RISC User Magazine -Pdfs

[RonT]

Hi

Does anyone have and Pdf copies of the RISC User Magazine?

I have a few but not a complete set by any means

Thanks

[paulb]

Does anyone have and Pdf copies of the RISC User Magazine?

I have a few but not a complete set by any means

I guess you've seen the RISC User collection on the Internet Archive. At some point, when I get physical access to my own archives of various magazines, I can imagine an epic scanning session.

[RonT]

Hi paulb

I did see that thanks, that is where I initially plugged a few gaps but it is clear that there are more out there.

I few months ago I purchased some CDs from Ebay that contained the complete set of Acorn User and Micro User - such a brilliant reference resource.

It is a shame that seller doesn't/hasn't compiled a Risc User set.

Link here if you are interested:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/133897134576 ... BMoqTpr4Zg


I have a lot of academic material that I have accumulated over the years, I know what you mean - I dread sitting down and scanning it all.

Regards

[paulb]

I did see that thanks, that is where I initially plugged a few gaps but it is clear that there are more out there.

I few months ago I purchased some CDs from Ebay that contained the complete set of Acorn User and Micro User - such a brilliant reference resource.

It is a shame that seller doesn't/hasn't compiled a Risc User set.

I guess they just don't have a set of RISC User, which will have been a considerably lower circulation magazine than the others, being a subscription-only, direct mail publication. I also guess that either the original copyright holders are OK with people selling compilations on eBay or they aren't around any more in any sense where they might get upset about it.

I have a lot of academic material that I have accumulated over the years, I know what you mean - I dread sitting down and scanning it all.

I can get into the groove with my flatbed scanner, which sounds tedious, but the results might be a bit better than the auto-fed scanner output from the printer/scanner combination that I might end up using, at least for some stuff. It can also be somewhat nice to be reminded of some content, and certainly far more interesting than things like bank statements!

[Ukwebb]

I few months ago I purchased some CDs from Ebay that contained the complete set of Acorn User and Micro User - such a brilliant reference resource.

you people will actually pay for something that is freely downloadable from 8bs?
http://8bs.com/magazines.htm

[paulb]

I few months ago I purchased some CDs from Ebay that contained the complete set of Acorn User and Micro User - such a brilliant reference resource.

you people will actually pay for something that is freely downloadable from 8bs?
http://8bs.com/magazines.htm

I don't think RISC User is there, however. And a lot of the issues of the featured magazines are not available, either.

Personally, I am mostly happy to use the Internet Archive to find interesting material. In some cases it sheds new light on various topics that the familiar titles do not, and it also gives a sense of perspective about the place of various UK manufacturers in a global setting. For example, when people are surprised that Australia and New Zealand didn't just use Beebs in schools, with some people not even encountering them at all, some exposure to local publications (even those with strong UK connections) serves as a reminder that those markets are far closer to, and are often more aligned with, those of Asia and the USA.

So, I don't think it will stop me from scanning various magazines when I get the chance. After all, there has to be some benefit in keeping them all this time.

[Ukwebb]

oh absolutely, archival of these magzines, books, leaflets etc etc is vitally important

I just feel its not really playing fair when someone takes the work that someone else, probably more than just one person, has clearly spent a lot of time scanning, collating and put together, and selling it on ebay to make a quick profit.

but thats the way of the world i guess

[paulb]

oh absolutely, archival of these magzines, books, leaflets etc etc is vitally important

I just feel its not really playing fair when someone takes the work that someone else, probably more than just one person, has clearly spent a lot of time scanning, collating and put together, and selling it on ebay to make a quick profit.

but thats the way of the world i guess

It would be interesting to know what the nature of these compilations is, whether someone really did all the scanning work themselves, or whether it's a distant relation of the phenomenon where people would be selling compilations of online content (even collections of Wikipedia articles) on Amazon. Personally, I wouldn't buy anything like this unless the work was done properly and with some kind of assurance that either the copyright holder is fine with it or the work has effectively been abandoned.

With the Internet Archive, there is a range of content, some being freely available and presumably tolerated by the copyright holders, even sanctioned by them in some cases, and some being available under a kind of library loan arrangement, which presumably makes some of the copyright holders tolerate the arrangement. That only leaves the most litigious organisations pursuing full takedowns of content, which I think is pretty unethical given that some content industry organisations have been so negligent in preserving their content that it is barely an exaggeration to say that those organisations would rather see such content destroyed than archived.

[RonT]

The posts here make interesting and valid points.

I guess people collect for their own reasons be it financial, research or maybe because they have an inquisitive mind.

If anyone finds even half decent scans of Risc User please update this thread - we will all collectively benefit - it would be a shame to let this fascinating resource fade away.

Thanks

[baz4096]

I found a post on IconBar that suggests r-comp.co.uk sells CDs with a complete archive of Risc User magazines on, posted in 2017. You may have some success contacting them?

Further details available here:

https://hallas.net/Nutshell/

[matt_nottm]

https://archive.org/details/risc-user-in-a-nutshell

"For most of its life, RISC User was laid out using QuarkXPress on the Macintosh platform, and RISC OS-format backups of the material in the first seven years of the magazine's life were not retained.

For completeness, the available Mac backup files for those years are provided on this CD. Note, though, that they are not accessible on RISC OS machines.

The backups here cover issues 1:1 to 7:1 and 7:7 to 8:1; RISC OS-format files are available for the remainder of volume 8. No backups of any kind exist for issues 7:2 to 7:6. In most cases, the QuarkXPress files contain the page layouts with all the text of the articles intact, but no pictures; up to issue 7:1, all magazines were backed up onto one or two 800K Mac-format floppy discs each, which meant that there was insufficient room for graphics to be retained. Some graphics are present in the 7:7 to 8:1 archives, as these were stored on CD."

[RonT]

Fascinating thanks

[Richard Hallas]

I also guess that either the original copyright holders are OK with people selling compilations on eBay or they aren't around any more in any sense where they might get upset about it.

I wouldn't exactly say that.

Speaking as the copyright owner of RISC User, I didn't pay a fairly substantial amount of money for those rights merely in order to have people steal the material and publish it for free later. Unfortunately, this seems to be the fate of all magazines: once published, they're fair game for anyone to scan and republish without ever bothering to try to obtain permission, and precious little can be done about it, really.

In the case of RISC User, there is a clear owner of that material: me. I bought it directly from Beebug, largely in order to establish Foundation RISC User in 1999, which of course was published for another seven years or so after RISC User's demise. Thus the investment served its purpose from that point of view.

The software aspect of the magazine (the content of its magazine disks etc.) — and, crucially, the magazine backups that existed — were published on the “RISC User …in a Nutshell” CD-ROM. This is still on sale from R-Comp, for anyone who wants to buy a copy legally. I see that it's now been illegally archived and made available online at archive.org — though I'd be quite surprised to find that this is the latest version of the CD. It's most likely to be the first edition, whereas there was a substantially improved second edition published by R-Comp (followed, as I recall, by a third edition with other minor corrections).

As for PDFs, I do have a complete set of high quality PDFs of the entire set of magazines with the text intact and searchable. Most of these were produced by Sheridan Williams of Beebug Ltd some years ago. I've also personally produced particularly nice copies of the issues in volume 11 (11:5 to 11:10) that I laid out myself after moving production from QuarkXPress to Ovation Pro — generated directly from the Ovation Pro files. I must get around, some time, to doing the same for the final volume 12 (Mark Moxon's year as editor), but I haven't done those ones yet. They do exist as scans; just not the better, more efficient results that are possible by generating them directly from the DTP source files.

In an ideal world I'd like to create a RISC User tribute site online to house these resources and make them available in a high quality format. What's lacking is the necessary time and incentive to do the work. Having spent an inordinate amount of time creating the “Nutshell” CD back in 1999, I'm under no illusions as to the scope of the work needed to do the job properly — especially given zero financial incentive.

Maybe it'll be a retirement project for me some day. In any case, if I did do it, all that'd happen is that the files would be instantly stolen and republished elsewhere. ;-( Anyway, the bottom line is that the material is not lost, and it certainly could be made available again some day in a reasonably high quality form. In the meantime, there appear to be illegal copies available.

[paulb]

I also guess that either the original copyright holders are OK with people selling compilations on eBay or they aren't around any more in any sense where they might get upset about it.

I wouldn't exactly say that.

I admit that I was being charitable when I wrote that, not wanting to overtly criticise anyone's purchasing choices. I think my more unfiltered views were more clearly expressed in the context of Internet Archive materials, although I see that someone uploaded your CDs there as well.

Speaking as the copyright owner of RISC User, I didn't pay a fairly substantial amount of money for those rights merely in order to have people steal the material and publish it for free later. Unfortunately, this seems to be the fate of all magazines: once published, they're fair game for anyone to scan and republish without ever bothering to try to obtain permission, and precious little can be done about it, really.

I think you should exercise the rights that you have. Personally, I am an advocate of copyleft licensing, which some people interpret as being against copyright, but it is in fact a mechanism that depends strongly on copyright to be viable. So, although I dislike copyright maximalism, such as prohibitions on "format shifting" or the pursuit of individuals making content available that the rights holders will not make available themselves, I believe that copyright should be upheld.

In the case of RISC User, there is a clear owner of that material: me. I bought it directly from Beebug, largely in order to establish Foundation RISC User in 1999, which of course was published for another seven years or so after RISC User's demise. Thus the investment served its purpose from that point of view.

The software aspect of the magazine (the content of its magazine disks etc.) — and, crucially, the magazine backups that existed — were published on the “RISC User …in a Nutshell” CD-ROM. This is still on sale from R-Comp, for anyone who wants to buy a copy legally. I see that it's now been illegally archived and made available online at archive.org — though I'd be quite surprised to find that this is the latest version of the CD. It's most likely to be the first edition, whereas there was a substantially improved second edition published by R-Comp (followed, as I recall, by a third edition with other minor corrections).

You should ask the Internet Archive to take the appropriate action. There is plenty of content that seems to be taken down or controlled, and so there appears to be a mechanism to achieve that. For what it is worth, I have considered uploading content to the Internet Archive that is not generally available, but I have not done so in case it incurs the wrath of rights holders. Others might have uploaded content believing that it might become lost if not put somewhere that is supposedly safe. Personally, I would only bother scanning publications if they were not otherwise easily available, and I probably wouldn't share them readily online, either.

As for PDFs, I do have a complete set of high quality PDFs of the entire set of magazines with the text intact and searchable. Most of these were produced by Sheridan Williams of Beebug Ltd some years ago. I've also personally produced particularly nice copies of the issues in volume 11 (11:5 to 11:10) that I laid out myself after moving production from QuarkXPress to Ovation Pro — generated directly from the Ovation Pro files. I must get around, some time, to doing the same for the final volume 12 (Mark Moxon's year as editor), but I haven't done those ones yet. They do exist as scans; just not the better, more efficient results that are possible by generating them directly from the DTP source files.

In an ideal world I'd like to create a RISC User tribute site online to house these resources and make them available in a high quality format. What's lacking is the necessary time and incentive to do the work. Having spent an inordinate amount of time creating the “Nutshell” CD back in 1999, I'm under no illusions as to the scope of the work needed to do the job properly — especially given zero financial incentive.

Maybe it'll be a retirement project for me some day. In any case, if I did do it, all that'd happen is that the files would be instantly stolen and republished elsewhere. ;-( Anyway, the bottom line is that the material is not lost, and it certainly could be made available again some day in a reasonably high quality form. In the meantime, there appear to be illegal copies available.

Yes, I think it is regrettable that the bootleggers make the easy money while those who make (or might make) a decent product don't see any of that revenue.

The one thing I could add to this is that much of the value I have derived from perusing old publications, often on the Internet Archive, has been in introducing the information into a broader context, typically in places like this and on Wikipedia. Doing so actually amplifies the value of the knowledge involved, in my opinion, and there is an argument to be made that funding might even be available from various organisations to do the hard work of archiving such publications with a view to making them more widely available. That might be a more rewarding approach than letting the market decide what the value of the content is, especially if venues like eBay are constantly facilitating bootlegging and all the other antisocial traits of "everything goes" capitalism.

[joachim]

With the Internet Archive, there is a range of content, some being freely available and presumably tolerated by the copyright holders, even sanctioned by them in some cases, and some being available under a kind of library loan arrangement, which presumably makes some of the copyright holders tolerate the arrangement.

Given the very broad catalogue that's available under the library loan arrangement, my suspicion is that it's designed not so that the copyright holders will choose to allow it, but so that the (US) courts will force them to allow it as being the equivalent of a physical library (which is something you can certainly operate without permission of the copyright holder, provided you have a physical copy of the book to start with).

So I would guess it's much harder to get content taken down from the loan section than from the freely available section. Although you may have more options if, say, you only want to block access in one non-US country, rather than removing the material globally.

[danielj]

Or you could just leave it there and allow people to learn about the the past.

[RPCEmuUser]

I now have 49 Risc User magazines, which I'm in the process of scanning, it takes approx 6 mins to scan a complete Risc User magazine, scanning at 600dpi.

I'm not interested in making any money, but want to preserve the magazines and make them freely available.

[RonT]

Commendable.