HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: Finding the CSD
Date: 16 Dec 92 12:46:33 NZST
Organization: Welligton City Council, Public Access.
NNTP-Posting-Host: kosmos.wcc.govt.nz

In article <1gke2bINN2up@swan.doc.ic.ac.uk>, mybg@doc.ic.ac.uk (M Y Ben Gershon) writes:
> dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk (Denis Howe) writes:
[bits deleted]
> -Set FS <FileSwitch$CurrentFilingSystem>
> -SetEval CSD "<FS>:"+FileSwitch$<FS>$CSD
> 
> I am sorry to disappoint you, but this does not work either!  It remains
> constant and is not altered when the csd is changed.

   Of course it doesn't. It is not a code variable. To do what you want
would reqire writing some short assembler. This approach is designed to
allow you to find out the CSD at a *particular point in time*. This is
useful for Obey scripts that need to know the CSD or whatever but is by no
means intended to be a continually updating CSD variable.

   And of course it is considerably simpler to do than repeated calls to 
OS_GBPB and popping up directory layers which was what was required under
RO2.


Philip
From: ajdh@bnr.co.uk (Andrew J D Hurley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: High res Colour Printing in RISCOS 3.1
Date: 14 Dec 1992 15:16:42 GMT
Organization: BNR Europe Ltd, London Road, Harlow, England.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.199.129.86

In article <1992Dec11.182310.2@condor> blacka@logica.co.uk writes:
>I was delighted to discover that RISCOS3.1 driver supported
>colour - it is far simpler to configure one driver than swap
>between
>two.
>
>However, I discovered that the 3.1 driver does not support
>colour in resolutions above 180x180.  I appreciate that high
>resolution colour printing is not for those in a hurry, but
>on occasions one is prepared  to wait.
>
>Is this a restriction on the way that the Acorn driver
>software works or can it be sorted out by adjusting the
>printer config file.

I am fairly sure I have managed 360x180 on my Swift24 since RO3.1
but I could be wrong. If the printer uses interlace to get the 360x360
(which the average 24 pin DM will do) then it is definately not a good
idea to try colour at this resolution. The yellow part of the ribbon (and
the others to a lesser extent) get extremely mucky in no time at all when
you play around with interlace. Your ribbon will be all but useless after
a page of full colour (eg. a scanned sprite) and they are not cheap
to replace that often.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew J D Hurley ,   <><         |  Email:   A.J.D.Hurley@bnr.co.uk
                                  |   or      Andrew.Hurley.EG40@bnr.ca
BNR Europe Ltd., London Road,     |  route:   uunet!ukc!bnr!ajdh
Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA, UK.       |  Phone:   +44 279 402535

Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: rsxdp@unicorn.nott.ac.uk (D.Pead)
Subject: Re: CFD: Icon names in templates
Organization: Shell Centre for Maths Education, University of Nottingham
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 92 19:15:12 GMT

For C programmers, a partial solution would be to have a template editor
which maintained a .h file containing constant definitions for the icon
numbers (e.g. #define I_LOAD_CANCEL 1 ).

I think this would also work for Norcroft Pascal (which has the C
preprocessor) and could be adapted for basic (use variables instead of
constants and include them as a library).

If you edit the template, the .h file is updated and running MAKE will
re-compile any modules affected.

You need some way of remembering the constant names assigned to each
icon.  I can see 4 ways of doing this:

1.  The template editor saves its templates in it's own format, which
    could include the icon names and any other extras. When you
    save your file, you actually save 3 things:

    * The new format template editor file
    * The original format template file (this is what your program loads)
    * The header file

2.  When the template editor loads the template file, it also loads and
    interprets the .h file.  You'd need some "smart comments" and such
    in the .h file to hold other info.  Problem here is if the template
    and .h files get out of step you're stuffed.

3.  Use the validation string to hold the icon name.  This means that 
    everything has to be an indirected text or indirected text+sprite
    icon, but that is only a problem if you need to use indirected sprite
    only icons (which !FormEd won't do anyway).  If you're using RO3's
    slabbed icons or Interface then you're in this position already.

4.  Tack some extra data on the end of the template file and hope...

The whole point of this idea is that, at the end of the day, your program
doesn't need any non-standard template files or new libraries, and users
can still use !FormEd to tweak the templates if they feel inclined.

The problem with using a new template file standard is (a) I don't think
you could ever get it to work with RISC-OS lib without horrendous kludges.
(Yes, RISC-OS Lib is c**p, but I wrote a few programs before I realised
that and I don't fancy re-writing them!) and (b) If those lads and lasses
at Acorn & Norcroft sort us out with a nice C++ compiler and class
library, you'd be back to square one.
From: pjm@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Paul J Murphy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: Indirected icons in templates and resspr.
Date: 13 Dec 92 19:42:20 GMT
Reply-To: pjm@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Paul J Murphy)
Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U

In article <1992Dec13.020107.28690@infodev.cam.ac.uk> idg10@cl.cam.ac.uk (I.D. Griffiths) writes:
>In article <1992Dec10.093501.25007@westminster.ac.uk>, gpcec@westminster.ac.uk (Tom Kirby-Green) writes:
>|> How ( having dynamicly created a sprite area ) do I access the icon
>|> definitions that follow the wimp_wind pointed to by w_handle. According
>|> to the PRMs I need to get hold of the indirected icon's and plug in my
>|> user sprite area before wimp_create_wind'ing the window.

Yep, your interpretation of the PRMs is correct.

>language like assembler...  C will merely make things difficult for you
>by being awkward about letting you do pointer maths.  Something like
>this may work:
>
>  icon = (wimp_icon *) (((char *) w_handle) + 88 + 32 * icno );

I have to disagree withh you on C making it harder - it makes it easier (IMHO).
The following works well, and uses C's handling of pointers to make it easier:
(lifted direct from SparkInfo's source)
{
  wimp_wind *window;

  wimpt_init("SparkInfo");
  res_init("SparkInfo");
  resspr_init();
  template_init();

...

  window = template_syshandle("ProgInfo");
  window->spritearea = (void *)1;
  ((wimp_icon *)(window+1))[1].data.indirectsprite.spritearea = resspr_area();
                            |
     Icon number __________/
}
NB: This code is from SparkInfo 2.11 which has not yet been released (still
under development), and icon numbers and use in the Templates may be quite
significantly different to that in 2.10.

This code makes sprites in windows created from the "ProgInfo" template (which
has been loaded into memory by the template part of RISC_OSLib) default to
coming from the wimp sprite pool. It also says that icon 1 should take its
sprite from the resspr sprite area (icon 1 is an indirected sprite only icon).
This avoids the need to make assumptions about the size of window and icon
blocks (I know they are unlikely to change, but what about in a year or so when
we are on RISC OS 4.00 and Desktop C 5??? - hard coded values are a nightmare,
and unnecessary where we have very good header files).
The only thing with pointer arithmetic is that you have to think carefully
about what data type is being pointed to at each stage, since +1 has a
significantly different meaning for different types.
-- 
 _    _
|_|  |||	1st Year Undergraduate, Department of Computer Science
|aul | |urphy	The University of Edinburgh
email: Paul.Murphy@ed.ac.uk
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: altman@cryton.demon.co.uk (Hugo Fiennes)
Subject: Re: TeX/Wimp/Morley SCSIFS/keyboardhandler 
Distribution: world
Organization: The Serial Port
Reply-To: altman@cryton.demon.co.uk
X-Mailer: Simple NEWS 1.90 (ka9q DIS 1.19)
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 17:03:20 +0000

In article <1992Dec16.101159.26305@gate.esat.kuleuven.ac.be> tytgat@esat.kuleuven.ac.be writes:

>4. Has anyone noticed this "bug" in the Morley SCSIFS :
>   When clicking on the iconbar icon the root filer window is opened as
>   usual, but as a side-effect, the current directory is reset to the root.
>   This is very annoying, in particular when running a Task Window which
>   is processing files without full pathnames.
>
>   Morley claims that the drive must be mounted each time the user clicks
>   on the iconbar.  But ADFS doesn't mount the disc...
>   Can anyone shed some light on this.  Is the behaviour of the Morley card
>   normal ?
It's the way morley do it - obviously they execute a dir or similar command
to mount the disk, whereas the best way of causing filecore to mount the
disk but not set the CSD is to do something like read the attributes of
the $ directory object (what our filers do). I didn't know the morley
software did it, I'll shout at Gary today, I have to call him anyway....

>5. Does anyone know how to write an international keyboardhandler ?
I believe acorn released something like !IKHG which was a complete set
of utils to build keyboardhandlers. Acorn?

>
>Simon Baas
>mp17@rulhp2.LeidenUniv.nl

Hugo

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                     "Did I say that? My lips didn't move..."
Hugo Fiennes - The Serial Port                      altman@cryton.demon.co.uk
                                                or altman@cix.compulink.co.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: /G=Owen/S=Smith/O=SJ-Research/ADMD=INTERSPAN/C=GB/@mhs-relay.ac.uk
Subject: Re: EPS files
Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 22:46:22 GMT

ddevorchik@acorn.co.uk (David De Vorchik) writes:

>Owen you are wrong...

>The PostScript printer drivers will only generate EPS output *IF* the
>application has requested it via PDriver_SelectIllustration.

>As the printer driver has no knowledge of the number of output pages at the
>start of job it is impossible for it to work out that it is a single page
>job.

True, I was wrong. However !Draw always does this, so you can get EPS files
directly out of some RISC OS applications which is what the discussion was
about. Thanks for the correction...

>I would have thought you would have known this, given your vast knowledge of
>the RISC OS printer driver system.... 

... and next time keep the sarcasm to yourself. We're all entitled to a
mistake from time to time, particularly when trying to be helpful in my
spare time about a topic which has nothing to do with my current job.

Owen.
From: csudp@csv.warwick.ac.uk (Mr R E Broadley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: A5000 pcb links
Date: 20 Dec 1992 23:38:13 -0000
Organization: Computing Services, University of Warwick, UK
NNTP-Posting-Host: lily.csv.warwick.ac.uk

After fitting a 5.25 inch disk drive to my A5000 by following the instructions
in a RISC User magazine, I started to wonder what all the links inside the
A5000 were for. Please could someone either let me know what they all do, or
alternatively, let me know where I can find out.

Thanks in advance,
-- 
Richard Broadley,	       (      ...  rebroad@uk.ac.warwick.dcs      .
Dept of Computer Science,      )      ..    csudp@uk.ac.warwick.csv      ..
University of Warwick,         (      .     rbroadle@isis.cs.du.edu     ...
Coventry CV4 7AL, UK           )      .....................................
From: csudp@csv.warwick.ac.uk (Mr R E Broadley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: ARCfs & password encryption
Date: 20 Dec 1992 23:09:14 -0000
Organization: Computing Services, University of Warwick, UK
NNTP-Posting-Host: lily.csv.warwick.ac.uk

In article <1992Dec17.102446.2945@unix.brighton.ac.uk> rjb12@unix.brighton.ac.uk (Titch) writes:
>I have an Internet-less friend who has a serious problem: she has ARCfs'd a
>great deal of stuff on her A440 to, obviously, save space. Unfortunately 
>someone (she swears not her) has encrypted the whole lot using the password
>option within the ARCfs menu (the password is unknown).

Just a hunch, but try examining the archive using archiver (e.g. !SparkFS or a
different version of !ArcFS). It's possible that the archive viewer you are
using thinks it is password protected when it isn't. I have heard of this
happening when an archive using squash compression (with !SparkFS) was trying
to be read with !ArcFS (which might not handle squash compression).

Hope this helps,
	Richard
-- 
Richard Broadley,	       (      ...  rebroad@uk.ac.warwick.dcs      .
Dept of Computer Science,      )      ..    csudp@uk.ac.warwick.csv      ..
University of Warwick,         (      .     rbroadle@isis.cs.du.edu     ...
Coventry CV4 7AL, UK           )      .....................................
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: goodwin@edieng.enet.dec.com (Pete Goodwin)
Subject: Re: Screen goes white while accessing drive
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 08:42:41 GMT


In article <gilbertd.724342653@cs.man.ac.uk>, gilbertd@cs.man.ac.uk (David Alan Gilbert) writes...
>Hi All, Does anyone have the same symptoms?
> 
>I've got Risc OS 3.1, ARM 3 (Leading edge) Morley
>uncached SCSI card.  When I copy a lot of stuff
>from floppy to hard drive in say mode 16 occasionaly
>the screen goes white for a second or two - while
>accessing the hard drive.  I didnt think this
>should happen with an ARM 3 and I definitly
>thought it shouldnt happen on hard drives.

With an ARM2 and certain modes, accessing the hard disk would blank the screen.
Since the memory bandwidth is tight on certain 256 colour modes, RISC OS drops
the video in favour of data from disk.

With an ARM3 the situation is still possible - after all your main memory is
running at 8MHz (I assume you've got an ARM3 upgrade?), and it's still possible
to have tight bandwidths!

Pete Goodwin
goodwin@edieng.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: altman@cryton.demon.co.uk (Hugo Fiennes)
Subject: Measurement Instruments 
Distribution: world
Organization: The Serial Port
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 19:32:15 +0000


In article <1992Dec11.121731.29632@unix.brighton.ac.uk> rjb12@unix.brighton.ac.uk writes:

>
>davism@uhura.aston.ac.uk (Mik Davis) writes:
>>   Someone I know is trying to put together a computer system to use for the
>> measurement of pulse-rate, blood pressure and other sorts of things that> might
>> be needed in a P.E. Laboratory. He would like to use an A3000 (as he already> 
>> has one).
>>   I know there isn't any special equipment for doing this with an Arch. but
>> how about IEEE488 interfacing or something along those lines?
>>   Does anyone have any suggestions about how this could be achieved?
>
>There is a company who advertise in BBC Acorn User, Acorn Computing etc who
>sell IEEE488 interfaces for the Archimedes range. Unfortunately I can't 
>remember their name! I saw an advert for them last month, so they haven't
>gone bust (yet!).
>
I think you want Intelligent Interfaces, 0703 261514 is Andy Ray's number
(if that isn't the office now, he should be able to tell you what it is,
he's the technical side of II).

Hugo

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                     "Did I say that? My lips didn't move..."
Hugo Fiennes - The Serial Port                      altman@cryton.demon.co.uk
                                                or altman@cix.compulink.co.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: derijkp@reks.uia.ac.be (Peter De Rijk)
Subject: Programming Artworks?
Organization: U.I.A.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 16:06:41 GMT

I need to make rather specialised drawings (for the molecular biologists
under you: RNA secundary structure models). Rumour has it that it is 
possible to write extensions to Artworks. I would like to know whether this is 
indeed possible, how it is done, how difficult (or easy) it is, and what the
possibilities are. I need the possibility to create the drawing on basis of a 
data file.
I think I would also need following features:
      dynamic grouping: The drawings are kind of tree like: when the user 
         selects a branch (for instanse to rotate it), all depending branches 
         should be selected and rotated together with the parent.
      Text following a line, but the letters allways stay horizontal when 
         rotated (yes somewhat like rotating a group of characters in 
         RISC OS 2 Draw)
I would like to know whether it is possible to implement these things 
in/together with Artworks, well, for a non official developer that is.

Any information will be greatly appreciated,

Peter
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: rsxdp@unicorn.nott.ac.uk (D.Pead)
Subject: Atomwide VIDC Enhancer
Organization: Shell Centre for Maths Education, University of Nottingham
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 92 19:23:56 GMT


Does anybody know how to "manually" change the clock speed on a VIDC enhancer
(i.e. how to write to the AUX IO line that the switch is connected to) ?

Also, as I understand it, the A540 and A5000 must have something like a
VIDC enhancer built in in order to do SVGA - does anybody know of any
"Mode Definer" software (preferably PD) that is A5000/A540 aware?

Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: altman@cryton.demon.co.uk (Hugo Fiennes)
Subject: Screen goes white while accessing drive 
Distribution: world
Organization: The Serial Port
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 23:55:02 +0000


In article <gilbertd.724342653@cs.man.ac.uk> gilbertd@cs.man.ac.uk writes:

>I've got Risc OS 3.1, ARM 3 (Leading edge) Morley
>uncached SCSI card.  When I copy a lot of stuff
>from floppy to hard drive in say mode 16 occasionaly
>the screen goes white for a second or two - while
>accessing the hard drive.  I didnt think this
>should happen with an ARM 3 and I definitly
>thought it shouldnt happen on hard drives.
>
>Morley says it is Risc OS which does it - but I thought
>this only happened if you ran out of bandwidth or something
>similar?
Speak to Morley again - Gary Partis there tells me he's tweaked the code
so that it runs in the foreground (ie, not on IRQs anymore - which happened
every 8 bytes on the uncached card - 800kb/sec = 100k IRQ's sec = help,
I have to dump video DMA). This also helps with marginal serial problems
(sometimes) and Acorn Replay. (If background xfers are requested it will
enable them for that operation).

Hugo

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                     "Did I say that? My lips didn't move..."
Hugo Fiennes - The Serial Port                      altman@cryton.demon.co.uk
                                                or altman@cix.compulink.co.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: ddevorchik@acorn.co.uk (David De Vorchik)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: EPS files
Date: 15 Dec 92 11:27:38 GMT
Organization: Acorn Computers Ltd, Cambridge, England

In article <ARM200-921214124010-52326667*@MHS> /G=Owen/S=Smith/O=SJ-Research/ADMD=INTERSPAN/C=GB/@mhs-relay.ac.uk writes:

... stuff about generating EPS files for Word deleted ...

>
>I just thought I'd point something out here, as it may be of interest. The
>Acorn PostScript printer drivers (both RISC OS 2 and 3) always generate EPS
>files if the output is a single page. If the output is multi-page, then you
>get a standard PostScript file. Some programs which can import EPS don't
>like the version numbers quoted by the RISC OS 2 driver though. This can be
>fixed by a quick edit to the output, or even the printer driver module
>(since finding the string with !Edit isn't hard).
>
>Owen.

Owen you are wrong...

The PostScript printer drivers will only generate EPS output *IF* the
application has requested it via PDriver_SelectIllustration.

As the printer driver has no knowledge of the number of output pages at the
start of job it is impossible for it to work out that it is a single page
job.

I would have thought you would have known this, given your vast knowledge of
the RISC OS printer driver system.... 

 -- david

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 David 'dizzy' De Vorchik                                     ddv@acorn.co.uk
 Software Engineer
 Acorn Computers Limited                                   Tel +44 223 254351

  'Gonna Get The Girl... Gonna kill the Baddies and save the entire planet!'
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk (Denis Howe)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
Subject: Re: Reading !Run vars
Date: 18 Dec 92 22:34:53 GMT
	<BzEwAo.Cqw@dutiws.twi.tudelft.nl>
Organization: Computing Department, Imperial College, London, UK
NNTP-Posting-Host: wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk
In-reply-to: roozemaa@dutiws.twi.tudelft.nl's message of Thu, 17 Dec 1992 16:25:36

In article <1992Dec16.185334.11229@westminster.ac.uk>
gpcec@westminster.ac.uk (Tom Kirby-Green) wrote:

>I'm launching the file with the usual !Run, but with the ugly line
>
>	Run <CADshell$Dir>.!RunImage "<CADshell$Dir>"

In article <BzEwAo.Cqw@dutiws.twi.tudelft.nl>
roozemaa@dutiws.twi.tudelft.nl (Peter.Roozemaal.IS-assistent) wrote:

>I would use the first part of argv[0]; that contains the full pathname
>with which the program was invoked.

What wrong with SWI OS_ReadVarVal?  In fact, you can use Obey$Dir
directly until you start multitasking so often you don't even need to
define an extra private directory variable.
--
Denis Howe <dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk>
So Biggs, you're the idiot who bought all these IBM PCs.  You're fired!
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: robg@citr.uq.oz.au (Rob Geraghty)
Subject: Re: lha de-archiving
Organization: Prentice Centre, University of Queensland
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 09:39:12 GMT

amclintock@cix.compulink.co.uk ("Cray Communications, Alex McL") writes:
>> I am in need of a utility to de-archive lha compressed files.

>> Do any versions of Spark or arcfs handle these?
>Not that I know of.

Yes.  The version of spark I have does work on *some* lharced files.

>> Or is there any other program in the public domain?
>Yep! there is a simple lharc de-archiver. 

This archimedes lharc program does *not* unarc some methods.  I have
found this while trying to unarc tracker files.  I ended up having to
use the DOS lharc under the PCEm :-(

Rob

--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rob Geraghty               | 3 things are important to me 
robg@durian.citr.oz.au     | The gift of love, the joy of life
CITR                       | And the making of music in all its forms
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech
From: m_sattle@informatik.uni-kl.de (Matthias Sattler)
Subject: adfsbuffers
Organization: University of Kaiserslautern, Germany
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 10:33:30 GMT

What are adfsbuffers really good for?

They should speed up the (hard)disc access but in fact they don't.
I tried many different tests (hd-speed tests, compiling c programs, ...)
on the harddisc of my A540 (RO2) with adfsbuffers 0 and adfsbuffers 256k.
EVERY test with adfsbuffers configured was slightly slower than the test
without adfsbuffers.
Hmmmmmm... funny isn't it?


Matthias Sattler
email: m_sattle@informatik.uni-kl.de



Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.tech