Some things we noticed in the RISC OS world this month. What did you see?
 
More update to RDSP announced on ROOL forums
 
Elesar releases an update for Titanium users wanting to use two screens.
 
Autumn 2017 issue of Drag'n'Drop is now available on the website.
 
Show dates for 2018 all now released with SW show on 24th February, Wakefield Show on 21st April and London Show on 27th October.
 
80% of the RISC OS user guide is now updated and ROOL are asking for volunteers to complete the task.
 
Sophie Wilson was a guest on the Selywn team in the Christmas University challenge contest.
 
Some interesting updates on the RISC OS Linux port over on ROOL.
 

Assembler is where you talk directly to the chip in your computer using its own instructions, without any higher order language 'getting in the way'. This means you can write very fast code, but it is much harder to read and therefore maintain.

Links

ASM

ARM Macro Assembler

AS

An ARM assembler

ExtBASICasm

Provides extra functionality to the BASIC assembler

HeyRick

A wealth of examples and explanations in all manner of assembler

soup kitchen

An online version of Matthew Bloch's ten part series he wrote on ARM assembler programming in Archimedes World

 

BASIC stands for Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, but don't let the "Beginner's" fool you - BASIC has been used for a wide range of powerful programs, from NewsBase that many people use in conjunction with Messenger to store their emails and news, to RiscCAD, the well-liked computer aided design program.
 
BASIC has a long history - the 20-year-old BBC microcomputer started up in BASIC by default, though obviously an older version than the one that is now built into every RISC OS computer.
 
It is a simple language to learn, is very easy to get into and is remarkably quick - these have all led to a plethora of programs written in BASIC (including some of my own ).

Links

ArmSort

Module to provide easy sorting of BASIC arrays

Steve Kappa

Contains various interesting BASIC utilities, such as Basalt which provides some extensions to BASIC, and some BASIC StrongHelp manuals

 

http://www.riscos.info/ has recently gone live with information on C programming on RISC OS, and including a port of LCC, a very lean C compiler.

Links

The C Acorn User Group has articles, examples and links to other sites.

GNU C/C++

The "Gnu's Not Unix" open source compiler GCC

GCCide

A front end for GCC, which also acts as a project manager and can generate makefiles, by Dave Appleby

EasyGCC (Beta)

Another front end, by Chris Williams.

OSLib

A different header library

DrSmith's C Toolkit

A collection of useful programs to help develop stable, efficient programs

Easy C++

Easy to use C++ development package

MemLeak

Helps you track down memory leaks in C programs

A C page at acornusers.org

Some ANSI C tutorials

 

Perl is the Practical Extraction and Report Language, or more affectionately the Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister. It is a widely used language, available on nearly any platform, including RISC OS - a port is available to download from http://www.flirble.org/~nick/P/.
 

Unfortunately, Perl on RISC OS is statically linked and an application, which means not only can we not use many of the CPAN Perl extension modules that involve dynamic linking, but also a copy of the Perl executable has to start up every time a Perl program is run, leading to a significant pause in execution of every script.

 

PHP was originally designed to help spice up someone's home page, and stood for "Personal Home Page". As it grew, and gained more and more features, it renamed itself to the recursive "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor".
 
PHP is not like most other languages - it is embedded within HTML, and separated from normal HTML with <?php (or simply <?) and ?> tags. This means it is simple to include a bit of PHP in the middle of a page, to display a variable or run a whole shopping cart.
 
A RISC OS PHP port was done by Alex Waugh, originally just as an executable like the Perl port, but more recently it has been built in to WebJames, the web server Alex Waugh maintains. This means a new copy of PHP does not have to be started for every PHP page requested, siginificantly speeding up PHP execution. For example, I now find it possible to browse my website (which is entirely written in PHP) either online or offline using WebJames with PHP built in, with no real noticeable loss of speed.

Links

• php.net, home of PHP
• RISC OS port of PHP

 

If you're doing any programming in the Wimp, BASIC, Assembly, or with any SWIs at all, then Stronghelp and the StrongHelp manuals available at the sites of iain truskett and Christian Ludlam are invaluable, especially if you also have Zap or StrongEd as your text editor so that you can look up a command's innards just by pressing F1. :)
 
If you ever need any resources allocated by RISC OS, such as filetypes, SWIs, Wimp messages, then this explanation from RISCOS Ltd and the Allocate program will prove useful.