riscosselect [2]

In a press release earlier today, RISCOS Ltd have today announced that the very latest version of RISC OS [3] will be launched at this Saturday's Wakefield show [4]. Full press release follows:

RISCOS Ltd are delighted to announce that the latest version of RISC OS [5] 6 will be launched at the Wakefield Show 2008.

RISC OS 6 is available to members of the RISC OS Select scheme and this release is the fourth in the series. Currently RISC OS 6 [6] is suitable for A7000, A7000+, RiscPC, Kinetic and VirtualRPC products.

Visitors to the Wakefield show will be able to see the new version of the OS being demonstrated on a range of machines, including Risc PC with Viewfinder running on 22" LCD monitor at 1680 x 1050 x 16M. Virtual Risc PC running on PC with output to 32" LCD via HDMI at 1360 x 768 x 16M. Virtual Risc PC running on Apple Intel Duo-Core 24" iMac at 1920 x 1200 x 16M and Virtual Risc PC running on Apple Intel Mac-Mini at 1440 x 900 x 16M.

Existing Select subscribers who visit the show will be able to take home a Select 4i4 CD at no charge. New subscribers will also be able to take home a copy of Select 4i4 on CD.

A downloadable version of Select4i4 will be available as soon as possible after the show.

The RISC OS developers have made over three thousand changes and improvements since the RISC OS 6.06 ROM was released at Wakefield 2007. The key improvements and changes in this release are:-

Select 4i4 Key Features

• Tunable automatic switching between standard and thumbnail filer views.


• Support for 8MB of VRAM when running on VirtualRPC.


• New filer layout options: vertical display and reverse sort order.


• A number of WIMP optimisations to speed up the desktop.


• Faster filer thumbnailing with optimised image generation.


• Improved bandwidth for the RISC OS video system.


• Enhanced keyboard shortcut support in Filer windows.


• Improved Filer configuration options.


• Support for DrawWorks XL and DrawWorks Select.


• Search filer windows using the keyboard.


• Option to enable Filer view inheritance.


• Massive speed improvements to Pinboard.


• Powerful new rename/copy/move features in Filer.


• Optional and configurable 'lazy' thumbnailing.


• Improved and configurable focus handling in Filer.


• Many bug fixes to FontEd.


• Image number indicators on thumbnail icon display for files with more than one image.


• Updated FontEd user interface.


• Filer user interface update, e.g. new filetype menu.


• Thumbnail cache now configurable.


• Improved support for font file variants and preserving additional data such as kerning.


• New state indicators on thumbnail icon display (processing etc.)


• User selectable font for the Alarm iconbar time display.


• Updated User Guide.


• Improved 'working week' handling within Alarm.


• Iconbar, Filer and Pinboard cooperate on exchanging pinned items.


• Video Welcome Guide to Select 4i4.


• Faster filer viewer redraws and improved formatting.


• Pinboard includes support for removable media.


• Improved alpha-sprite support in thumbnails.


• Mouse scroll support in filer viewers has been improved.


• Configurable drag onto sub-directories to copy/move/save.


• Alarm notification position now configurable.


• Dynamic selections on Pinboard.


• Filer status (sort order etc.) indicated in title bars.


• Improved multi-user support in Alarm.


• Updated configuration plugins to support all these new features.


• Improved SVG export from Draw.


• Increased accuracy when scaling objects in Draw.


• Smoother mouse scroll wheel.


• Updated Toolbox components.


• Numerous other improvements to the Application suite (Paint, Draw...)

A years subscription to the Select scheme costs from £99. Full details can be found on the RISC OS Select website at:

http://select.riscos.com/ [7]

Details on RISC OS Six [8] itself can be found on the RISC OS Six website at:

http://www.riscos6.com/ [9]