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Summary: ROM 5.28

Summary of changes to the RISC OS ROM image (5.24 to 5.28)

  • The following are the headline changes to modules or components in platforms attaining ROM stable release status for 5.28.
  • For brevity only the top 14 changes have been described, because many of the 344 changes in the full change logs are administrative in nature or a result of other work, but they all contribute to stability and ease of use.
  • The Task Manager, Wimp and Kernel have all had remedial work to support RISC OS systems with more than 2GB of RAM fitted
  • PCI Manager, Debugger, USBDriver and underlying host controllers, and the Kernel have had extensive changes to support physical memory located outside the range of a 32 bit variable in support of recent system on chip devices which no longer fit into 4GB of address space
  • Paint, Colour Picker, ScreenModes, Boot Commands, DOSFS, Serial, OHCI, and SCSI device driver, Debugger, RTSupport plus toolbox’s ColourMenu, FileInfo, FontMenu and the RISC OS, Unicode, Toolbox and TCP/IP networking libraries have all had previously hidden memory leaks and similar programming mistakes fixed by analysing their source code with cppcheck.
  • While over 90% of each of the ROM releases are common, there are a few extra notes specific to each port linked below:
    • Beagleboard (full change logs OMAP3)
    • Iyonix (full change logs Tungsten)
    • Pandaboard (full change logs OMAP4)
    • Raspberry Pi (full change logs BCM2835)
    • RiscPC / A7000 (full change logs IOMDHAL)
    • Titanium (full change logs Titanium)

!Alarm

  • Now saves its choices in the Choices directory inside the Boot application rather than in a system variable, and no longer uses valuable CMOS.

!Chars

  • No longer reports an error if an unplottable character is found in a font. Instead, a rectangle is substituted.

!Draw

  • Supports clipboard cut & paste operations for Draw/Sprite/JPEG/Text objects, interacting with other compliant RISC OS applications.
  • Supports drag and drop of Draw/Sprite/JPEG/Text objects, optionally wrapping the objects in a small DrawFile depending on what formats the receiving application supports.
  • The former operation to make a single local copy of an object has been moved to keyboard shortcut Ctrl-D to make a Duplicate.
  • Additional fixes when transforming text areas and plotting fonts above 240pt.
  • A new summary box gives information on the current DrawFile via Misc > File menu item, to complement the similar dialogue in Paint and Edit.
  • Now saves its choices in the Choices directory, with the choices dialogue accessible via the icon bar menu Choices… item.

!Edit

  • Now saves its choices in the Choices directory inside the Boot application rather than in a system variable, saving can be triggered from the Save choices menu entry
  • Edit can now be unplugged, and will disappear from Resources:$.Apps entirely, should you have a preferred editor.

!Paint

  • The sprite filer supports clipboard cut & paste operations, interacting with other compliant RISC OS applications.
  • Supports drag and drop of Sprites for keyboard-less transfer in and out of Paint.
  • Colour handling has been greatly improved
    • Artist friendly colour ordering of 256 colour palette, and option to reorder pixel data for the remapped palette
    • Full 256 colour sprites can be created (as well as 64/16 entry VIDC compatible ones)
    • Colour indicator swatch in the bottom left corner of the sprite window
    • Adjust click on colours to paint with background colour
    • Shift-select as a shortcut to Paint > Select colour
    • Shift-adjust ditto for background colour
  • The sprite editor window will zoom if the containing window is resized while Ctrl is held down.
  • Now saves its choices in the Choices directory, with the choices dialogue accessible via the icon bar menu Choices… item.
  • During a sprite move there is a new option to wrap pixels that have “fallen” off the edge back round to the opposite edge.
  • A number of esoteric bugs have been fixed as part of the ongoing improvements to Paint bounty work.

BBC BASIC

  • Can now assemble the later ARMv8 AArch32 opcodes using its built in assembler.
  • A number of minor bug fixes.

Debugger

  • Can now disassemble the later ARMv8 AArch32 opcodes using its built in disassembler.
  • Can dump physical memory which is above the 4GB address range.

Filer

  • When creating a new directory, multiple levels can be created in one step (using dot separators), using the same destination logic as directory copy.
  • The existing Rename shortcut is now marked with ^R in the menus.

Internet

  • The insecure T/TCP protocol has been fully removed (previously it was disabled by the Boot application) as part of the TCP/IP security bounty.
  • Timeouts on socket operations now timeout correctly for applications that want something other than the default 60s duration.

LanManFS

  • Usernames and passwords have been extended to 64 characters.
  • Filename translation, file enumeration, and deleting complex directory trees are now more reliable.

RTC

  • Now makes the initial clock correction more swiftly than before.

SCSIFS and SDFS’ Filer

  • Ambiguous disc name errors caused by swapping discs while they are mounted are now handled correctly, as for ADFS.
  • All of the desktop filers now show an ellipsis after the Free menu item in line with the Style Guide recommendation.

WindowScroll

  • This is a new module which makes the action of the scroll wheel on a mouse much more configurable.
  • The default behaviour matches earlier versions of RISC OS 5, but can be customised through the corresponding Mouse setup plug-in.

Window Manager

  • The Window Manager now supports drag and drop (as well as cut and paste via keyboard shortcuts) in writable icons throughout the desktop
    • Any Style Guide compliant application should automatically gain this feature in any suitable icon
    • A new Clipboard Manager task keeps track of the clipboard operations
    • Programmers may wish to consult the draft documentation for details of the interfaces that have changed
  • A handful of bugs have also been fixed – consult the full change logs for programmer level detail of what these are.

Iyonix specific

NVidia video driver

  • Now supports video modes with unusual line lengths which require padding, such as 1366 wide

Beagleboard specific

HAL

  • Fix to UART driver for speeds above 19200bps.
  • Fix to BeagleBoard rev C GPIO setup.

OMAPVideo video driver

  • Now supports video modes with unusual line lengths which require padding, such as 1366 wide.

Pandaboard specific.

HAL

  • Fix to UART driver for speeds above 19200bps.
  • Preparatory work for using multiple cores in future.

OMAPVideo video driver

  • Now supports video modes with unusual line lengths which require padding, such as 1366 wide.

Raspberry Pi specific

HAL

  • Adds Compute Module 3+ support.
  • Adds Model 4B support.
  • Fix for UART handshaking.

XHCIDriver

  • Extended to attach to XHCI controllers which are on the PCIe bus
  • A number of fixes and stability improvements adopted from NetBSD

EtherGENET

  • This is a new module to drive the on chip gigabit Ethernet interface present in the Model 4B

BCMVideo

  • Updates in support of the primary video head on the Model 4B

Titanium specific

GC320 video driver

  • Now supports video modes with unusual line lengths which require padding, such as 1366 wide.
  • Is more lenient vetting some video modes that were previously incorrectly calculated or rejected.

HAL

  • Improvement to SATA reset when softloading and PHY settings.
  • Fix for left/right reversal on the headphones.
  • Fix to UART driver for speeds above 38400bps.
  • Fix to PCIe bus master setup.

XHCIDriver

  • Extended to attach to XHCI controllers which are on the PCIe bus
  • A number of fixes and stability improvements adopted from NetBSD

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