Best of 2005 awards voting open - RISC OS News, Software and Information

Best of 2005 awards voting open

Published: 24th Dec 2005, 04:40:23GMT Source: drobe.co.uk
By Chris Williams

Page 1 of 1

Better late than never

Voting is now open for the Best of 2005 drobe.co.uk awards, celebrating this year's foremost contributions to the RISC OS platform and recognising the people who made it all happen. Drawing up the list of nominations was a tough job and if something or someone isn't listed, this doesn't necessarily mean we don't care or that we forgot. Every single developer, dealer and bug hunter is worth his or her weight in gold. The non-commercial category, for instance, required a lot of soul searching as so many applications and utilities have been updated, enhanced and released this year.

However, the decision now lies in your hands. You have until midday December 31st to visit the voting form and cast your vote. The winners will be announced on New Year's Eve. Below are the nominations for this year's awards.

Best commercial software
This is RISC OS software you must pay for to receive.

ArtWorks - Version 2.4 included some 40 improvements while 2.5 brought outstanding PDF generation to this vector graphics package.
CDVDBurn - Burn files to CD and now DVDs with this media authoring package.
Geminus - This year this graphics driver collection harnessed the Iyonix's PCI graphics card to accelerate screen operations, including cached redraws, icon plotting and line drawing. It also officially gained multi-monitor and screen rotation support.
RiscCAD - Its author returned to RISC OS late last year to restart development work on RiscCAD. This 2D engineering design application is now up to release 10.
RiScript 5 - Defying rumours of its death, this PostScript and PDF imaging application returned to the platform in style with a new website and new features.
Messenger Pro - The email and news client gained an impressive built-in text editor and other features, such as 'tree view' support for messages.
TechWriter and EasiWriter - The word processor duo gained various new features as well as bug fixes - including structure bars, object grid lines, enhanced Microsoft Word import, keyboard macros and more.
UniPrint 2 - Use a Windows PC on your network or VirtualRiscPC to print documents created in RISC OS using this overhauled 'universal' printer driver.

Best non-commercial software
This includes open source, freeware and shareware RISC OS software.

Avalanche VNC viewer - Plenty of updates and speed boosts to this much welcomed remote desktop management tool.
Firefox - Eventually released this year in June, this heavyweight web browser port has shown improvement with each new beta version.
Cocognut - Initially a commercial application, this peer to peer file sharing application was generously made available for free in 2005.
GCCSDK - Developed and improved upon by numerous contributors through out the year, this compiler package can build applications written in C, C++ and other languages.
NetSurf - This open source native web browser continues to grow and mature, rapidly addressing problems with websites and constantly fixing bugs and evolving.
OpenTTD port - You need the original game data to play, but nevertheless, this strategy game port has entertained many users.
PrintPDF - A user friendly interface to ps2pdf, opening up a straight forward approach to creating PDF files on RISC OS.
Sargasso - Keep up to date with your favourite news and blog websites with this RSS client written in Python.
Sourcery - A programming environment, now with improved makefile generation and greater support for GCC among other updates and tweaks.
spc - In the new age of podcasting, this handy utility will download MP3s from web broadcasters and play them with DigitalCD.
Sunfish - A reliable and capable NFS client has enjoyed various bug fixes and gained support for NFS v3.
Thumbcat - Consistently treated to bug fixes and improvements, this utility can create HTML based galleries of images.
Variations - An amazing piece of graphics manipulation software that you feel guilty for using for free. It's hard to keep up with the updates made to Variations this year, the best being a slideshow feature and direct image editing support.

Best RISC OS event
Best in terms of organisation, timing, publicity, and what was on show at the events.

South West - show report - organised by John Stonier and the Wessex ARM user group.
Wakefield - show report - organised by Chris Hughes and the Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club.
European Expo - show report - organised by Aad Bezemer and the Big Ben Club
South East - show report - organised by the Surrey And Sussex Acorn Users' Group
Christmas road show - event report - organised by RISCOS Ltd.

Best show of ingenuity
Cunning use of hardware or software to think, in some cases literally, outside of the box.

3D OpenGL drivers - Ported from a BeOS related platform, this Nvidia driver presents to RISC OS the world of hardware accelerated OpenGL compatible 3D graphics.
A9home - Powered by the compact 400MHz ARM9 S3C2440 processor and Silicon Motion SM501 chipset, this petite desktop computer is currently available to paying beta testers only, yet has been a much welcomed development for the platform.
A3010 controlled central heating - Rather than toss this ARM250-era computer out with the trash, here's how real electronic engineers should keep their homes warm.
Emulating the RISC OS environment - First came some noble work to get QEMU to implement RISC OS software interfaces. Then hot on its heels came a brave effort to do the same in Java. The source code for both projects are freely available for the adventurous to tackle.
Miniature video camera - Utilising an existing network, this camera can stream live video to computers, including RISC OS powered machines.

Best general contribution
A difficult category to draw up as it recognises efforts that benefit the community as a whole.

Chris Bazley - As well as other side projects, Chris breathed life back into Star Fighter 3000, encouraging many SF3K fans to revisit the retro space combat game.
Paul Beverley - As the veteran editor of Archive, Paul has kept the pint sized monthly RISC OS-centric magazine rolling despite market pressures, whilst publishing a series of booklets and setting the standard for responsible journalism.
Jonathan Marten - Jonathan kindly released a number of graphics applications, which were previously commercial, under an open source licence, allowing them to be made 32-bit compatible and picked up by the community.
NetSurf contributors - Not content with merely collaborating to produce a native open source web browser, the team have spun off a number of satellite resources, including Tinct, Rufl and iconv, which can be used in other software projects.
Martin Wuerthner - Developer of ArtWorks 2 and also the TechWriter family, Martin continues to successfully juggle development the two packages much to the delight of his users.

Top own goal
Things that didn't go according to plan, or should never have been attempted in the first place.

Website false starts and finishes - The Cybervillage dropped its 'Acorn' name tag, went through a mild redesign, promised regular updates and a new team of writers, all before its new editor reportedly lost the FTP login password for the website. Similarly, riscos.org hogged its domain name for most of the year with a sparse handful of updates before switching to a weblog format, which was then ditched soon after.
MicroDigital AWOL - Oh dear. Synopsis: After spending years designing a computer, ship the product to patient customers, at least one of whom is then less than impressed with the goods. Get taken to court, lose, appeal, lose, and then get sought by bailiffs much to the misery of the chap owed a four figure cheque.
Oregano 2 exhaustion - The infamous web browser frequently checks for software updates from a central server maintained by developers Oregan. Over one weekend, the server fails, triggering a bug in Oregano 2 which causes it to improperly release operating system resources used for networking. The end result: Oregano 2 users find they can't use their Internet connections without regularly rebooting to cure the problem, until Oregan promptly fixes their server and Castle later issues a patch.

Contact us immediately if you spot any problems or have any questions.

Links
Best of 2005 awards voting form - you must be logged in to drobe.co.uk to vote

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Sawadee 24/12/05 11:28AM	I like the RISC OS style motto, "Better late than never". I guess in the RISC OS world, late can be a very long span of time. But when that time comes, the late than never goodies are rather nice.
TonyStill 24/12/05 10:59PM	Here's to less Own Goals and more good news in 2006: O3 released. RO 32-bit versions converge. VoIP reaches RISC OS It's Christmas - I can dream can't I?
Sawadee 24/12/05 11:40PM	Right on there Tony, I'm dreaming for the same three choices. VoIP I have been using lately on my laptop. I use Skype just recently, it is quite good. I also signed up to MSN about a month ago but have not used it, I hear the other day that Google have something in the VoIP line too? Are there any better VoIP systems out there? It would be nice to have Skype on RISC OS, as well as it's Festoon VSkype video system. Now which Christmas dream may all that be?
JGZimmerle 25/12/05 1:33AM	IIRC Skype uses a non-standard protocol, IMHO we would be better off with an H.323 client.This way we would be compatible with NetMeeting (the standard VoIP application that comes with Windows), and have a wide selection of commercial gateways to the POTS (plain old telephone system) networks.
monkeyson 25/12/05 12:37PM	What about Google Talk? Google have released the Jingle-Talk APIs now: http://code.google.com/apis/talk/index.html
Jwoody 25/12/05 6:37PM	H.323 and NetMeeting. Note sure that is a good choice as it does not work with devices behind a Nat firewall. Where as MSN Messenger and Skype do. Why not just get a straight phone on a VOIP enabled router does not need any development on RiscOS, its standards complient. Might cost a bit more but most RISC OS users seem to be well healed as they always seem to own several machines. Plus what in the RISC OS world is cheap
JGZimmerle 25/12/05 11:02PM	Of course H.323 works with NAT, altough only one H.323 client works at the same time on the NATed network. The way around that problem is to use a gatekeeper.
knutson 26/12/05 2:45AM	What no Chocky? Surely he deserves to be included in the "Best general contribution". Peter has and continues to make a massive contribution to RISC OS on a number of levels including www.riscos.info, Firefox and the Unix Porting Project.
Shadow 26/12/05 12:00PM	Yes I concur. He should be on the list, but I also noted that he wasn't thanked in the article after this for his contribution to Drobe earlier in the year. :\|
Eddie 26/12/05 3:38PM	And lets not forget to thank the team behind Drobe for their contribution to RISC OS and its tiny band of followers. Well done to Chris and his team.
Shadow 26/12/05 3:40PM	Has anyone heard anything from Peter Naulls recently? He hasn't updated his blog http://riscos.blog.com/ for ages, and I havn't seen him on any mailing lists or RISC OS websites...
TonyStill 26/12/05 4:28PM	I guess H.323 would be a good choice as it's standards-based, or perhaps something around SIP. Skype is likely (I guess) to be a non-runner because it is (as JGZ said) proprietary. I guess that the likes of Skype will likely grow gateways in the future, so the different standards will interwork even if they don't converge. As to a VoIP-enabled router: I just prefer to have these things on my computer and would like RO to gain this particular capability.
Eddie 26/12/05 5:12PM	I think Skype is rapidly achieving a 'critical mass' and I don't see any real competition to it. Many of my friends already use Skype regularly - it's easy to use, free to download and free to use via VOIP. Never heard of H.323!
Shadow 26/12/05 5:18PM	These articles may be worth a browse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.323 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype
jess 26/12/05 5:54PM	Skype suffers from being proprietary and not able to be used to talk to other VOIP services. My router supports sip VOIP and is administered via a web browser (Firefox on RO is fine). I can talk to users of sip services other than my own (eg gizmo project). Any VOIP service need to have the option of cheap dedicated hardware, to be a serious alternative to the normal telephone network, otherwise your computer need to be on all the time. Gaim is supposed to be gaining sip support, so maybe that could be ported.
jess 27/12/05 4:34PM	At least they noticed firefox.
TonyStill 27/12/05 4:40PM	*In reply to mrchocky:* Your contribution is valued hugely - here at least. But you do appear, in the guise of Firefox; I know 'cos I voted for you. Your work has been hugely valuable, I'm sure (at least, I hope) no slight was intended. Please do keep up the good work.
Jwoody (+3.1) 27/12/05 4:41PM	Yes but when will Firefox porting be complete? i.e. Non Beta. Jan 2007 perhaps. I aways get worried that Paul will get distracted by some new challenge and never finnish anything off. I see he has already made the source available for others is this a sign he has had enough of it.
mrchocky (-1.0) 27/12/05 4:50PM	Who is this Paul? And who are these mystery contributers? Despite source availability of both the browser and various supporting libraries, there's been precious little contribution besides the ongoing efforts of others in the GCCSDK team and CX11 contributor Alan B. If you wish to go on about completion, talk to the Amiga OS porters - they have a whole team, not just one very underfunded person, and they still don't have anything to show. If you wish it to be complete, then you'll have to get involved. *In reply to Tony:* My contribution to RO during 2005 has been vastly more than Firefox releases.
Jwoody 27/12/05 5:19PM	Oops Yes I meant Peter as in Peter Naulls rather than Paul, sorry for the frieudien slip up.
mrchocky (-1.0) 27/12/05 8:59PM	*In reply to Tony:* Actually, since there seems to be some confusion over this matter, I'd like to clarify further. No less than _two thirds_ of the non-commerical software listed above relies directly or indirectly upon work I did - in some cases in a very substantial manner. I was also present at all but one of the RO events listed. The QEMU work mentioned, although originally done by Nick Burrett, was built on and released by me. Apart from that, in 2005 alone, I wrote a substantial number of articles over various contentious RO topics, in order to clarify matters. That was in addition to the literally hundreds of responses I made to help requests on usenet and mailing lists. Never mind that I also stood up to individuals who were hell-bent on spreading misinformation, and not to mention all the crucial work I did on libraries and tools besides GCCSDK that even made Firefox and the dozens of over ports I did possible at all, and set the scene for even novice developers to be able to get a foot up on contributing to RO - which it desperately needs. There's more, but I think I've made my point. I look forward to the poll being rectified. If you only want to vote on developers who are listed in the poll presently, then there's not much I can do, but don't let there be any argument over my contributions in 2005 to RISC OS.
john 27/12/05 10:20PM	Well since it claims I've already voted, I'll just register my vote for you here. Certainly for me, firefox working on my iyonix is the most obvious success, but I trust all of the behind the scenes work is equally impressive.
diomus 28/12/05 12:51AM	*In reply to john:* John, and to anyone else who couldn't vote earlier: my apologies. I have been away from PHP for too long. A bug that overzealously checked usernames has been fixed and you should be able to vote now. With regards to Peter, the awards nominations can't be changed this late into the game as many people have now voted. Also, I stand by the nominations list and it will not change. I recognise the amount of stuff that Peter has tried to do this year, but I also wanted to highlight what others have done that has attracted praise and interest, particularly faces new to the spotlight because I like to encourage new people and development. Don't forget that Peter was nominated for this category last year and came second. And his projects this year were again nominated. I do wish you wouldn't take these things so personally, Peter.
mrchocky (-1.0) 28/12/05 1:04AM	I'm welcome to take it personally, when in fact, personally it involved me so much. As for being in it last year - that's an odd comment, since indeed the winner last year is included again in this list - Martin W. - do you propose to drop him from the list? By all means include a "best new contributor" section - it would be a worthy award. However, I think it's more than fair to ask for due credit. As for not changing it, it's a shame you can't bring yourself fix the mistake. As it is, it looks rather like this was done purposefully, for whatever reason. Is it drobe's intention to run a poll which has an inaccurate result?
diomus 28/12/05 1:28AM	Whilst I'm trying not to prejudice the voting process by explaining this, MartinW was picked again because he continues to ship finished products that people have given their thumbs up to. As for the rest of it, I just cannot believe you're trying to brow beat an independent awards service into 'fixing the mistake' of leaving you out - even though your work has been nominated in other categories. It is precisely this attitude of yours that just totally obliterates any goodwill generated by your programming efforts - and that's truly sad.
mrchocky (-1.0) 28/12/05 1:40AM	Why are you contradicting yourself? You said you wished to award "new faces - but neither Martin nor Paul are that. You've yet to explain why I was left out - saying that I'm "brow beating" is rather odd, since I've mentioned it after the fact, not before - the situation is not of my making. As for finished products, I'm happy to point to plenty of those, but look carefully at the name of the category - "efforts to the community as a whole" - which is precisely what I did all year, and is a long way from just programming. "my work has been nominated in other categories" - actually, my name isn't even mentioned at all, despite what I said above about my involvement. It certainly wasn't clear until my above comments to many people that I might have done so much. I still look forward to an explanation of why I was ommited - at the moment, I can only guess that it's some kind of personal antagonism towards me. If there is truly someone who has contributed more than me in 2005, please name them so they can properly be thanked; if not, I again ask for due respect for my efforts.
diomus (+0.1) 28/12/05 2:12AM	*In reply to MrChocky:* Look, you're going to look silly now. I said "particularly faces new". That first word implies preference not exclusivity. "Browbeat" is the right word to use because you're trying to change the nominations list after they were published - look it up: http://www.answers.com/browbeat&r=67 Next up is the fact that no one in the software categories are named because people should judge the software, not the author. You also point out that you have written articles and made mailing list posts, which is nice, but so have many other people. According to the Drobe database, you wrote 7 articles this year out of the 270-odd that were published. All articles are warmly welcomed, but how is that "substantial"? Finally, and here's the kicker - it is my opinion that the contributions of the people nominated are just as good as your contributions outside of the GCCSDK and Firefox (which are both nominated and both contain features contributed by other developers, I'll hasten to add). Please, take a leaf from the book of whoever wins the 'best general contribution' this year - you might learn a little humility in time for New Year's Eve 2006.
mrchocky (-1.2) 28/12/05 2:40AM	Call it browbeat as you wish (I could call what you're doing browbeating, but I won't), but you still miss the point - my objection is after the fact - it is a valid remonstration. I was excluded from the list for reasons you haven't named, but are apparently now trying to make up to justify your ommision (deliberate or otherwise). But you don't seem to have read very much of what I said - for my mailing list posts, the majority of mine were answers to questions from others - did others answer as many questions - perhaps, but not many. But that's just one thing I did. Articles? I count around 20, some quite lengthy, as well as updating some older ones to make them current. All development contains "contributions by others", except a limited number of pure ARM programs, of which there aren't many. That is the nature of development, so that's hardly a valid point. Martin is updating programs written by someone else, and much of the work recently published by Paul was written by others. It may be your opinion about my contributions (for reasons you haven't named), but again you contradict yourself - it's a poll, not "Chris's picks of 2005". I must say I am deeply disappointed at this situation. No doubt I do look silly to some, but that is the nature of standing up for myself.
datawave 28/12/05 2:50AM	*In reply to diomus:* Voting Works PERFECTLY, I just voted.
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