Profile for VinceH

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Email: Private ICQ: AOL: Yahoo:	Username: VinceH Realname: Vince Hudd About me: The Life of Ian Fleming by John Pearson is my most recently read biography. What do you mean that's not what the question meant? Homepage: www.softrock.co.uk Face/Logo: Comments posted: 125 (show all)

Recent comments

On Five tips for ROL over the next five years:

riscosboss: "VinceH, you state that you can't test your software if you were to use a Select feature. Is that because you don't have Select?" That's correct, I don't - and there's a very good reason for that: My development machine is an Iyonix, and I don't have the space to have another machine alongside it and my laptop (the latter being my primary machine for all other work). Installing VA on the laptop could arguably be a solution, but I did that on my previous (previous) laptop and, quite frankly, I hated using it with a vengeance - so that's a complete non-starter. I might revert to emulation again when the fat lady not only sings, but smashes all the glasses in the process - but even then, I might have to give serious consideration to just how much I disliked it before deciding. "I get the impression from a number of the similar comments from other people as well that you think that developers should get free access to copies of Select in order to test their software." That's not actually what was said, though, is it? Being generous, you appear to have misunderstood or misread a number of comments made here. Being less generous, you could be misrepresenting what people say in order to make your own angle stronger. Given that the people in question seem to be the developers - the very people who you want to use Select features in their software - I'd hope it's misunderstanding, because it would surely be incredibly daft to misrepresent the people who you should be trying to get on side. But that's an aside. Getting back on topic... As has been said more than once, you should give serious consideration to making API improvements, rather than user-facing improvements, available outwith Select subscriptions. This would surely be beneficial to the platform as a whole, chiefly because it will enable developers to better support those APIs - and at the day's end, developers are vital to the platform. However, having said all of that there is still the flaw of the computers in use. I fuly reserve the right to be wrong, but I get the very distinct impression that most developers use Iyonix PCs. At the very least, therefore, you need to find away of releasing components including new APIs for that platform if you want developers to use those new APIs, IMO. VinceH on 3/6/09 9:42AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Five tips for ROL over the next five years:

Indeed. Earlier, Paul Middleton said "I appreciate that some people don't use Select features in their applications because they choose to assume the lowest common denominator of Operating System in use rather than testing for the availability of features, and then gracefully telling the End User that a required feature is not available on their specific OS." Speaking with my sadly rarely worn developer hat on (which does have a nice peak and would have prevented the nasty sunburn I have on my forehead) I'm not likely to ignore a Select feature in order to support a LCD OS version - it's because I can't test anything I might write to use that Select feature to make sure I haven't included any silly errors as a result of misreading the documentation or whatever. If you want developers to support it, make it available so that they can. Simples. VinceH on 2/6/09 1:59PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Five tips for ROL over the next five years:

"Before we get into specifics about freely available softloadable updates for people who have never contributed to the Select scheme, perhaps we should ask those people who have contributed whether they think the contribution they have made to RISC OS development over the past ten years should be given away for free?" That would include me, then. "So if you are reading this discussion and are a current Select subscriber then please let us have your thoughts. PS. Please quote your Select Number to verify that you are a subscriber." Oh. That wouldn't include me, then. Shame about those moving goalposts. VinceH on 2/6/09 1:11PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Five tips for ROL over the next five years:

"Just because nobody comes along and says "I use the filer thumbnailing all the time", or "The ability to import and export pngs in Paint is fantastic", is not evidence of people not using them." Aren't you just falling into the same trap riscosboss did, and ignored the earlier list of obscure additions rjek gave as examples? VinceH on 22/5/09 7:48PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

On Five tips for ROL over the next five years:

Oops. Sorry about the italics. VinceH on 22/5/09 7:40PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

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