"David Holden RIP

15/05/15 - RISCWorld applications now available

We would like to send our thanks to those people who reported a few small faults with the website over the weekend.

We have fixed the missing downloads for the free RISCWorld applications and fixed a couple of small errors with the software download system. We have also dealt with some missing files in the main index of the Public Domain Library.

Aaron Timbrell

15/05/15 - The new APDL website: iSV Products

The sudden death of APDL's David Holden last year has left a big hole in the RISC OS world. Over the years APDL had expanded and purchased rights to hundred's of RISC OS applications. With Dave's death the entire APDL operation just stopped.

The new APDL
Last year David Bradforth and Aaron Timbrell set up a new APDL website, available at:

http://www.apdl.org.uk

with the aim of preserving as much of APDL as possible. The first step was to make the complete RISCWorld article archive available as the original APDL site had closed.

The second step was to make the APDL PD library available as it contained 1000's of RISC OS applications which we wanted to preserve. It's taken a while but now we come to the third step,the APDL software catalogue.

APDL software
Over the years David Holden obtained rights to a great many commercial software packages, many of these titles would have vanished otherwise. Beebug, Clares, Fourth Dimension, iSV Products, ProAction and many other names became a part of APDL. David didn't just buy in products, he continued to develop them. He added new features, fixed bugs and converted older applications to run on newer versions of RISC OS. A good deal of the commercial 32bit RISC OS software owed its existence to David.

What's happened to APDL's software?
With the help and support of David's family we have recently recovered all of the APDL development machines. This has allowed us to secure the source code to the entire APDL software catalogue.

So what's happening?
The plan is to make all of the APDL software titles available free of charge to single users. To start with the iSV Products section of the APDL site is now open and all of the iSV applications are now available for download.

A quick history of iSV Products
iSV Products was founded in 1994 by Aaron Timbrell from The Electronic Font Foundry (EFF). Over the nest 7 years iSV released a number of applications including the DrawWorks series and the FontFiend font editor. In 2001 APDL took over the sales, distribution and development as Aaron wanted to concentrate on setting up VirtualAcorn.

When we decided to set up the new APDL site it made sense to look at iSV Products as the first 'commercial' section because we were fairly familiar with the applications concerned. What we didn't have until recently was the later APDL versions of the source code.

Some older applications are only suitable for 26bit machines but APDL did convert some titles to 32bit. So where possible it's the 32bit versions that are available as these should run on all RISC OS devices.

We will be making further announcements when the next section of the apdl.org.uk website opens. In the meantime please take a look at the APDL FAQ page as this should answer most questions.

David Bradforth and Aaron Timbrell

24/07/14 - The new APDL website: The APDL PD Library

Myself and David Bradforth are delighted to announce that the much missed APDL PD Library is once more up and running and can now be found at:

http://www.apdl.org.uk

About the APDL PD Library
David Holden founded APDL in the late 1980s as a library for freeware RISC OS applications. Originally the library was supplied on floppy discs. In the mid 1990s APDL launched a set of 3 CDs which comprised the whole of the library. In 2008 David Holden decided that he was going to make the whole library available free or charge via the APDL website. His recent death meant that the future of the library was under some doubt. So we are pleased to announce that it has a new permanent home.

About www.apdl.org.uk
The internet is ephemeral and too often a person's work vanishes after they have gone. As Dave Holden's friends we don't want this to happen to his work. So we are going to catalogue and preserve as much of APDL and David Holden's work as is possible.

We aren't doing this for financial reasons and so the project will have to be fitted around our regular work. Because of this we have not got defined timescales, we will just keep working until the job is done.

We would both like to thank Dave Holden's family for their continued help and support.

Aaron Timbrell and David Bradforth

18/07/14 - The new APDL website: RISCWorld Archive

David Bradforth and I are pleased to say that the RISCWorld magazine section of www.apdl.org.uk has now gone live.

About RISCWorld
RISCWorld was published bi-monthly for 9 years. All of the 55 issues are now available free of charge, making a total of well over 1100 articles. RISCWorld also serialised a number of RISC OS reference books and these are included. As part of the preservation process a number of fixes and improvements have been made to the RISCWorld archive for example to remove bad links. We hope that further sections of the www.apdl.org.uk archive will go live over the next few weeks. Visitors can easily see which projects are being worked on and the status of each from the apdl home page.

About www.apdl.org.uk
The internet is ephemeral and too often a person's work vanishes after they have gone. As Dave Holden's friends we don't want this to happen to his work. So we are going to catalogue and preserve as much of APDL and David Holden's work as is possible.

We would both like to thank Dave Holden's family for their continued help and support.

Aaron Timbrell and David Bradforth

This Web site was hand coded by the Friends of David Holden.
All contents are © The estate of David Holden and/or Aaron Timbrell & David Bradforth 2014
Graphics constructed using DrawWorks Millennium
Last updated 18/05/15