ROOL Forum: Recent posts

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 15:40:02 +0000

I have just made a comparison with your new model and the test that I carried out, the antialiasing comes out much better in your new approach, and therefore the text is more pleasant to look at, you are on the right track.

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 15:14:52 +0000

Comp version 123a.35 works with JPEG and PBLplus files. No problems even with a script.
and you can save your file as sprite.
For the script, I ask it to create the canvas, it is no longer necessary to click on compose before dropping the script on the iconbar.

makecanvas 800 800 0
Nice to adjust the size of source image.

not yet tested the latest version of your script…

good cup of tea,
(I don’t know if that’s the right expression…)

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 11:06:47 +0000

Aaarrgh! Nightmare! :-/

I experimented and found that the version of Compo I was using would load PBMs but not Jpegs. Have various versions of !Compo around in my machine. So tried the others. Found one that does load Jpegs fine… only to find it then loads PBMs but the script then crashes as it ’can’t find the selected object’! It shows the content of the PBM on the canvas, but the script can’t read it as a sprite! I’ll have a cup of tea and with luck can stumble out of this particular bear-trap! :-/

The problem here is all the different versions of the fleet of ‘codelet files’. Confuses my small brain. :-///

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 11:04:30 +0000

Has there been a comparison of the ARM assemblers?
Tks

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 10:10:30 +0000

Is the source available? I’ve been maintaining it for the past 14 years, it would make sense to merge my changes into your source.

Known bugs and changes I’ve made:

Issues to fix:  

        – MACRO’s remove local variables, bug in

	        macro.macros Delete_Variables and Assemble_Macro

		which alter Prev_Variable_Offset

	- arm.decode_load_store_instruction DT_PUSH errors with a macro

		named PUSHSWI

	- ALIGN doesn’t work in STRUCT

	- ALIGN doesn’t work in RELATIVE

	- DIV uses lower two bits in R13

Changes:

2.05	20-08-22

	- changed general.flex.Clear_Memory as it could overrun causing

		general.variables.FV_Local_Loop to abort on it’s 1st instruction

		@ AA68 when walking the local variable list (it overruns)

2.03	20-08-16

	= assembler.extra.decode_extra_instruction

		ALIGN now correctly aligns to -

		ALIGN now writes 0 to words added

	- assembler.general.assembler

		Align_PC corrected and now writes 0 to bytes added

2.03	20-10-15

	+ arm.decode_load_store_instruction

		Checks for auto-expansion of PC

2.02	27-03-15 / 30-03-15

	= arm.decode_exception_instruction

		Now checks if BKPT immediate exceeds the limits

	= arm.decode_misc_instruction

		Now checks if PLD immediate exceeds the limits

	+ extra.decode_extra_instruction

		Added Throwback option for OUTPUT

	+ general.messages

		Added Throwback option for Warning

		Added Throwback option for Auto-expansion stacked/non-stacked

2.01	14-10-12 / 16-10-12

	= arm.decode_psr_register

		CPSR_all / SPSR_all now encode correctly

	= arm.decode_misc_instruction

		NOP now uses MOVEQ R0,R0 instead of MOVNV R0,R0

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 05:37:48 +0000

Is this project dead now?

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:47:11 +0000

Hey Richard,

Are you thinking about the over-IP implementation, or the classic? Or both?

Just the over-IP implementation. But still an interesting jurney I would say! XD

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:00:27 +0000

@Simon
another very interesting approach, worth testing. thanks for the link.
In one of the PDF files I was able to recover only the background without text, but I didn’t know how to use it.
To test.
@Jim
With KPDFUtils, extracting images in Jpep mode, I have no problem opening them with Compo, even opening them with a script.
I have Comp version 123a.35 and I just saw while searching with !Store that there is a problem with version 1.23c
“1.23c fails to load JPEG images on 32 bit platform.”
Both version are included in the download .
I will download your latest version and review it.

NB the Farfrontiers pages were scanned with a quality machine, the format reached almost 3000 pts, the rendering of the background was too perfect :-)

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 17:24:37 +0000

Sounds great, Paolo. Thanks for the updates on here. Seems like you are covering casual use by double-clicking an .exe on Windows or macOS, right up to always-on Linux servers, or even running on NAS devices (a modern-day FileStore/MDFS!).

When you said something the other week about ShareFS being the ‘original network filesystem’ for RISC OS, I was going to quibble and mention AUN/Net/Econet. :). Interesting that you are putting that on your list too. It sounds like a bit of a nightmare of versions to manage, but there are at least several implementations you can look at (on stardot & the RISC OS sources). Are you thinking about the over-IP implementation, or the classic? Or both?

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 16:18:08 +0000

@ All

I am starting to close the build for this weekend so people can run another set of tests. What I have managed to find the time to fix so far for the next build you will receive is:

• Fixed all reported issues with the sharefs.toml file being regenerated.
• Fixed all issues with transferring files from RISC OS to ShareFSServer. This should make file transfers safe in both directions now, but you will need to confirm.
• Added graceful system shutdown, so older versions of macOS on Intel should not behave oddly when pressing CTRL-C.
• Improved error reporting.
• Improved Unicode handling. This is not completed yet, so I am planning to finish it next week.
• Improved file extension handling, although this is also planned to be completed next week.
• Added a new parameter to store logs in a file, because a few of you forgot to send me logs with your reports. Sending those logs is vital.
• You can now start the server by double-clicking the executable icon.

What I am fixing tonight:

• Unicode to Latin-1 translator causing problems with RISC OS NBSP (hard space used for file names). The issue is that Unicode uses 0xC2 0xA0 for NBSP, but RISC OS uses only 0xA0. The combination of the Unicode to Latin-1 translator and the space-to-hard-space translator creates a bug that makes ShareFSServer send RISC OS a hard space as two bytes: 0xC2 and 0xA0 (and 0xC2 gets displayed as an extended “A”). This obviously does not map back to what a file with a regular space is on macOS, Linux, Windows, and BSD, so the translation table returns an unknown share.

Please let me know if there are other important fixes I forgot and need to implement.

As soon as the new builds are ready, you will receive the usual email with instructions. I have also added a README.txt file with all the instructions in the zip file.

Again, thanks everyone for helping to test this!

Roadmap:

1) After file sharing testing is completed, we will move to printer sharing testing.
2) Test Access+ features, they are not ready yet
3) After A+ and printer sharing is completed, we will move to testing the two administrative functions:
   - A web UI to administer the server from !Browse and !NetSurf ;)
   - A REST API for people who wish to write their own native RISC OS desktop application to administer ShareFSServer
4) After finishing testing of 1, 2 and 3, we will need to test the new messaging protocol I am adding to ShareFSServer. This should be exciting for users who wish to build RISC OS clusters, because the messaging protocol allows:
   - Creating a RISC OS cluster system to share processing load (the protocol allows sending and receiving processing load units, for example to create software that runs threads on remote systems. I demoed an early version at some of the RISC OS Shows in past years). So yes, RISC OS clustering is coming :)
   - Creating distributed applications on RISC OS
   - Creating ways to send update messages to running apps on separate RISC OS systems, even across VPNs
   - Creating local chats lol (some of you asked if it was for this, well yes, you can use it for this as well)
5) Finally, we will need to test all the new security features:
   - You will be able to define which IPs, subnets, and CIDRs can access each specific share
   - Set up a rate limiter
   - Check if anything can break a RISC OS client

As a separate note, I am also trying to reverse/re-implement Acorn AUN too in ShareFSServer.

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:26:35 +0000

WRT jpegs:

Looking into the “Resources” directory in !Compo I can see files with ‘jpeg-ish’ names that have datestamps circa 20 years ago! IIRC it is recommended to run this under an emulator of an OS of that period. So maybe either and emulator or – better! – someone updating these code snippets – would get jpegs working correctly again. Alas, beyond me.

This is Compo version 1.23c-26. And by default I’m normally using without emulation. So I guess no surprise if there are some problems.