Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2003 10:00:00 +0100 From: Cerilica Limited To: vantage@article7.co.uk Subject: [vantage] Announcement Organization: Cerilica Limited There has been a degree of speculation and panic over the weekend regarding a rumour - 'plus ca change'. I was going to make the following announcement via comp.sys.acorn.announce, but you heard it here first, folks: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Change of Directors at Cerilica Limited It is with sadness that Cerilica bids farewell to Nicholas van der Walle, one of its founding directors, who is moving out of the software developement field to greater explore his artistic and creative abilities. We will miss not only his good humour and excellent presentation and support skills, but also his distinctive style, creative imagination and unique grammar and spelling ;-) It is entirely due to Nick's determination and persistence that Cerilica was created and has contributed so much to the RISC OS world. Co-founder Simon Birtwistle takes over day-to-day running of Cerilica. This has necessitated moving the office from Ross-on-Wye to Liverpool and as a result our address will be changing. Sadly we will no longer be able to provide telephone support, so all enquiries and orders must now be placed via email. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The slow-down of the RISC OS market has meant that Cerilica no longer requires full-time staff, nor can we afford the luxury. Nick did not feel that he had much to contribute if he was no longer available nine to five, Monday to Friday, and was no longer certain of the future of Cerilica and the RISC OS world. I see things differently - it merely requires us to reduce overheads so we can continue to serve and support our customers. The change-over is taking longer than I expected - I went down to Ross to pick up the stock, which I could pick up with one hand, but what filled the car was boxes and boxes of paperwork - many, many huge files full of the stuff. I have not previously been involved in the day-to-day running of this business, so all this information, and Nick's filing system, is taking some time to work out. The PO Box address will change this week, though the old one will continue to work for some months. However, the phone number has now been cancelled - it was too expensive and we won't have anyone available full-time. All email is now coming direct to me, though I don't yet have an archive of previous emails. I must apologise to anyone who was in discussions with Cerilica, for this interruption. I will be contacting those who have written to us, but if you are waiting for a reply to an email sent before the start of this month, please write again! As for the future, Vantage 1.10 will be released at the end of April - regardless of the status of the new features such as drop shadows. This will see a change in development strategy. Previously I have maintained a single source, so new features and bug fixes happened at the same time. This resulted in the latest version always being faulty in some new way, and so Cerilica was not keen to release it. I am now going to concentrate on stabilising this release. Next, we release the Iyonix version we demonstrated some time ago. Then, the stand-alone renderer. I will announce news of the Iyonix versions of RiScript and Insignia when I have confirmation of their availability. Cerilica may not be able to attend some shows - unlike Nick I have unavoidable business commitments some weekends which prevent me from attending. I will try to get to at least one this year, but I really can't promise. My real job comes first because it pays the mortgage. ;-) Simon Birtwistle -- Simon Birtwistle simon@cerilica.com Technical Director Cerilica Ltd www.cerilica.com