Welcome to My Home Page

Although this site is still active my new site with additional material can be found at:

Introduction

Remarkably this site was constructed on a 10 year old machine using a variety of software packages most of which are still being developed today. Although my machine is obviously no longer manufactured there are one or two newer and faster machines that are being produced that run RISC OS natively. If you like RISC OS it can also be run on the PC in the form of Virtual Acorn.

Some of the Software Used to Develop This Site

• Again a rather tedious operation is writing a lot of text. This is best handled by a document processor. EasiWriter handles this extremely efficiently by converting the text to HTML. EasiWriter* will interpret Microsoft WORD files. This is a 2-way process - documents typed in EasiWriter can also be converted to WORD files.
• The graphics software I use is the magnificent ArtWorks2*. Files can be converted to the standard pdf format for multi-platform users.
• An HTML thumbnail creator program. Important to have a good reliable program to perform this function. Pic Index recommended*.
• A text editor to enable the HTML code to be compiled. StrongED is my preferred editor*.
• HTML Macro editor.
• A multi-format viewer. Highly recommended is PrivateEye by David Thomas*.
• Image manipulation software is somewhat behind the Adobe competition. Although rather dated Photodesk is still very useable - if you are prepared to go through the long learning curve (the same is true however with Adobe's Photoshop). Copies may be obtainable from CJEmicros.
• The superb open-source web-browser.... NetSurf*.

My main area of interest is graphics. A brilliant software author - Martin Wurthner has extensively improved an easy to use and superb vector based drawing package originally conceived by a Hertfordshire based company - Computer Concepts Ltd. Known as ArtWorks2 sophisticated drawings can be created due to its clear interface and intuitive behaviour. If you would like some idea of its capabilities then please go to the thumbnails index page.

As with all things there are some important issues where RISC OS performs less well......

• No new "Javascript" enabled browser software. The unix port of Firefox has been made but requires further development.
• No up-to-date video manipulation and 3-D software.
• Unsuitable for modern graphic intensive games.

These are simply a result of insufficient financial resources being available for developing fast machines and more importantly the software. Unlike MAC OS, UNIX/Linux or the ubiquitous Microsoft windows, all RISC OS software is written by "one man bands" for sadly a rather small market. Having said all this the OS is very efficient - don't just dismiss it because it runs in a negligible 4Mb of ROM, it is intuitive and free from viruses, key loggers and malware and offers high reliability with the latest RISC OS - Select/Adjust*.

* development on-going

Links checked Saturday the 2nd of June, 2007