Venue:- Methodist Church Hall, Blackwell, Bromsgrove B60 1BL
Some of the attendees were here for the first time. I think we all hope to see yet more RISC OS enthusiasts next time.
Operation of the borrowed projector equipment, (greatly appreciated), again provided a technical challenge, overcome by an example of cooperative expertise typical of RISC OS users!
All participants (speaker exempted) contributed £2.00 to cover the cost of the hall and tea and biscuits, etc. Robin again paid the hall's official £18 by cheque.
Doug talked to us about the principles and practice of network printing. There was clearly a wide range of knowledge within the group on this subject. Some were able to ask pertinent questions whilst others were complete novices. The possible set ups of networks appeared to be diverse and numerous. Doug mentioned commercial aids to printing - amongst them Uniprint - and some non-commercial products, such as Remote Print FS (RPFS) which he illustrated with a detailed work-through. A problem - solved by ALT BRK - occurred, which it seemed was a well-known one with Ovation Pro and is the subject of an article in drobe.co.uk/features. Other products are !LPRSpool and PrintSpool V 2.14which Doug seemed to like. What came through to me (Robin) is that network printing is not so simple as one might wish!
After the talk, which was clearly much appreciated by the group, Doug arranged with John Rickman that he would make it available as a Webster file with a link from JR's site.
Doug Webb's talk on how to use network printers has been put up on his web site. Click on the link below to see it.
Networking Printers using RISCOS
The next meeting will take place on Saturday 16th Sept (third Saturday of an ODD month) at the same place and time. Possible subjects for future talks resulted in a consensus that Ron Briscoes's suggestion for members to bring along a favourite and useful non-commercial (PD) software would be very interesting. This was agreed as the topic. It was hoped that perhaps four people would bring software, but all were encouraged to provide their list of /vital/ PD stuff. A further attempt to induce Jon Duddington to talk about !Pluto was suggested. A talk on the Boot Sequence was also offered by Richard Spencer.
The forthcoming Midlands Show on 25th November (organiser Ralph Sillett, who could not be present at the meeting) and the contribution of MUG to it were briefly discussed. JohnR would contact Ralph on this.
There was much informal chat amongst the group, with numerous subjects being discussed simultaneously! All seemed to be looking forward to the next meeting.
G Robin Edwards