RISC OS Select 3 in detail - RISC OS News, Software and Information

RISC OS Select 3 in detail

Published: 7th May 2003, 16:48:07GMT Source: drobe.co.uk
By Chris Williams

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Screenshots Icon cut'n'paste, filer thumbnailing, alpha sprite transparancy tip of the iceberg

As developers of the desktop incarnation of RISC OS 4, RISCOS Ltd. have today issued to drobe.co.uk the full RISC OS Select 3 feature list which includes the special secret features they have been saving 'til last. At the start of March this year, we obtained the limited provisional features list to the next public release of the operating system under the Select distribution. At this weekend's Wakefield event RISCOS Ltd. will be demonstrating Select 3 on their stand and also in the show theatre. Originally and admittedly tentatively, they intended to release the new version of everybody's favourite OS around the end of April however we're informed a public release will begin after the Wakefield event as RISC OS 4.36 enters the final stage of testing and packaging up for release. RISC OS Select is usually distributed first online to Select subscribers followed by a mailed CD release.

Essential info
Full detailed feature list
Official screenshots
Geeky modules listing

Our favourites
Curvy graduated icons
Icon cut'n'paste
Filer image thumbnails

After teasers of 'RISC OS 4+' towards the end of 2000 (if we recall correctly), it was Wakefield 2001 that saw the first announcement of Select 1, a softloading version of RISC OS that gets released through out the year to subscribers so they can quickly benefit from updates, enhancements and bug fixes made to the OS. The RISC OS Select team's aim is to get a release out about every four months, although like all big products, the actual release timings tend to flutter around the aforementioned estimation like a moth homing in on a light bulb (closer, closer, wait a minute, closer still, closer...) Despite competition from the 32 bit RISC OS 5 (developed by Castle Technology), RISCOS Ltd. has continued its support for 26 bit users and Select 3 is the result of this.

"Building upon the work done in Select 1 and 2, Select 3 improves upon both the significant changes made to both the graphics and networking components as well as adding many new features", the Select 3 feature list welcomes us. "The focus on Select 3 has been mostly based around stablising features from Select 2 and improving the desktop usability of the Operating System."

Below is our run down on the highlights of today's unveiled features. In italics is the descriptions from the Select development team, our chatter in normal type. The above right sidebar contains quick links for the impatient.

Icon cut and paste
Text in writable icons provided by the Window Manager is now able to be selected by keyboard and mouse.
It's a feature users have been crying for and we're glad to see it implemented. Highlight some text in a writable icon, hit control-c to copy to the clipboard, go to another writable icon, hit control-v to paste from the clipboard. You can also highlight some text in a writable icon and hit control-X to delete the highlighted text. You can even select text in your text editor, copy to clipboard and then paste the clipboard into a writable icon. The behaviour of the cut'n'paste system is configurable.

Thumbnailing
The filer can now display images as thumbnails, allowing photo albums and other image collections to be browsed more easily.
Any graphics file handled by the ImageFileRender system (PNGs, JPEGs, Drawfiles, Artworks, BMPs, full list here), is scaled down into a thumbnail by the Filer when a directory is in Thumbnail view. Thumbnail view is selected like the 'small icons' and 'full info' Filer views and is useful for quickly browsing image and photo collections.

Overhauled Paint
!Paint's internal and external operation has had a major overhaul to cater for some of the new features of Select 3, including alpha-channel sprites.
See below for alpha sprites. The menu layout and user interface to !Paint has been updated with floating toolboxes around the image being edited so each image has its own toolbox much like !Draw documents. There are now shortcuts to zoom and a colour toolbar which displays the RGB value of a colour for people needing such numbers (like web designers). Like the Filer, !Paint calls on the ImageFileRender system to load a range of graphics formats from PNG to ICO to Clear to JEPG to BMP, it can also save out PNGs as well as JPEGs and spritefiles. "A good number" of bug fixes have been included and better clipboard support.

Alpha-channel sprites
A new class of sprites has been created for alpha-channel sprites... Alpha-channel sprites allow each pixel to have variable translucency, which means that sprites can blend better to their backgrounds.
Currently, in sprites (native RISC OS bitmaps) with a transparent mask, a given pixel is either opaque or transparent. With an alpha channel, pixels can be semi-transparent by having multiple levels of transparency. The OS supports alpha channel sprites whenever it's asked to plot a sprite for user applications. !Paint can create sprites with alpha-channels, add an alpha-channel to an existing sprite, and allow editing of the alpha-channel.

Iconborders
Action buttons, as well as groups and other 3D-style icons have been improved and may be made round or given colours.
Briefly mentioned in the original feature list and given more detail this time. The Window Manager allows separate modules to draw the desktop's icon borders enabling custom icon borders. The supplied iconborder module allows the user to configure icons to have graduated fills, curved outlines and other colour and border effects. These effects can be easily enabled and disabled and example iconborder client code will be provided.

Recycle bin
Files deleted by the user can, optionally, be sent to a recycling bin from which they can be retrieved if necessary.
This is the classic desktop waste basket that hooks into the FilerAction system. When a file is deleted, it's moved to the bin. After a certain configured time, the bin expires old deleted files which are permanently removed. Before a file is expired, it can be retrieved and restored if accidentally deleted.

Zero Configuration
ZeroConf is a means by which an address can be obtained for a machine on a network without any configuration process.
The name 'zero configuration' says it all really and is similar to the configuration used by Access.

Don't forget

New utility Netlights is included which indicates network traffic from the iconbar. Command windows opened by single tasking apps are now opened in the center of the screen rather than near the bottom left corner of the desktop. Directories starting with a '!' but contain no !Run obey file aren't treated or displayed as applications and instead remain ordinary directories. JPEG handling is much more robust now and can withstand corrupted data thrown at it. The TextArea gadget renders text more quickly than before and supports the clipboard.
Internet, ShareFS and Freeway have had issues relating to large file transfers addressed. The Internet module can now handle changes in interface addresses more reliably. DHCPClient and ZeroConf client both respond to *ShowStat to provided their statistics, for those who like their stats.
FileSwitch also no longer leaves streams open if a 'close' fails. OS_EvaluateExpression-type expressions can now extract directory or leaf names from a string, canonicalise a filename and generate a string from the current time.
Softload ROM images are now sorted into date order, making selection of ROMs much simpler from the Softload configuration plugin. The Resolver configuration plugin is now able to locate DNS servers on the local network. DNS servers are used to convert textual domain and host names like www.drobe.co.uk or myriscpc.home in IP addresses your computer can understand. The Filer configuration plugin has been re-written and includes configuration settings for the new thumbnail view. The TimeSetup plugin, now used to set the computer time and date, is now capable of setting the timezone - a bug emphasised as the UK entered BST earlier this year.
Many, many internal tweaks and bug fixes, documented by the Select developers if you wish to check.

And more
This feature list is all on top of the original Select 3 feature list which includes a WIMP priority sprite pool, a key taskwindow bugfix and Appletalk support in ROM so RISC OS computers can contact AppleTalk file and print servers. Screenshots from RISCOS Ltd. that illustrate new aspects of the OS can be found here, with our captions. We hope to do a review of Select 3 when the product begins shipping to end users.

It's clear RISC OS Select 3 is definitely a "sum of all parts" case. Whilst single features like Filer thumbnailing and the much improved !Paint are all very nice, it's when all the separate features come together to form a much more friendlier, productive and cohesive desktop environment that Select 3 truely hopes to outshine its rivals.

Finally, while RISC OS Select was originally designed to run on RiscPCs, A7000s, RiscStations and Micos, it appears the StrongARM powered Microdigital Omega is able to boot and run RISC OS Select with minor glitches.

Links
Select 3 in action (screenshots)
RISCOS Ltd.
RISC OS Select website

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moss 7/5/03 5:47PM	This all looks lovely. Definitely worth buying.
imj 7/5/03 5:49PM	Whee. Clipboards! Thumbnails! Beautiful alpha PNGs. I love it.
mrchocky 7/5/03 5:52PM	Woo. Stuck record, I know, but all sensible and nice features that I've been expecting Select to add. -- Peter, drobe.co.uk
ksattic 7/5/03 6:15PM	Excellent! A formidable list of features to make my Iyonix jealous of my RiscPC! One question - can alpha sprites be used as icon sprites, ie. for application icons? If so, will they be blended to the iconbar, filer and pinboard background? If yes, then wohoo! -- Simon Wilson, Boulder, Colorado
middot 7/5/03 6:28PM	Can we see a screenshot of the full desktop with 'Netlights' and the 'Recycle bin' on the iconbar?
imj 7/5/03 6:32PM	*In reply to ksattic:* yes. Anywhere you can use a sprite, you can use an alpha-channel sprite.
sa110 7/5/03 6:38PM	It's about time the user inteface on !Paint was revamped The image view app looks promising. Perhaps it could be expanded on in the future to be able to select an image source like a scanner - you know bit like windows imaging in W2K Pro. -- Paul Stewart, Bletchley, Milton Keynes
middot 7/5/03 6:39PM	'recyclone' is not such a good name. It does not seem to fit in with the simple verb names of the other apps, like paint, edit, draw, browse... they should name it something like 'trash'.
imj 7/5/03 6:49PM	You never really see "!Recyclone" in a filer tho. It's a bin. It sits there. You sing its praises when you need to undelete stuff.
ksattic 7/5/03 6:49PM	Trash is primary American though. Recyclone does sound a little odd, but at least it's unique - it won't get confused with anything else. I agree though that the name isn't as obvious as "Paint" or "Draw", though. -- Simon Wilson, Boulder, Colorado
ksattic 7/5/03 6:50PM	Could I have said "though" any more times? Though. -- Simon Wilson, Boulder, Colorado
takkaria 7/5/03 6:52PM	I'm not sure I like the look of the new !Paint, actually. I rather liked having the tools in a window on their own, with more width and less height. However, the hex representation of the current colour and the other neat things in the new !Paint might make me change my mind...
imj 7/5/03 6:59PM	It's impossible to please everyone.
piemmm 7/5/03 7:41PM	It's a HUGE improvement over the original !Paint that had remained static for a number of years though. I keep getting sent 'Select - your subscription has expired' letters,... the features in select 3 are really making me think twice about my decision to not subscribe. I'll probably end up re-subbing at wakefield. Damn the fantastic improvements! -- Ian Hawkins (g0tai)
quatermass 7/5/03 7:41PM	I'd would have liked to see support for TIFF files in Select 3. Am I right in thinking that the new 'ImageFilerender' system can have other file formats easily added by 3rd parties?
md0u80c9 7/5/03 7:49PM	*In reply to quatermass:* yes. Quite easily in fact. This version has added an incredible number of plug-ins already for IFR, and once added, and IFR-supporting application can use them, and all the clever transformation stuff that IFR allows you to do on them. The API for IFR /is/ documented - if you wanna see what it does, go and root it out. IFR has seen some updates for Select 3 though - so make sure you check out the new doc when it appears too. -- Andrew Hill,
Smiler 7/5/03 8:47PM	Finally, proper anti-aliasing of app icons. Does nayone else have an ugly Easi/TechWrite icon on their beautifully decorated backdrop? Now with this, it will anti-alias to the backgraound, not just qhite (or grey)! Hoarah! !Paint looks great! Also, with the apps without !Run files, do they still display any !Sprite in their contents? ----------- Smiler - Alex Melhuish
JGZimmerle (-1.0) 7/5/03 8:54PM	Why does the info box say "© Pace Micro Technology plc, 1987 - 2002", when everywhere else it says 2003? -- Julian G. F. Zimmerle
harmsy 7/5/03 9:11PM	That looks cool. Well done to RISCOS Ltd for another bunch of hard work. -- Andrew Harmsworth, Cambridge. www.gcse.com owner and author
nex 7/5/03 9:54PM	ditto chocky, most of these things are to be expected, blah
Gregor 7/5/03 9:54PM	Hi middot! I also don't like 'recyclone'. This name isn't short and it doesn't sounds good. I prefer '!Basket'.
diomus 7/5/03 10:04PM	It's a play-on-words of 'Recycle', I believe. Chris, drobe.co.uk
Snig 7/5/03 10:11PM	It does sound like a robot from RobotWars, you know one made out of paper mache and wire coat hangers.
flibble 7/5/03 10:23PM	Recyclone: I will destory you all with my mind warping ray *In reply to Flibble:* Noooooooooo, It burns my eyes Recyclone sounds like a Marvel rent-a-baddy
Snig 7/5/03 10:51PM	Or even a weather report. "We have areas of high pressure coming on from the continent and an area of low pressure coming from across the atlantic. Notice from the south, the area of middle pressure reaching up across Cardiff, a Recyclone."
md0u80c9 7/5/03 11:23PM	Hmm. If those storms that hit the US this week return, would that be a recyclone? -- Andrew Hill
imj 7/5/03 11:23PM	*In reply to quatermass:* The ImageFileRender and ImageFileConvert systems are fully user extensible and docs are provided to select subscribers. It's really very easy to add new types. I've got an IFR up my sleeve which I hope to release if I can make it stable! I'm sure you'll soon have IFC_TIFF sorted for us, Stuart.
ksattic 8/5/03 1:18AM	Is the thumbnailing cached in any way? Ie. are the thumbnails recalculated every time the directory display is opened? Will I have to wait and see for myself? -- Simon Wilson, Boulder, Colorado
imj 8/5/03 2:18AM	There's a cache of the scaled-down sprites while the filer is open. It's dropped when the window closes.
Mendosa 8/5/03 9:31AM	I must say this all looks absolutely marvellous. Well done to all involved. I may finally have to scrape together the pennies to subscribe. Can't wait !
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