ICENI News November 2005

Please note that this is a change from the originally advertised meeting which would have been a talk by Richard Brown, on Oregano 3 developments, if we had been able to arrange online access.

As we are having to fill in a topic at short notice, Gareth has suggested with the recent release of OpenOffice.org 2 which supports the Open Document Format, an XML based file format, and the recent decision of a US state to demand all documentation be in open formats, he thought this may be worth visiting. It could be incorporated into an "Open Source and Open Format" evening, looking at the reasoning behind free software, and also looking at some of that software.

Gareth said he could talk about the beginnings of Openoffice.org, the open document format, the commercial product that both spawned and is now itself based on OpenOffice (SunStarOffice), and a bit about free/open software.

At the beginning of the year Paul was interested in an open source evening, and also he was interested in trying to understand photo editing using the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Package), which is rumoured to be almost as powerful as photoshop, but does not at first glance seem intuitive. As Paul is interested in a lot of this I'm sure he would add some input too.

I think we should look for a certain amount of audience participation in this evening. (Ed.)

Please come along and bring a machine if you wish as we might do some networking here as well.

Last Meeting: Wednesday 5th October "Virtual Acorn hands-on"

This meeting was principally presented by Tony and Frank with some contribution from others.

Tony began his presentation by describing his system. He has a laptop which is an ACER ASPIRE 1670 widescreen from Silicon Alley, with 80 GB hard-drive, 512 MB of RAM and 4 USB ports @ £839.00. A carry case also from Silicon Alley, has room for the laptop, charging unit, PS1 mouse, external floppy drive, adaptor & mat etc @ £39.00.

Virtual Acorn RPC-ADJUST was purchased from the Wakefield 2005 RISC OS Show @ £149.00. (Basic software was also sold @ £99.00.) He also uses an external floppy drive which was also purchased at Wakefield Show from R.Comp for £30.00. (His Kinetic RISC PC does not have a USB port).

The Virtual Acorn CD loads automatically, but as it reaches the unlock code, you need to phone 01283 522969 for an 18 digit number to insert. Once installed then click on "Virtual RPC" to obtain the first inset window and then click on "Tools", in order to create an external floppy drive.

Then using a DOS 1.44MB formatted floppy disc transfer data from a non-USB RISC PC, using SparkFS to enclose and SparkPlug to open.

On entering the transferred work onto Virtual RPC and deleting the files from the floppy a message: "Error when reading HostFS - floppy not found" appears.

This fault is known to VirtualAcorn, who do not know a cure for it, however the fix is to keep just an empty "Edit File" on your floppy always.

To get from the Windows side of your laptop to RISC OS simply press ALT/ENTER repeating ALT/ENTER will return you to Windows. However, if you do this you must return to RISC OS to click on "Shutdown", otherwise RISC OS will not behave well next time it is used.

Tony said he did something like this recently and the configuration codes were all deleted. He then had to re-install Virtual RPC again to rectify this problem.

After clicking "Shutdown" upon the RISC OS side, press the switch-off button and the "Windows" side will then shut down automatically.

The best configuration seems to be to use 1024 x 768; higher ones will work, but the screen then seems to go peculiar if you use the others.

Tony has recently bought a Lexmark X5250 Printer/Scanner/Fax machine half-price from W.H.Smith, but there is no printer driver for RISC OS yet! Frank uses Uniprint to solve this problem with RISC OS.

Virtual Acorn comes with !Draw, !Paint, MyFiles, RISC OS and UserGuide appearing on the left hand side of screen by default. Moving these icons to other positions is possible by dragging with "Select" (left mouse button) and saving the new positions with Save Pinboard in the usual RISC OS way from "Menu" (middle mouse button). On Virtual Acorn, either the mouse wheel on a PS1 mouse or a certain key on the bottom of the keyboard can be used to produce a "Menu".

A white mouse pointer arrow (Windows pointer) and a light blue mouse pointer arrow with dark blue fill (RISC OS pointer) The white mouse arrow can be turned off, by clicking the arrow with a cross on it, found under "Tools" on the first inset window appearing.

The white mouse arrow can be turned on again by pressing ALT/ENTER both together. It is confusing with blue & white arrows together!

The USB adaptor allows either a PS1 mouse or keyboard or both to be installed independently of the keyboard on your laptop, if you wish.

Whenever Tony transfers data to a CD from either the Windows or Virtual Acorn side it records it in DOS format. He wants to be able to change this. Any ideas on how to solve it? There followed some discussion on this. It is possible to drag and drop files to the CD and use it just like a normal drive if Ahead Nero software (IN-CD) is installed or if Pinnacle Instant CD is installed on the laptop.

Tony has placed "Menon" into the "Boot Resources" for frequently used files. This piece of Freeware has always been most useful to him.

He said that he had yet to get to grips with !Easywriter version 8.40 of 18 May 2005 by Keith Lander, Peter Hartley, David Pilling and Icon Technology.

There is extra Freeware & Shareware to be found on the installation CD provided by VirtualAcorn. Installation is optional to your wishes.

Tony cannot get "Video" provided by Virtual Acorn to work. Any ideas on this? MOV pictures provided by his cousin Peter do not work either.

Does anyone know whether you can get an external drive that takes a PD Cartridge with USB lead? Panasonic are unable to help with this.

Alternatively, is it possible to acquire at a reasonable price an external CD writer, which could be plugged into a Kinetic RISC PC computer?

Finally, as Tony circulated last month, W.H.Smith sell a flat-pack for £14.99. to build a computer desk. It takes laptop, keyboard and printer etc.

Frank then gave his presentation; he uses the earlier RPC-SE version of Virtual Acorn. Frank showed all the directories on HardDisk4 on Virtual Acorn within the Windows environment. Full names show up like Tooltips when the mouse pointer is over the icons.

Frank prints using Uniprint without problems. He finds !XChars a useful application for Font handling. (Freeware).

Screen graphics can support 1600x1200x16M colours and he showed !Variation running very well.

This is a photo manipulation package for adjusting contrast, colour balance, brightness etc. It operates with a 3x3 matrix of thumbnails such that the current image is shown in the centre red square with the step variations of the parameter e.g. contrast in this example. The figures shown in the matrix on the left are % variations on the contrast of the red centre square. In use clicking on say the +5 thumbnail will result in the "0" thumbnail increasing in contrast by 5% and the other squares changing correspondingly. The increment can also be varied and it is quite fast in use. It much easier to do than describe! There are all sorts of other features and it is freeware and being actively developed by Rob Davison. (http://compo.iconbar.com/variation.htm).

John Rye and Peter added that the latest version has even more features including a comparison of the original photo and the modified one shown side-by-side. There are differences in the features available between the RPC-SE which uses SELECT, which stopped with RO4.39 and 8MB for Video display and the RPC- ADJUST. Bundled software with ADJUST also includes better versions of !Paint and !Draw.

Jon Rye said that you can configure HardDisk4 as a shared drive. It is advisable for peripherals like the Belkin Card reader to be connected before to starting up the VRPC. There is no problem using the Internet with InetSuite or using Pluto for mail. The general impression is that Virtual RPC works well with only a few glitches which may be worked around.

A Video Projector for the Club

Editorial

Hopefully as many if you as possible will be at the next meeting so that we can discuss the following:- We are going to have a Committee meeting very soon and one of the items to be discussed will be the venue and format for our January Social function usually held in the third week, which would be Weds 18th by my reckoning. If you have any preferences, suggestions or ideas for this please let us know.

ICENI Future programme

Date	Topic	Speaker
November 2nd	Open Source Software applications e.g.GIMP and Open Office.	Gareth et al.
December 7th	Gadgets, DVD burning etc.	Club
January	Social evening TBA
February 1st	UNIX, Solaris and Java	Club
March 1st	JPEG slideshow 10mins per person	Club
April 5th	AGM

Talks with Visiting speakers are shown in Red. We will give more details as soon as they are available. the more distant dates are more provisional in definition! Some more meetings may have an outside speaker.

The first visit is free and subsequent visits for non - members is £2. The membership fee is £18 due from the AGM date in April, but may be reduced for those joining late in the year.

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P.S. My insurance company have added my computer cover away from home with no extra premium required, yours might do the same.(Ed.)

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