Distribution: COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL
Project: NC Model 1
Issue: 0.15
Author(s): Steve Cormie (edited by DWalker)
Date: 18-Sep-97
Last Issue: 0.14
0.01 SMC 28-Feb-96 First created. 0.02 SMC 12-Mar-96 Lots of changes. 0.03 SMC 19-Mar-96 Added Apps and Misc specifications. 0.04 SMC 20-Mar-96 Added Territory specification. 0.05 SMC 26-Mar-96 Added apps list, removed DHCP. 0.06 SMC 27-Mar-96 Moved some items to future enhancements. 0.07 SMC 03-Apr-96 Updated for new UI. 0.08 SMC 09-Apr-96 Added some new specs. 0.09 SMC 12-Apr-96 Added nested windows and IR specs. 0.10 SMC 23-Apr-96 Moved some items to future enhancements. 0.11 SMC 26-Apr-96 Added serial spec. 0.12 SMC 01-May-96 Added clipboard spec. 0.13 SMC 03-May-96 Sorted out Toolbox modules. 0.14 SMC 03-May-96 Added SmartCard spec.
There are no outstanding issues.
This document contains the top-level software functional specification for the Network Computer Model 1. It aims to provide an overall specification of all software activity required for the NC Model 1 and provides links to documentation for specific software components.
Parts of this specification which are italicised are either undecided issues or are liable to change.
Software development for the NC Model 1 is basically split into two parts. Firstly, the development effort required for the NC Model 1 ROM and secondly the effort required for support software eg. for network card ROMs, server side software etc. The development of base applications for the NC falls into the first category as it is the intention that these are all in the ROM.
The NC Model 1 ROM is a version of RISC OS based on the ROM produced for the A7000 and on the ROM produced for the Online Media STB. The main differences are as follows:
Note that there is no application support for email and news browsing, this must be provided by the service provider concerned eg. as with UK-Online.
In addition, the following modules which were present in the A7000 ROM are not present in the NC ROM:
The following additional software development is required for network card ROMs and server side software:
The Network Computer does not use the traditional RISC OS desktop but uses the Web browser as a front-end in a special desktop mode instead. This allows potentially quite sophisticated and configurable front-ends to be built using HTML.
There are a number of booting strategies for NCs all of which result in a read-only NFS mount being created. These are described in the NC Boot Software Functional Specification which describes in detail how the NC boots and what is expected of the server.
The boot process will normally end in the browser being run and pointed at the NC log on HTML page although various smartcard options may result in different behaviour.
When the user has logged on the browser is used to create a "desktop" as specified in the NC Applications Software Functional Specification. This specification also describes the base application set and along with the NC Application Requirements Specification determines the generic user interface for the Network Computer.
The NC Model 1 ROM is dependent on various third parties to provide working software components. These are as follows:
To be decided.
The NC Model 1 ROM image is built from the standard RISC OS 3.60 build tree which has been expanded to hold all of the new software for the NC.
The following lists some possible future enhancements.