Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 16:10:40 +0000 (GMT) From: developer Subject: Select 4 Update To: riscos-select@smartgroups.com Hi Everyone, Time for an update. RISC OS 4 is now 32 bit safe. ---------------------------- RISC OS 4.02 ------------ This was released over 5 years ago, and will become end of line very shortly once existing ROMs are exhausted. 4.02 will still be available for AMSs (OEMs), but we expect most to move over to using 4.39 as their base product this year. See the latest news page on the RISC OS website for further details of the special clearance offers on RISC OS 4.02 ROMs and offers on RISC OS 4.39 Adjust ROMs RISC OS 4.39 "Adjust" ROM ------------------------- This will shortly become the standard RISC OS 4 ROM upgrade release for purchasers upgrading either from RISC OS 3.x or 4.x The advantages of having 4.39 are primarily based on the availability of DHCP networking and the other Boot option tools that are in ROM. If you have a 4.39 based machine and your hard drive fails (for example) then you have a much more usable machine (especially if you are on a network) than you would with a 4.02 machine. 4.39 is obviously a much more advanced version of RISC OS than 4.02 so it makes sense to have 4.39 in ROM even if you are a Select subscriber. There has been confusion on some web sites over the naming of different versions of RISC OS 4. "Select" is the ongoing development project title for softloaded versions of RISC OS 4. "Adjust" is the ROM version of RISC OS 4.39. Future versions under development are "Select 4" as the next version of the Select scheme, which will appear as Select 4 for There is however NO INTENTION to produce further different versions of RISC OS as ROM updates for the forseeable future. The stock of OTP ROMs is finite and for support reasons it is far better to have a known level of RISC OS in ROM rather than a wide range of OS versions. Early purchasers of the Red Flash ROMs with RISC OS 4.39 may be able to reflash to later versions of RISC OS / Select, but that is not part of the official roadmap for Select developments. Select ------ The Select scheme is now the main development platform for RISCOS Ltd. We plan to make Select features available to Iyonix users as well as existing 26 bit RISC OS users, if there is sufficient demand. Select subscribers will shortly have the choice of subscribing to either or both of a 26 bit version of Select and/or a 32 bit version of Select. We shall be issuing requests for commitments to subscribe to the Select 32 scheme early in May. There will be an initial target of 100 subscribers needed in order to proceed with Select 32 for Iyonix. The Select scheme has always been intended to be a means by which RISC OS can be kept up to date with new technologies as they emerge. The key expertise of RISCOS Ltd has always been to improve the Desktop Users experience, by introducing new features that compliment existing third party applications. RISCOS Ltd has also put a large amount of work into analysing the lower level code of RISC OS 4 and resolving many long standing bugs. All new RISC OS 4 code has of course been developed to be 26/32 bit neutral with the aim of producing a 32 bit version of Select as soon as market conditions allowed. This has been expanded throughout 2004 so that the vast majority of RISC OS 4 source code (i.e not just modules which have been enhanced via Select) is now 32 bit safe. This has been a major undertaking and it should be pointed out that this work has been done completely independently from the 32 bit version of RISC OS that had been developed by Pace that was used by Castle for RISC OS 5. Select 4 -------- Some of the features intended for future versions of Select (not necessarily Select 4) include:- Vast majority of source is now updated to be 32 bit safe New version of StubsG release (which will allow the development of applications that can run on RISC OS 3 -> 5 Video Hardware abstraction. Full set of Standard Postscript compatible Fonts. Collection of extra Fonts. Easy system recognition of registered file types. GIF Image File renderer. Fast Database searcher. ATA Hard disc drivers. Further enhanced Paint and Draw packages. Support for 32 bit processor modes. 32 bit neutrality ----------------- The totality of Select development since the release of Select3i4 has been towards the goal of total conversion of the RISC OS 4 sources to be 32 bit neutral. The first milestone in that project was the production of a 26 bit RISC OS ROM image from the 32 bit neutral sources last Christmas. With the goal of using just one RISC OS source this has meant a lot of extra work ensuring that the two versions of RISC OS produced from this new source are stable for both 26 bit processors and 32 bit processors. As may be expected this has not proved as simple as just producing a new version of RISC OS solely to suit a particular processor, but is essential work to be done now to avoid problems in supporting both types of processors in the future. In the past the Select scheme has deliberately not touched certain areas of the OS, but the conversion to 32 bit has meant that every part has been examined, with the inevitable discovery of old and new bugs as well as old, but previously unknown features. Just a few of the new features already developed for Select 4 include ongoing development work has been done on Paint and Draw as well as a considerable number of new graphics renderers. The Filer has been updated to support some more advanced facilities than it has ever had before. This includes features such as keyboard command shortcuts and "search as you type". The Internet stack, and related components, have undergone a number of changes in order to address problems and provide new features to developers and, ultimately, users. The primary improvements have been the addition of new modules for particular Internet facilities - RouterDiscovery, InternetTime and ResolverMDNS. SpriteExtend has is now capable of rendering CMYK and YCbCrK JPEGs. The WindowManager has been updated significantly. From this work, it is now possible for button icons to be 'highlighted' when the mouse is over them. This is not used by the built in borders. However, a number of new borders will be supplied which will use this feature. Filecore and HForm has been totally overhauled to support the latest ATA standards and SMART features. TextGadget has new features to support new text area background sprite handling. Hopefully that enough to whet your appetite for now:-) Support for RISC OS Select on 32 bit only processors ---------------------------------------------------- RISCOS Ltd does not intend to support 32 bit Operating Systems running on 26 bit capable processors. We believe that the legacy market prefers to maintain inbuilt support for applications which have been built to run on 26 bit processors, rather than requiring the use of an emulator in order to run 26 bit applications on a 32 bit based Operating System. By this we mean that RISCOS Ltd intends to provide 26 bit Operating Systems for 26 bit capable hardware - such as Risc PC and 32 bit Operating Systems for 32 bit only hardware - such as Iyonix. We do not intend to support 32 bit Operating systems running on legacy 26 bit processors. And finally ----------- There has been many comments that that there has been no programmers information released for RISC OS 4 / Select. The fact is that the Select CDs and the RISC OS 4.39 Installation CD have always contained a substantial amount of programmers reference material in the Manuals/HTML/RISC_OS4 directory. We're sorry if this hasn't been pointed out more widely but we thought everyone enjoyed searching through the CDs to find the little gems that we had included. cheers -- RISC OS Development Team