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Sib2Draw

Ron’s Adventures with Windows at Work

Customised RISC OSMachines

Issue 51 — Autumn 2004

What always amazes me about theRISC OS world is it’s inability tounderstand basic economics.Time and time again one reads onnews and user groups of someoneputting forward a splendid idea(for them), for somebody else(never themselves), miraculouslyto come up with some amazingnew software or an all singing alldancing machine, costing next tonothing. Some basic lessons ondemand and supply would beuseful.

However you will be pleased toknow I will not be includingeconomic lessons in thismagazine. It is marvellous thatsoftware writers like MartinWürthner (Artworks) andhardware companies like Castleand MicroDigital still manage toproduce anything at all. Quiteregularly on the newsgroups I readpeople moaning, “Where is an upto date browser”, “flash player”,

“DVD player?”, “Where is the nextRISC OS laptop?” etc. Just supplythe money and all is possible.

Some of these things may comeabout, given time, but the RISCOS world is never going to catchup with the world of Windows.

RISC OS companies are not goingto get rich relying on theenthusiasts’ market, they have tosupply machines to the businessworld. Here the power/processorspeed of the machine is not themain consideration but perhapsit’s ease of use and reliability. Thenew A75 produced by Stuart Tyrellis a good example of this.

RISC OS’ strengths are its GUIand its non-reliance on hard drives- long may it continue.

Andrew Wyver

Eureka 51 — Autumn 2004 1

The Real World

All opinions expressed in Eureka are those of the authors and not

necessarily those of the Club or it’s committee members and officers.

2 Eureka 51 — Autumn 2004

4 RISC Bytes

A short round up of some of the news of happenings over the lastcouple of months in the RISC OS world.

6 Sib2Draw

The Editor looks at one of the best unsung pieces of software foruse on RISC OS.

13 Ron’s Adventures with Windows at Work

The ins and outs of working (or not) with WindowsTM at Ron Briscoe’s workplace

21 Free For All

Andy Burgess looks at Antispam, PERL and WebJames

24 Double Cross Puzzle by Roger King

Your regular chance to test your way with words

26 RISC OS Variations

Machines from this year’s Wakefield Show

28 Winning Games with Logic Part 7

Barry Aulton deals with game design

35 New Membership Card

Our Chairman introduces the new membership card design


36 Site Seeing: Languages

Sue Clamp explores some foreign lanuage sites on the web.

42 Double Cross Puzzle solution

43 Arm Arena

Andrew Weston continues to look at new developments and re-releases for the RISC OS platform

49 RISC OS Rhymes

Another poetic masterpiece from Alan Wickham’s amazing mechanical RISC OS Wizard

52 Club Contacts

Who you need and where to send

The new ‘solder it yourself’ portable Risc PC


Castle shatters RISC OS World

Earlier in June Castle (CTL) were in dispute with Risc OS Ltd(ROL) about licensing and licensing fees from RISC OS. CTL claimedthat they had bought RISC OS ‘lock stock and barrel’ from Pace andthat ROL now owe the licensing fees they were formeely paying Pace.Both sides issued statements basically explaning why they were inthe right.

Meanwhile developers like Stuart Tyroll and Virtual Acorn had beenforced to suspend trading in products using RISC OS 4 after CTLinformed them that it was cancelling ROL’s licence to supply RISC OS 4.

However at a shareholders meeting in July all the parties concernedseem to have come to some agreement though the details of this areunclear at the the time of going to press.

Audio capture software for Iyonix

AudioIn, a new applicationdeveloped by Christian Ludlum,records a WAV file from “anyavailable audio channel”. Thesoftware is for use in Castle’sIyonix and is available to Iyonixusers from the Castle discupdate site.

An audio input socket isprovided in the Iyonix by theon-board AC97 chip.

CD Burn

Sales and support of CDBurnhave been taken over by authorSteffen Huber. hubersn Softwarehas been founded “to give a newhome to CD Burn”.

Previously distributed by WarmSilence Software all enquiriesregarding CDBurn should bedirected to hubersn Software.The software is Iyonixcompatible and also allows formultitasking CD writing.


32bit RiScript beingdeveloped

Paul Reuvers of X-Ample hasannounced the development of a32bit version of RiScript, themajor PDF (portable DocumentFormat) viewer and producer forthe RISC OS platform. The newversion should now support pathclipping of objects (a majorfailing of the old version),allowing greater ease intransforming Sibelius andArtworks files into PDF format.

X-Ample has taken overdevelopment of the package fromCerilica.

New RISC OS Web Design SmartGroup

There is a new smartgroup specifically devoted to the subject ofdesigning websites on Risc Os computers. In the first two weeks of it’sexistence subjects discussed include W3C validation, use of Risc Os artpackages for web graphics, and putting sound on web pages.

The group’s website is and its email address is [email protected]

Articles required for EurekaRemember that everyone whocontributes an article to the

magazine will have theirmembership extended, free ofcharge, for every issue in which

their work appears.

Midlands Show

Like a phoenix the Midlands showis reborn this year at the NationalMotorcycle Museum on Saturday4th December. See the Ad on page25 of this magazine.

For up to theminute RISC OS

news

visit

www.drobe.co.uk

Walter Lo Nigro Nationality ItalianAge 41

Walter Lo Nigro has a backgroundof choral conducting and iscurrently choir master andconductor at the Tartini MusicConservatory in Trieste. Perhapsmore importantly he has alsodeveloped Sib2Draw, asophisticated music graphicsoftware package for RISC OS.

Around 1992 the Finn brothersdeveloped a music scoringprogram that was by far the mostadvanced and straightforward onthe market - Sibelius 7. It wasdesigned to take advantage of thespeed of the current ARMprocessors that Acorn used intheir computers and was streetsahead of similar programs for thePC and Mac.

The screen display was almostWYSIWYG and was the best effortat the time to replace musicmanuscript paper and the pencil.One of it’s most useful featureswas that it could export output inthe form of draw files to enablefurther manipulation of the scoreand to allow the inclusion ofmusical examples into desktoppublishing programs such asImpression. The similar programsfor PC could only export bitmap


Sib2Draw

files which do not give thescalability of vector files. Howeveron the collapse of Acorn in 1999the Finn brothers announced thatthey would cease development onSibelius 7 and brought out a PCversion just called Sibelius. Thisprogram has now become one ofthe leading music scoringprograms in the PC world and isquickly becoming the de factostandard.

Sibelius 7 though is still anextremely useful music programalbeit lacking some of the bellsand whistles of the PC version.However it still has some usefuladvantages over the PC version,one being the drawfile export. Inorder to take advantage of this andto add features that Sibelius 7lacks Walter Lo Nigro developedSib2Draw

Sib2Draw is a graphics programwhich is designed to take outputin the form of drawfiles fromSibelius 7 and convert them toSib2Draw format so that furthermanipulation can take place.

In order to import the music score

from Sibelius 7 the program firstof all has to be ‘hooked’ to theSibelius score which has to beopen on the desktop so that thevarious styles and settings can beextracted from the Sibelius 7score. This is done from the Iconbar icon which gives you variousoptions on how the output is to beassembled in Sib2Draw (Fig. 1).The score can then be imported .

Once the score is in Sib2Drawyou are presented with the firstpage of the score (Fig. 2).Manipulation of the score is thendone through the various menuoptions that follow:-

Enter

The usual draw shapes can beused with the addition of anypolygon along with some musicalones like staves, hairpins and slurs(Fig. 3). Slurs in Sib2Draw can bemanipulated much more freelythan in Sibelius 7 enabling slurshapes to be produced that areimpossible in Sibelius 7 (seebelow).

Text can be entered in all thestyles of Sibelius 7 and extra



Fig. 1

Fig. 2

styles can be generated. Also textcan be entered to follow a path. Arecent addition to the program isthe symbols library (Fig. 4) intowhich the user can add othersymbol fonts and edit the existingsymbols to make new ones.

Edit (Fig. 5)

The usual Draw type editingoperations can be carried out plusthe additions of being able to lockobjects to the page so they cannotbe moved or altered, cut and pasteto a clipboard, skew objects, addwhite borders and/or boxes to


Fig. 3

Fig. 5Fig. 4

objects and the useful facilityusing the Ossia function to makestaves and all objects (notes,expression marks, slurs etc.) intosmall staves. Sibelius 7 can dothis but imperfectly as text size isnot altered and slurs becomeseparated from the notes leaving alot of tidying up to be done.

As a Sib2Draw file can be a multipage file, at the bottom of the editmenu is the ability to add or deletepages.

View

The magnifier gives a magnifiedview of part of the page in a newwindow. The usual editingoperations can be carried out inthis window.

Various grids can be used with theusual locking options and you canview what is on the clip board andany erasers that have been used.

Undo/Redo

Multiple undo and redos areavailable.


Fig. 6

Format

This allows you to change pagesize, stave size, margins, guttering,stave line thickness and pagenumbering.

There are a number of featuresthat at the moment can only beaccessed via the keyboard. Theseinclude editing symbols, aligningobjects and selecting lockedobjects.

Various options are available forprinting (Fig. 6) including severalbooklet layouts

Sib2Draw allows direct import bydrag and drop of Draw, sprite andJPEG files. Text at the momentcannot be imported directly onlyvia a draw file.

Output can be saved in Sib2Drawformat or as Draw files

Advantages

Sib2Draw allows furthermanipulation of Sibelius 7 files.

The program can be used as aconventional vector drawing

program and is the only vectordrawing program for RISC OS toallow multi page documents.

Unconventional modern musicscores can be set directly withouthaving to use Sibelius 7 see(Fig. 7) a copy of a page fromLucanio Berio’s score Circles. Theoriginal is hand drawn.

Musical examples can be easilyused in DTP work.

Disadvantages

No manual or help files at themoment.

Keyboard short-cuts are notdocumented and some of thesefunctions are not availablethrough the menus.

Next release version will be 2.09which includes support for objectcloning (i.e. to have one or more‘virtual’ instances of an object on apage without really copying it,sparing a lot on memory etc).

Next planned version should be2.10+, and should include full DTPsupport, i.e. text effects, nestedsuper/subscript, formatting offormulas, flowing text stories in


frames, embedded objects in text,rulers etc.

Next it is intended to introducedynamic instrumental partextraction and editing i.e. extract apart from full score in Sib2Draw,edit it and have edits reflected inthe main score or vice versa. Thisis possibly a first for any musictypesetting program.

Possibly MIDI support, at a laterstage.

Current price is 100 euros + p&p

Demo & PayPal payment directlyavailable from Walter Lo Nigro’s web-site.

Email [email protected]


Xyloph.

foot ped. b.d.2 Congas

3 tom-tomsnare drum

2 bongostomb. basso

Vibroph.

Hi-hat1 Tom-tom

3 susp. cymb.3 Triagoli

III

Bells

Lujon

3 Gencerros3 Tam-tam

3 susp. cymb.Hi-hat

3 Triagoli

Timpani

3 Tom-tom3 Tablas

2 bongos

Mar.

III. "N(O)W"WORDS COPYRIGHT 1931 BY E. E. CUMMINGSREPRINTED FROM POEMS 1923 - 1954 BY E. E. CUMMINGS

table

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Fig. 7

One day, a while ago, Ihad just returnedto my den havingdecided that mywork load hadd imin i shedsufficientlyto enable meto switch ont h e f i l t e rcof fee ma-c h i n e a n da w a i t t h epromised de-l ivery of somed e l i c i o u s W e s tIndian s ty le breadpudding. (For the benefit of

anyone thinking of sending mebegging letters I am not a richeccentric but am employed as amaintenance pipefitter/plumber,so don't bother.) Suddenly the den

d o o r i s f l u n g o p e n a n d t w ostrangers appear. “Hello lads

what can I do you for?”quip I. This falls on

u n r e c e p t i v eground as the

obviously seni-or of the twogives me astony lookand gratesout, "Factorytwo mainten-

ance den?” Irise from my

chair and go out-side, yes the notice

on the door still says‘Maint Fact2’. I affirm

that by some mischance they

have found the secret location ofthe den.

A word or two of explanationhere. Although the den is


Ron's Adventures withWindows at Work.

nominally mine, owing tomanagement skulduggery I haveto share it with two toolroomfitters, who work shift about, andthe maintenance multi-skilledwho rotate across the factory siteon a fortnightly basis. Thismeans that the den containsthree workbenches, assortedcupboard and shelving units, asink unit, four chairs and thenormal maintenance den fixturesi.e. fridge, microwave, toaster,hifi unit and my filter coffeemaker, so not a lot of room formuch else. I am mentally debating whether ornot to phone the security up andreport two suspicious characterswho are obviously casing the jointwhen stone face speaks again. “Weare from I.T. come to install yourPC.” The penny drops, for agesnow people who can be botheredto turn up at the company’smonthly team brief sessions havebeen reporting that themaintenance/toolroom are goingto be inflicted with computers foran undisclosed reason. “Is that areal PC or a Windows ‘Start uptoday and come back tomorrowwhen the desktop is visible’ PC?”ask I. This is ignored as stone faceprowls round the den, finallystopping by the only piece ofvisible wall and raps out to his

underling, “Here will have to do.”I point out that the only reasonthat there is bare wall showing atthat spot is because the toolroomfitters’ coat locker needs the spaceto enable the locker door to open.“They can shift it then,” is the onlyreply. Bearing a self-satisfiedsmirk stone face signals to hissidekick and they exit the den.After much debate andmeasurement I decided to alter mysix drawer free standing unit so asto slide it under my workbench,thus creating sufficient space for acomputer workstation. This donewe inform our head of departmentwho passes on the message to theIT wallah’s that we require thecomputer to be fitted on aworkstation. Does this make anydifference? If you have not alreadyfallen asleep read on. A couple of weeks pass and onceagain the den door is wrenchedopen and stone face entersfollowed by his underling pushinga trolley bearing several things butnowhere in sight is anythingresembling a computerworkstation. “No workstation?”say I. “I think that the unit isbetter fixed to the wall.” ripostesstone face “Why hasn't the lockerbeen moved? Well you will have tomove it later when we havefinished.” I decide to make some


fresh coffee and watch theproceedings. The underling unloads thetrolley, including a two tier wallframe unit. He then proceeds toplace it on the wall and move itup and down until stone face issatisfied that anyone looking atthe monitor screen will getsevere neck ache. Whilst this isgoing on I am passing aninterested eye over the rest of thegear, old 14 inch monitor, a nolonger needed old computer andsome rather nice gear for fixingthe frame to the wall. Wait whatis this? The wall plugs they havegot are not suitable for the joband the screws are bothundersized in diameter andlength. After borrowing a set of steps theunderling proceeds to drill thewall, remarking on how easy it iswith a new masonry drill and thepower of their new DeWaltdriller. I ignore this as I havealready swapped their unusedspare battery for one of ourtotally used ones. The drillingsoon done, the wall plugs areinserted. They are too loose. Noproblem, stone face fumblesabout in their commodioustoolbox and produces a roll ofinsulation tape. This is wrapped

around the wall plugs until theyare a nice tight fit. Afterscrewing the frame to the wallthe underling gives it a gentlepull and it promptly comes awayfrom the wall complete with wallplugs. When their brains haverecovered from this little setbackour intrepid pair decide to usefirmer fixings. The ones theychoose are known as ‘Parabolts’and I just know that I and the bynow returned other members ofthe den are in for some realentertainment. A short time later the intrepidpair return with said ‘Parabolts’and find the first problem theselected items will not gothrough the holes in the frame,this remedied our duo open outthe holes in the wall and bangthe fixings in through the frame.Much grunting later theunderling has succeeded intightening the nuts up enough tosatisfy stoneface, a cursoryglance shows me that theunderling has screwed the nutsdown so far that they areactually binding on theunthreaded shank of theparabolts. This means that theparabolts have been pulledalmost out of the wall.


The underling then places themonitor on the top shelf and thecomputer on the lower shelf,plugging in all the relevantcables as he goes along. This alldone the monitor and computerare switched on. We wait andwait until at last the desktopappears, but there is a problemand we are told that we cannotconnect to the server. The intrepid duo engage injargonese away from thecomputer. This is fortunate aswithout warning the two topfixings give up on their tenuoushold on the brickwork and theframe tips forward spilling thecomputer and monitor to thefloor via the edge of the fittersworkbench. There is a satisfyingcrash, bang, flash and all thepower in the den goes off. In theensuing darkness the toolroomfitter drops an extremely largeand heavy object with sharpedges on the computer. Exitdynamic duo bearing extremelydamaged goods.

A month later the underlingreturns alone pushing acomputer workstation bearing acomputer, monitor, printer andancillaries. A couple of hours

later he pronounces himselfsatisfied and informs us that wehave limited access, no internet,no games, no screensavers in factwe are restricted to the oneprogram that the computer hasbeen put in for, he exits with asmirk. I leave the resident Windrossexpert to see what he can do withthe computer and wander over tothe main shop with a desire tofind out more about themysterious program. My boss theEngineering Services manager,(note that we no longer haveWorks/Maintenance Engineers, Ileave the results to your ownimagination.) is very proud of hislatest toy. “Cost 50k and is thebees knees. Every single machineis entered in its data base alongwith available spares andsuppliers, its got costings,salaries, machine downtime andmuch, much more. “What's ourrole in this amazing piece oftechnology?” ask I. “Oh you willfind out about that during yourtraining” says he returning to hiscomputer which I notice is doingcomparisons on time taken toeffect repairs on one type ofmachine. Returning to the den I find thatthe Windows expert has retrieved


Excel, Word, Powerpoint et albut more importantly has foundand re-installed several desktopgames, these will keep the multi-skilled quiet at least. I inform theden of my conversation with theboss and observations of what hewas doing. This causes somedisquiet but I am not botheredfor I have every faith in ourmanagement. Two days later thesoftware is installed or ratheraccess to it enabled. At the sametime all of our other programsare removed including the mosteye burning desktop that wecould collectively devise.

Whilst waiting for ourcomprehensive training we areinvited to ‘play’ with theprogram. Always willing to tryanything new, no matter howdistasteful, I switch thecomputer on. After a long delayand much ‘Windows is loading’screen parking I am invited toinput my password. “What's thepassword?” ask I. “They are alltaped to the side of the monitor.”is the answer. “All?” think I, andfour passwords later up comesthe dreaded program icon, I notethat all the other programs havebeen recovered again.

I click on the icon and activitystarts, some time later an errorbox comes up on screen ‘Thedata base is too large and will becurtailed.’ More activity ensuesand wonder of wonders theprogram window opens. Thiswindow itself contains severalbuttons with fancy but totallymeaningless graphics on them. Iclick on one that looks like a cogbeing bashed with a spanner.This turns out to be a waste oftime as all I get is a windowinforming me ‘This part of theprogram is unavailable for now.’This suits me for after only anhour on this machine my nervesare shredded and I feel in need ofa strong cup of coffee. Refreshed I return to the frayand find out several interestingthings, like, I am (unfortunately)on the database as a user, thatnone of the services(air/steam/water/waste) havebeen entered into the database,meaning that I can't type out anend of shift report as theprogram will not accept nonexistent service locations. I alsofind that certain assets that Ipersonally maintain areaccording to the program infixed positions whereas inactuality they move about thecompany a fair bit, meaning the


program will not accept thelocation, (it is on a computerdon't forget and thus cannot bewrong), and that the inputnumber of said asset cannot beat the location I say it is. After a few days everyone agreesthat the program is a bag of nailswritten by different people whodid not communicate with anyother programmer whatsoever.For light relief I try Word, this isa big mistake as I am used tomuch superior products and theexperience leaves me feelingsorry for anyone who has to usea Windows machine on a regularbasis. Within a short period oftime the computer is only usedfor playing games and printingout the local pirate lists ofavailable CDs.

We are beginning to think thatthe management have forgottenall about it when it is announcedthat we are to be ‘Trained’. Thiswe are told will consist of beingsplit into groups of six andreporting for training in the ITtraining centre on specific dayswhere we will be given a wholetwo hours instruction in the useof the new toy by an expertprovided by the software house.

Now although we hadsupposedly split into groups ofsix, my group which was also thelast, actually comprised of seven.“Not that bad thinks I, there aresix computers in the room thatwe will be using, so only twopeople will have to share.” Thisshows how naive even I, anexperienced man of the factoryworld, can be. The day of the training sessiondawns and our group sidle intothe IT Work Centre. (Honestlythat is what was written on thedoor.) There are as reported sixcomputers already pre-startedalong with our manager, his twounderlings and a nervous lookingyoung man. I choose to occupyone of the computers at the backand am immediately joined bythe spare man and the rest of thegroup choose a computer each.This is a mistake as the tutor hasdecided that because no one hasbeen practising with the softwarehe has rather a lot to get throughin two hours and so we willdouble up. This meant of coursethat yours truly ended up sharingwith two others, one on thekeyboard another on the mouseand me reading the instructions.“Right!” Says the tutor. “Who hasany experience of computers?”This falls on deaf ears because


we are all applying the wellknown maxim that you shouldnever volunteer for anything barovertime. The boss leaves his twounderlings to assist the tutor andwe begin. I soon find out that thetwo lads I am with genuinelyknow nothing about computersat all so I have to show one howto use the mouse and the otherwhat key to press when required.This slows down my readingsomewhat for I have found outthat my user manual is in fact anadvanced users manual foradministrators only. Iappropriate this for furtherstudy. After two hours of filling in ‘Endof shift reports’ and conductingsearches under asset, user, workissue, tradesmen and location etcwe are given time off for goodbehaviour and return gratefullyto work. Despite all this intensivetraining no one seems at all keento continue the good work byfurther practice. In fact no onecan even be bothered to playgames and the computer sits insolitary silence.

Just as the threat of disciplinaryaction is forcing desultoryattempts to practice writing end

of shift reports we are saved. Aknock on the den door heraldsthe ingress of a friendly face.“Time for your regular portableappliance testing. How about acoffee first?” After coffee heproceeds to test all of our gear,everything passes except thecomputer plus two of the leadssupplied by the IT ghouls. Heimpounds the two leads andslaps a big red ‘Do not use P.A.Tfailure’ notice on the computer.We ring up the boss to tell himwe need to have our computerchanged. Three days later the computer istaken away and yet another andmuch better model is installed inits place. However stone faceextracts his revenge by disablingeverything he can think of. Wehave no floppy drive, no CDplayer, no USB and even thesound out is disabled. In fact wecannot even alter the desktop. Despite all this our resident PCexpert manages to retrieve all theusual bits except for the gamesand we convince themanagement that the fittersshould have access to themachine, tool and productdrawings. The clinching factor inour argument was that any ofour company’s customers could


download any of the drawings,even commercially sensitiveones, via the intranet. This Isuspect caused more than a fewripples in the IT department. And now? The PC sits forlornlyunloved and unused on itsworkstation due to severalreasons, The main one beingthat due to security demands theI.T. Department keep changingour passwords and neglect totell us and we don’t bother toask. The second reason is that,being used to the RISC OS wayof doing things I found thatwhen I clicked on the windowclose button the applicationshut down and removed itselffrom the icon bar. This ofcourse meant that the app hadto be restarted again with all ofthe aforementioned delays.Everyone quickly started to click

on the ‘little X button’ and onlytyped very verbose end of shiftreports with one finger, leadingto an insufficient time foreverybody to input said reports.The third and most relevantfactor is that the EngineeringServices manager has beenmade redundant and hisresponsibilities have been splitbetween his underlings and theyfind it much more productive toreturn to the old paper basedsystem of work records. This Iam afraid is due to the fact thata certain cunning person foundout that one could alter otherpeople’s end of shift reports ifthey were to do a searchinvolving ‘Trades’ and then clickon another tradesmans numberand told the rest of thedepartment. The future? Who knows?


I was pleased to find out thatrebooting my A7000, andrestarting AntiSpam, it seemed tohave started where it had finished,but I was wrong in thinking this

was the case - all of that email wassomehow lost! When you start anAntiSpam session be prepared tokeep going, as so far as I can see,there’s no way of gracefullystopping it once it’s started! Ididn’t really care - most of it wasprobably junk anyway!!

I had left my email for a couple ofweeks, and found to my horror Ihad 2042 messages, of which only43 I wanted to keep. I deleted thesethrough WebMail, as it was quick-er, and while I enjoyed myself do-ing that, I came up with a method-ology to delete mails. This methodmay not work for everyone, butwould work for me, as I onlywanted to see emails from certain

parties. AntiSpam has someexcellent help (but one needs!StrongHelp), and this, combinedwith a usefully published rules fileon the Internet by Bryn Evans onthe comp.sys.acorn.apps (subject“AntiSpam Rules OK”) gave me a

decent starting block to starteradicating my mail. I used hissuggestion of accepting fromfriends, and deleting the rest,basically following his rules to theletter.

I set up my rules file along the thefollowing format (the Colon beforethe equals means use this part ofthe header, the star (*) indicates awildcard, and a pipe a comment,blank lines are allowed):

From people I want to receiveemail from

Accept From: = *BBCShop* AcceptFrom: = Brave*New*World*With subjects I’m interested in -


Free for all

I’m potty about planes, but alsowant to get bounced mails.

Accept Subject: = *aviation* AcceptSubject: = *failure* Accept Subject:= *returned*| The following I presume to onlyallow replies to yourself.

Accept In-Reply-To: = *ajburgess@*| Kill other email

Delete Content-Type: = *text/html*Delete Content-Type: = *text/plain* Delete Content-Type: =*multipart/alternative*

And not do anything with emailsgreater than 30K (I presumeagain)

Defer Length >3000

Mr Evans’ rule file was far moredetailed than what I’ve writtenabove and it may be worth asquint. I initially followed MrEvan’s suggestion of deferring“mulitpart/alternative” contents,but it seemed to leave too manyemails I didn’t want, and I’mabout to delete “text/plain”documents as I seemed to have afew of these I didn’t want. It tookme three hours for AntiSpam toprocess my 3000 odd emails - I’monly on an old A7000+ with a 56K

modem running at only 46K. Ishould really do my email cleaningmore frequently - this was about 3weeks’ worth of un-picked-uprubbish. It would have takenlonger for Voyager to pick up all ofthis, and I wouldn’t have knownwhat it was doing; AntiSpam didtell me it was on email 10 of 3034,it had deleted 3, accepted 3 anddefaulted 3 etc.

The only thing I’ve got againstAntiSpam is it doesn’t seem tohave a stop-running facility. If youhave thousands of junk emails toweed though it would be nice tochip-away at them without havingto do one sitting to avoid losingemail!

Although it is a lot of work to setup the rules file and my otherniggle aside, I think thatAntiSpam does at least give onethe ability to weed out the rubbishemails, and once I’ve refined myrules file to what I want, it know itwill be a very useful addition tomy Acorn software. If only I hadsomething faster - like an Iyonix!!


or

(thoughthe RiscPC version worked on myA7000+)

I’ve been interested in learning‘server side’ programming, but asusual was loathed to have towind up my PC and studysomething on Windoze. I am amember of Paul Vigay’s RISC OSAcademy

and so was very keen to learnPERL when I discovered thatlinks were available to it from hisAcademy. Unfortunately, due topressures outside of his website, Icouldn’t partake of a course fromhis website, as the course is asyet incomplete, but I did findlinks to PERL, and a piece ofsoftware called WebJames (bothfree, and both work on RISC OS),which sets up a pseudo webserver on your RISC OS Machine,and allows PERL to run.

PERL is a simple, though slightlycryptic language derived from theUNIX operating system. It standsfor Practical Extraction ReportLanguage and it basically createsHTML (HyperText MarkupLanguage) web pages ‘on-the-fly’through a program. You need to

know HTML before embarkingon learning PERL, and RISC OScourses in this are available onPaul’s website (though currentlyonly lessons 1 to 3 are complete).Paul’s PERL Lesson 6(!) in theAcademy hand-holds you throughsetting up WebJames and PERL(even though there are no lessons3 to 5), and once this is done, youcan start writing PERL programsstraightaway. I used the humble!Edit to create my PERLprograms, and bought a PC-stylelearning-to-program with PERLbook, skipping the long windedand unnecessarily complexinstallation instructions for thePC Apache server! I did hit aproblem creating a programwithout changing the file type toPERL it didn’t run in WebJamestill I had. I also hit a problemwhen I used the command‘PRINT’ instead of ‘print’ - tookme a while to “twig” thecommand had to be in lowercase!

It was great to be using such awidespread language on myfavourite computer platform.

!Organiser I’ve still got to try tofind time to play with Organizera bit more, and test drive somenew software.....



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Place the 39 letters shown belowinto the grid to make valid words

Answer on page 42


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volvo

The National Motorcycle MuseumSolihullNr Birmingham

Adults £3, Arm Club members £2Children under 14 (with an adult) FREE !

IYONIX

pc.IY

ONI

Xpc

.

Saturday 4th December 2004Doors open 10am - 4.30pm

Windmill Village Hotel

B 4104The Manor Hotel

Balsall Common & Kenilworth

A 452M42

A452

North M42

M6

A452

Junction 6

Junction 4

A446

A452

A45

A452 B4102B4104

B4102

Solihull

Merlden

A45B4102

Nuneaton

Coventry

M6

Birmingham

NEC

N

NationalMotorcycle

Museum

RISC OS

60450National Motorcycle Museum

For further details: Tel. 07010 709 849 - Fax. 07020 954 018 - EMail. [email protected] page: http://www.armclub.org.uk - ftp site: ftp://ftp.armclub.org.uk

A free coach service from Birmingham International rail station to and fromThe National Motorcycle Museum is available.Birmingham International Airport is also only 10 minutes away and you couldcatch the monorail to the train station to use the free bus from there.

or by roadby public transport

IYONIX

pc.IY

ONI

Xpc

.

MIDLANDS RISCOS SHOW2004 2004

RISC OS RISC OS

CASTLE CASTLE

Not sure where to start this one.What can I contribute to computergames? Yes I have played a few,but so has everyone else. Design?Well I could go a bundle on designtechniques but I haven’t knownanyone stick to one. If you arewriting a game alone, you only

need to communicate withyourself. This shouldn’t be toomuch of a problem, (if it is go seea shrink!) If however there are 2 ormore of you, you can end upwriting different games!

Designing games is more of an artform than a science. It is a goodidea to catalogue different ideas,e.g. character descriptions,interface techniques, sound effects,animation sequences depending onthe game. Brainstorming sessions -a free exchange of original ideas isoften a good idea to generatecreative characters and stories.However sessions do need to bekept reasonably focused, withnoone dominating them. Another

good idea is prototyping e.g. asshown in Fig 1. However it maysuffice to plan something out onpaper first however crude,sketches, story plots etc.

The last time I tried to get a teamtogether to write games was a

disaster! One graphics designerwanted to do a ‘beatemup’, anothersuggested a wedding game? Theother programmer suggested thateveryone else do nothing till hewrites a graphics engine. Yetanother graphics designer was askateboarding fiend and suggestedas such. (A week later he sat on topof Mt. Blanc and decided he didn’twant to design games! He laterchanged his mind again and wentto work for Walt Disney )

Thus, this time I will stick to thelogic bit! To clear the air for later Iwill attempt to define a few things,such as what are ‘intelligence’ and‘intelligent behaviour’, but see alsoEureka 46. If you have ever


Winning Games with Logic Part 7


REVIEW

Build Prototype toEstablish Requirements

TechnicalReview

PlanReview

Revise Resources,CostsSchedule & Justify

Revision

DevelopmentBegins

Ok

This commences with a feasibility study of eachviable alternative . The ideas that are deemed viable are then progressed to design & developmentstage . This is purely as an aid to the feasibility study itself . A very simple prototype for eachalternative need only be implemented . For eachone the required resources & cost benefit estimatesare revised . All viable alternatives are thencompared using agreed feasibility criteria .The ones that still seem viable proceed to thetrue game development phase .

Establish Scope,Resources-Costs,feasibility,schedule.

Fig. 1

argued with someone only to findthat there was just one word thatyou disagreed over you’llunderstand! One of the problems the A.Icommunity (who disagree overalmost everything,) has is jargon;having to modify or refine themeaning of words to make themprecise enough to be used as abasis for discussion. Take theword ‘LIFE’ for instance. Beforeyou decide if there is life on Mars,it is best to agree on what life is. Adefinition of life appeared in theALIFE conference notes. It wasfollowed by an article entitled - “IsThe Romantic Novel Alive?” andanother that concluded thathumans beings were not alive, butthe earth’s Biosphere is. This maydisappoint some of you, but thealternative is somewhatsubjective. You may argue -“Humans are alive - coz we haveself consciousness. There isnothing like that on Mars - thusMars is a dead planet.”

The different approaches in A.I.stems from their differentbackgrounds. By the early 1900’sscientists had realised that biologyhad much to teach engineers. Oneof them was the philosopher -scientist Warren McCulloch whoas a freshman at Haverford

College Pennslyvania was quizzedby a Quaker professor. “Warren”the professor asked , “what is theegoing to be?” “I don’t know,” saidMcCulloch. “And what is theegoing to do?” persisted theprofessor.

Still uncertain, McCulloch replied:“I have no idea, but there is onequestion I would like to answer:What is a number, that a man mayknow it, and a man that he mayknow a number?”

“Friend,” said the kindly professorwith a smile, “Thee will be busy aslong as thee lives.”

McCulloch and the mathematicianWalter Pitts in 1942 suggested thatcomputers and the brain mayfunction in similar ways. Neuronsin the brain may be thought of asdevices for manipulating binarynumbers.

This cybernetic (from the Greekword for steersman) or neural-modelling approach to machineintelligence was dubbed the‘bottom up’ approach. The ideabeing to start with simple analogsof primitive creatures containing afew neurons and work up fromthere to the human level orbeyond. The goal was to createdevices that could observe the


environment and apply feedbackto modify their behaviour as itwas believed living organisms did.However at the time the analogywith living organisms was notparticularly useful. WarrenMcCulloch once noted, “If youwant a sweetheart in spring, don’tget an amoeba and wait for it toevolve”. However, I don’t know ifanyone has noticed, butcomputers are a tad faster thesedays and some A.I pioneers e.g.John Koza are attempting to dojust that! For example, in 2000Lipson and Pollack at BrandeisUniversity Massachusetts used acomputer to evolve 200 robotdesigns starting completely fromscratch. Using a simulationprogram, they scored the robots(i.e. used a fitness function, seeEureka 45) by how fast they couldmove across the floor, replacedlow fitness (slow) robot designswith ones of higher fitness, andmutated all the remaining robotsagain. After several hundredgenerations, they then built someof the most successful robots outof moulded plastic. These evolvedrobots that walk like inchworms,crabs, and other real animals, yetlook like nothing on earth!

So what are the requirements forintelligence for a robot or virtualcreature?

Just to get us in the mood I willtell you a story. Once upon a timethere were three brick layingrobots Dumbo, Fatso andEinstein. “Who’s been eating myporridge?” says Dumbo. No that'snot right! well you’ll get the ideafrom Fig. 2. Note - this story has amoral, namely Fig. 3 :- “It ain’twhat you do it’s the way that youdo it”

You may have decided thatintelligent behaviour requiresreasoning. However primitiveanimals have no central nervoussystems but still have a complexbehaviour and are well adapted totheir environment. Thusroboticists decided that initiallytheir robots need to be designedalong the lines of such creatures.OK over to a book :-

“Intelligent behaviour in animalsstems from the costs and benefitsthat accrue to different aspects ofbehaviour. The forces of evolutionby natural selection tend towardsthe behavioural strategy andtactics that will best enable theanimal to adapt to the currentcircumstances. It does not muchmatter how the optimal strategy isachieved. What matters is thebehavioural outcome. This isjudged by evolution in relation tothe particular circumstances


pertaining to each species.Intelligent behaviour is that whichcomes up with the right answer,irrespective of how that answer isarrived at.

If we think otherwise we may findourselves in the ridiculoussituation of judging a poorersolution to a problem to be moreintelligent because it involves


einsteineinstein

dumbo

dumbo

fatso fatso

It is intelligent behaviour of the robot to raise a counterbalance when it picks up thebrick even if it is an automatic response. Intelligent behaviour requires the mechanicalcapacity i.e. to have the counterbalance & the environmental circumstances. Neitherof the other robots can do this however big their onboard computers.

Are you all seated comfortably. No ? Then I will begin. Once upon a time there

falls over when the brick is grasped. Fatso sets out successfully cos it is big, heavy & fat.Fatso is just a heavier Dumbo. Einstein however sets out & uses its free arm as a counterweight

were 3 robots. Dumbo, Fatso & Einstein. They were all set to work moving bricks.( Why, cos its me telling this story) Dumbo sets out but oh dear! disaster , Dumbo

Fig. 2

reasoning, than a better solutionthat does not.” (Ref. 1) Suppose we consider that eachactivity that an animal does has asurvival value to it. Animals areable to allocate priorities toactivities in a general way. Thisproblem can be approached byconsidering a measure of cost toan animal of abstaining from eachactivity in its natural repertoire.For example if an animal did not

feed, the cost would be high, but ifit stopped grooming the cost maybe less so. An animal that desiredto do both, but did not have thetime, (e.g. if predators are near)would sacrifice less in terms offitness, if it spent its time feeding.However the animal’s environmentcan change. Suppose it now takeslonger for the animal to feed, sinceit is now having to obtain foodfrom another food source. Theanimal can :-


I Ain't got no

Body

bomb

To build sandcastles, or not

to build sandcastles that - is the ?

virtue of its effect on the environment.

Only the consequences of intelligent behaviour can be called intelligent by

2)

1) Intelligence requires a body. A computer withno body - that cannot control its environmentis incapable of intelligent behaviour.

3) Intelligent Behaviour requires some judgemenin relation to some criterion of intelligence. In nature, a species must survive. In a computgame we must make some judgement as to whconstitutes intelligent behaviour e.g. winningthe game.

Fig. 3

A) Take the same time feeding andsettle for less food. B) Take more time feeding andthus have less time for otheractivities that must then besquashed into the remaining time. C) Compromise between the two.

Houston and McFarland foundthat the extent to which an animalresists squashing can berepresented using one parameter“RESILIENCE” which ineconomic terms equates to“inelasticity”. In the case when ananimal insists on its normalamount of food, the ‘resilience’ offeeding is relatively high. Feedinghas then ousted the other activitiesfrom the time available. Resilienceaffects the importance of anactivity. During periods when timeis a budget constraint, activitieswith a low resilience will tend tobe ignored. In such times someactivities may disappear from ananimal’s repertoire We may callsuch an activity a luxury one.

But how can such quantities as“motivation”, “fatigue” and“resilience” that we are havingto define in the first place becombined?Now hands up who can count! 1 sausage + 2 sausages = 3

sausages (so far so good!) You can put your hands downnow! 2 apples + 2 oranges = ? 4pieces of fruit ?

You have probably realised bynow that there is somethingmore than mere additioninvolved such as should thequantities be added in the firstplace! Needless to say there ismuch controversy here andwhole PHD’s that can besummarised “ADDEMUP” andothers “*”. So where are we? We are goingto look at action selectionmethods and virtual creatures.To do this we will need to be ableto add etc.

If you can’t, don’t worry. Youraverage pigeon is no Einsteineither, but it still can make basicdecisions.

Meanwhile if you are stuck for atechnique you can Email [email protected].

Ref 1 Intelligent Behaviour inAnimals and Robots, 1994D Mc Farland. T Bosser MIT press -Complex Adaptive Systems


It has been brought to ourattention that most of theMembership Cards in circulation atthe moment have an increasingarray of old and defunctinformation on them, not least theold Freepost address that is nolonger supported/ working.

Therefore we’ve had a new batchprinted. You should find your ownblank card included with this issue

of the magazine. Please fill inyour own name and membershipnumber (from the old card, oraddress label) and cherish in asafe place!

If you’ve lost your membershipnumber, or can’t find an insertedcard, please contact Toby [email protected] orvia the address on the back page.


Learning another language can beextremely useful as well as fun, soin the online information age, Idecided to investigate what freelyavailable resources there would beon the World Wide Web, whichare accessible to our RISC OSbrowsers!

Unilang.com is a fantasticresource for anyone interested inlearning a language. They list freeonline courses in many languages,from Afrikaans to Turkish. Theseare simple, text-based lessons,supported, in some cases, by audiofiles, which again worked finehere. In addition, there arediscussion groups where you canlearn a language as part of a small“class”. Again there is a widechoice of languages here and Idipped into an Esperanto forum tofind that it was still active. Unilangcan be found at

.

As German has always been a bit ofa weak point in my language

repertoire, I thought this would bea good starting point for myresearch. I came across

fairly quickly. (Fig.1) Iwas happy to discover that thesound files used on the site to aidcorrect pronunciation are MP3’s

which played perfectly on mymachine. many of the exercisesalso worked without problem andthe categorised vocabulary lists,with sound files could be useful forthe beginner. Some basic grammarrules are also simply explained onthe site. More complex grammarand further exercises can beaccessed by paying a subscription.It wasn’t all plain sailing though, asmany of the exercises I clicked onjust produced a blank page and Ionly managed to get as far as thebeginnings of the Flash-basedexercises. Also on the site was alink to the very useful German English Dictionary at

I have to say that my Spanish is


Site Seeing: Languages

rather better than my German,and I was curious when I cameupon businessspanish.com(fig.2) The site’s name is rathermisleading as the informationhere could easily be used byanyone learning the language.There are daily ‘lessons’, verband vocabulary lists, dialoguesand a grammar section, as wellas a very useful travel Spanishsection included in this free

online course. One section I triedout was the one based ondialogues. Each part of thedialogue had an audio file (MP3again) so that you could repeatthe sentence. This was followedby comprehension exercisesusing new vocabulary. Clickingon verbs in the daily verb listsbrings up a page showing theconjugation of that verb in everytense. Impressive stuff!


Fig. 1

Taking a slightly different angle isWebspañol, (fig.3) which has anumber of Spanish languageresources, including a Spanishtest, idioms, riddles and an audiopronunciation guide. This really

useful site can be found at

I thought that finding a site tolearn French would be relatively


Fig. 2


Fig. 3

Fig. 4

easy, but the first two sites Ivisited proved to be disappointing.The sound files on “Fast andFriendly French for Fun” wouldn’twork (the links to WAV versions ofthe files lead nowhere!) and

was a rather dry, butnevertheless comprehensive, textonly site. That’s fine if all youwant is an online book, but bynow I was getting used to sitesthat provided at least just a bitmore than that, in the form ofaudio pronunciation guides.Eventually I found what I waslooking for; a good beginner’s sitewith audio files at

(Fig. 4).

Encouraging their readers to“think different” is the LearnDutch site at

(Fig. 5). Here you learn thelanguage working your waythrough lessons based in thefictitious ‘Crossroads Café’.“Crossroads Café is de juisteplaats om Nederlands te leren”!Using pictures with speechbubbles, you can click on theDutch version to hear it spokenand also reveal the translation inthe picture alongside .

OK, so what if even Dutch isn’tdifferent enough for you? Whatabout Latvian? “Learning LatvianOn-line” (Fig. 6) will lead you


Fig.5

through the first simple steps tolearning Latvian, althougheventually, if you want to writethe language on your computeryou may run into problems withfonts that display the Latviancharacter set. The first part of thecourse is very straightforwardthough and every part of it workson my Risc PC, except the ‘active’

crossword, which requiresInternet Explorer, but theyhave thoughtfully added a PDFfile of this resource to downloadand print out. So if you want toadd a few words of Latvian toyour knowledge of foreignlanguages, head for

.


Fig. 6


©

B Z L

M P E

O E S

B Y U I P X

C U B S L AF

S H A R M SO

E T A

S E K

Y R S

E EI E O

A LB P S

Y RL

A O I EU O M N O Y E

R M U FK T R E E K

C W O U P

X RS W N

P AA A H

A D

L

This is the first ARM Arenacolumn under our new EditorAndrew Wyver and I hope thiscolumn will be able to announceat least as many developmentsduring Andrew’s time here as itdid under Peter Jenning'sstewardship.

Some interesting developmentsfrom Wakefield included thecommitment to on goingdevelopment of RISC OS 5 andthe expansion of its hardwareand also news of the Omegafrom Microdigital and the latestenhancements to RISC OS 4 inthe form of RISC OSSelect/Adjust.

The relevance to games playersis that with all this activity inthe market it can onlyencourage any potential gamesauthors or converters to trytheir hand on the latest RISC OStechnology. Indeed there is at

least one development thismonth that the arrival of theIyonix has made possible.Future possibilities includeRISC OS Select on the Omegawith faster XScale processors ifMicrodigital (the Omega’sdevelopers) can sort out their

ARMTwister technology that isintended to permit 26bit code(e.g. RISC OS 4/Select) to runon the latest fully 32bit ARM-based processors. This wouldpotentially bring the benefits offull support for RISC OS4-compatible games and thegreater speed to support futuregames-related software releasedfor RISC OS.

On with the news...

As reported last month the UnixPorting Project has released a


ARM Arena

conversion of the Linux PCemulator, DOSbox. This isintended to emulate PCs fromthe 286/386 chip era which is,roughly-speaking, around theearly 1990s. The arrival of thisprogram opens up a wide rangeof games titles which are listedon the DOSbox web-page(http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/comp_list.php?letter=a). As usualwith the Unix Porting Project,support is only available tosubscribers to the scheme so, forexample, any requests forupdates made to the Linuxversion of DOSbox to be portedto the RISC OS version couldonly be addressed to thedevelopers through the channelsas a subscriber.

It should be noted however that,despite there being controls tooptimise the running speed,DOSbox is only really suitablefor the Iyonix. On the otherhand, without the Iyonix thisconversion may well have notbeen embarked upon. One finalpoint of interest to RISC OSusers is that the sequel to theclassic 8-bit BBC Micro gameElite, Elite 2: Frontier, whichwas never converted for Acornmachines is compatible withDOSbox and can bedownloaded as shareware from

http://www.eliteclub.co.uk .

Aemulor is the applicationdesigned to allow code writtenfor 26bit ARM chips (i.e. allthose on RISC OS machinesbefore the Iyonix) to run on theIyonix. It has just received anoverhaul and the new version,Aemulor Pro incorporatessupport for many features ofolder RISC OS machines thatwere lacking in Aemulor. Thisgoes beyond full sound supportbut also includes features suchas support for low-colourscreenmodes, support for theold-style video and memoryhandling chips that some gamesaccessed directly and evensupport for the ARM 3processor. This signifies abroadening of objectives for thedevelopment team aiming toaccount for programs written asat least as far back as 1991 aswell as enable more recentsoftware that perhaps wasdeveloped for RISC OS 4 but hasnot been converted for theIyonix to run. Thus, amongstthe most notable beneficiaries ofthis widening of remit includethe games-players!

A full list of compatible


software, including games isavailable on the Aemulorwebsite. At the point of writing,the developers are working onsupport for screen resolutionsand monitor refresh rates thatare no longer found on modernmonitor models. Aemulor Procosts £99 for new users and £49as an upgrade for owners ofAemulor. It can be orderedfrom the website or from yourusual Acorn/RISC OS dealer.

One difference betweenAemulor and A310em(discussed in detail in lastmonth’s column) is thatA310em aims to provide as fullan emulation of the wholemachine as possible rather thanprioritize on allowing old codeto run. This, in the long run,might be of more benefit tothose who want to play gamesfrom the launch of theArchimedes to the early 1990s(or later games with backwardscompatibility built-in) asA310em is intended to supportas far as is practical theidiosyncratic features of thesemachines. As an example, thedeveloper of A310em, Jan deBoer, recently provided supportfor the old 4th Dimension spacegame, Black Angel, which usesa copy-protection mechanism by

virtue of a ‘hidden’ track on oneof the game’s floppy discs. Byenabling A310em’s disc readingemulation to take account ofthis, Jan extended the accuracyof the program.

It will be interesting to chart theprogress of both programs interms of their success inrunning older games whilstbearing in mind the differentobjectives of each package.

Last month, this columnbrought news that the range ofgames owned by the successorto the Eclipse brand had beenreclassified as freeware andwere to be released to downloadfrom Acorn Arcade in duecourse. Most of these gameswere written by Tom ‘Berty’Cooper who was a one manworkhorse in the early 1990sand the 3D walkabout gameDarkwood has just been madeavailable.

Darkwood is a mix of problemsolving and exploration whichalternates between 3Dlandscapes and room-to-roommovement. The game made useof the enhanced graphicscapabilities of the RiscPC whilst


maintaining compatibility witholder machines. The objective isto communicate with other gamecharacters to discover theemerging story of the game andthe quest the player has to make.Much of the dialogue is quitewitty and in-depth and the thebackground scenery detailed andhigh quality. The story doesn'tbecome clear initially and it isnecessary to perform a fewhelpful tasks in your local villagefirst merely to get the hang ofthe game and to set things up forlater on.

The game is now supposed to becompatible with all machinesfrom RISC OS 2 to Selectalthough there is a bug whichcauses the game to crash whenfiring indoors under RISC OSSelect. The only solution I couldfind was to save the game andtransfer the saved-game file intoA310em in which I hadpreviously installed the game.On moving outdoors again Itransferred a saved-game file outto the desktop again to play thegame under Select. It is a shamethis bug couldn't be ironed-outas, apart from theinconvenience, several of thegraphics options have to be de-selected to get the game to runat a reasonable speed under

A310em (as presumably theywould on older machines). Theother downsides to the game arethat some of the controls have tobe worked out and some of thecharacters are poorly drawn. Thelatter is minor however andcould even be regarded as one ofthe quirks of the game.

On the whole though,Darkwood really pushedgaming forward for RISC OSand being freely available is abonus for all RISC OS gamers(indeed the game is reported torun under Aemulor Pro).

Other Berty games have beenuploaded to Acorn Arcade forconvenience of locating them.These are: Lemmings, theLemmings variant and Son ofGyrinus, a platformer. Bothgames have high quality andvaried Tracker-style musiccharacteristic of early Bertygames and much depth. IndeedTracker music has a greatnostalgia feel and did progressmuch further than the RISC OSTracker-creation programmescatered for. It would be nice tosee this extremely efficient andcompact music form return tothe RISC OS scene. FurtherEclipse and Tom Cooper releasesare being worked on or sought


as I write. Keep ’em peeled!

A new magazine designed tocapitalise on the current interest inretro-gaming is currently being soldat newsagents up and down thecounty. Named Retrogamer, issue 3was an Acorn special whichmentions Acorn machines up untilthe RiscPC. Hopefully this isindicative of some of the gameswhich they will seek to re-release oncover-discs for example. The

Acorn-special issue featured a CDfull of games from the publisherGremlin (whose copyright is nowowned by a successor company) ofwhich three were BBC Micro titles.RISC OS emulators exists for manyof the other platforms covered alsoon the CD so this magazine shouldbe good value all round. The issuealso includes a description of themost popular Acorn series of gamesever, Repton written by RISC OSLtd’s Richard Hallas. Could therehave been an Acorn special withoutRepton?


DOSboxUnix Porting Project email: [email protected]:

AemulorWebsite: Compatibility:

A310emWebsite: 4th DimensionTelephone: 01903 523222Website:

Acorn Arcade downloads

RetrogamerTelephone: 01625 855086Website:


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On the CD you get:

Midlands


I have discovered, when clearing out some old files, that mymachine has written another bit of verse. It has not been too

well recently and seems to be feeling its age. Please find belowa copy - it might be of some interest to readers.

Another poetic masterpiece from Alan Wickham’s amazing mechanical RISC OS wizard


Alan Wickham’s RiscPC


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