PD World

Paul Brett with the latest freeware and PD releases for RISC OS.

Welcome to the PD World column. There have been a number of interesting developments software wise over the last few weeks, including the release of the PC card software for the RiscPC under the GPL (Gnu Public Licence). So lets see what RISC OS developers have released in the last month or so...

LaBella V 6.00 - Ray Favre

LaBella is a RISCWorld favourite and Ray has been hard at work adding new features to this very useful label designing/printing application. This new major upgrade also comes with a completely new manual.

Labella

Although LaBella is an application for printing text and/or graphics onto labels - but it is a lot more than that, you can...

Create label definitions on screen and save them for subsequent loading - including font choices/colours/line indents/justifications etc. (and some popular definitions are included as a starter)
Display a single label or display a whole label sheet, at user-chosen scales (including a display of the current printer driver print margins)
Print onto labels from records held in CSV files - choosing the number of copies of each record, the starting and finishing records, the starting label position and the range and number of copies of label sheets
Preview the printing, including showing the actual text from a CSV file and showing which record will appear on which label
Add a drawfile graphic to each label

In addition LaBella includes some very powerful functions:

Switch the label shape between rounded corners (normal), squared corners, envelopes and circular (for CD labels)
Choose a different font/size for each individual line of text
Choose a different colour for each individual line of text
Choose the text indent for each individual line of text
Choose the justification (Left, Right or Centre) for each individual line of text
Set the line spacing individually for each line of text
Add sequential numbering to each label, on any line
Word-wrap any long text onto more than one line
Print drawfile graphics onto labels (without text, if required)
Scale and/or shift the graphic to the size/position you want
Switch between normal (portrait) and sideways (landscape) display/ printing
Print a label outline
See how many empty (blank) records are in the loaded CSV file, and where they will appear when printing (and choose whether or not to print any loaded graphics on them)
Step through a loaded CSV file to see how any particular record will actually appear in print
Strip quotes from CSV file fields
Add an extra space to the bottom line of text; or set the bottom line of text at a specified offset above the bottom edge of the label.
Include or skip blank lines (i.e. blank fields)
Lock the font/colour/indent values of a line to its corresponding record field (so that a field’s appearance is not affected by skipped blank lines)
Select individual label sheets for printing
Store your drawfile graphics and CSV files conveniently
Save your favourite label/csv file pairings for subsequent quick reloading.
See how many label sheets are needed to print a complete file
Organise your CSV files into sub-directories which are automatically translated into a menu/sub-menu structure for easy loading.
Edit individual records of a loaded CSV file.
Insert current date/time/day into CSV file text.
Add/delete records to/from a loaded CSV file.
Customise the start-up settings.

Installing LaBella

If this is the first time you have used !LaBella, simply copy the whole application to the place of your choice on a hard disc. It is, as usual, best to keep also a master copy somewhere safe. The application comes with a some label definition files for popular self-adhesive label sheets, example CSV files and drawfile graphics, so it needs nothing else to get going. A plain-text version of the full Manual is available from the "Help" option on the iconbar/main menu. Also included are fully formatted illustrated manual in both Impression and OvationPRO formats. You should consult a manual if you are upgrading from an earlier version.

PCPro3 - Aleph 1

Aleph1 have decided to release the entire PCPro software, along with the source code under the GPL. So if you have a PC Card in your RiscPC and haven't used it for ages now could be the time to dust it off. PCPro 3 is the latest generation of the Aleph One PC support software for RiscPC machines. It achieves considerable speed by working with real PC hardware attached to your RiscPC. While older versions were also designed to support podule cards in pre-RISC PC machines, this software only works with the RiscPC second-processor cards.

PCpro running Windows95

PCPro will let you run DOS, Windows 3.x and even Windows 95 and Windows 98 on a RiscPC with a suitable 486 PC card. If you are using an older version of PCPro then you may well be amazed at the speed improvements. You will need the supplied !DivaCode application to generate an unlock code for PCPro. There is also a very comprehensive illustrated HTML manual in the archive called UserGuide. I strongly recommend that you consult this before using the software.

PrivateEye - David Thomas

PrivateEye is a viewer for Sprites, DrawFiles, JPEGs, ArtWorks, GIF and PNG images. PrivateEye can also show ArtWorks files but needs a copy of AWViewer to add this feature.

PrivateEye

PrivateEye requires two modules which are only present on RISC OS 3.6 or later. So it can't be used on RISC OS 3.5 or earlier. PrivateEye can display lots of information about files as well as interface with the universal clipboard.

Sudoku - Mijas Software

This is an recursive solution to Sodoku written in 'C' for RISCOS. The program searches each empty square of the puzzle for the number of possible entries and remembers the first square which has the lowest number of possible entries and enters the first (untried) entry in the list into that square. (There may be other squares with the same number of possibilities - but they are ignored). After the new square has been filled the 'updated' puzzle and the list of possibilities are remembered.

Sudoku

The process is then repeated for the 'updated' puzzle and the whole process continues until either the whole puzzle is solved or no square has any possible entries. If the puzzle is not solved, the program goes back to try the next possible entry for the previously remembered puzzle and starts again. If no possible entries remain it goes back to puzzle before that - and so on until a new possible entry is found.

If the program finds itself right back where it started and no possible entries can be found it declares 'no solution'.

Webalizer - David Llewellyn-Jones

Welalizer is a web server log analysis program. It produces highly detailed, easily configurable usage reports in HTML format, for viewing with a standard web browser. It was written to solve several problems with currently available analysis packages. A vast majority of them were written in Perl or some other scripting language, and took forever to run. Some were not free. Some even produced wrong results, or results that were not in a very useful format.

This version of Webalizer has been set up for use on RISC OS. In order to use it, you'll first need to set up the file !Webalizer.webalizer/conf . Instructions can be found inside this file, and more information can be found on the Webalizer website at www.mrunix.net/webalizer/.

It's possible that some bugs may have arisen during the recompilation of the program for RISC OS. However, all credit for the program goes to the author, Bradford L. Barrett, and the developers of the RISC OS libraries that make the use of programs like this on RISC OS possible.

That's all I have for you this time, I will be back in early 2006!.

Paul Brett