It's seemingly mostly doom and gloom these days in the increasingly small world of RISC OS, with the glaring deficiencies in the platform still unresolved and the latest releases from the OS developers having received an underwhelming response. However, it's always easier to concentrate on the dark side, and possible to overlook the fact that there's nice stuff happening too. So I thought I'd highlight a few of those developments here in this article.
 
Now, before anything else, I should make clear that this is *not* an attempt at advocacy: I'm not trying to argue that RISC OS is in a good state, and certainly not that users of other OSes should switch over (or back). All I'm aiming to do is talk about some areas where RISC OS seems to me to be getting a bit better. And there are more of these than might be obvious, at least if reading Usenet is your guide to the health of the platform.
 

In this article we look at some of the programs and projects - some obvious, others less so - that influenced the history of the RISC OS platform and its users. These are our suggestions, not a top ten and certainly not in any particular order. What other applications would you add to the list?
 

A chart showing which languages make programmers feel superior to other programmers. Where would you put BBC Basic?
 
PDF: The Programmer Hierarchy (via daringfireball)
 

Each week we hold up a mirror to the people of RISC OS and reflect the current topics of debate.
 
In this, the third exciting installment:

• Demo versions of software
• BBC iPlayer protests won't aid RISC OS
• Another user says goodbye

 

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

 

In my opinion, the Draw module is one of the most significant and useful components of RISC OS. For the uninitiated, it provides a set of routines for calculating, transforming and rendering lines, polygons, bezier curves, sprites, and text. The Draw application has been bundled with every version of RISC OS and the draw file format is a defacto standard for almost every RISC OS application that incorporates graphics in some way.
 
Aside from the obvious applications such as word processing, desktop publishing, and so on, many other programs use Draw files in quite unique ways. As an example, the sound editing program Sonor can export sound waves in Draw format.
 
In this article I hope to demonstrate some of the flexibility that Draw and the RISC OS desktop can provide.
 

Like many readers of The Icon Bar, I started off computing with a BBC Micro. In 1991, I upgraded to an Acorn A3000, which was great because unlike Windows 3.0, you could print to a dot matrix printer and the printout would be just as it appeared on the screen. Then in 1994 I got a Risc PC, shortly after taking up the freelance role of Business Editor of Acorn User which I did for just over a year.
 

The Paul Vigay has written an article on his website detailing why he will never abandon RISC OS... ever.
 
From the article:

Most people know my views on RISC OS and also on other, lesser operating systems - so why did I feel inspired to write this short article and share my views with people? Partly in response to an article on The Icon Bar and partly because there are a number of (IMHO) rather ignorant, yet arrogant, PC users inhabiting some of the comp.sys.acorn.* newsgroups who love to complain about RISC OS and prosthetalize about how good PC applications are to their RISC OS counterparts - usually without the skill set or experience to make a valid judgement. I'm all for argument, but when people argue through ignorance or though blinkers, I feel like shouting "Oi! No!" in their faces, but instead I'll settle for writing this article.

Are you in Paul's camp? If the ship went down, would you go with it?
 
Update: Well, The Vigay received quite a slapping on OSNews, it seems. He's written a follow-up article and published it this evening. OK, that's the update. You can continue slapping now.
 
Links:
- The original article
- Follow-up article