BARUG NewsMarch 2005 This newsletter is rather early because I am not going to be around much during March. The March BARUG meeting will be held on Wednesday 30th March, usual time and venue. Paul Middleton, MD of RISCOS Ltd, is to be the guest speaker. Come and hear the latest plans for the development of RISC OS and Paul's view of the state of the market and the future. There wasn't a routine meeting in February, but the majority of BARUG members attended the South West Show. I've received thanks from John Stonier, the organiser, to all those BARUG members who helped with the setting up and clear-up operations. John advises that numbers were down this year, but the dealers were still satisfied with their takings. There was no really new stuff on offer at the Show, but BARUG members were observed with new peripherals, hard drives, software upgrades and gadgets off the Charity Stall! My lady wife is also very happy because at last almost all the old computer equipment I was given just after last year's Show has finally gone to the Charity Stall. I was able to dispose of some of the equipment privately prior to the Show and over £150 went to various Charities from the enthusiasts who acquired the equipment. I believe that the Show Charity Stall made at least £100, so much of the old equipment was rescued from the tip and found a more sympathetic home! The next part is pinched from the report of the Show on Drobe and was written by Martin Hansen, who was running the stall next to BARUG's table. He attended the talk given by Peter Naulls who runs the Unix Porting Project. I have to admit that I didn't go to this presentation, but having read Martin's report I wish I had. There is clearly a lot of potential programs which could be ported from the Unix/Linux world and which would make a big difference and fill some of the emerging gaps between RISC OS and other OS. Martin writes:
"The third talk of the day was from Peter Naulls. This drew a large audience, a little different from those who attended the other talks of the day due to a good number of the younger enthusiasts dotted around. The ideas being batted about by his Unix Porting Project are exciting although it has taken a little while for them to be properly grasped by the average RISC OS user, myself included. Briefly, the plan is to set up a pipeline through which a hoard of Unix or Linux applications can be fed such that they emerge as software that will run, stand alone and natively, under RISC OS. The idea is ambitious but the reality is that Peter can now demonstrate various pieces of software that have passed successfully through this process. Some fascinating issues emerge; it is certainly amazing to see these packages working on an Iyonix but they don't look like RISC OS applications. Some come with pull down menus or non-standard window furniture. Some games work, but assume that more processor power is available than the XScale can deliver. One member of the audience voiced the opinion that he thought it was quite reasonable that a Unix application should continue to work, respond and feel like a Unix application when running on RISC OS. Peter explained that, in some instances, part of the conversion process could replace, for example, the Unix menu system with the RISC OS pop-up one. The real excitement currently comes, however, from the possibility that a state of the art web-browser could be ported into RISC OS. Peter listed twelve RISC OS browsers, all of which are brave but unsatisfactory efforts to give us this competent and killer piece of essential software that we still (embarrassingly) badly need. FireFox is the object of desire, and porting this across has been the principle focus of the Unix Porting Project for the last couple of months. With a wry smile Peter offered to show us how well the latest port runs and then crashes: If you blinked, you missed the bit where it ran. However, it truly will be a great day if this can be successfully moved across to our platform and tweaked to work at a good pace under RISC OS. Peter got a very positive round of applause at the end of his talk; I hope it spurs him on."
Now I found this interesting because I have just started to use FireFox on the PC in preference to Internet Exploder, and find it a very good program. So if this can be ported, we would have a really good web browser available on RISC OS. Therefore, I urge members to look at supporting Peter Naulls' efforts as being a worthwhile contribution to the future development of RISC OS applications. See you in April! Steve |