About this CD

Richard Hallas introduces the "RISC User in a Nutshell" CD and explains how to access its contents through these pages

This document is divided into several sections. You may click the following links to jump directly to a particular topic:

Welcome!

The RISC User in a Nutshell CD contains an enormous amount of material, and there's a great deal to explore via this HTML front-end. Not only is the CD itself virtually full, but almost all of the material on it is archived, too! Because of the volume of material here, particular effort has been put into creating a helpful and logical structure for this front-end. However, the structure will benefit from a few initial words of explanation. Note that for viewing these pages you are advised to use a screen mode of at least 800×600 pixels in 256 or more colours; higher resolutions are preferable.

General navigation

The browser window features a category menu bar down the left-hand side, with the main content appearing in the large area to its right (you're looking at it now!) and an item selector bar across the top of the main area (blank for this help page, as there are no other items in this section). Clicking a category in the main menu will cause the item selector bar to change, and will also cause a contents page to appear in the main area of the window. This contents page will allow you to jump directly to any item in the selected category, whilst the selector bar at the top provides short-cuts allowing you to jump to other items within the current category without having to return to the contents page.

Volume and issue selectors

The Magazines and Discs sections feature volume and issue selectors in the item selector bar. Note that it is necessary to choose a volume number before the issue selector will work. Once you have picked a volume, its number will remain highlighted to allow you to see which volume the issue numbers currently apply to. You can still click any other volume number to change volumes, though.

Note that the volume and issue selector in the Magazines section also contains a couple of extra short-cuts. The first is to the series index, which contains listings of all the articles which form regular or occasional series in RISC User. The second short-cut is to ArcScan III, which indexes the entire contents of RISC User and its associated discs.

Special hot-links

This front-end makes very heavy use of its own special kinds of link. These links will only work if you are viewing these pages on a RISC OS computer; if you are not, then you will have to locate the appropriate archives on the CD and open the files manually.

Note that because almost all of the material on this CD is archived, it is essential that you are running a copy of SparkFS when using the disc. If SparkFS is not loaded, then most of the links will fail to work. (If you do not own SparkFS, a special read-only version will be loaded from the CD when you launch the Nutshell application.)

There are many variations on the hot-link icons, but they all follow the same basic idea. Here are a few examples:

Links with window borders
A hot-link which takes the form of a small file or program icon with a window border surrounding it will generally open a new window containing a particular kind of file, as indicated by the icon in the centre of the link. Clicking the link equates to double-clicking on a file to run it directly from within its archive on the CD, and so it may involve the computer first loading another program such as Draw or Ovation Pro.

Arc Archive
The archive link is used very widely, and will open the contents of the specified archive in a new filer window.
Txt Generic file icons
A link containing a file icon in a window indicates a file which may be loaded by any one of a number of programs; the examples to the left are text, Draw and sprite files, which may be loaded by many different RISC OS applications.
Drw
Spr
OP Specific application files
A window icon with a small application icon inside it indicates a file which will be loaded by a specific application. The examples to the left are Ovation Pro (a demo copy is supplied on this CD) and Impression.
Imp
Res Resource files
This icon will generally open a directory display containing a number of different kinds of file relating to a particular program or topic.
Jpg JPEG image
Note that JPEGs are opened in new browser windows, rather than using an external RISC OS application to view them, which means that these particular hot-links will work on any browser and computer platform. All photographs on the CD fall into this category.

Links without window borders
Hot-links without window border elements will generally do one of two things: they will either open another section within the HTML front-end (such as a software manual or a page about a disc) or they will run an application directly. The context should indicate what will happen.

Dsc Floppy disc
Floppy disc links will either lead to another HTML page which describes the disc, or will run the menu system on the disc itself
AS3 Program icons
Clicking an application icon will run that application
Htm HTML files
Clicking an HTML link opens another page, such as a software manual, in the main area of the window. Remember that you can click with Adjust in most RISC OS browsers to open a page in a new window (use Ctrl-Select in WebsterLT).
Cvr Images
Clicking on an image will usually open a larger version of the image in a new browser window, and will work on any browser and platform.

Resource software

All the software you need in order to use this CD-ROM on a RISC OS computer is provided on the CD itself, either in full or in the form of a cut-down or demo application. The resource software provided is as follows:

For more details about specific resource software, please read the Resources page in the Bonus Items section.

Resource fonts

Many of the books, manuals and magazine files on this CD require the use of specific fonts. The appropriate fonts are provided in a form that may be used directly from the CD: click on the link below to enable them. Similar links may be found elsewhere on the CD, and all perform the same function. Remember to click one of them again when you have finished using the CD in order to disable the fonts. (If you forget to do so, the computer may ask you to reinsert the CD unexpectedly.) Note that these particular fonts are intended for use from this CD only, and are not in an appropriate format to be copied to a hard disc. Suitable copies of the fonts that may be installed onto your own hard disc can be found in the Software section.

NSF Install/remove resource fonts
Click to enable or disable the fonts required by files on this CD

Troubleshooting

Here are some questions and answers covering potential queries and problems in a range of areas. You may choose a link from the list below to jump to a particular subject area.

Using the HTML front-end
Q: The special links don't work in my browser! Why not?
A: If you are not using a RISC OS computer, then most of the special hot-links will not work. If you are using a RISC OS machine, though, then you must make sure that you run the Nutshell application in the root directory of the CD to start viewing the disc's contents. If you don't do this, it's possible that some features may not work correctly. The Nutshell application will use a suitable browser if it can find one on your system; if not, it will load a customised copy of WebsterLT from the CD. If for some reason this fails, you should double-click on !Nutshell with the Shift key held down, and then run the copy of WebsterLT that you see in the resulting directory. The exact function of the Nutshell application is described in its Help file.

Q: I don't see any graphics in the HTML front-end; instead of images, I just see boxes with words in them.
A: You are almost certainly using ImageFS from Alternative Publishing. Either quit it in its entirety (choose Quit>Whole filing system from the icon bar menu) or disable its handling of GIF and JPEG images, which are the image types used by the HTML front-end: ImageFS' status for the individual GIF and JPEG filetypes should be set to Inactive. The reason that the problem can occur is that ImageFS tries to translate foreign images into sprites as they load, and this can result in GIF and JPEG images being presented to the Web browser's image translation system as sprites that have already been converted when the software is expecting a GIF- or JPEG-format image. This can cause the browser to become confused and display the image's alternative text description. Not all RISC OS browsers are affected by the presence of ImageFS, but WebsterLT, supplied on the CD and run in the absence of a commercial browser, does suffer from this problem.

Q: I am using a RISC OS computer, but I get error messages when I click on the special links and they don't do what they're supposed to do.
A: There are two possible causes:

SparkFS: SparkFS needs to be loaded in order for most of the links to work; if you have quit it, you may run into problems. If you do not own the full version, a special read-only copy is loaded from the disc when you run the Nutshell application.

CDFS bugs: if you are using a version of RISC OS earlier than 4, then there are various bugs in its CD-reading software, CDFS, which cause it to have trouble translating files with name extensions to their equivalent RISC OS filetypes. The obvious symptom is that many files are shown as Data files rather than the expected filetype. Check the files on the CD to see if the Zip archives (files ending with a "ZIP" suffix) are being displayed with Archive or Data file icons; if they appear as Data files then you need to load a program called CDFix. This is located in the Install directory on the CD, and should be installed as per the accompanying instructions. When you first opened the Nutshell CD or ran the Nutshell application, it should have warned you that you needed to install CDFix (if this was the case). CDFix is required for use with CDFS on all versions of RISC OS 3, but it is not needed on RISC OS 4.

Q: I have installed CDFix, but the CD will still not load correctly; I get strange errors such as "Line too long" or "Program renumbered" when running the Nutshell application.
A: On some rare combinations of hardware and software (i.e. particular CDFS drivers on certain RISC OS 3.1 machines), there are serious bugs in the RISC OS CD-reading software which can cause errors of this nature. The problem is not with the RISC User in a Nutshell CD-ROM. You should contact the supplier of your CD drive and/or associated interface card to find out if a more recent version of the CD driver is available. Unfortunately Beebug is not able to offer assistance with this problem as the fault is not with the Nutshell CD.

An alternative answer to this problem (especially if no other solution is available) is to buy CDROMFS from Warm Silence Software. This is an enhanced replacement for CDFS which cures the various CDFS bugs and provides extra functionality. The Nutshell CD has been tested successfully on a RISC OS 3.1 machine which was exhibiting the CDFS problems described above. CDROMFS costs £30 ex. VAT. For more details contact:

Note that the use of CDROMFS also renders CDFix unnecessary.

Q: When I click on a link to run a floppy disc menu system (e.g. for a RISC User Disc), I get an error to the effect that 'Repeat' is not found, and the menu doesn't load.
A: The Repeat command was introduced with RISC OS 3.5; if you are running the CD on a RISC OS 3.1 machine, you should install the Repeat file (which can be found in the Install directory on the CD) into your Library directory (which is usually a directory entitled Library at the root level of your hard disc).

Q: When I load a floppy disc menu system, it starts up as expected, but many or all of the program icons are blank!
A: Unfortunately the Repeat command (which is used by the HTML front-end to load the icons) appears not to work as reliably as it should on RISC OS 3 machines. (The problem does not affect RISC OS 4.) To make all the icons appear, simply open a directory display of the disc archive in question in the RISC OS filer.

Q: When I try to use the RISC User Disc menu system for a floppy disc archive, the menu system loads correctly and displays the help pages as expected, but produces 'not found' errors when I try to run the programs by clicking on their icons.
A: This is a limitation of RISC OS 3.1, and unfortunately has no direct solution. You will simply have to open a directory display of the archive and double-click on the various applications to run them manually. Copying the contents of the archive to another disc will also allow the menu system to work. The only real solution, though, is to upgrade your machine to one that runs a more recent version of RISC OS.

Q: When I click on the special links, I sometimes get error messages saying that files related to ArcFS can't be found, but the links still seem to work.
A: This can sometimes happen if you have been using a floppy disc image on the CD which uses one copy of ArcFS, and you then start using another disc which contains its own related copy of ArcFS. The system can become a little confused about where ArcFS is located, or which copy it should be using. Such errors are actually spurious, and can safely be ignored; they're just a side-effect of having lots of copies of the same program (ArcFS) on the CD.

Q: There's sometimes a pause after I click on a special link, and nothing seems to happen for a few seconds. Why?
A: The special hot-links are acted on by a special helper application called NutServe which is supplied on the CD. This is loaded automatically the first time you click on a special hot-link, which may cause a small delay (though it should not normally take an appreciable time to load). The program quits of its own accord after around five minutes of inactivity, so if you wait for more than five minutes between clicking the special links, it will have to be loaded again.

Q: I am using the copy of WebsterLT supplied on the CD, and its performance seems painfully slow on my old (2× or other slow speed) CD-ROM drive. Can I do anything to speed it up?
A: Yes: copy WebsterLT from the CD onto your machine's hard disc; you will need to Shift-double-click on !Nutshell to open it up and then copy WebsterLT from inside it. Quit the copy of WebsterLT that was loaded from the CD, and then run the new copy from your hard disc. The CD's title page should appear automatically, but note that you will still need to have loaded SparkFS (which is launched automatically by the Nutshell application) in order for the special links to work.

Because WebsterLT frequently accesses image translation programs stored inside itself, running it from a very slow CD-ROM drive can cripple its performance. Using it from hard disc instead may produce a dramatic speed increase on machines with very slow CD drives.

Q: When I click on a floppy disc link icon to run a disc's menu system, why does it sometimes take a while to start up?
A: Quite a lot needs to happen when you click a disc menu link: the computer needs to first read all the applications' program icons, and then the disc's menu system itself needs to load and catalogue the disc's contents. When running off the slow CD-ROM medium, it may take a few seconds for all this to happen.

Q: The top menu bar is fiddly! I can't find where to click!
A: It had to be small in order to accommodate the required number of short-cuts, but if you use a JavaScript-enabled Web browser, you will find that the items highlight in black when you point at them; the main category menu at the left will also highlight. At the time of writing, the browsers that support JavaScript on the RISC OS platform are ANT Fresco (available from ArgoNet/Argo Interactive Group) and WebsterXL from R-Comp.

Q: The main menu is too deep, and goes beyond the bottom of the window!
A: The category menu has no scroll bar, but if the bottom part is inaccessible you can scroll it in any RISC OS browser by clicking it and dragging. The vertical dotted line is a convenient place to drag, as you can click on it without choosing a category by accident. Note also that the least frequently used items have been placed at the bottom of this menu: the credits page is the last item, and the help page can also be accessed by returning to the opening page (click on the RISC User logo at the top of the menu) and clicking on the title graphic. This front-end, however, has been designed to work best in a desktop of at least 800×600 pixels; this resolution should be considered the minimum for effective use of these pages.

Q: There are several ugly black lines dividing portions of the window in the Web browser.
A: This is a minor cosmetic problem which affects specific combinations of operating system and Web browser. If you are using Acorn's Nested Wimp (supplied with the Browse Web browser, and built into RISC OS 4), the problem will not occur. However, if you do not have the Nested Wimp installed, and the Web browser that has been loaded is the version of WebsterLT supplied on the CD, then the problem will be evident. The solution is either to upgrade your machine to use the Nested Wimp or to use a different Web browser. The file-only version of Fresco supplied inside the Nutshell application works in a different way and will not exhibit this problem (though its functionality is severely limited). Commercial browsers such as Browse and the full version of Fresco will also not suffer from the problem.

Q: When I click on a category menu item to return to the contents page of a section after exploring other pages, it doesn't work! Either nothing happens, or else I just get taken back to the page I was looking at previously in that section!
A: This is a limitation of certain browsers, and should not affect users of the latest version of any RISC OS browser. It may be possible to navigate to the contents page by using your browser's Back button, but these pages have been designed in such a way that the opening contents pages are not essential in any case. You can navigate to any desired page using the item selector bar at the top of the window.

Fonts
Q: I want to read a book, manual or magazine article, but I get a report about lots of missing fonts. How can I view the file properly?
A: Almost all of the fonts needed to view the files on this CD are provided on the CD itself. A whole area of the Software section is devoted to fonts, but for convenience we also provide the necessary fonts in a form which can be run directly from the CD. Simply click an Install/remove resource fonts link (which can be found above or in various other appropriate places in this front-end), and the fonts you need will be run from the CD, so you don't need to install them all in your own fonts folder first.

Note that a handful of documents do in fact call for fonts which we cannot supply on the CD. However, these fonts are mostly unimportant, and are either used only in short sections or in adverts in magazine pages, for example. Simply view the documents using temporarily substituted fonts if you do not own the appropriate fonts already.

Q: I installed a collection of fonts from the CD and then tried to remove them. A window appeared to say that the fonts were being removed, but they're still listed!
A: There appears to be a minor problem on some systems when using fonts stored in archives if font management software is installed: fonts can be enabled but not subsequently disabled by the RISC User fonts enabler/disabler utility. If your font management software provides an option to manipulate the Font$Path system variable directly, you can use it to remove the sets of fonts in question. For example, LOOKsystems' Font Directory has a Remove folder option on its icon bar menu for this purpose. If not, you will have to use the command line (or a task window) to examine Font$Path and edit it to exclude the problem font folder(s).

Other ways of using this CD
Q: I want to explore the CD without using the menu. How is it organised?
A: The organisation of directories and archives on the CD is very similar to the structure of this front-end, with separate directories for magazines, discs, software and so on. The HTML files in these directories may be viewed directly to index their associated archives. Note that other resources needed by this HTML front-end are stored in directories called HTML; any such directories can be ignored when browsing the disc's structure directly.

Q: There are various directories on the CD called _AlbumData. What are they for?
A: They are for use by Irlam Instruments' Album software. If you have Album installed on your machine, you will see thumbnail images in directory displays in place of the normal filetype sprite. Album thumbnails have been provided for all appropriate graphics on this CD, and the _AlbumData directories are used to house them. In some cases, these directories also contain some of the small images used by the HTML front-end on this disc.

Q: I want to use this CD on a non-RISC OS computer. What parts of the CD can I use, and what won't work?
A: You will be able to use this HTML front-end in any Web browser which is capable of displaying frame-based pages that make use of tables. Any recent browser should be suitable. You will be able to view all the HTML pages and the HTML versions of the software manuals that are provided here, and you will also be able to view the images (magazine covers, photos etc.) that are linked into the pages (plus JPEG file links, as listed above in the section about links). However, none of the other special links to programs etc. will work, and you will be unable to open archives using the special archive links. The archives are in Zip format, and so can be decompressed on virtually any modern computer system if you locate them manually on the CD. You will then find that you can access some of the archives' contents in a useful way; for instance, the magazines prior to issue 11:5 contain articles in the form of text files. Note also that the archives of QuarkXPress documents (RISC User issues 1:1 to 8:1 and the Acorn Action magazines) use the StuffIt version 5.5 archive format, which can be accessed on the Mac and PC platforms.

Software problems
Q: After I've finished using the CD and taken it out, the computer keeps asking me to insert it again. Why?
A: There are several possible causes:

Fonts: you have probably enabled some fonts on the CD and not remembered to disable them again afterwards. Find one of the Install/remove resource fonts links and click it again to remove the fonts that are intended for use from the CD. If you have been experimenting with the font collections in the Software section, do the same for these. In each case a window will appear to tell you whether the fonts are being installed or removed. Alternatively, if you use font management software such as LOOKsystems' Font Directory, you can disable the font folders directly using this software.

Archive software: your system may have become confused about where to locate an archive program such as SparkFS or ArcFS. Simply load a new copy of the software from your hard disc to correct the appropriate system variables to point to that version rather than a different one on the CD.

Other software: there may be confusion if you try to access files from the CD using demo software rather than your own full copy. As with the archive software, simply rerun your own full copy of the software to make the appropriate system variables point to it rather than to the version on the CD. This should not usually arise, though, as the Nutshell application will try to use the full version of the software if you have it already installed on your system.

Q: Program X won't work on my RISC OS 2/3/4 computer.
A: The material on this CD encompasses the entire history of the 32-bit Acorn platform, from 1987 to 2000. The very early software discs actually predate RISC OS itself. It is therefore impossible to guarantee that every program will work on every RISC OS computer. Although this CD has been produced and tested on a StrongARM Risc PC running RISC OS 4, it is known that not all programs work on RISC OS 4, and a few are also incompatible with the StrongARM processor. We apologise for any compatibility problems that you may encounter, and we have attempted to minimise such problems, but the nature of this product means that it is impossible to avoid them entirely.

Q: Program X appears to work, but does peculiar things!
A: It's worth bearing a few points in mind when running into minor software problems:

  1. Many applications expect to be run from a read/write disc rather than a read-only CD-ROM; a few may also have problems about being run from within archives. Therefore it's worth copying them from the CD to your own hard disc to see if that makes the problem go away.
  2. Older programs (particularly those from 1994 or earlier) may not be able to use screen modes with more than 256 colours. If you are running in 32 thousand or 16 million colours and don't see what you expect to see, try changing down to 256 or even 16 colours.
  3. If problems are reported about memory shortage (e.g. 'No room for function/procedure call' or 'No room for this DIM'), try copying the application to your hard disc and then increasing the values in the WimpSlot line in the application's !Run file by (say) 8K. (To access the !Run file, open up the application by double-clicking on it with the Shift key held down.)

Although minor problems have been corrected in many of the programs in the Discs archives, it was not possible to test every single program exhaustively, and some older programs in particular may suffer from minor incompatibilities with more recent machines.

Q: Is there a newer version of program X than the one you have supplied on this CD?
A: It's a possibility, but you should initially approach the author of the program in question (if an address is supplied) with such queries. The programs on this CD are the most up-to-date ones that were available at the time the CD was pressed, and updated versions of items that were published on RISC User Discs are collected together in their own sections (see the opening page of the Discs section, or the Unused material area of the Bonus Items section).

Q: I tried copying RISC User Disc #:# to a blank floppy disc but found that it wouldn't fit! Why not?
A: The RISC User Discs archived on this CD are not 100% identical to the versions that were published on physical floppy discs. Although the material they contain is identical, a few small changes have been made:

So, the archive of floppy discs on this CD represents the discs in an improved format, but they will not all physically fit on a floppy disc any longer!

Further information
Q: I have a question that isn't answered here. How can I contact you?
A: Contact Richard Hallas either via email to Richard@hallas.demon.co.uk or by writing c/o the Beebug address (which is listed on the credits page). Email is the preferred method of contact, and will produce the fastest response. If your query concerns technical support for this CD, however, please ensure that the answer is not already provided above, as we have tried to anticipate most potential problems.

RU