Hi folks...

Developer News 01/04/97 (and that's no joke)

!Bookworm
---------
!Bookworm is effectively an "experiment" shipped on the hard discs of the
new StrongARM Risc PCs (product codes SRPxx); it comprises an HTML browser
(part of our newer licensable technology) which is hardwired to only support
local "file://" URLs. The purpose of !Bookworm is to enable us to produce
our manuals in the form of locally-stored HTML rather than paper; to this
effect the Welcome Guide shipped with SRPxx has been extended to cover the
use of !Bookworm, and the User Guide is supplied in HTML form on the
machine's hard disc. If we find out that users like receiving their
documentation this way, more manuals may be converted in the future.

Several of you have shown an interest in !Bookworm from the point of view of
looking to convert your own manuals to work with it, so I have uploaded a
reference copy to the Developer WWW site. In fact I've uploaded *two*
copies, one bundled with the HTML version of the User Guide and one without,
as soon as I found that the archive of the bundled distribution occupies
just under 3 Meg...

To cut a long story short, you can now download !Bookworm as
http://www.acorn.co.uk/SALES/DEVELOPERS/resource/reference/book+userg.arc
(bundled) or
http://www.acorn.co.uk/SALES/DEVELOPERS/resource/reference/bookworm.arc
(standalone). If you are downloading the bundled version, the whole of the
Manuals directory should be placed in $ on the hard drive containing $.!Boot
; if you are downloading the standalone version you need to create a
$.Manuals directory to put !Bookworm in.

NetStation (yet again)
----------
First of all, Sales have now released the stock of TNS11 NetStations (the
Ethernet versions) for sale to Developers; these are now being delivered in
fulfilment of orders. No Smartcards are being shipped with these units,
however, owing to shortage; fortunately the docs on the Developer site (see
last missive or ReadMe.txt for location) detail how to circumvent Smartcard
authentication so this is no longer an issue for 95% or more of software
development.

Modulo reports of problems with it (which I haven't received any of) I'm now
happy to let Appnote 298 stand as a Developer release document (hence it's
been copied into docs/appnotes) and make a start on documenting hints, tips
and procedures for porting RISC OS apps to NetStation; this will be Appnote
300 once I've written it. Draft copies will be uploaded to the Developer
site as and when something new gets added; I'll probably be asking for
requests on what to add in a week or so once I've produced something to
begin with. Hopefully something will appear in
http://www/acorn.co.uk/SALES/DEVELOPERS/resource/reference/nc/ later today.

More news as it happens...

Cheers,

Dave