Awksed
awksed | Bazound | DDF2Html | DrawComb | Films | FirePipe | FireToImp | GnuPG wimp | Grab 2 | Infozip | MBBack | NewAlarm | ScreenGrabber | SideDiff | StripStyle | StylePick | Switch | Tabbit | Textseek | Typer | Uptime | WimpDrain | XUTime
This software is designed for computers running RISC OS. The title and icon of each program are linked to the relevant Zip archive for download. On RISC OS computers Zip archives may be opened using SparkPlug, SparkFS (commercial) or Infozip. You can see full-size versions of some of the screen shots by clicking on the thumbnail images.
Awksed
This program provides a WIMP interface to the GNU command-line utilities sed and awk. Awk is a data-driven programming language, the basic function of which is to search files for lines (or other units of text) that contain certain patterns. Sed (Stream EDitor) is an earlier UNIX utility for parsing text files and applying textual transformations to a sequential stream of data.
1.36b (13th July 2007)
Awk look-up manual in StrongHelp format.
Awk mode file for
StrongED.
Download a package with
all awk utils.
Bazound
(Requires Toolbox modules.)
Bazound is a small configuration and diagnostic utility for the RISC OS sound system. It may be useful to programmers writing sound software, and in situations where programs have left the sound system in an indeterminate state. It was written using AppBasic, a new programming aid that simplifies the task of writing Toolbox applications in BASIC.
0.34 (7th October 2007)
PROCbroadcast_claim was terminated by
ENDIF rather than ENDPROC. I can hardly
believe this didn't cause noticeable problems before
(presumably because the following procedure in the
compressed !RunImage was relatively benign).
DDF2Html
DDF2Html is a program to make it easy to convert Impression documents into HTML format, either for use as web pages or simply in order to send them to PC-owning friends. Simply use the 'Save text with styles' option from within Impression and run the resulting output through DDF2Html to translate Impression styles/effects into HTML mark-up.
Can also process plain text files into valid HTML, and substitute entities for non-ASCII characters in existing HTML files.
John Alldred & Harriet Bazley (current maintainer)
1.59 (16th April 2020)
https: as a
link.
DrawComb
You may not think a program to combine the contents of two Draw files very useful, but it has one major advantage - it preserves the coordinates. Dragging a file into a Draw window will load it at the mouse pointer position.
This is especially annoying when combining Spirograph patterns, which do not fit onto a grid of any sort, but which are always drawn at the same position. Although it may have other uses, this program is principally an add-on for Cogs to allow multiple patterns to be drawn on top of each other.
1.01 (14th March 2009)
Films
(Notes: requires ArmSort by Martin Avison.)
This is a basic timetabling program to make it easier to decide which conflicting performances of which films to attend. Once data on available performances has been entered, the program can display an interactive timetable on the screen, showing the knock-on effects of selecting a given performance in terms of the films with which it clashes. Dates on which you have prior commitments can be eliminated from consideration altogether. As you narrow down the possibilities, any films for which there is only one possible performance remaining will be highlighted in red, and a warning will be given for any which cannot be fitted into the timetable at all.
1.25 (3rd March 2011)
Firepipe
Firepipe converts files from Fireworkz format into PipeDream 4 format. Fireworkz can load in PipeDream files, but hitherto there has been no easy way to convert files in the opposite direction.
2.01 (17th January 2003) CJB
FireToImp
FireToImp is a Fireworkz to Impression file converter. FireToImp was not designed to convert spreadsheet-type files into Impression tables. It will not do so. In fact, it will only convert the first column of a Fireworkz document, so if the first column of your spreadsheet is blank, you will get a completely empty Impression document.
1.31 (7th November 2003)
GnuPG
wimp
The GNU Privacy Guard allows you to encrypt and sign your data and communication, features a versatile key managment system as well as access modules for all kind of public key directories.
Harriet needed a WIMP front-end for Stefan Bellon's port of GnuPG to RISC OS and ended up reverse-engineering one of the ancient front-ends to PGP 2.x, PGPwimp by Peter Gaunt. The !RunImage was compressed BASIC, and the original source code had long since been lost. Fortunately, compressed BASIC programs retain their original structure, and it was possible to locate and reconstruct the necessary bits.
Peter gave his permission to distribute this version since his Risc PC is now broken - provided that he is given full credit.
Peter Gaunt & Harriet Bazley
1.01 (19th September 2007)
Grab II
(Requires Toolbox modules.)
|
|
| Ye Olde Grab. | Spangly new Toolbox version. |
Once upon a time there was a program called "Grab", which allowed the contents of the Wimp sprite pool (ROM or RAM areas) to be saved as a sprite file. This was written by David Thomas way back in 1992, and hence is now looking very dated:
The text icons are too narrow for anything but system font, it insists on using blocky RISC OS 2 vintage window sprites, and its distinctly non-style-guide user interface is conjured up by the weird and ancient InterfaceManager module.
So, I nicked the application sprites and in a few hours wrote this replacement, partly to prove how easy it is to knock together applications using Acorn's Toolbox system but also because once too often I had tried to drag sprites from the old Grab straight into Paint, forgetting that was beyond its capabilities.
Improvements:
Many thanks to Dave Thomas for his permission to use the "Grab" name, concept and application icons.
You can browse the source code on GitHub.
1.19 (24 Sep 2015)
SYS "OS_SpriteOp",12 is no longer used to save
any of the window manager's sprite areas because they are
too esoteric. In particular, RISC
OS 6 has zero-named sprites in its Wimp sprite
pool and its tool sprite area's header is at a higher
address than the rest of the data.
Infozip
(Note: requires APCS-32 supporting C library)
A desktop front-end for the Info-ZIP command line routines. The contents of a zip file are displayed in a similar way to a RISC OS Filer window, and files may be added or extracted using drag and drop. This is a good alternative to SparkPlug because it allows you to create as well as extract from zip files. Also, Infozip multi-tasks smoothly allowing zipping and unzipping without disruption.
The full distribution
archive contains the Info-ZIP routines (currently Zip 3.0
and Unzip 6.00), so that the application is ready to run "out
of the box". These are also made available to command line
users via Run$Path.
Alternatively, you can download a much smaller archive containing the front-end application only. This is suitable for those upgrading from previous versions, or those who already have the Info-ZIP command line routines from another source.
If you do not already have a de-archiving program capable of handling Zip files, then you can download Infozip as a self-extracting archive: Just set the filetype of 'infozipsea/bin' to 'Absolute' (&FF8) and double-click on the file. Alternatively, there is a a self-extracting version of SparkPlug available on David Pilling's web site.
3.07 (24th July 2012)
zip and unzip aliases
which allows the WimpSlot of the back-end programs to be
set prior to running. Apparently it was previously
dependent on the user's Next slot!
MBBack
Yet another random backdrop chooser program to pick from the myriad selection on the Internet. What makes this one unique? Well, the headline features are:
2.11 (25th September 2013)
NewAlarm
Desktop clock which tells the time and handles alarms in a vague text-based manner rather than with digital precision. This program is basically an amalgam of the best features of Acorn's Alarm and Doggysoft's RoughTime.
1.38 (9th December 2005)
NewAlarm$Options system variable as per
Edit$Options, etc. This avoids the need to edit the
!Run file to maintain non-default options every time a new
version is released!
NewAlarm$Title" etc. info
system variables. Split History off into a separate file
and moved all help files into subdirectory. Added a dummy
HTML file to
satisfy Castle.
Choices$Write as well as those
stored inside the !NewAlarm application.
ScreenGrabber
(Requires Toolbox modules.)
One day I finally got bored of searching for a program that would perform that most basic of tasks - taking a picture of the screen. So, I wrote my own.
ScreenGrabber is the name of a relocatable module that allows you to take multiple pictures of the screen display, even when you are running a single-tasking application (such as a game or graphical demo). The screen display is saved as a Sprite file, optionally with the current palette. The snapshots are numbered, so you can take as many as you like without overwriting the previous picture.
A desktop front-end application allows easy configuration of settings such as whether the 'hot' key is enabled, the current save location and base filename, and whether or not to include the palette.
If you have more hard disc space than sense, then making animations is fun. Continuous recording can be synchronised automatically with screenbuffer swaps, or with a fixed delay period between frames. You can then convert the numbered screenshots into an animated GIF using Peter Hartley's InterGif.
You can browse the source code on GitHub.
2.26 (04 Mar 2012)
*SGrabConfigure where any
two of the arguments [-Interval
<centiseconds>|-AutoSync|-HalfSync] were
accepted instead of generating an error.
SideDiff
SideDiff acts as a desktop interface to the GNU diff utility, allowing you to view the differences between two text or BASIC files in the form of a scrolling side-by-side display.
The program can create and/or render 'unified' output from GNU diff into two panes in a desktop window. The filenames of the two files that were compared are shown above the relevant display panes, followed by a coloured listing of the 'chunks' of data where differences between the two files were found.
2.44 (5th September 2005)
StripStyle
This program is of use only to users of Impression Publisher (or Style) or Impression II. It is designed to remove the style definitions from the head of a document saved in Computer Concepts' 'DDF format' -- that is, one saved as text 'with styles' so that italics, headings etc will be preserved when it is dropped back into an Impression document.
Example uses: Removing unnecessary style definitions, collating chapters of a document which all conform to a 'house style' and therefore do not need individual style definitions.
2.36 (4th January 2005)
IfThereIs.
StylePick
A program to allow the user to import a sub-set of the styles contained in one Impression document into another such document. In Impression it is possible to 'import' an entire set of styles from another document, however it is not possible to import only one or two of them.
StylePick offers you a list of available styles so that you may choose which ones you wish to use, and compiles a new file containing only this information, which may then be dropped onto an Impression window.
1.01 (12th June 2000)
Switch
This is a program that lists all open windows and allows the user to switch between them. Other actions supported include iconising the window, pinning it (if it is a file/directory), closing it, or sending it to the bottom of the window stack.
Clicking SELECT on the iconbar icon will display a menu of the titles of all the windows open on the desktop, sorted according to the task to which they belong. Clicking on the entry for a window title in this menu will bring that window to the top. The window currently at the front of the stack is ticked.
Nick Craig-Wood & Harriet Bazley
1.58 (29th May 2003) CJB
Message_Iconize is now zero terminated rather than
CR
terminated. The old behaviour didn't bother the pinboard,
but showed up in WimpMonitor and
was probably wrong.
Tabbit
This utility was written for a specific purpose and will only rarely be used. It performs the opposite of the 'Expand tabs' command in Edit - it removes multiple spaces and replaces them by tab characters where possible.
1.21 (10th August 1998)
Textseek
Textseek is a WIMP front-end to a fast machine-code file search routine. It uses throwback to display the search results, showing a whole line of text as context for each match. Entire directory structures may be searched recursively.
Reasons to use Textseek for searching files rather than other similar programs (such as FileFind):
What it isn't: Textseek isn't a "file finder". It is designed for searching file contents, not for finding files of a particular type, date stamp or name.
1.48 (5th September 2015)
PROCmakemenu generating
array of pointers for use by OS_HeapSort
(OS_HeapSort does this automatically).
Typer
Takes a text file as input and, when prompted, sends the contents directly to the keyboard buffer, in effect producing exactly the same result as if you had manually typed in the file's entire contents at the current position of the caret.
This has two main uses:
NB: Not to be confused with Type.
1.03 (23rd January 2011)
Uptime
A very small (trivial?) utility that displays the time in
days, hours and minutes since your computer was last turned
on or reset. Having installed it in a directory on your
Run$Path (typically
$.!Boot.Library), you can then type "uptime" at the
command line prompt for a response like this:
Six years later, Martin incorporated my code into a desktop application that you may find more palatable.
Last updated Saturday 3rd August 2002
Wimpdrain
A very small program that brings up a menu of all files that are currently open, allowing the user to close any or all of them.
1.11 (11th August 2001) / 1.20 (22nd January 2001)
XUTime
XUTime is a tiny WIMP experimental program of doubtful use. It is an amalgam of two command line BASIC programs: XmasTime (by Martin) and Uptime (by Chris). It also shows the current date and time, as well as the 'uptime' in raw (centisecond) format. Because the latter has to be updated very frequently, it chews up processor time and is therefore optional. This application is mainly useful as a more accessible way of using Uptime.
Martin and Christopher Bazley
Release 3 (17th October 2008)