Q. Will RISC OS 4, Select and RISC OS 5 merge?
A. RISC OS 5 already contains most of the enhancements from RISC OS 4, however
not all of the Select features apply to non-desktop applications.
Additionally care must be taken to avoid RISC OS losing its competitive
edge in other fields, with increased code size and loss of performance.
Castle wish to maintain only one source tree, so RISCOS Ltd will continue
to produce Select (containing Desktop specific features) and Castle will
encourage RISCOS Ltd to migrate this to RISC OS 5.
Q. What does this mean for other hardware developers such as MicroDigital Limited and RiscStation Limited?
A. There are no changes to the current position; they can continue to ship
their RISC OS 4 desktop computers; the only difference is that Castle
now holds the head license instead of Pace.
Q. I want a license to use RISC OS - must I apply to Castle to get one?
A. Not necessarily. A number of companies have the ability to grant 3rd party
binary licenses for RISC OS, for example RISCOS Ltd can licence RISC OS 4
for desktop computers. In addition they could also apply to Castle for an
extension to include new hardware - there are no plans at all to withhold
permission to any genuine volume applicant.
Q. Castle make hardware, isn't it a conflict of interests to also own the operating system?
A. No. Historically Acorn made hardware and owned the operating system, but
didn't license RISC OS to competitors. The exciting difference here is
that there is now the ability for 3rd parties to produce/market ARM based
products featuring RISC OS, there would be no conflict as Castle will
benefit from royalties for these products. As covered in the press
release on July 4th Castle will forge new partnerships with mass-market
consumer companies, this should become a major use for RISC OS in the
future.
Q. What about !Browse, can I expect any updates?
A. Sadly after years of frozen development !Browse is now a long way behind
in its standards compatibility. Though upgrading it to handle HTML4 and
newer Javascript is theoretically possible, this is a huge task. As
Oregano 2 already offers these features, and with the recent announcement
of it's use in the Playstation 2, a huge amount of investment is being made
in Oregano which should be very easy to port back to RISC OS in future versions of Oregano.
Q. Will a version of RISC OS 5 for the Risc PC and A7000 be released?
A. Although a simple HAL for IOMD based machines does exist for testing
purposes it would require an unfeasible amount of work to turn it into a
production quality version.
Additionally running in 32 bit mode on an old processor which still
supports 26 bit mode doesn't really bring any benefits. 32 bit
applications will of course still work on these machines (fitted with a
26-bit version of RISC OS) and can also use the new 32 bit APIs through
the free CallASWI module, SharedCLibrary, and HAL module in a
fully backwards-compatible manner.
The HAL module referred to above is available from:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~theom/riscos/othersoft.html
Q. When can I buy a legal version of RISC OS for emulation on my PC?
A. Emulator authors wishing to ship RISC OS for non-ARM platforms will be
contacted shortly. It is expected that there will be a number of solutions
available over the next few months.
Q. This is all very confusing! Who does what?
A. Put simply:
Q. What new hardware is on the cards?
A. With the hardware abstraction layer (HAL) and fully 32-bit operating
system, RISC OS can run on all ARM devices including ARM9, ARM10, ARM11
and XScale devices as and when they become available. Specific new
hardware will depend on what individual companies negotiate with Castle.
Q. Is anyone working on an ARM laptop now?
A. As with previous attempts the major stumbling block is sourcing a case
which has a long enough life span to be able to ensure supply. This
doesn't rule out the possibility of selecting one of the many ready-made
A4 sized industrial tablets based on fast ARM9 and XScale technology.
16th July 2003