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RISC World

PD World

Paul Brett with the latest freeware and PD releases for RISC OS.

I'm back from my summer break and am delighted to see that development of RISC OS freeware and shareware continues at quite a pace. So what new programming wonders have we to tempt you with this issue?

SampleED - Really Small Software Company

The SampleEd application allows you to create, edit and play back sound samples. The main features are:

  • Load and save samples in a variety of different formats.
  • Disk based editing not limited by available memory.
  • Apply a variety of affects to samples including fades, echoes and loops.
  • Supports the LADSPA plugin protocol for effects.
  • Uses PlayIt to play back on a variety of different sound hardware.

In case you were wondering LADSPA stands for Linux Audio developer's Simple Plugin API and provides a mechanism to add new effects or tools to SampleEd. These can of course be used on other applications that support the LADSPA protocol. More details can be found at www.ladspa.org.

SampleEd should run on any RISC OS 3+ machine with 4MB of memory. It does require the Toolbox modules and a 32bit version of the Shared C Library so this might push requirements up somewhat. Any processor should do although obviously an ARM2 will be very slow and a StrongARM is best.


SampleED

Memphis - Open Source

Memphis 3 is a fully-featured, dynamically resizing RAM-based filing system for RISC OS 3.5+. Its main features are:

  • No limit to size of disc (memory permitting).
  • Uses a Dynamic Area to store files, which automatically grows and shrinks as files are added/deleted.
  • Filenames can be up to 63 characters in length.
  • Provides an icon on the icon bar like the RamFS Filer.
  • Icon bar has configuration window, with options saved in 'Choices'.
  • Files can be saved directly to the iconbar icon from applications.
  • The disc can be saved (as a spritefile) upon quit, and automatically reloaded when Memphis is next used.
  • Disc can be used as a scrap device.
  • Memphis can be set to imitate the built-in RamFS, so programs that write to RAM::RamDisc0.$' will save to Memphis instead.
  • A single module 'MemFS' provides the low-level filing system support and desktop front-end.

Memphis 3 requires a RISC OS computer running 3.5 or later. It has been tested successfully on Select, Iyonix and VirtualRPC. The module is fully 32 bit clean, but since it is linked with StubsG it does NOT require the 32 bit Shared C Library to be loaded on non-Iyonix machines.


Memphis

SpamSpamp - Jan-Jaap

SpamStamp is a program that attempts to detect if an incoming mail is spam or not. Some headers are added to the mail with the result of that check. Your mail client can then decide what to do with the spam. New features for this version include:

  • Contains installation instructions for Hermes.
  • Contains installation instructions for AntiSpam/Pluto.
  • French resources (Thanks to Jérôme Mathevet).
  • New option to start caching the hashfile on start-up of the frontend.
  • Experimental support for rnews files.
  • Bugfixes...

Deciding whether mail is spam or not is being done by bayesian filtering techniques see www.paulgraham.com/spam.html. This means that you do not need to set up all kinds of rules, but the system figures it out by itself. It does this because every time it makes a mistake, you tell it that it took a wrong decision. This then increases SpamStamp's ability to detect spam.


SpamStamp

Fade - The Really Small Software Company

The Fade application allows you to create, edit and display a simple slideshow. The main features are:

  • Various different picture to picture fades are available
  • Uses ChangeFSI so a wide range of image formats are supported
  • Slideshows run in any 8,16 or 32 bit screen mode

Fade should run on any RISC OS 3+ machine with 2Mb of memory. It does require the Toolbox modules so this might push requirements up somewhat. Any processor should do although obviously an ARM2 will be very slow and a StrongARM is best for some of the fades.


Fade

Sunfish - Alex Waugh

Sunfish allows you to connect to NFS shares on other machines over a network. Sunfish requires a working network connection and an NFS server to connect to. The server should be running version 2 of the NFS protocol, version 1 of the Mount protocol, version 2 of the portmapper protocol, and optionally version 2 of the pcnfsd protocol. It has currently only been tested with the Linux kernel server present in Debian Woody, but it should work with other servers. Both UDP and TCP connections are supported.

Sunfish should run on any version of RISC OS from 3.11 onwards. It has been reported to work on RISC OS 3.7, RISC OS 4 (including under Virtual RPC), Select, and RISC OS 5. It is 26/32bit neutral.

Sunfish has been reported to work with the Linux 2.4 kernel server in various distributions, a Solaris 7/8 server, the TrueGrid NFS server on Windows, and Netware 6.5SP1a. It partially works with Allegro NFSd 1.1.4 on Windows, but a bug in that version of the server can cause file not found errors when copying files onto the server.

You may wish to refer to Allan Curtis' notes on setting up a Linux NFS server, or the Drobe article on setting up the TrueGrid server for use with Sunfish.

Any updates will be available from http://www.alexwaugh.com/.


SunFish

TTF2f - J.M. Bell

TTF2f is a font converter designed to convert fonts supported by FreeType2 to RISC OS format fonts suitable for use with the Unicode Font Manager.

In order to convert a font, follow the following process:

  • Run the application and open the main window.
  • Drag the source font file to the window - the file path will appear in the Converting display field.
  • Choose a RISC OS font name for the font and enter it into the Fontname writable field.
  • Choose a base encoding number (default = 99). See the manual for details of why this is necessary.
  • Select the location to save the output font from the drop down menu (this is comprised of all the entries in your current Font$Path).
  • Click convert and wait for conversion to complete.
  • Copy the /BaseNN file into Font:Encodings (You may have to create this directory first).


TTF2f

ViewXLS - Anton Reiser

Finally before I go there has been an update to a RISCWorld favourite, ViewXLS. The new version now has an option to save a spreadsheet as a drawfile. For those that don't know ViewXLS is a file viewer for spreadsheets created by Microsoft Excel, and for those that use PCs on a daily basis it's an absolutely essential application.

That is all we have time for this issue, see you in January.

Paul Brett

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