South West show reports and photos - RISC OS News, Software and Information

South West show reports and photos

Published: 27th Feb 2007, 00:45:37GMT Source: drobe.co.uk
By the Drobe news desk

Page 2 of 4

The what, when, where, why, who and how of the weekend's event

Here, dgs reports on his experiences at this year's South West show as an exhibitor on the AAUG stand. Click here to return to the main article or view some photos of the event

Theatre presentations
The South West Show 2007 was on February 24 at its usual venue, the Webbington Hotel in Loxton, Somerset. It was organised and run by John Stonier with the help of the Wessex ARM User Group.

There was an extensive theatre programme, with Paul Middleton from RISCOS Ltd, Jack Lillingston from Castle, RiscPkg author Graham Shaw, and Qercus editor John Cartmell all giving presentations. There was also a joint presentation - or rather, one presentation in two halves - from Paul Vigay of Orpheus Internet and RISC OS Now editor Louie Smith.

People who attended the presentations told me that Jack Lillingston, unsurprisingly, talked mainly about the RISC OS shared source initiative. John Cartmell was showing the recently released issue of Qercus - the fourth since the long hiatus - and also mentioned his offer to send out mailshots to relevant postcode areas to help new or existing user groups.

I attended the presentation from Paul Vigay and Louie Smith. Paul first talked about his past in computing, saying amongst other things that, as a former Windows user, he can see the parallel with ex-smokers who become the most fervent anti-smoking campaigners.

Paul also talked about his creation of Orpheus Internet to cater for former Argonet users and others, and his hopes for increasing the RISC OS user base to the point where it is more practical to approach large companies about making their software or services usable by RISC OS users. Finally, Paul gave brief demonstrations of his Disc Commander and Web Gallery programs, both of which are free downloads from his website.

Louie focused on issue two of RISC OS Now. This was still at the printers at the time of the show, but Louie had the final PDFs of the entire issue to display and discuss. She stressed that there had been a great deal of feedback from issue one, which has been taken into account with subsequent issues.

After the black and white front cover and other problems with issue one, Louie changed the printing company she uses for production of the magazine to improve the overall quality. Issue two was also a bumper issue to make up for its delayed release. Louie's presentation seemed very well received, with a small queue of new subscribers signing up afterwards.

New stuff
There were no massive new releases at the show. Graham Shaw's new book on UnixLib, Castle's new RISC OS 5.13 download, the new Heroes of Might & Magic 2 expansion pack from Blasts of the Xtreme, and Dave Higton's open source control software for a USB missile launcher have been reported on Drobe already. All were represented at the show.

CJE Micros were selling and demonstrating the missile launcher on their stand, and it attracted a fair amount of interest and excitement. Hopes of USB missile wars between stands were not realised, however. One thing I didn't notice until after the show was that CJE were selling 5-port and 8-port gigabit switches. For owners of more than one Iyonix or other gigabit-capable machines, these are now very affordable and rather tempting, starting at £64 including VAT and delivery from CJE.

The relatively new Midlands User Group (MUG) were well represented at the show, showing off their unique method of ensuring that their meeting venue is almost at the average geographical location of all their members' homes, and offering to do the same for other groups. They also had a new suggestion for a subtle RISC OS logo, and ambitious ideas for a user group conference - watch this space. MUG may even be taking a stand at the Wakefield show this year. Definitely a user group that is going places.

Up-beat
The overall atmosphere of the show was up-beat, and whenever theatre presentations were not running there seemed to be a busy and noisy feel to the event. There were even times when it was difficult to move from one side of the show to the other because there were people several deep in front of stands facing each other.

The hall itself is still very spacious for the number of exhibitors and visitors though, so there were still some large empty areas. The show theatre was mostly quite busy but certainly never anywhere near running out of seats.

The show was very well run, and I was most grateful to the organisers who not only helped with bringing in equipment, re-siting my stand, and loaning numerous pieces of hardware for demonstrations, but even stepped in to help someone who wanted to buy a Style Guide from my stand whilst I was away. The going price for a Style Guide seems to be the princely sum of five pounds - more than double what Acorn sold them for when they weren't giving them away for free. Not bad for a publication more than fifteen years old.

The show organisers also had the use of a public address system for announcements, which hadn't been the case when I last visited the show in 2005. This was useful for announcing when each theatre presentation was about to begin, as the final schedule of talks never seemed to get published anywhere.

It also came in handy for a certain exhibitor who was even later checking out of her hotel room than I checked out of mine.

Transport problems
One aspect of the show which seemed chaotic was the shuttle bus. This seemed to be operating on request only, using a car rather than a minibus, and on the assumption that no-one who had made their own way to the show would want to use the shuttle bus to get back. This was one assumption too many, as the show website had promised a service every thirty minutes until 4:45pm, especially given the relative isolation of the show venue.

Only a small minority of visitors come to the show by train, so one can understand the organisers wanting to cut back on this significant expense. However, any such move really needs to be widely advertised and made known well in advance of the show. A publicity drive to encourage those travelling by car to consider offering lifts to some of those coming by train could work wonders - but such a publicity drive cannot start at 4pm on the day of the show.

That small issue aside, the show was great fun, and another successful and essential RISC OS event.

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markee174 (+2.0) 27/2/07 7:38AM	There were some "Acorn show" signs on the roads around the venue.....
jc (+1.0) 27/2/07 9:49AM	I've checked my notes. I'm sure I didn't mention the Qercus offer to User Groups (ie we'll include flyers out to Qercus readers in a group's catchment area) - so thanks dgs for mentioning what I missed! The presentation (rather than an earlier discussion that I had with dgs!) was mainly about the new and return series that will be appearing in Qercus and the archives that we are preparing based on Acorn User paper and electronic sources. The reporters also seem to have missed the importance of real development. David Snell has just released version 2 of WebWonder that seemed to be going down well with the purchasers and was talking about the contents of version 3. With ProCAD at a new, low price he's one exhibitor that made the most of the opportunity - and not the only one, the SW Show is traditionally the 'end of the season' where you can see early hints of what is likely to be released at Wakefield. There were plenty of hints - and more. Thanks to John and the Wessex group for the organisation - and best of luck to those hoping to extend user group activity in the area following the good ideas of the Midlands Group.
markee174 (+3.0) 27/2/07 10:13AM	*In reply to jc:* David was mentioned along with the price cut along with the state of play on MWs printer driver, Photodesk, Artworks and TechWriter and the fact Graham Shaw has been busy...
diomus (+2.0) 27/2/07 10:24AM	fwiw, the Web Wonder 2 release was covered in an article on Dec 16.
arawnsley (+2.0) 27/2/07 10:37AM	There were several new products/updates on the RComp/RCI stand too. We found this SW show to be one of the better ones in recent memory. Thinking about it, the shows continue to be excellent, which must be good news for the market, and be indicitive of all the hard work the various show organisers put in.
adamr (+3.0) 27/2/07 10:56AM	From Mark's report - It's good to hear that being a professional RISC OS programmer still opens opportunities elsewhere (c.f. MW, Xara)
jc 27/2/07 11:12AM	*In reply to diomus:* "the Web Wonder 2 release was covered in an article on Dec 16" The important consideration is continued development. It's happening with Web Wonder, RComps products, EasiWriter, ArtWorks, RO6, Graham Shaw's stuff - even with Qercus! It's not just what is released now that's important but also what can be seen of what's to be released tomorrow. You need both (something now and something seen in development) to give a feeling of confidence in the future. Someone criticised us for using so much space in Qercus to advertise the show. I'm glad we did.
chriswhy (+2.0) 27/2/07 11:32AM	I would like to add my thanks to John Stonier and the organisers. This year I was not one of those leaving with bulging carrier bags, but felt it was well worth the 270 mile round trip from Surrey. As others have said it is a show were you can talk to exhibitors without feeling guilty about a long queue waiting patiently behind you.
lym (+2.0) 27/2/07 3:54PM	Anyone who attended the ROOL presentation: any more details on a date for production of the first batch of code? It's been a while since any information was released. I know the legal process is tortuous, but I'm beginning to worry that the whole thing may take so long that by the time stuff gets out there the market will have shrunk too far. Although no panacea, open-source RISC OS seems to me the only hope left for the platform (alongside continued development of Firefox, ArtWorks, etc.) - would be excellent to see it emerge sooner rather than later.
JohnR 27/2/07 6:01PM	DGS mentions a "subtle new logo" for RISC OS that the Midlands User Group is playing with. It is visible on this web page:- http://rickman.orpheusweb.co.uk/index.html It is part of the name on the image of the mug and explains why our official abbreviation is MUG(R) not MUG.
JohnR 27/2/07 6:06PM	Warning - and apologies! the link in my previous post will not back out to Drobe owing to a redirecton page meant to trap index.htm and convert it to index.html. I need to rethink this
thegman (-1.2) 27/2/07 11:01PM	JohnR, I wonder maybe if it's worth paying a design agency to come up with a new logo for RISC OS, either via Castle, ROL, or ROOL? I've purchased a couple of designs (for an entirely different purpose) recently from small agencies, you can get something pretty nice done for about £200. Let's face it, the logo used by ROL is utterly hideous and looks like it was designed by a 12 year old.
JWCR (+2.1) 28/2/07 1:51AM	*In reply to thegman:* There is little point in one of the major players commisioning a new logo for RISC OS, if the others chose not to use it. Any rebranding would require a degree of co-ordination and cooperation between ROL, ROOL and Castle.
adamr (+2.0) 28/2/07 11:59AM	thegman, JohnR: I disagree. There's nothing wrong with the cog. Let's not waste time & money designing a new logo that no-one will use. Adam
hEgelia (+4.2) 28/2/07 12:37PM	In my opinion the current RISC OS logo, the cogwheel, is fine. It's the ROL logo (which incidentally has probably been done using Draw by a non-designer in a few minutes) and their particular usage of the riscos.com domain that annoys me, personally. If they can't properly keep it up-to-date and an accurate resource, they should pass it on to someone who can. The 256 colour Acorn-palette puzzle pieces, the seemingly random structure of dated or even inaccurate information, stone-age webdesign. Think about the RO4.02 advertisement dating back to 1999 still prominently displayed on the front page while no mention is made about the current ROSix, dated information regarding Select among other things - utterly unprofessional and counter-productive to their supposed aims. I'm sure there are some people around willing to do a site overhaul for ROL, if only to get rid of the current thing. ROL just needs to ask. The OS desktop cosmetics is obviously a bigger job and probably require professional dedication from a true designer, such as Richard Hallas. But, in all fairness, it seems ROL can just about sustain its own existence, barely any fundemental OS development and can hardly financially justify a cosmetic overhaul of the RO desktop... I'd say nowadays getting a Select subscription is mostly about putting food on PM's table.
sa110 (+1.0) 28/2/07 12:42PM	*In reply to thegman:* If you think ROL's logo was designed by a 12 year old, what do you make of Iyonix blue blob. I'm sure a 6 month old baby could have come up with something more appealing.
druck (+1.0) 28/2/07 1:31PM	*In reply to sa110:* The logo came from the blue oval power button of the Iyonix Classic case, which is an off the shelf ATX case not a Castle design. But I'm sure Castle can give you the name of the supplier to complain to.
dgs 28/2/07 1:48PM	*In reply to adamr:* "There's nothing wrong with the cog" I quite agree. However, I don't think John and MUG are proposing the replacement or abandonment of the cog, just "playing around with" an alternative that may be useful in some places. I even suggested the (R) logo and the cog logo could be amalgamated into one rather easily, but I haven't seen this done yet. ROOL are using a variant of the cog as well, of course. dgs
VinceH (+1.0) 28/2/07 2:39PM	If the (R) symbol is registered, then it can be used in the form (R)(R)
VinceH (+1.0) 28/2/07 2:43PM	Damn... I'm sure I put a second half to that sentence. Oh well, here's the second half that isn't there: Perhaps, to make the symbol they're playing around with more distinct from the symbol for a registered trademark, they could use a lowe case r? (Though I'm not sure that meets with the logic of the symbol they've devised, in which I guess the outer circle is meant to be an 'O' so that the whole thing represents the initials RO).
JohnR (+1.0) 28/2/07 4:04PM	Vince has cracked da code It came about when I was playing with letters to make up the club name. MUG gave the right flavour but wasnt specific enough. MUGRO was specific but lost the sense of irony. MUGro was no improvement. Then I happened upon the registered copyright symbol which combines the R and the O in a sort of ready made RISCOS monogram. Hence MUG® - don't know if the symbol will be rendered properly so I usually write it as MUG((R)
thegman (+0.1) 28/2/07 8:25PM	Reply to sa110, Well, yes, the blue blob Iyonix logo is just awful, I think they just made it the blue blob because it looks like the power button on the bog-standard PC case they used. I suppose they want us to think they had the case designed to look like the logo, rather than the other way round... Getting back to the ROL logo, yes, the cog is less of a problem than ROL's logo, which really beggars belief that they thought it was in some way acceptable. I think both logos could be replaced with something really modern, and the thing is, it costs NEXT TO NOTHING to get a really, really nice logo made. Really you're looking at about £200. £200 put put a fresh new image on the OS, a logo which could be used to replace the shockingly terrible splash screen on RISC OS Adjust (I had the use of it a couple of days ago), and in lot's of different places. I happen to like this logo for Haiku: http://haiku-os.org/ It makes you think Haiku is modern, funky, and all round great, but the fact is, Haiku is still pretty beta, and less useful than RISC OS, but from the RISC OS logos you see, you'd swear it was run by a primary school and not by limited companies. If you still think that it's £200 wasted, then we'll have to agree to disagree. As for time taken, it would take a small design agency a couple of days after getting the brief, and trivial programming to get it into websites and the OS itself.
AW 28/2/07 11:22PM	It's a shame the RISC OS Now woman is using a Mac.
JohnR (+1.0) 1/3/07 11:32AM	*In reply to AW:* I was a bit surprised to see the Mac but anyone who has to travel to give a presentation has little choice. Given the close association of RISC OS Now with PV a PC laptop with VRPC would be out on religious grounds. An A9Home would be possible, but is a bit messy with separate mouse, keyboard and screen - which leaves the Mac. It was plainly not was Louie's machine of choice - she had to ask the audience how to use it at least once.
jess (+1.0) 1/3/07 11:44AM	If only VA would release their Mac version.
hEgelia (+1.0) 1/3/07 1:07PM	*In reply to AW:* Modern Macs are fantastic computers, in my experience. After always using RISC OS and realizing I needed more then could be expected of a RO machine, the choice was obvious to me: a Mac. Why? Mac OS X is very powerful, yet easy, uncluttered and pleasurable to use with the most resemblance to RO I've yet to see elsewhere. Plus their hardware is pretty nice. Apple and Acorn have a history together and I've always been of the opinion that if I'd need an alternative system, it would be a Mac. I haven't regretted this decision for a microsecond and it's a great partner to my RiscPC. Indeed jess, it is a great shame VA hasn't pushed on and completed their Mac version of VRPC. Now that all new Macs have Intel CPU's inside them, I suspect it could be easier to port the code over to OS X. I'd hate to run Windows on a Mac to get to VRPC, because I hate to run Windows.
stevef (+1.0) 1/3/07 2:22PM	If you read the explanation of how the RISC OS cog came about, it seems a lot more thought went into it than is being suggested here. I suspect that Richard Hallas might be a bit miffed at being described as a 12 year old, too. As for changing the logo again: why? The cog is universal now: it appears in the RO4, RO5 and RO6 logos, ROOL's logo, and in a lot of the platform's publicity. As more logos get redesigned, it's replacing the Acorn as the standard symbol of the platform, regardless of supplier. And just as this is happening, some people want to design a new logo to replace it, thereby diluting what 'brand image' we have. Why?
thegman 1/3/07 2:45PM	I've read the cog explaination, and yes there are reasons behind it, but not very important ones. Almost all major computer vendors started off with 8 bit machines and moved onto 32-bit machines, but they don't feel the need to reflect that in their logo. Actually, the cog is not that bad, and I'm not saying Richard Hallas is a 12 year old, only that most of the logos and design in RISC OS looks like it was created by one. My major beef is with the ROL logo (and whole website), the RISC OS splash screen, the Iyonix logo, which are pretty bad. The ROL logo in particular can be singled out for taking about 2 mins in !Draw and being utterly, utterly terrible. We don't really have a brand image to dilute, and the image we do have is ghastly, just gaudy websites filled with shamefully amateur logos and graphics, designed with zero professionalism. The only point I'm trying to make is this: RISC OS in many ways looks horrible, we can fix this with very minimal expense. RISC OS is pretty dated technically, but looks even more dated than it actually is, again, it would not hurt to pretty it up a bit, again could be done for a few hundred pounds on a couple of nice icon sets.
mfraser (+1.0) 1/3/07 3:13PM	Just to let everyone know, the charity stand raised £200 for our chosen charity.
hEgelia (+1.0) 1/3/07 4:18PM	*In reply to stevef:* It seems to me most critisism given here is about the RISCOS Ltd logo, not the RISC OS logo itself which indeed is the cogwheel. I know Richard Hallas has designed the cogwheel (and have read his thoughts behind it in his Foundation article), but somehow I doubt if he did the ROL logo which certainly looks like a schoolboys first exercise in Draw. The cogwheel as a logo is fine and, for the most part, I agree with the sentiments behind its creation. A new logo would only add to the confusion already existing within the RO community and outside of it, but at some point it could perhaps be remade to gain a more flashier appearance like having a bit of shading, shadow, blending, etc. *In reply to thegman:* I agree with much of what you've said. What, indeed, really does need to be redone is ofcourse the RISCOS Ltd website, together with its presentation of their various products and services. It could even become a sort of 'RO knowledge centre' including forums and more personal examples of RO application by various users, including ofcourse screenshots, stories, tutorials, etc. A lot of possibilities exist and it's a shame ROL does not exploit them. It is the riscos.com domain after all! The websites of many RO companies and dealers also look quite outdated and boring. Yes, boring... it can really help sell products if a website has an active and exciting appearance. It can even have a Flash film somewhere as long as it's not too big and there are not too many of them. With regards to compatibility, we have several decent browsers which can cope with technically more advanced designs than what currently remains the standard. NetSurf can render some pretty nifty sites very well nowadays! *In reply to mfraser:* What a positive bit of news to return to topic!
stevef (+1.0) 1/3/07 4:21PM	*In reply to thegman:* OK, so many of those involved with RISC OS use poor logos and design. I'd largely agree with that, and I also agree thet the "RISC/OS ltd" logo is bad. However, I don't make the leap from that to the idea that we should abandon the cross-platform branding that has built up following a lot of work. Getting to the point that we have a single logo (the cogwheel) which is flexible enough to be incorporated into other designs took a fair bit of effort. If any one RISC OS company now goes out and commissions a new 'universal logo', it will be ignored by the other players. We already have a consesus: why can't we build on it? There's nothing to stop ROL, Castle, ROOL and so on commissioning new logos from these £200 design houses that incorporate the cog. Surely that would solve your problem, too?
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