HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: banksie@khantazi.welly.gen.nz (Philip R. Banks)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: A4 and RISC OS 3.10
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 19:00:03 +1200
Reply-To: banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Organization: My Arc.

news@comlab.ox.ac.uk writes:

[entire article deleted]

   Come on guys. Put this in the newsgroup where it belongs. Take it to
comp.sys.acorn.advocacy please...

    Philip

--
Philip R. Banks  Syntax: mail < banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz >            @@@@@/|
                                                                        @@@@/#|
                                                                        @@@/##|
And who are we to criticize or scorn the the things that they do?       @@/---|
For we shall seek and we shall find Ammonia Avenue. ---A.P.P.           @/    |
From: nbvs@cl.cam.ac.uk (Nicko van Someren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Updates
Date: 29 Jul 92 11:50:34 GMT
Reply-To: nbvs@cl.cam.ac.uk (Nicko van Someren)
Organization: U of Cambridge Comp Lab, UK

In article <1992Jul27.192938.21189@cs.utwente.nl> kortink@cs.utwente.nl (John Kortink) writes:
>Service message for registered users of Translator et al
...
>Service message ends.

Surely this is the sort of message that comp.sys.acorn.announce was set
up for.

Nicko

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Nicko van Someren, nbvs@cl.cam.ac.uk, (44) 223 358707 or (44) 860 498903    |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: 3d icons for RO3.xx
From: jwil1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (TMOTA)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 22:45:59 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept. University of Auckland

ijp@oak9.doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Palmer) writes:

>Jason Williams' 3d window icons posted to comp.sources.acorn contain
>one slight bug. As far as I can tell the close window icon (cicon)
>needs to be an even numner of pixels wide (it currently has an odd
>number). This leads to a strange gap between the close icon and the
>main title bar (only noticable at the top and bottom).

>Other things that could be added to make them look even better
>...

Sorry! I don't have RISC OS 3.xx yet, so I couldn't check these
things out! Removing the masks from all the icons halves the space
used, and I couldn't see any reason for masks on most of the icons...
Not a bad try, though, for a RISC OS 2.00 user, is it? ;-)

>And one question about the various replacement window bits floating
>about, they all seem to have a spurious icon which appears to serve no
>useful purpose. I think it's called 'blicon' (if memory serves me

I puzzled over this one - I think it's probably for the "adjust size"
icon *hole* when you don't have an "adjust size" icon.
(If you have vert & horz scrollbars, but no a.s. icon in the bottom right
corner of the window, I suspect it uses the "blicon" sprite instead
of the resize sprite...)

>I shall also be uploading (again somewhere) some other applications
>(wot I 'ave writted) (although not quite as exciting) over the next
>week (or so) :

Plug:
Try emailing them to
  cba@acorn.co.nz  (comp.binaries.acorn)
-- 
_________________  "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
From: martin@thed.uk22.bull.com (Martin Percival)
Subject: Re: Wimpmode problem
Organization: Bull HN Informations Systems Inc.
Date: 30 Jul 92 09:19:20 GMT

I've had problems every now and again with Mode 31, usually when I haven't
been keeping track of the amount of memory left to switch to the new mode
e.g. using mode 12 and soaking up most of the memory with small apps then
trying to jump to 31. I have no such problems switching immediately after a
boot.

Martin
From: dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk (Denis Howe)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: comp.sys.acorn.announce information and ground rules
Date: 21 Jul 92 11:57:40 GMT
Organization: Computing Department, Imperial College, London, UK

In article <16948@acorn.co.uk> aglover@acorn.co.uk (Alan Glover)
wrote re comp.sys.acorn.announce:

>Low noise is something most people have different ideas about.  For
>now, I will use the same guidelines applied to the binary/sources
>groups - ie no more than four postings a day (and yes, I know
>postings to c.s.a.a will be smaller).

Low noise is different from low volume.  I would rather all
announcements were posted as soon as possible and especially virus
warinings.  I can't believe that even the maximum possible volume of
c.s.a.a would be a problem for any site (unless Acorn has a LOT of new
products lined up :-).
--
Denis Howe <dbh@doc.ic.ac.uk>
Does this question have an answer?
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: RO3 boot-up sequence
From: banksie@khantazi.welly.gen.nz (Philip R. Banks)
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 19:24:59 +1200
Reply-To: banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz
Organization: My Arc.

rebroad@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Richard Broadley) writes:

> Uugh! Mode 20? The mode where the screen bulges outwards at the sides? Or is
> this just my monitor? Also, isn't the refresh rate slower with mode 20? (It
> does look much more flickery than mode 27 anyway.)

   Oh don't give me the 'I hate Mode 20' business *again*. I *like* Mode 20,
it is my favourite screen mode. End of discusion. You can like Mode 27 to
death for all I care... I was making a point that some of us out do not like
the suggested configured mode.

    Philip

--
Philip R. Banks  Syntax: mail < banks_p@kosmos.wcc.govt.nz >            @@@@@/|
                                                                        @@@@/#|
                                                                        @@@/##|
And who are we to criticize or scorn the the things that they do?       @@/---|
For we shall seek and we shall find Ammonia Avenue. ---A.P.P.           @/    |
From: aiadrm@castle.ed.ac.uk (Alasdair D. McIntyre)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: CLIB 3.75 (or later)
Date: 22 Jul 92 16:40:44 GMT
Distribution: eunet
Organization: Edinburgh University

I wonder if some kind soul has CLib3.75 (or later, but must be RO2
compatible) to hand?  I have a couple of shareware progs which demand
nothing less, rather annoyingly.

Offers via e-mail, please, and I'll mail the lucky winner with a
request.

Ta muchly,
          -- Alasdair -- aiadrm@uk.ac.ed.castle --
From: lithgow@upjomon.usl.com (Malcolm Lithgow)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: WordHound
Date: 24 Jul 92 00:10:28 GMT

[In message "WordHound", Tim Rowledge writes:]
>Well, I ftp'd Wordhound yesterday and I'd like to congratulate Ian on an
>interesting and rather nice app.
>Suggestions for the future:
> [suggestions deleted.]
>It could end up better than NeXTs notebokk thingy!

I would like to add my congratulations to Tim's: congratulations Ian.
This is the best PD application I've seen since StrongEd2 (that wasn't
long ago, but that's because the Arch PD scene is so utterly brilliant).

No longer can MS Word owners trumpet over how Impression is missing a
thesaurus. ;-) Now Impression owners can crow over Word's missing
'definitions dictionary'. :-)

I would be interested to know what sort of compression techniques you
used on the data files, and the indexing algorithms (since I'm tossing up
whether to write a generic large-file concordance system, mostly for use
with Biblical text). Also, would you consider distributing the
construction tools, so that people could add their own data files to the
system?

Anyway, good job -- yet another program that shows the superiority of the
Arch. :-) (I like the icon, too.)

-Malcolm.  lithgow@usl.com  These are merely my opinions.

P.S. I noticed that, if I used double click to select a word in
Impression, dragged it to Wordhound, then clicked select on some other
word, Wordhound only copied back the word, so that you were left with no
space between the new word and the next one in the Impression text
(because Impression also selects the space at the end of a word when you
double click). Would this be difficult to fix? Also, I presume that any
styles would also be wiped in this case -- could these also be preserved?
(No, that's a silly question, you use the keypressed message to enter the
data, so you'd need a map of Impression styles versus their hot-keys --
hang on, don't you get a full style definition in exported text? You
could look that up and use the hot key to re-enter the style! ;->)
From: kelly@minster.york.ac.uk
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: MSGTrans Module
Date: 24 Jul 92 13:34:14 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of York, England
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

Hello, 

Sorry to bother everybody, but does anyone have any idea where to get hold of
the MessageTrans module, as used in the RiscForm and PlaceIt utilities which
I wish to try out. I have tried all the normal FTP sites and mail servers but
cannot locate it.

Many thanks

Ian

ps. reply by email if possible

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ian T. Kelly             |
University of York, UK   |
kelly@minster.york.ac.uk |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jez@praxis.co.uk (Jeremy Prior)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: RiscIX 1.15 SCSI drive problems
Summary: Can't build SCSI drive under RiscIX 1.15
Keywords: R140 st506 RiscIX SCSI
Date: 23 Jul 92 16:36:55 GMT
Organization: Praxis plc, Bath, England.

[ Posting this for a friend without news or email access.  Please feel
  free to reply either directly to me, or phone one of the numbers at
  the bottom of the article, for the more direct approach :-)
  Thanks, jez ]

  --- +++ ---
  From: Lynton Challoner
  Subject: RiscIX 1.15 SCSI drives
  
  I have an R140 with 2 x 45Mb st506 drives and a 100Mb Quantum LP105s
  SCSI, a VIDC enhancer, a Technomatic A5 scanner and a EIZO multi-sync
  monitor.  (The SCSI card is Acorn Issue 2 + EPROM v1.05)
  
  I recently purchased the SCSI card & drive, formatted, sectioned and
  partitioned it for RiscIX and followed the instructions in the Acorn
  Technical Note on how to install it to the letter, and I cannot get
  scsidm to recognise my device drivers (which means the next step of
  updating disktab and newfs-ing the drive isn't possible).
  
  The devices in question are created by:
  mknod sd0a  b 12 0 ; chmod 640  sd0a; chgrp operator  sd0a
  mknod rsd0a c 21 1 ; chmod 640 rsd0a; chgrp operator rsd0a
  mknod rsd0h c 21 7 ; chmod 640 rsd0h; chgrp operator rsd0h
  
  This I have experimented with until the cows arrived home, but I have
  another serious problem which is that my (internal) root drive is
  defective and my kernel repair kit (dutifully built years ago) will
  only repair the kernel on this drive.  My system will not stay up long
  enough to enable me to re-create these floppies or clone the system
  fully onto the other st506.  I even have a zero level dump to restore
  (from 800k floppies ugh!) if I can bootstrap the whole thing somehow.
  I am running in about 35Mb on an external drive with a ropey copy of
  RiscIx 1.13.
  
  If there is nothing wrong with the device set up, the partitioning
  then is there some crucial patch on between 1.13 and 1.5 which
  will solve the problem ?
  
  A far simpler solution would be to clone someones 1.15 system.
  If there is any generous person out there who lives in the
  south west (Avon, Wilts, Glos, Devon, Gwent) who has a pristine 
  RiscIX 1.15 system and is prepared to have me copy it ?
  
  Needless my maintenance cover lapsed a long time ago, and
  to purchase a copy of RiscIx 2.0 is out of question at the
  moment.
  
  Thanks in advance,
  Lynton.
  ---
  Lynton Challoner
  Home Number: 0225-315885
  Work Number: 0793-888481, (0793-886171 fax)

--- +++ ---
Jeremy Prior (jez)                                  Telephone:   +44 225 444700
Praxis plc, 20 Manvers Street,                          Telex:  445848 PRAXIS G
Bath, AVON, BA1 1PX, UK                                   Fax:   +44 225 465205
uunet!mcsun!uknet!praxis!jez                            Email: jez@praxis.co.uk
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: bzg52408@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Benjamin Z. Goldsteen)
Subject: I want an Acorn, so what do I do?
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 02:23:28 GMT

   We are looking at getting an some new equipment - I would like get
something a little different then the typical Xterminal.  All I
know about the Acorn is it is from England (?).  
So, if somebody could send me the typical propaganda (as well as
some pricing, benchmarks, etc).  I am afraid I can't monitor this group...
yet as my news reader (more likely more news feed) claims this group
is empty ..
Thanks
Benjamin Z. Goldsteen
(reply's to this login should .forward to my real login)
From: gta@st-andrews.ac.uk (Graham Allan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: Acorn Printer Drivers
Date: 21 Jul 92 13:53:12 GMT
Reply-To: gta@st-andrews.ac.uk
Organization: Greyfriars mail-relay

jwil1@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (TMOTA) writes:

> Under RISC OS 2.00, a 3-pass ("240x216") print on my 9-pin printer is very
> good until you try to print any shaded things (drawfiles, sprites).
> 
> The trouble is that the printer driver assumes that just because it is
> pretending that the printer can do 240x216 resolution, it is actually able
> to make the dots 1/240th x 1/216th of an inch.
> 
> In reality, the dots are much larger than this, so that anything but the
> lightest shades of grey comes out black.
> 
> All that would be needed to fix the problem would be to scale the 24-bit RGB
> value for each colour up towards white (by an optional amount) so that
> everything except black can be made lighter to the extent that 90% of the
> greys actually become visible...

Under RO2, you could tweak this a bit by altering pxres_halftone and
pyres_halftone in the PrData file. Try using a coarser halftone and grey
shades can come out slightly better. Well - I seem to remember trying this,
and it worked in *some* cases. The printer driver would complain about some
settings, though, so it needs experimentation.

Didn't Owen post a long explanation of the RO3 printer drivers, which
implied they could also do palette correction as you suggest? It would need
to be explicitly set-up for each printer/resolution combination, though.

> Ummm... Here's an idea that people might baulk at (because it's from the Mac)
> but why do we have to have
>   "120x72" "180x180" "420x638", etc.
> 
> Would it not be more user-friendly to have:
> +----------------------------------------------------------------+
> |  Quality:  Low      Average     Better     Best                |
> |            [ ]        [*]        [ ]        [ ]                |
> |  Speed:   Fast      Average     Slow       Excruciatingly slow |
> +----------------------------------------------------------------+
> (Where [*] are radio buttons)

Personally, I'm quite happy with it the way it is. It tells you exactly what
you are going to get rather than hiding you from the technicalities. Of
course, the "180x180" etc options you are given are simply text defined in
the PrData file (in RO2 anyway), so you could always add the "slow",
"comatose" etc annotations in there...

Graham
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Graham Allan
Physics Dept, University of St.Andrews                   gta@st-andrews.ac.uk
From: kers@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Chris Dollin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: WordHound
Date: 30 Jul 92 09:09:35 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.


Tried Wordhound last night (I had to take Wordhound2 home in two parts, to fit
it on my PC floppies, and couldn't remember the RISC OS command to concatenate
files. This *is* one, isn't there?), not bad.

An observation: I kept *double* clicking on entries to expand them. Do other
people find this? I'd prefer one click for select, second to fire (I'm an
``anti-double-click'' person), but I'm interested in other opinions.

Now the hard bits. How about allowing the dictionary & thesaurus to be
expanded? For example, it didn't seem to know ``instantiate'' (but it was OK on
``peripatetic'', the next word we tried). Also one would like to attatch
specialist dictionaries to it. ANd can we extract the information *in* the
dictionary & thesaurus?
--

Regards,    | It's strange how you suddenly discover bizarre and dangerous
Kers.       | holes in your knowledge.  I fell down one today. - Steve Knight
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: kortink@cs.utwente.nl (John Kortink)
Subject: Updates
Organization: University of Twente, Dept. of Computer Science
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 19:29:38 GMT

Service message for registered users of Translator et al
--------------------------------------------------------

Translator 7.11
---------------
- Now loads JPEG, using the Independent JPEG Group's software
  (and ensures Clib and FPEmulator prior to calling djpeg, unlike
  some other apps I can mention ... :-)
- Pointer now changes shape over 'menuable' icons.
- Several minor tidy-ups regarding RISCOS compliance.

Creator 1.34
------------
- Fixed misinterpretation of TIFF required tags, which should shut
  up some picky foreign TIFF readers.

GreyEdit 1.29
-------------
- Smaller control window
- Presets menu for zoom
- Several minor tidy-ups regarding RISCOS compliance.

PackDir 1.23
------------
- Minor but annoying bug fixed : potential address exception during
  unpacking cannot occur anymore (last bugette in LZWB I hope). Was
  more likely for largeish-file/more-bits/less-memory situations.

I have forgotten who indicated the PackDir bug, but your 16-bit PackDir files
were definately not corrupted by this bug, and can be unpacked safely with
1.23.

Registered users are invited to mail me for copies of any or all of the above.
Others don't bother or register.

All will be PackDir-ed, except PackDir, which is available as a Sparkhive.

Please note that Translator, Creator and GreyEdit may *not* be put on BBSses,
servers, etc.. Read Docs.Guide for details regarding my new 'policy'.

Sorry for wasting bandwidth, all you unregistered folks. :-)

Service message ends.


John Kortink

Student of Informatics at the University of Twente, The Netherlands
NETMAIL : kortink@cs.utwente.nl              DISCLAIMER : the usual

'The sun is blinding, dizzy golden, dancing green
 Through the park in the afternoon, wondering where the hell
 I have been'                            - Suzanne Vega, 'Cracking'
From: gardar@grun.is (Gardar Runolfsson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: music related drawfiles?
Date: 27 Jul 92 08:27:45 GMT
Organization: G.Run hf

hi there,

the subject almost says it all!  I need music related
drawfiles for a small paper I'm putting together in
!impression.

If anyone out there has drawfiles of things like guitars and
other instruments and any music related stuff he/she is allowed
and willing to part with please mail it directly to me, your help
most appreciated.

best regards
gardar Runolfsson
gardar@grun.is

-- 

Regards
Gardar Runolfsson
gardar@grun.is
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
From: mybg@huji.ac.il (Michael Ben-Gershon)
Subject: Re: A540 Processor card changes?
Reply-To: mybg@shum.huji.ac.il (Michael Ben-Gershon)
Organization: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Date: 23 Jul 92 08:16:23 GMT

My A540, bought at the end of March, has a processor card with a socket for
an FPA.  I am still eagerly awaiting its arrival :-)

Michael
From: rogersh%p2c@uk.ac.man.cs (Huw Rogers)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: FAQ list posting needed (was Re: info?)
Date: 27 Jul 92 07:47:32 GMT
Organization: Murder Inc.

In article <1992Jul26.082315.23796@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> yegerleh@cortez.ecn.purdue.edu (James D Yegerlehner) writes:
>I know almost nothing about this computer, but was enticed by a
>runor that it is low cost and is built around a RISC chip.
>Can anyone supply details? What about ports, OS, video modes?
>Is it distributed in the US by anyone? How much does it cost?

There really should be an item in the FAQ for this kind of question,
of which there are two examples today. Whoever's in charge of the
FAQ, if you're still online, can you please fix this (and post it)?

	-Huw

[ H.J.Rogers  INTERNET: rogersh%p4@cs.man.ac.uk                    ]
[    ,_,      JANET: rogersh%p4@uk.ac.man.cs                       ]
[  :-(_)-o   "I'll be back..."                                     ]
[   _} {_    "Computer Science is an engineering discipline."      ]
From: streater@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Tim Streater)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
Subject: Re: Okay, so tell us about this Archimedes computer...
Date: 29 Jul 92 04:43:25 GMT
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center


The Archimedes with the ARM3 is very fast. My nephew, in London, has started
a small company which does *real*time* video editing on an ARM3-based machine,
using *no* special hardware. He can read compressed video in from a Sony
optical drive, decompress and dither to 256 colours at a full 25 fps, done
entirely in software. So an offline editing suite is very cheap. They also
have a system connected to a professional video recorder system so you can 
edit to/from tape directly if preferred (or copy to the video disk).

Anyone interested in finding out more should contact them directly:

EIDOS plc, 15 Thames St, Hampton, Middlesex TW12 2EW, UK.  081-941-7899.

Tim.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn.advocacy
From: mvoorhis@joseph.WPI.EDU (Michael C Voorhis)
Subject: Re: Software Licences
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609-2280
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 02:37:36 GMT

>  - You may only use the software on one *particular* machine. You are stuck
>    if you ever want to upgrade to a better machine. You may never sell the
>    software as second hand.

Acorn, eh?  That's enough to prevent me from ever wanting a machine of
theirs... if they're actually considering that...

Yow.  Just think-- with all the wonderful free stuff out there, gcc, emacs,
LaTeX, gdb, ftp.uu.net... there are so many people out there who are
willing to deal with licensing BS like this...

Sigh.