Drobe Launchpad | RISC OS 6.10 available to Select subscribers

RISC OS 6.10 available to Select subscribers

Published on 24th Apr 2008, 22:12:25, source is drobe.co.uk
By the Drobe news desk

Should be no real surprise

As revealed here two days ago and again this morning, RISCOS Ltd have put the finishing touches to RISC OS 6.10 and released it as part of the Select subscription scheme. Existing subscribers will be able to walk away with a Select 4i4 installation CD at Saturday's Wakefield 2008 show or download it from the riscos.com website after the event. RISC OS 6 is available for A7000, A7000+, RiscPC, Kinetic and VirtualRiscPC-class computers.

Wading through all the press release stuff this evening, it appears the key updates include an improved Filer that creates and presents thumbnails of images in a more efficient manner; indicates which images are being processed for thumbnails; can reveal how many images are present in a file; offers a couple of new ways of sorting and displaying files and can automatically choose the layout style depending on the contents of a directory; allows files to be quickly located by typing their names into filer windows (like search-by-typing in modern web browsers); gives the option of making filer windows use the same layout style of their parent window (rather than always defaulting to configured options); and includes a new sub-menu to pick file types from a list.

We've got our hands on a screenshot of the updated Filer and it's pictured below. Click on it for a larger screenshot. It shows the new file type selection menu, the directory layout settings in the title bars and filer window shortcuts.

Other improvements include a new user interface for FontEd, improvements to Alarm's user interface and handling of working weeks, support for 8MB of VRAM for VirtualRiscPC users, a revised user guide, selections of files on the Pinboard now work in real-time just like filer windows and improved SVG export and scaling accuracy in Draw.

Also, it's understood ROL have produced a set of videos demonstrating the new features of RISC OS 6 for punters to watch and learn from. Copies of these, thought to be in MPEG format suitable for RISC OS-powered machines, will be included on the Select 4i4 CD.

ROL claim they've made over 3,000 changes to the operating system since their last full release of RISC OS 6 (specifically version 6.06) in May 2007. The full list of features in S4i4 can be found here although some of it a little baffling in places. A spokesman for ROL was not available immediately to shed further light on some of the new features. However it is possible take a peek at the list of bugs squashed in the ROM to get more of an idea of what has been achieved in the new version - this leaked list doesn't include the various bug fixes and speed-ups made to applications bundled with Select.

It's hoped more details and possibly photographs or screenshots will emerge over the weekend as ROL boss Paul Middleton is due to present the new OS version to an audience at the Wakefield show.

Links
RISCOS Ltd website

This article has been linked to, or is available in the following formats:

[Printable] [Digg this] [Blog search]

Design and concept (c) Fudgecake Design, 1999 - 2001. Content (c) The Drobe Team, 1999 - 2006. See www.drobe.co.uk for more information. For non-commercial personal use only.