Hi folks... Acorn Developer News 08/01/98 First of all, happy 1998 and all that; I hope it's an interesting and profitable year for all of us. I spent a useful Newtonmas hacking around some more with NC servers; more news on the results are likely to emerge sometime in a future missive... Phoebe: Information Release Timetables -------------------------------------- I've had a chat with Pete Fox and Mike Stephens (Messrs Phoebe and Ursula respectively), and received clarification of the release timescales both for Phoebe / Ursula themselves and the functional specs of the hardware and software components. The software functional specs are currently in a pre-review state, so there isn't much to be gained in releasing their contents now as the information may change both before and as a result of the spec review process; spec freeze and review is expected to start happening next month, so you should expect to see API details appearing in the docs/api/ursula directory before the end of February. As documents appear, missives will be despatched to let you know exactly what can be found where. Hardware specs as they currently stand are covered, barring IC designations and PSU rating, in the notes distributed as part of the missive sent out on 12/11/97; again, I'll keep you posted as and when more concrete information becomes available. Working Phoebe prototype hardware running a prototype Ursula (both pre-QA) will be ready to have a silk sheet whisked off it sometime prior to the Wakefield show. Browser Updates and URI Handler ------------------------------- !Browse is now up to version 1.30 Beta, and is coming close to meeting its first draft spec when it comes to features. You can find this version and accompanying documentation (along with various necessary local cache handling utils) at http://www.acorn.co.uk/browser/ . When it comes to incremental releases of this code, releases are completely under the control of the Networking group; it can happen that a release is made and I don't get to find out about it until I fall over the code while digging through the WWW site for something unrelated. Therefore news of browser updates may or may not be reflected in developer missives. URI Handler Released -------------------- We've released a beta version of a new module to cater for handling and passing of URIs between applications; URIs, for the uninitiated, are rather like URLs but including the up to date docs for and components of the URI handler module (significant for interprocess communication where URLs or other Internet-related location data needs to be passed). If you start your HTML pages with