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RISC OS 5 to support NetSurf printing Published: 6th Nov 2007, 00:27:51 | Permalink | PrintablePlus Filer and Pinboard among more ROOL components updated  RISC OS 5 users will soon be able to print pages from NetSurf after one of the web browser's developers stepped in to fix Castle's printing system. Using the !Printers source code released via the RISC OS Open project, NetSurf developer John-Mark Bell was able to rectify a bug blocking printing from the freely available web browser.
His patchwork, now accepted into the printing system by ROOL staff, will also enable other applications to print documents containing non-Latin letters via the bitmap printer driver.
Until now the driver module could not handle text stored in a format suitable for representing international characters - NetSurf uses two of these formats, namely UTF-8 and UTF-16, to store web pages' text in memory. A similar inability to handle internationally-formatted data in the RISC OS PostScript system could be fixed in a separate development project, it is hoped.
John-Mark, pictured, said his fixes "permit printing of text which uses international characters to bitmap printers - ie: everything except PostScript." As RISC OS 4 and 6 do not feature a Unicode-supporting Font Manager, users of these operating systems version will have to land their mitts on a copy of the RISC OS 5 Font Manager to use John-Mark's update.
He said: "The most obvious use of this is that it finally allows people to print from NetSurf on RISC OS 5, although not to PostScript printers as that uses a different driver.
"In theory, this is of benefit to anyone who's trying to print from an application that uses Unicode text on a machine with the Unicode Font Manager installed. In reality, that's NetSurf on RISC OS 5, at present, although there's nothing really stopping the UFM being softloaded on non-RO5 machines."
Other components recently tweaked by volunteer programmers include the Pinboard and its Configure plugin, the Filer, SciCalc, Maestro and CloseUp. Double-clicking on a Filer icon and holding down the mouse at the end will now emulate a shift-double-click.
ROOL's Steve Revill confirmed pre-built copies of the updated software will be made available for download "in due course." He also asked people to report any bugs or issues so that they can be addressed and fixed.
• Meanwhile work is underway to speed up the Font Manager module as Adrian Lees has experimented with optimising the plotting of anti-aliased text.
Links
ROOL source code updates and announcement
RISC OS Open and NetSurf websites
How the RISC OS printing system works
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stevek
Well done to JMB, and of course everyone at ROOL.
