Date: Thu, 07 MAY 1998 17:03:06 +0100 (BST) From: Dave Walker Subject: Acorn Developer News 07/05/98: Conference aftermath, Presentation slides, Ordering of Packs, etc etc To: isvquery@acorn.com Resent-Date: Thu, 7 May 1998 16:59:53 +0100 (BST) Resent-From: regdevs@acorn.com Resent-Sender: regdevs-request@acorn.com Hi folks... Acorn Developer News 07/05/98 Developer Conference Aftermath ------------------------------ It was good. In fact, it was very good (although exhausting). It was about as good as the last one, which is going some. It was a bit of a shame that we didn't have runnable Phoebe hardware around at the time, however we'll have enough hardware built by Wakefield that some machines will be able to escape the lab and be shown. Be aware for Wakefield that all developers are automagically signed up as Clan members if they aren't Clan members already; you should be sure to bring your Clan membership cards to Wakefield, and if you have any problems getting into the Phoebe area then come and find me. It has been brought to my attention that a small number of the document packs distributed at the conference were incorrectly copied; the whole document set should be printed double-sided, so if you see any blank pages within the main body of the pack then your pack is missing some important information. If you have a pack which appears to be faulty in this way, contact Sales here at Acorn to arrange a replacement. Finally, thanks to all the speakers (Piers, Pete, Mike, Alan, Simes and Chris), Jonathan for sorting the venue, Olly and Robert for handling the admin arrangements, and Paul Hough and his team (especially Valerie Lambert for hackification beyond the call of duty in fixing the AV system following power loss) at New Hall. Rest assured that there will be another conference once another conference-worth of information becomes available... but don't expect one for the next few months at least :-) Presentation Slides ------------------- The slides used during the presentations which did not make it into the conference packs are now becoming available via the Developer site; see http://www.art.acorn.co.uk/SALES/DEVELOPERS/resource/docs/misc/conf98/ . Presentation slides currently available cover the keynote and agenda, NC, Java, Development tools, Filing systems and the Ursula user interface. The Ursula overview, kernel and hardware slide sets should become available shortly. Documents are currently available in the main as Impression Style and plaintext + Drawfile; HTML can be made available if required (I'll probably do it in the next day or so anyway). The exception to this is Piers' presentation on Java; rather than use a presentation system such as CableNews, he wrote a small and simple presentation system in Java with which to show his slides. The slides, the Java bytecode executable and the Java source (the latter of which is the first piece of Java source to be compiled completely native under Acorn's alpha version of the Java 1.2 JDK) can be found in the java.arc archive. Ordering of Packs ----------------- The mechanism by which developers unable to attend the conference can order a copy of the materials distributed at it is now in place. You will need to order product code ADC98 from Sales here at Acorn, price UKP20 + VAT. As usual, cheques should be supplied with the order. Updated Ursula Screensaver Spec ------------------------------- An update to the Ursula screensaver spec has been released; this was incorporated into the Conference packs, but I've only gotten around to uploading it now. See http://www.art.acorn.co.uk/SALES/DEVELOPERS/resource/docs/ursula/screensaver.eps if you have a PostScript printer, or http://www.art.acorn.co.uk/SALES/DEVELOPERS/resource/docs/ursula/screensaver.html if you don't. Softloadable bits of Ursula --------------------------- As most of you who attended are somewhat observant anyway, you'll have noticed a Risc PC running a number of Ursula software components (FileCore, !Configure, !Help, the new Window Manager, Pinboard, etc etc) which had been softloaded on it. We aren't releasing these components to you yet as they aren't particularly complete or stable, but I'll see what I can sort with Software Engineering for the near future... watch this space. Cheers, -- Dave Walker, Engineering Support Manager Acorn Computers Ltd Tel: +44 (0) 1223 725233 Acorn House, 645 Newmarket Road Fax: +44 (0) 1223 725333 Cambridge, CB5 8PB, United Kingdom WWW: http://www.acorn.co.uk/