The latest RISC OS chat brought to you in glorious cut-n-paste-o-vision.
 
In this week's episode:

• Whatever happened to VA for Mac?
• Should developers join forces?
• A7000 puts you on hold
• Acorn Computers admit their past

 

Or: we read the newsgroups so you don't have to.
 
In this new, hopefully regular, column we collate the interesting, informative and funny comments posted on all the RISC OS web sites and newsgroups throughout the week. Our telescreens are everywhere, and we are always listening.
 
 

A couple of months have passed since the Wii was released in Europe. Even with some smashing launch games, such as Wii Sports, Twilight Princess and Rayman Raving Rabbids, the innovative 'channels' interface fell a little short of expectations beyond the Miis and Wii Shop. Nintendo's promise was of new channels designed to appeal to traditionally non-game playing family members, and to give everybody a compelling reason to regularly turn on the machine. Those channels have arrived - the most recent (and strange) appeared out of the blue earlier this week. Here's my review.
 

Another of Acorn's co-founders has been honoured in the New Year's Honours list. Andrew Hopper is now a Commander of the British Empire. Herman Hauser received an honourary CBE in 2002.
 
The BBC reports:

In 1978 along with Hermann Hauser, Prof Hopper founded Acorn Computers that went on to make machines which proved very popular in the UK.
 
It was behind the Acorn Electron and Archimedes machines and also built the fondly remembered BBC Micro. The machines found wide usage in the 1980s and early 1990s. Acorn was broken up in 2000.
 
One of the most influential subsidiaries that grew out of Acorn was Advanced RISC Machines which is now known as ARM. The chip designs of this firm are found in enormous numbers of portable gadgets - particularly mobile phones.

Hopper specialised in networking - he worked on the creation of the Cambridge Ring, a rival to Ethernet, became director of an industrial research lab at Olivetti and later AT&T, and formed RealVNC to develop remote control software. The Acornsoft game "Hopper" was named after him.
 
Links
BBC news article
Andy Hopper in New Scientist
Andy Hopper in Wikipedia
Herman Hauser honoured
 

RISCOS Ltd have today announced RISC OS Six on the Glasgow leg of their northern road show.
 
RISC OS Six is built from a completely 26 bit / 32 bit neutral source, and the move away from the RISC OS 4 brand is because "RISC OS 4 has always been linked with 26 bit computers". The name RISC OS Six is also said to have been chosen due to links with Advantage Six. ROL "hope that everyone will soon see the advantages of RISC OS 6."
 
A preview version will soon be available for as a softload for existing Select subscribers, and also for those who last subscribed to the Select scheme after May 31st 2004.
 
Link: RISC OS Six
 

RISC OS Open have been in touch to reveal a new shared source inititive in partnership with Castle Technology.
 
From the press release:

Castle Technology and RISC OS Open Ltd (ROOL) are pleased to announce plans for the opening-up of RISC OS source code. This step is a further major landmark in the development of the highly respected software platform. A primary objective is to bring RISC OS software to a wider community and to encourage growth in both the RISC OS user base and the developer community. This will be augmented by more rapid development of the software base and removal of critical barriers to use, normally associated with proprietary platforms.

Shared source will allow controlled access to a limited amount of the RISC OS source code. The release of the code will be phased, with phase one containing

• The RISC OS build environment
• The Shared C Library
• The main disc-based applications (!Paint, !Edit, !Draw, etc)
• Other disc-based applications (!Boot, !System, !Scrap, !Unicode, !Configure)
• Browse (otherwise known as Phoenix), WebServe and related Fetcher modules
• The USB Printer Manager, printer drivers and printer dumper modules
• The configuration plug-ins
• Some screen savers
• Other modules which are handy for developers

Read more on the ROOL website.
 

Apart from my Dad adding another year to the tally, here's a rundown of what's happenin' this weekend: "RISC OS Now" magazine launching; R-Comp's new RISCube MINI; some quickies.
 
RISC OS Now
Louie Smith is launching a new magazine (in the preferred dead tree format), with the dual aims of appealing to the existing user/programmer base and attracting new blood.
 
To this end, contributers are sought, and cash money may be on offer:

I'm looking for anyone able to write articles and reviews aimed at experts and beginners alike. I am interested in articles about existing software and new releases. Also, if anyone is interested in writing a regular column please contact me.

Expected to cost £4.20 per issue, or £29.95 for the annual subscription, this may or may not hit a WH Smiths near you soon. It'd be nice to see something hit the shelves again to fill the AU-shaped hole, if Smiths can be persuaded.
 
Source: Usenet posting
 
RISCube MINI
The specs seem a little fluid at the mo, but R-Comp are about to release a "stunning new computer" that's "the size of a medium-sized hardback book - it'll even fit into a briefcase."
 
A dual core, 512MB, 80GB HDD, CD writing, card reading, DVI/VGA/TV outputting and wired/wireless networking model is the base, with Windows XP Home and RISC OS 4 or Adjust; but cheaper (single core) or beefier (e.g. 1GB/200GB/DVD writer/XP Pro) models will be available.
 
Price inc. VAT is expected to be around 999 of your earth pounds, more info at the RISCube website.
 
Source: press release
 
Quickies

• RISC OS ELF GCC with shared library support
• Richard's RISC OS Site updated - ArtWorks and Photography. And no name-fillage in his !HTML3 config
• You can add new or updated software to our database, and they'll appear not only on the front page, but also in our new RSS feeds. Spam should also be kept out due to added security.