Information about these sites

Duncan Breckels writes:

This site acts as a holding page to point you to the main information I have published which is all located elsewhere - follow the links on the opening page to find it. This tiny site was first put together well over a decade ago, and it's now looking very dated. No matter, if it does its job.

To begin with, this site was hosted on free space from BT/Yahoo, and when that was discontinued with effect from October 2012, it was moved to its own space.

As is all too obvious, no commercial designers have been used in preparing these pages for publication. Like many before me, I have done all the work myself, and the information on the equipment and software I first used all that time ago is set out here for interest.
For information, the following have been used:

• Hardware:
• • It all started on an Acorn RiscPC Computer which was been gradually updated to RISC OS 6.20 and a 200Mhz StrongARM processor. Since the demise of Acorn Computers, the brand continued for a while under the aegis of Castle Technology. More recently, the RiscPC has been replaced by an ArmX6 from R-Comp. Most of my computing now uses Linux.
  • A flatbed scanner has been used, firstly a Mustek ScanExpress 1200SP pro, then an Agfa Snapscan 1236 and now an Epson Perfection V700 Photo, via Windows or Linux.
• Software:
• • !ArtWorks, the commercial vector drawing package from Computer Concepts' was used to originate some of the artwork in conjuction with useful add-on programs from MW Software. This has been updated to Artworks2, now all development is handled by MW Software.
  • !Browse, the Acorn web browser. (This won't run on the latest version of RISC OS)
  • !Netsurf, a browser still being developed for the platform and also available for Linux & Mac OS among others.
  • !Draw, a vector drawing package that comes with Risc OS.
  • !ChangeFSI, supplied with Risc OS, is a handy way of processing scanned images and altering things like the size, contrast and dynamic range.
  • !Composition, originally from Clares and no longer available, has been used for image processing & masking.
  • !Edit, the text editor that comes with Risc OS.
  • !Family, a freeware family tree editing and printing application, first written by Dennis Howe, later updated by Pennine Software, and which appears to no longer be available.
  • !HTML3, a freeware web macro inserter by Richard Goodwin was found very useful in speeding up the production of some pages.
  • A commercial package authored by David Pilling and now known as !DPScan has also been used for processing and originating some of the scans
  • !InterGif, a freeware utility by Peter Hartley, has been used for converting Acorn style graphics files into .gif files for the Web.
  • !Paint, an editor for bitmap graphics that is also part of Risc OS, has been used for grabbing images from the screen and for tidying up some images.
  • !Sleuth2, an OCR package by Beebug, then marketed by APDL and which may now be unavailable has been used to prepare the Mills Research Group's pages in copying text from the original printed proceedings, in making extracts from the guidebook for the St Peter's Church pages and in preparing the extracts from Blomefield's History of Norfolk.
  • !Twain drivers from David Pilling have been used with both !DPScan and !Sleuth2.
  • !Zap, an excellent freeware editor, has an HTML mode which has been used on some pages.
• Typefaces:
• • The typeface on the main homepage is StMartin.Extended from the iSV Products "Professional Typography Expert 2100" CD collection.
  • Cibarious.Bold is used for the heading on the Breckels home page, and comes from the same iSV collection
  • The typeface on the Family history homepage is Davys.Ribbons, a PD font obtained from the "Free 4000 Public Domain Fonts" CD issued by the now defunct Electronic Font Foundry.
• Changes:
• • There have been spasmodic changes to this site when I notice some of the links are broken. That's why some of the software listed above no longer has an associated link. A big change was made in January 2021 to remove the link on the opening page to St Peter's Church, as I handed over responsibility (and all the content) to new management in late 2020. In mid 2022 the Mills Research Group was disbanded and the Mills Archive took over its assets.