Talk:Acorn Archimedes

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August 2024 Editing Bonanza

I see that considerable enthusiasm has been directed towards editing this article recently. Although it was indicated that the article was too long, and as a significant contributor to this article, I will admit that my own prose has not been outstanding, some of the recent edits have not exactly preserved the level of clarity or even coherence. To start with, the introduction now says this:

"These systems were powered by Acorn's own ARM architecture processors and ran on proprietary operating systems: Arthur and RISC OS."

Of course, what is meant is that they "ran proprietary operating systems" as opposed to "ran on" those things. Then the editing activity has introduced contradictions. For example, it is noted that the FPA10 was available for the A540 but then, in the section on floating-point hardware, it is stated that "[i]ts availability remained unclear". In the performance section, the correct statement noting the delivery of the FPA10 is given. I find myself with the unappealing task of proofreading casual edits by people who evidently don't know the history of these products.

And on that note, I see that a lot of the historical context has been cut. I appreciate that my own verbose prose needed condensing, but without context, people fail to understand things like why this range of machines wasn't more popular, why it didn't appeal to people, and so on. Ultimately, the way the technology and a strategy around it was developed determined the fate of Acorn itself. If that level of detail isn't interesting to the "TL;DR" brigade, it is possible to make separate articles covering the available software and various expansions and applications.

And it was certainly possible to discuss major edits on the talk page instead of going on a three-day bonanza that, reviewing the history, has produced some pretty destructive edits to this article. I find it all pretty disrespectful, really, not just from my own perspective but also from the perspective of those who provided the historical record that enabled this article to be written. PaulBoddie (talk) 20:55, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Speaking of the editpalooza, this edit "fixed" some spelling, asserting that "This is done because the alternate spellings are more widely accepted although the acorn was admittedly sold to a British audience." As a Yank with little sympathy with any fellow Yanks who are bothered by non-US-spelling, I restored some of them and put a {{Use British English}} template at the top; I left the "ize" vs. "ise" alone after discovering that there's such a thing as "Oxford spelling". If you think the article should use Oxford spelling, go ahead and change {{Use British English}} to {{Use Oxford English}}; if you don't, feel free to restore the "ise" spelling. (And, yes, go ahead and fix or restore anything you think is appropriate.) Guy Harris (talk) 21:33, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your own interventions. I wouldn't mind knowing why a bunch of people suddenly hit up this article. Has there been some kind of Wikipedia contribution event? Or did someone make some YouTube video about ARM that sent people scurrying in this direction? Now I'm going to have to review all the changes and probably even make time for the article reorganisation that I acknowledged would be necessary, even though I don't really have the time to dedicate to the exercise.

I was aware of the Oxford comma, and so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Oxford spelling is a thing. Given Acorn's own geographical positioning, maybe I should investigate if Cambridge spelling is also a thing. PaulBoddie (talk) 19:35, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

The more I read the current version of this article, the more I want to revert it to what it was before. Some of the edits are just terrible, like trimming the commentary of the first A300 and A400 machines to a single remark so that the "variously" qualifier makes no sense at all. The A540 is noted as "without Ethernet support" as opposed to "without built-in Ethernet support", which is exactly the kind of thing that leads to criticism of Wikipedia as inaccurate or counterfactual amongst people who know the topic well. I know that isn't important to people who just want to tell the world that the ARM processor is in billions of smartphones, which of course now appears in the introduction but, weirdly, not in the section about the machine's legacy.

One can discuss whether the dismal software situation in the early days of the machine is historically significant, but I think that eliminating most of the treatment of that topic is like glossing over two years of the machine's crucial early history. It was noted in the press that Acorn threw away much of the machine's advantage by only having Arthur and a piecemeal application strategy until RISC OS came along. I see that in the section about the machine's impact, the early Byte review and subsequent PCW follow-up, both by the prolific Dick Pountain, have been excised in the recent editing frenzy. Discarding those observations leaves the reader wondering why this apparent wonder machine wasn't more readily adopted when the answer can be deduced by anyone if those observations are left in.

I see that the remarks about Acorn's operating system strategy to evolve RISC OS have been removed. Although unlikely to have been pursued, any exploration of using Workplace OS would have been significant, particularly if the porting of that software to ARM (which did occur) had been done for the benefit of Acorn. Meanwhile, the PC emulator section seems to have received the mostly harmless treatment, which is unfortunate given its fairly central role in Acorn's attempts to make the system appeal to a business audience.

While I definitely concede that the bitmap image editing section needed condensing, the current version of the vector image editing section has been trimmed so much that I question whether the person responsible ever even used this system at all, given the significance of ArtWorks for RISC OS and the follow-up product for Windows. Indeed, in the section on document processing, Impression has simply been removed entirely, neglecting the fact that it was a central element in Acorn's publishing industry product. If those responsible for these edits did indeed use RISC OS, they seem rather ignorant of the platform's most significant products.

Then, the development tools section has been gutted. Discussion of BASIC development tools has been truncated to only cover the built-in BASIC, and the C++ subsection is now incoherent because the remaining remarks have lost the context from the original paragraph that began by mentioning the abandonment of the platform by developers. Taking that very significant remark away leads the reader into wondering what Colton, Moir and Finn were on about. And without grasping the difficult development tools situation, the reader has no hope in understanding how the platform struggled to maintain its developer community or attract developers, sealing the platform's fate.

I accept that the section on graphical capabilities did go "into the weeds", but it is essential to understand that the Archimedes, like the Amiga, was being outpaced by generic PC-compatibles in the early 1990s, of great concern to the user community. I think it is important to note that efforts were being made to enhance the graphics by companies like State Machine, even if some of their products did not come to light. One might also claim that the floating-point section also went rather deep, but as noted above, cutting context away - such as the fabrication status of the FPA10 at a particular point in time - leads to an incoherent impression about the eventual availability of products. Also, by removing discussion of application support for hardware floating-point instructions, a crucial element in understanding the perspective of Acorn and various developers and their attitudes towards such technology, along with the consequences, is withheld from the reader.

As previously noted, I am inclined to revert to an earlier version and incorporate sensible refinements, as opposed to dropping entire paragraphs and rinsing out the meaning of much that remains. I see that User:WhyIsNameSoHardOmg- - was mostly responsible, tagging the edits with "Newcomer task", after someone set the ball rolling through the usual Wikipedia paper-shuffling edits and attempted fixes for the mess made along the way. Particularly galling is the reintroduction of the headline "4 MIPS" figure without the essential clarification about the kind of "MIPS" involved: essential to avoid flamewars about what "MIPS" is measuring, but also to understand how Acorn advertised its own product.

Well, if people want to slash away at other people's contributions, they should at least be aware that the shoe is on the other foot now. Particularly after this mysteriously high number of "Newcomer task" edits, any failure to engage constructively here on this talk page in future will be regarded as antisocial editing behaviour. PaulBoddie (talk) 21:42, 13 August 2024 (UTC)