It seems incredible to find we are still using RISC OS into the 2020s! We are still seeing new and exciting software and hardware developments. My personal top 3 key developments at the moment are:-
1. The new RISC OS laptop.
2. Bounties to drag RISC OS kicking and screaming out of the 1990s and into the present.
3. The new web Browsers which make the modern internet accessible on RISC OS.
So what are your RISC OS plans for 2020? And what would you like to see on the Icon Bar?
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What are your RISC OS plans for 2020? |
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nytrex (01:18 4/1/2020)
Philip52 (08:41 4/1/2020)
rich (18:06 4/1/2020)
Philip52 (08:08 5/1/2020)
flibble (16:39 5/1/2020)
Bucksboy (19:02 5/1/2020)
Elesar (08:39 6/1/2020)
Bucksboy (11:50 6/1/2020)
ilcook (13:46 6/1/2020)
Elesar (20:47 6/1/2020)
adrianl (22:35 6/1/2020)
Bucksboy (08:19 7/1/2020)
VincceH (11:30 7/1/2020)
CJE (22:17 6/1/2020)
adrianl (22:47 6/1/2020)
Phlamethrower (14:10 7/1/2020)
nytrex (00:58 10/1/2020)
Phlamethrower (10:26 10/1/2020)
nytrex (04:58 12/1/2020)
cmj (22:09 20/1/2020)
ksattic (18:28 21/2/2020)
rich (20:46 21/2/2020)
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Alan Robertson |
Message #124676, posted by nytrex at 01:18, 4/1/2020 |
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Posts: 118
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My Top 3 are:
1) Multi monitor support built into RISC OS - I believe Adrian Lees has done a lot of this work already, so perhaps there needs to be a bounty to help this get added to the core OS. Two screens is more than 100% better than one screen.
2) Updated Filecore - Partition support in Filecore will go a long way to help new users keep RISC OS on their Pi SD card. At the moment RISC OS doesn't really play nicely with other installed OS's. It's a huge task rewriting Filecore to C and then adding partition support, so I guess this bounty is going to take time to complete and test.
3) RISC OS Internal Improvements - These are all the clever stuff that the developers add to the internal OS that improve it, yet users are completely unaware of. Stuff like better memory management, memory protection and better hardware utilisation . Who doesn't want a better and more intelligent OS?
I'm loving using RISC OS in 2020. We have native RISC OS laptops, we have fast ARM hardware, and we have some great applications. The RISC OS Trinity  |
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Philip Green |
Message #124677, posted by Philip52 at 08:41, 4/1/2020, in reply to message #124676 |
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Posts: 13
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Well, I can't upgrade my Mac mini to Catalina until I have implemented an alternative for Virtual RPC whose current 32-bit version won't run on the 64-bit Catalina, so I think I'll make the effort to integrate my raspberry pi into my otherwise totally uncluttered ;-) setup. |
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Richard Goodwin |
Message #124678, posted by rich at 18:06, 4/1/2020, in reply to message #124677 |
 Dictator for life
Posts: 6828
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Message from Steve Johnson, who's having login problems:
Please can you tell Philip that the solution to getting VirtualRPC to work on 64-bit Catalina on his Mac Mini is given on http://www.virtualacorn.co.uk/index2.htm?LMCL=xusJfU |
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Philip Green |
Message #124679, posted by Philip52 at 08:08, 5/1/2020, in reply to message #124678 |
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Posts: 13
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Many thanks for that. I'll have to give it some thought. None of the workarounds is simple/straightforward. |
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Peter Howkins |
Message #124680, posted by flibble at 16:39, 5/1/2020, in reply to message #124679 |
Posts: 892
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No plans here |
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George Greenfield |
Message #124681, posted by Bucksboy at 19:02, 5/1/2020, in reply to message #124680 |
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Posts: 91
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It does indeed seem remarkable that I'm still making daily use of an OS I first encountered in 1993 in the form of a second-hand A410. I lost no time in upgrading to an ARM3 CPU running at the dizzy rate of 25Mhz (so 1/48th as fast as the Pi3 I'm typing this on), but even then RISC OS seemed notably brisk and responsive. Time and CPU architecture have moved on however, and I regret that only 1/4 of the Pi's processing power is being used currently by my favourite OS. So I personally very much hope for progress this year with a multi-core version. And, of course, the perennial need for a better browser. I am excited by Adrian Lees' Evince project - I employ a physical switch at the moment to share mouse, screen and keyboard between my Windows laptop and the Pi, and it would be great to have the ability to launch, copy from and paste to Windows from the RISC OS desktop. Finally, I hope to see the Pi4 port completed. Overall I think the RISC OS scene is in excellent shape, and although still in a tiny niche, grows more active year by year. |
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Robert Sprowson |
Message #124682, posted by Elesar at 08:39, 6/1/2020, in reply to message #124681 |
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Posts: 45
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Waiting impatiently for UPS to arrive with a box of PCBs with timing hardware - the next step in Elesar's planned time travel, to allow various future RISC OS software and hardware projects to be completed.
Got a UPS tracking number for the first part at least... |
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George Greenfield |
Message #124683, posted by Bucksboy at 11:50, 6/1/2020, in reply to message #124682 |
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Posts: 91
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...the next step in Elesar's planned time travel, to allow various future RISC OS software and hardware projects to be completed. Oh goody! Can’t wait. |
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Ian Cook |
Message #124684, posted by ilcook at 13:46, 6/1/2020, in reply to message #124683 |
 Resident idiot
Posts: 1077
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I hope the parts don't end up like a type of London Police Box. |
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Robert Sprowson |
Message #124685, posted by Elesar at 20:47, 6/1/2020, in reply to message #124684 |
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Posts: 45
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I hope the parts don't end up like a type of London Police Box. The box arrived, chock full of PCBs - so many in fact I have to wonder whether the box is larger on the inside than it appears from the outside? |
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Chris Evans |
Message #124686, posted by CJE at 22:17, 6/1/2020, in reply to message #124676 |
CJE Micros chap
Posts: 228
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My Top 3 are:
1) Multi monitor support built into RISC OS - I believe Adrian Lees has done a lot of this work already, so perhaps there needs to be a bounty to help this get added to the core OS. Two screens is more than 100% better than one screen. AIUI Jeffrey Lee has also been over some years doing a lot of work at a low level in the OS, that full Multi Monitor Support needs.
Though I don't think either Adrian or Jeffrey are money motivated so I'm not sure a bounty would help.
[Edited by CJE at 22:18, 6/1/2020]
[Edited by CJE at 22:19, 6/1/2020] |
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Adrian Lees |
Message #124687, posted by adrianl at 22:35, 6/1/2020, in reply to message #124685 |
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Posts: 1637
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I hope the parts don't end up like a type of London Police Box. The box arrived, chock full of PCBs - so many in fact I have to wonder whether the box is larger on the inside than it appears from the outside?
Oh I do hope so, I really need to clear just enough space in my study to install a TARDIS and then I can set up as many RISC OS boxen as I want!  |
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Adrian Lees |
Message #124688, posted by adrianl at 22:47, 6/1/2020, in reply to message #124686 |
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Posts: 1637
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AIUI Jeffrey Lee has also been over some years doing a lot of work at a low level in the OS, that full Multi Monitor Support needs. There's still a lot more work to be done throughout all levels of the software stack unless, like Geminus, you 'cheat' and create a virtual frame buffer using the MMU; doing that means that Kernel, SpriteExtend, Draw, WindowManager and all application code still see a single, contiguous frame buffer and can render to it directly as they always have done.
Though I don't think either Adrian or Jeffrey are money motivated so I'm not sure a bounty would help. I can't speak for Jeffrey's current situation, but personally I have set up as a self-employed contractor so I can shift my balance of RISC OS-related development to other non-RO work according to where the income is available.
The intention is to release a commercial update of Geminus for all targets anyway, since it offers very useful acceleration on all targets, and has the potential to bring multi-monitor support to all machines in the shortest timeframe (the MMU-based approach is generic and works with all graphics devices). |
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George Greenfield |
Message #124689, posted by Bucksboy at 08:19, 7/1/2020, in reply to message #124685 |
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Posts: 91
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The box arrived, chock full of PCBs The suspense is killing me - any hints? |
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VinceH |
Message #124690, posted by VincceH at 11:30, 7/1/2020, in reply to message #124680 |
 Lowering the tone since the dawn of time
Posts: 1600
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No plans here That's a bit AOL, isn't it? 
My plan is to actually do some programming this year. While I can still remember how. |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #124691, posted by Phlamethrower at 14:10, 7/1/2020, in reply to message #124688 |
 Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff
Posts: 15100
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So what are your RISC OS plans for 2020? Hopefully finishing off some of the things I started in previous years! Currently I'm focusing on some low-level memory management changes, which will result in improved support for machines with lots of RAM (4GB Pi 4 & 4GB IGEPv5, and future machines with >4GB RAM). If I continue to stick with memory management, the next job would be to get things to the point where different CPU cores can have different wimpslots active. And at some point I should probably implement a proper threading API to replace the placeholder one that the SMP module currently provides.
Meanwhile, in my "off time", there's things like tidying up my NBlood port, updating my website to get everything PackMan-packaged, and maybe even continuing to play around with JIT recompilation in ArcEm.
AIUI Jeffrey Lee has also been over some years doing a lot of work at a low level in the OS, that full Multi Monitor Support needs. Most of the work I do follows the pattern of "it'll be a big help to this one main thing, and a minor help to these five other things" - usually multi-monitor support is one of the "five other things" rather than the main thing. So although I've been working on it in a sense, really all I've been doing is slowly nudging it in the right direction while focusing on other things.
There's still a lot more work to be done throughout all levels of the software stack unless, like Geminus, you 'cheat' and create a virtual frame buffer using the MMU; doing that means that Kernel, SpriteExtend, Draw, WindowManager and all application code still see a single, contiguous frame buffer and can render to it directly as they always have done. Yes, making it appear as one framebuffer to software is the only sensible way of doing it. So that's either a virtual framebuffer created using the MMU, or (if supported) a large physical framebuffer which multiple GPUs can read from. Easy for applications to support, but non-trivial to add to the OS.
Though I don't think either Adrian or Jeffrey are money motivated so I'm not sure a bounty would help. Money isn't a motivator for me, which is fine, because it means there'll be more money for Adrian! |
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Alan Robertson |
Message #124696, posted by nytrex at 00:58, 10/1/2020, in reply to message #124691 |
Member
Posts: 118
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Hopefully finishing off some of the things I started in previous years! Currently I'm focusing on some low-level memory management changes, which will result in improved support for machines with lots of RAM (4GB Pi 4 & 4GB IGEPv5, and future machines with >4GB RAM). If I continue to stick with memory management, the next job would be to get things to the point where different CPU cores can have different wimpslots active. And at some point I should probably implement a proper threading API to replace the placeholder one that the SMP module currently provides. As always thank you so much for your continued work and progress improving RISC OS. I'm always keeping a eye on the GIT activity commentary to see what shenanigans you and your fellow developers are up to.
Yes, making it appear as one framebuffer to software is the only sensible way of doing it. So that's either a virtual framebuffer created using the MMU, or (if supported) a large physical framebuffer which multiple GPUs can read from. Easy for applications to support, but non-trivial to add to the OS. Would apps be able to determine if there was one or more screens available, if there is just one framebuffer? And different screens may have different resolutions or rotations which the apps would need to be aware of too. |
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Jeffrey Lee |
Message #124698, posted by Phlamethrower at 10:26, 10/1/2020, in reply to message #124696 |
Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot stuff
Posts: 15100
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Would apps be able to determine if there was one or more screens available, if there is just one framebuffer? And different screens may have different resolutions or rotations which the apps would need to be aware of too. Yes, there'll be new APIs which apps will be able to use to read the screen layout. |
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Alan Robertson |
Message #124699, posted by nytrex at 04:58, 12/1/2020, in reply to message #124698 |
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Posts: 118
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Yes, there'll be new APIs which apps will be able to use to read the screen layout.
Cool. Reassuring to know.
Also, how difficult would it be to add layers of framebuffers so transparency could be achieved? Apologies if I'm not using the correct terminology. |
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Chris Johns |
Message #124707, posted by cmj at 22:09, 20/1/2020, in reply to message #124676 |
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Posts: 9
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Python 3. |
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Simon Wilson |
Message #124727, posted by ksattic at 18:28, 21/2/2020, in reply to message #124707 |
 Finally, an avatar!
Posts: 1291
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I've not really had a lot of time in the last few years due to work/kid/family but my plans are:
- Fix my franken-A3000 (some RAM data line corroded - again).
- Need to figure out an upgrade from my Iyonix. I'd prefer something with SATA. The Rpi3 just isn't cutting it.
- I'd like to contribute something to the RISC OS kernel. |
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Richard Goodwin |
Message #124728, posted by rich at 20:46, 21/2/2020, in reply to message #124727 |
Dictator for life
Posts: 6828
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- Need to figure out an upgrade from my Iyonix. I'd prefer something with SATA. The Rpi3 just isn't cutting it. Pi 4 with a SATA hat? 
________
 Cheers,
Rich.
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