If you have ever wondered what it is like to scan slides and transparencies with a dedicated film scanner then now is your opportunity to find out. With the Nikon Coolscan III it is possible to capture excellent high quality photographs directly which is particularly useful for archiving old photos produced before the availability of Picture CD at the processing stage.
Please come and support Tony in what I am sure will be a very worthwhile talk and demonstration.
Also would someone please bring an extra monitor for this meeting and let me know(Ed.)
AppBasic is a freeware application which provides the easiest way to write standard RISC OS applications for the desktop and can be found at http://www.jettons.co.uk/riscos/toolbox/.
Joe has been developing this system for some years and demonstrated the power of the system using a Toshiba laptop running Virtual RPC- adjust with an overhead projector.
AppBasic allows programming 'off the cuff' and Joe enjoys demonstrating the power of the system to an audience.
This application, which is essentially a programming environment for WIMP programming, enables one to construct software with a minimum of typing as it consists of a very graphical approach to program structure and uses building blocks to handle various events. All of the detailed functionality is handled by the Toolbox, a library of routines originally developed by Pace , which makes the construction very swift and error free and produces very small sized code modules. It is necessary to ensure that you have the latest Toolbox library installed since it is being continuously developed.
It can be used with Basic or C/C++ and leads to standard and portable programs. The programming is very compact and a finished program may contain only 90k of main program out of 4.5MB Total. Joe uses StrongEd as his editing program which he prefers over Zap.
There is extensive library of gadgets which is being added to by other authors all the time, in particular Rick Griffin has produced the tabs gadget which is used at the top of some of the screens. AppBasic creates a standard RISC OS application, which we know is a directory structure containing !Boot, !Run , !RunImage etc. but the difference here is that !RunImage is a now a directory itself instead of a file. This !RunImage directory contains a !Run file and any number of other files which are all added by AppBasic as the program is constructed. To program you design objects using the resource file which is the Toolbox and drop these into the !RunImage directory.
Once having loaded AppBasic you click on it in the icon bar to get Toolbox modules. Joe created a new program, call it !Iceni. Calling up a window object he drew a circle within it and added various boxes, text objects and buttons. As each change was made to the program Joe re-ran the module to check it since AppBasic allows what might be called continuous iterative development. He then overlaid another window obscuring part of the circle. In order to change the circle colour he showed how to call a colour picker which allowed him to pick a new colour for the circle but this also needed an auto redraw module. It is easy to add text captions and instructions to objects within the window. In !Iceni he set up co-ordinates for the position and size of the circle and omitted the colour parameter in order to show the error handling.
If an error is made this is a very neat throwback approach to error handling which allows rapid identification of the error and speedy correction. The Event handlers are used to define what is happening for example if a mouse is clicked on a particular object. Joe claimed that you don't need the manual to use the system as context sensitive help was available at all times using F1 on a highlighted character. Various functions are used to handle new (child) windows spawned from parent windows. or to 'Get parent' and it is necessary to ask the Toolbox for the ID of a window in order to reference it.
Once a program is running satisfactorily it can be compressed. AppBasic comes with 3 different compression programs written by 3rd parties. He prefers the one called StrongBS.
The compressor identifies all of the modules added to the !RunImage directory and removes those which are redundant automatically so it doesn't matter if extra files are added and not used.
The system produces a final program which is compressed and is run as a normal standalone basic program without the user needing AppBasic to be installed. In fact it is not possible to detect that AppBasic was even used in the program development and the finished program can always be returned to AppBasic for changes to be made.
I can't really report all of the meeting here as it really needs a hands on approach. Joe was a remarkable speaker and claims that once people have become familiar with the system they can be very proficient at producing applications. Maybe we should have a competition at designing something at a hands-on club meeting?
This talk was a very good introduction to the application and presented in a very lively and entertaining fashion. Joe is also currently writing a series in Quercus magazine (formerly Acorn user) (Ed.) We are very grateful at Joe for making the journey on such a foggy evening.
Your editor also visited the Essex club this month to see Uniprint in action demonstrated by Frank having spent the day setting it up at home. Quite an interesting evening although frank had to do battle with a borrowed RPC to get everything working. I must say I was very impressed with the print quality from his Canon i965 printer. It is a very good system both for networking several machines to one printer and for enabling the use of printers from RISC OS where no RISC OS driver exists.
Have you any suggestions for topics for future meetings, which would aid the Committee in planning next year's programme.
| Date | Topic | Speaker |
| 2nd March 2005 | Using Nikon Coolscan for slide scanning | Tony |
| 6th April 2005 | AGM followed by a talk by Paul Beverley | |
| 4th May 2005 | IYONIX and RISC OS | Jack Lillingston |
Talks with Visiting speakers are shown in Red. As you can see we are hoping to have a few more talks with outside speakers this year. We will give more details as soon as they are available.
Our meetings are held at the Bourne Vale Social Club, Halifax Road, Ipswich IP2 8NP , for a map and other details please see the website. http://icenicomputerclub.users.btopenworld.com
Continuing our publicity for EAUG events their next meeting will be:
8th March "Getting to grips with Easiwriter/TechWriter and Friends" with Stewart Brookes.
Stewart Brookes is a beta tester for the Easi- range and reminds you in advance that Icon Technology's document processors are one of the cornerstones of RISC OS productivity software.
The Icon Technology range includes Writer and Writer+ which are available to almost all RISC OS users through being bundled with other products, EasiWriter for those who need a fully-featured word processor with Word import and export, and TechWriter which adds sophisticated equation editing for those of a scientific or mathematical inclination.
The really good news is that this already capable software has benefited from a flurry of recent enhancements, with development being carried out by Martin Wuerthner (who revitalised ArtWorks). These are exciting times for Easi/TechWriter users, with the promise of more to come.
But how well do you really know the software? Do you feel that you're using it to its best advantage? Confused by structures?
With such questions in mind, the presentation will cover arrange of topics, including emphasis and paragraph styles, structures, creating headers/footers, indexing, and using stationery pads. Indeed, pretty much anything and everything that time allows!
As the latest versions of EasiWriter ship with a full copy of Citation (the premier bibliographical reference manager for RISC OS computers), the evening will also include an overview of Citation, demonstrating how it can be used to best effect with EasiWriter.
If you haven't upgraded to 8.31 yet, then it will be an ideal opportunity for you to see the latest, all-singing, all-dancing, ArtWorks-friendly version of Easi/TechWriter in action.
For details of the above see the website
http://www.watsnees.demon.co.uk/fw/eaug/
Meetings are at the Great Baddow Village Hall,
opening at 7:30 p.m. for a start at 7:45 - 8:00 p.m.
For directions see below (note the new web addresses)
http://www.watsnees.demon.co.uk/fw/eaug/ven.htm
or 'phone one of the contacts on http://www.watsnees.demon.co.uk/fw/eaug/ppl.htm
See you soon!
Frank.
"ICENI does not have any Insurance cover for computers or other equipment so please be advised that you bring machines to the club at your own risk."
P.S. My insurance company have added my computer cover away from home with no extra premium required, yours might do the same.(Ed.)
I am open to suggestions on what people would like to have included in the new website. Our website URL has changed to
http://icenicomputerclub.users.btopenworld.com as a virtual domain,
it can also be reached using http://www.btinternet.com/~icenicomputerclub
Email to: iceni@woolridge.org.uk