.

Even GCC has a 32 bit version!

Who does that leave?

We're still waiting to hear back from Clares Micro Supplies and also to see what APDL/Proaction will be able to do with their catalogue. Most of the applications for RiscStation machines will be 32 bit in the near future.

At this point, it is unsure what will be happening with the 4th Dimension software from CJE - our newshounds are onto that one ;-)

Note: I suppose what this does show is how quickly applications can be moved to 32 bit neutral when it came to the crunch. Question is, why has it taken this long to get something like the Iyonix?