HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: DWallin@acorn.co.uk (Dick Wallin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: Acorn Share Price
Date: 29 Sep 92 14:08:53 GMT
Organization: Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge, England

In article <7465@armltd.uucp> dseal@armltd.co.uk (David Seal) writes:

>In article <Bv9LpG.xC@ibmpcug.co.uk> gtoal@ibmpcug.co.uk (Graham Toal) writes:

[Stuff deleted]

>So Acorn still have a financial interest in sales of the ARM chips - it's
>just not as direct or as large an interest as it was originally.

It certainly isn't as direct, but it is much larger than it would have been
if Acorn had retained the full rights. This is because without ARM Ltd being
independent, Apple wouldn't have been interested (if I've read the press
releases correctly!)                                    

6/13 of a big pie (sic) is lots more than 13/13 of a little one!

Dick Wallin
From: smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: RISC OS 3 Upgrade Availability
Date: 26 Sep 92 16:41:44 GMT
Organization: Nottingham University

Norwich Computer Services (publisher of Archive magazine) has over 1000 
RISC OS 3.1 upgrade packs on order. Paul Beverley (the boss) has said on
Arcade BBS that the has only received 50 packs from Acorn. He ordered
250 packs for the A5000, and hasn't received any.

Strange!

Simon B.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: The ARM Club
From: Gavin.Flower@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Gavin Flower)
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 21:37:35 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Victoria Uni. of Wellington, New Zealand.

In article <BvEoDy.3C2@newcastle.ac.uk> Oliver.Cornes@newcastle.ac.uk (Ollie W Cornes) writes:
>I came across this in Eureka, the magazine for the ARM Club...
>
>"It is generally accepted that C is the language to use if you intend to
>write a serious application of any complexity"
>
>Not meaning to pick too many holes or anything, but the two main
>'Serious applications of any complexity' on the Arc, namely Impression
>and ArtWorks are both written entirely in Assembler.

They did say "generally accepted".

Also, how well do you think these two packages could be adapted to
take into acount the features of the newer ARM chips?  How will they
cope with using the 32 bit address mode?  Not to mention some of the
newer instructions that could well speed up or enable new features.

Also, how easily can they incorporate compliance to new features of
the operating system?

These are just some of the motivations for using "C" for "'Serious
applications of any complexity' on the Arc".


Gavin
-- 
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Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
From: jkh@esel.lotus.com (Jordan K Hubbard)
Subject: Re: Computer Shopper Magazine (UK)
Organization: Lotus Ireland
Date: 1 Oct 92 14:14:59

	He forgets that the A5000 can take a floating point unit and a second
	IDE drive.

What floating point unit?
From: bmccnnll@unix1.tcd.ie (Barry McConnell)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: Acorn Advertising
Date: 28 Sep 92 09:28:06 GMT
Organization: Trinity College, Dublin

In <1992Sep27.161452.11207@cs.nott.ac.uk> smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows) writes:

>Wonders will never cease! Acorn has placed adverts in numerous computer
>magazines recently, but the most amazing I've heard of is a full page
>advert for the A3010 in a dedicated Amiga magazine (CU Amiga).

Eeek! That's almost as bad as NeXT placing an ad in some Mac magazine
a few months back... (Very sneaky: the ad talked about Apple's plans
for the next-generation OS (Pink/Taligent), and what it could do, and made
it out to be really impressive-sounding, and then finished with the phrase:
"They have just described a NeXT." :-)

>Simon B.

Barry.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: The ARM Club
From: jwil1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (TMOTA)
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 00:59:42 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept. University of Auckland

banksie@khantazi.welly.gen.nz (Philip R. Banks) writes:

>                                Remember for C to take advantage of these
>new features the compiler has to be updated to cope with them. Somebody out
>there has to sweat blood to make it possible. The difference is that the
>application writer does the sweating rather then the compiler writer.

Yes. So I suppose the question we should ask John is
  "Is it better to make ONE developer update ONE program (the compiler) or
   have Tens/Hunreds/Thousands of developers update Hundreds/Thousands
   of applications?"
Which do YOU think takes more man-hours?

>   As easily as C. Indeed I would argue it is *easier* in assembler to
>interface cleanly with the OS. Especially in ARM code where relocatability
>and interfacing with the OS has been made very easy. No need for the
>'hackiness' of C where quite often clumsy veneers are layered over the SWI
>interfaces to code.

But both languages can call SWI. And so long as they both supply the same
values in the same registers, there is very little difference. Of course,
there are some operations that are faster/easier/more comfortable/smaller
in each language. Finding the best mix/compromise seems logical...
-- 
_________________  "I'd like to answer this question in two ways:
  /____ _ _/_ __       First in my normal voice, and then
 // / //_//_ /_/       in a silly, high-pitched whine." (Monty Python)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
From: arc@Ingres.COM (Andy Cowling)
Subject: Re: Risc OS 3.1 supplies
In-reply-to: smb@cs.nott.ac.uk's message of 6 Oct 92 09:32:02 GMT
Organization: Ingres, an ASK Company
Date: 6 Oct 92 12:29:16 GMT


>> On 6 Oct 92 09:32:02 GMT, smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows) said:

  Simon> Paul Beverley (the boss of NCS) has been busy posting
  Simon> messages on certain bulletin boards (not just Archive's,
  Simon> which seems almost dead) criticising Acorn for the lack of
  Simon> supplies, and saying "Oh, why me?". He also asks that people
  Simon> do not attempt to contact NCS, since they are getting
  Simon> approximately one phone call every six minutes asking where
  Simon> the upgrades have got to. In other words, NCS hasn't even
  Simon> acknowledged orders received.

I am one of the unfortunates who ordered RISC-OS 3.10 from Archive. I
ordered almost immediately after it was announced and am still
waiting. However Paul Beverley warned from the outset that there may
be a delay in supplying upgrades and that cheques wouldn't be cashed
until it was available. So it's a bit unfair to say they "haven't
acknowledged orders received". Having said all that, I'm getting close
to cancelling and gettting my upgrade from elsewhere. Anyone know if
Atomwide have any in stock ?

I've used Archive in past and enjoyed excellent service and unlike
Beebug, they are capable of sending goods to a different address from
that on their subscription DB and can produce a receipt (both of which
seem beyond the wit of Beebug). And as for Watford....


--
Andy Cowling (arc@ingres.com)
Ingres Ltd, (Emerging Products Group), 15-19 Britten St, London SW3 3TY
From: pb@cl.cam.ac.uk (Piete Brooks)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: Acorn Share Price
Date: 27 Sep 92 21:23:04 GMT
Reply-To: nbvs@cl.cam.ac.uk (Nicko van Someren)
Organization: U of Cambridge Comp Lab, UK

71s
In article <1992Sep27.161957.11348@cs.nott.ac.uk> smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows) writes:
>
>The quoted price of Acorn shares has soared this year, from only 6 pence
>to over 40 pence.
>
>Nobody seems to have given a sensible explanation for this in public. Whenever
>I have asked questions about this, I've either been given blank looks, or else
>been told that the reasons are confidential at present.
>
>Does this sound like insider-trading? If so, it is illegal!
From: nbvs@cl.cam.ac.uk (Nicko van Someren)
It is not very common but none the less public knowledge that the reason
that Acorn shares droped from their pretty stable 16-18 pance down to
6p earlier this year because Chris Curry sold alot of his shares to put
the money into Cambridge Cable.  It was natural that the price should come
up again from there as 6p ment the company capitalisation was only about
3 or 4 milion pounds - much less than their real estate let alone their
assest are worth.  A number of people I know saw the price so low, saw the
large sales recently had been the reason and bought with the intention of
selling when they hit 16p.  The price dewly went up and were still rising
when Acorn released some rather good results (small profit, big improvment
in current account level).  With this upward momentum and the good result
behind them the Acorn shares kept on the up from about 16 to about 29p
and then Acorn started to release information about the new computers to
various ISVs, journalists etc.  At this point the prices took another step
up which I am inclined to belive was as a result of some rather boarder line
buying wrt. the insider trading rules by those who had been to the press
launches - who knows.  As a result the Acorn price is now up around the
40p mark.  To be fair this is infact a very reasonable price considering
Acorn's trading position - the education market has not been hit by the
slump that is hitting Atari and Amiga markets and their new line of
products are very good.

In short Acorn shares were low because someone sold alot for no reason
to do with Acorn.  They are now higher but I don't think they are now high
in absolute terms and they stand a good chance of growth in the next year.

Nicko
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Nicko van Someren, nbvs@cl.cam.ac.uk, (44) 223 358707 or (44) 860 498903    |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
From: burke@vxdesy.desy.de
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: Risc OS 3.1 supplies
Date: 6 Oct 92 17:01:15 GMT
Organization: (DESY, Hamburg, Germany)

In article <1992Oct6.093202.13989@cs.nott.ac.uk>,
  smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows) writes:

[Various stuff about Archive and NCS]

I've always found NCS very helpful, and I order essentially everything either
from them or IFEL (who are also very good). I bought a hard disc from NCS
last year, which didn't work; they sent me a replacement within about 2 days,
*before* I returned the original disc. I can't see Beebug being that trusting!
Obviously they are a fairly small organisation, and may be getting to be
victims of their own success, but I think they care more about their customers
than most companies.

  As for comments about independence, RISC User used to claim be independent of
Beebug products, but they've been compromising that recently (e.g. their advice
to go for IDE rather than SCSI - see their review of the original IDEa, where
they said something like "IDE is good, but there may be better interfaces on
the way". I wonder which one they meant? :-) There have also been many
references to DeskEdit in RISC User articles. I was a Beebug subscriber from
issue 5 and a RISC User subscriber from issue 1, but I'm getting increasingly
fed up with them. For my tastes, Archive is now a much better magazine.

> Archive magazine landed on people's doormats (early) on the morning of 27th
> August, the day the new products were launched (at 11am).

They've always been good at this; they adjust their publication dates to
get news out as soon as possible, which I suspect RISC User can't do. I think
their claims are entirely justified on this count - actually I read the news
on Usenet first, but Archive arrived about a day later. Their general
editorial turnaround seems very fast - I sent them some hints, and they
were in the next issue which arrived about 10 days later!

> or software themselves (they just farm it out to LOOKsystems). However it
> would seem that the magazine's policy is intended to maximise turnover for
> Norwich Computer Services. NCS has ordered 1000 upgrade packs (250 for the

Maximise turnover maybe, but not profit; their usual reponse to extra revenue
is to increase the page count. Anyway, I'm not sure what you're getting at
here; most magazines try to increase their circulation.

> Comments, flames, suggestions, agreement:=) welcome ?!

At your service :-) Seriously, I think if you have criticisms you should
be open about them; I can't tell from your comments whether you are
really criticising NCS or not.

  Incidentally, I have no connection with NCS other than being a satisfied
customer (and I'm an atheist :-)

e----><----p | Stephen Burke           | Internet: burke@vxdesy.desy.de
 H   H   1   | Gruppe FH1T (Liverpool) | DECnet:   vxdesy::burke (13313::burke)
 H   H  11   | DESY, Notkestrasse 85   | BITNET:   BURKE@DESYVAX or SB2@UKACRL
 HHHHH   1   | 2000 Hamburg 52         | JANET:    sb2@uk.ac.rl.ib
 H   H   1   | Germany                 | Phone:    + 49 40 8998 2282
 H   H 11111 | HERA, the world's largest electron microscope!
From: smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Acorn Share Price
Date: 27 Sep 92 16:19:57 GMT
Organization: Nottingham University


The quoted price of Acorn shares has soared this year, from only 6 pence
to over 40 pence.

Nobody seems to have given a sensible explanation for this in public. Whenever
I have asked questions about this, I've either been given blank looks, or else
been told that the reasons are confidential at present.

Does this sound like insider-trading? If so, it is illegal!

Anyone care to suggest reasons for the share price increase? It certainly
isn't because of Acorn's latest range of new machines (although they are good).

Simon B.
From: smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Sonamara
Date: 5 Oct 92 18:18:42 GMT
Organization: Nottingham University

Could anyone explain the "SONAMARA" scheme advertised in the last two issues
of BBC Acorn User magazine? I read the bit in the editorial, but it wasn't
exactly clear.

What do you receive if you send off the form, and what are the benefits of
being a "founder member"?

Thanks for any information.

Simon B.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: The ARM Club
From: Gavin.Flower@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Gavin Flower)
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 19:52:08 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Victoria Uni. of Wellington, New Zealand.

In article <2N4R4wj024n@khantazi.welly.gen.nz> banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz writes:
>Gavin.Flower@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Gavin Flower) writes:
>
>> They did say "generally accepted".
>> 
>> Also, how well do you think these two packages could be adapted to
>> take into acount the features of the newer ARM chips?  How will they
>> cope with using the 32 bit address mode?  Not to mention some of the
>> newer instructions that could well speed up or enable new features.
>
>   About as easily as C can be. Remember for C to take advantage of these
>new features the compiler has to be updated to cope with them. Somebody out
>there has to sweat blood to make it possible. The difference is that the
>application writer does the sweating rather then the compiler writer. It is
>a moot point as to which is better which will lead back to the old argument
>of C vs the world again.

But, it only has to be done *once* for the compiler, and then this can
be used for *many* applications.  

The key issue is not "C", rather a high level language versus
assembler.  On the Arc "C", just happens to be the best supported high
level language.  Another friend of mine programs in Pascal on an
A5000, he started a major program on the  Master 512, and has adapted
it to run on the Arc and expanded it.


[... bits about O/S compliance to new features... ]

>> These are just some of the motivations for using "C" for "'Serious
>> applications of any complexity' on the Arc".
>
>   And they apply equaly well to any language you care to name on the Arc.
>Can we *please* not have another 'C is better - is not! - is so! - is
>not!...' style arguements on the Acorn hierachy again?

I think a lot of people would like a wider choice of well supported
languages on the Arc.  Currently "C", is the best supported high level
language, not only on the Arc, but across *all* machine types. It
doesn't mean it is *the* best language for *all* applications.


Gavin
-- 
Tomorrow's Society                              | flower_g@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
    Depends on                                   ----------------------------
Today's Children  - help us raise them properly! 
*******  These comments have no known correlation with dept. policy!  *******
From: Oliver.Cornes@newcastle.ac.uk (Ollie W Cornes)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: The ARM Club
Date: 30 Sep 92 19:20:22 GMT
Organization: University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, NE1 7RU
Organisation: University of Durham, Durham, England.

I came across this in Eureka, the magazine for the ARM Club...

"It is generally accepted that C is the language to use if you intend to
write a serious application of any complexity"

Not meaning to pick too many holes or anything, but the two main
'Serious applications of any complexity' on the Arc, namely Impression
and ArtWorks are both written entirely in Assembler.

Ollie

-- 
Ollie Cornes  Oliver.Cornes@uk.ac.durham
Macintosh, schmacintosh. The only machine with a better blender than 
Artworks is a Moulinex.
                              James Hope, Computer Shopper.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: /G=Rhodri/S=James/O=SJ-Research/ADMD=INTERSPAN/C=GB/@mhs-relay.ac.uk
Subject: Ping?
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 15:12:45 GMT

This is a test, please ignore

Rhodri James, SJ Research, Cambridge, England.
Rhodri.James%sj.interspan.gb@mhs-relay.ac.uk
From: torbenm@diku.dk (Torben AEgidius Mogensen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: Flicker-free Icon updating
Date: 28 Sep 92 14:06:36 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, U of Copenhagen

<SMARTIN@ESOC.BITNET> writes:

>I am writing an application that requires a number of text icons to be
>updated fairly regularly (frequency definable by the user). Currently, I
>am using the SWI SetIconState with zero arguments to force an update, but
>if the update frequency is more than a few frames per second, the flicker
>is quite intolerable with or without icon borders. I have also tried the
>SWIs ForceRedrawWindow and UpdateWindow (names may be slightly wrong), but
>this does not improve things. My question is, is it possible to use the old
>GCOL type tricks by EORing text into the Icon? If so, how is this done ?
>If not, will updating the Icon as a Sprite help ?

>Any other hints on how I could rid myself of this annoying flicker would be
>greatly appreciated.

You could try waiting for the vertical sync before updating. In Basic
this is done by WAIT, but there is an Os_Byte call (I don't recall the
number) that has the same effect.

	Torben Mogensen (torbenm@diku.dk)
From: marlow@sys.uea.ac.uk (K. Marlow PG)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Econet timeouts
Keywords: Econet timeouts
Date: 30 Sep 92 08:40:25 GMT
Organization: UEA School of Information Systems, Norwich, UK.

Hi,

  I just want to ask those in the known, is the timeout for an econet
transmit an absolute stop point or just a point at which it says the
transmission has failed? Say if I had my timeout set to 1 second and a repeat
count of 10, would that mean the first transmission (which is queued due to
the network being busy) be aborted after 1 second or does it just
decrease the repeat count & keep on with the same queued transmission?  If
it does the first then I could see situations where a transmission doesn't
occur because it never reaches the top of the queue in time.  This is
something which the PRM's aren't very clear on & might explain some strange
behaviour I'm getting..

  Also what do people reckon is a sensible length of timeout to have.. 5
seconds, maybe 10?

  AdvTHANKSance

     Keith Marlow

--
 Keith Marlow,               *  Author of Archiboard BBS s/w, 
 Information Systems P/G,    * the only multiline fidonet BBS which operates
 University of East Anglia,  * across Econet.
 Norwich. Norfolk NR4 7TJ    *
From: gilbertd@p4.cs.man.ac.uk (David Alan Gilbert)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: SparkFS
Date: 1 Oct 92 16:10:08 GMT

Hi All - have any of you had problems with URD's
in SparkFS - I can't seem to set them.

Dave

P.S. SparkFS is a great piece of software

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- David Alan Gilbert - gilbertd@p4.cs.man.ac.uk - G7FHJ@GB7NWP                -
------(Programmers don't sleep - they just park their heads)-------------------
From: bwc@waikato.ac.nz (Ug!)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: More RiscOS 3 fonts to PostScript...
Date: 6 Oct 92 17:14:13 +1300
Organization: Vooniersity fo Kaiwato

Hi folks!  Another query about font downloading in RiscOS 3.1...

Okay - so the printer driver dowloads fonts now, right?  Right...

Unmap Homerton.  Print file using Homerton in Impression 2.16.  Sure 'nuff,
it downloads the font (in this case, just another remapping to Helvetica!).

Fine, so lets download...  Optima!  and Garamond!  Take a look at the
PostScript it produces (I've never seen a font download after all).  Sure
'nuff, there are the comments where the font download goes, with *nothing*
between them!  Aaaaarrrrrrgggghhhh!

Hokay, calm down.  Go get the original Type-1's and AFMs, and convert them,
assuming that this will keep enough information to be able to download them,
once they have been converted.

My question is:  what do I have to do to get the printer driver to download
RiscOS 2 fonts for the duration of the job?  Can it be donw?  Or do I have
to go and hunt down all the Type-1 equivalents?
								Ug!
From: duplain@rtf.bt.co.uk (Andy Duplain)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: Bug found in v4 of Acorn C compiler
Date: 1 Oct 92 17:16:34 GMT
Organization: BT Customer Systems, Brighton, UK

In article <1992Oct1.033932.22482@cs.aukuni.ac.nz> epoo1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (Edouard Poor) writes:
>
>    value = ( ( ( ( WORD ) fgetByte() ) << 8 ) | fgetByte() );

	The following text is an extract from "Harbison and Steele, 3rd
	edition, page 207":
	
	"In general, the compiler can rearrange the order in which an
	expression is evaluated.  The rearrangement may consist of evaluating
	only the arguments of a function call, or the two operands of a
	binary operator, in some particular order other than the obvious
	left-to-right order.  The binary operators +, *, &, ^ and | are
	assumed to be completely associative and commutative, and the
	compiler is permitted to exploit this assumption".
	
>One genuine bug.

	Wrong.

>(I suspect it's the optimisers fault myself...) 

	Wrong.

>Minor Flame Start {
>Can anyone think of any good reason why the optimiser is permanantly ON in
>the C compiler? Every other C compiler on the planet has the optimiser as an
>optional command line flag... Is it really just to make the dhrystone results
>look better (as the benchmark specifies that the compiler should be run in
>it's default state--optimiser off for everyone else, but on for the Acorn one)
>} Minor Flame End
>	       
	The Microsoft C compiler has "some" optimisations on by default
	(you may turn all optimisation on, or all off, from the command line).
	I _guess_ it may be to do with debugging information; the GNU C
	compiler is capable to generating optmised code _with_ source level
	debugging information, while others mutually exclude '-O' and '-g'...
	maybe Acorn C v4 can do both, like gcc ? 
	Anyway, why is it a problem ?  compile time ?
	
-- 
Andy Duplain, BT Customer Systems, Brighton, UK.            duplain@rtf.bt.co.uk
#define	DISCLAIMER      My views and opinions are my own, and not my company's
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech