Amiga 68k Apps: MUI or Bust?

[Korodny]

When people write nowadays for 68k Amiga, and it's UI intensive (word processor, business app, what have you), is it common to use MUI?

Nobody's writing stuff like that for AmigaOS these days

I'd say it depends on what kind of project you have in mind. There are two different goals you could aim for, which pretty much exclude each other:

• run on as many Amigas as possible, i.e. support a typical 1980ies setup. This equals reducing the feature set and GUI complexity
• try to mimic a modern app, which requires the most modern GUI toolkit you can get your hands on

Nobody's trying to do the latter anymore - because the results will be disappointing given the target system's many limitations, no matter how good a job you will do. If you're going for the former, advanced GUI toolkits are not an option anyway.

If you do want to write a "modern" app:

Reaction on OS3 is dead. The original developers (Chris Aldi et al) allegedly got scammed by H&P - and they're not interested in giving it away for cheap. Amikit might be porting their Reaction classes back to OS3, but that doesn't help the general state of the Reaction base system on OS3: badly documented, outdated look, lack of configurability many gadget types are underdeveloped (e.g. listtrees) or completely missing.

MUI on OS3 is dead as well - unless you're willing to ignore all the problems the post 3.8 releases have - but at least it's in a much, much better shape than reaction.

Most people (including me) don't like MUI - because it's shareware, it feels alien compared to other Amiga GUI toolkits and it's not well suited for 68000 based Amigas. But it's very nice to develop for, and it's a defacto standard since pretty much every non-commercial application released this century (commercial applications need to pay royalties to the MUI author) uses either Reaction or MUI.

Yeah, pretty much "MUI or bust", AFAIC.

[Minuous]

Nobody is writing UI-intensive Amiga software!? Programs like AmiArcadia, MCE, etc. have feature-rich, modern GUIs, done entirely in ReAction.

The issues you mention re. "state of the ReAction base system on OS3" are being addressed. If you don't like the default look it can be changed via Preferences.

[Korodny]

Originally Posted by Minuous

Nobody is writing UI-intensive Amiga software!?

He was talking about word processors and business apps.

Programs like AmiArcadia, MCE, etc. have feature-rich, modern GUIs, done entirely in ReAction.

Screenshots are available here: http://amigan.1emu.net/releases/

These user interfaces are certainly not "modern" in terms of layout and functionality, they look horrible (you're not helping Reaction's awful default look by adding a brightly dotted wallpaper to each window...) and MCE is violating the "SAVE|(Use)|CANCEL" paradigm of Amiga GUI applications. I guess the two icons at the top left stand for "abort" and "save" - what are they doing up there, and why are they Toolbar buttons instead of text buttons?

The issues you mention re. "state of the ReAction base system on OS3" are being addressed. If you don't like the default look it can be changed via Preferences.

You can change background color and border colors for gadgets aswell as the fonts used, IIRC. That's not nearly enough to fix what's wrong with reaction.

[Minuous]

Originally Posted by Korodny

He was talking about word processors and business apps.

He said "UI-intensive apps" and then gave two examples of such apps. The "what have you" indicates that those two were just examples.

(you're not helping Reaction's awful default look by adding a brightly dotted wallpaper to each window...)

That background pattern is not anything specific to the programs or to ReAction, it was just what I happened to be using on my system when I took those screenshots. If I used the same pattern in a MUI window would that mean MUI is ugly?

MCE is violating the "SAVE|(Use)|CANCEL" paradigm of Amiga GUI applications.

No, that's just for preferences editors. It wouldn't make any sense at all in this case.

I guess the two icons at the top left stand for "abort" and "save" - what are they doing up there, and why are they Toolbar buttons instead of text buttons?

No, they are standard AISS "open" and "save" gadgets. The usual paradigm is to have a graphical toolbar for this, with text tooltips, which is what has been done in this case. And of course that functionality can be reached via menu or keyboard also. Text-only for everything with no graphics anywhere is ugly and dated and less user-friendly.

You can change background color and border colors for gadgets aswell as the fonts used, IIRC. That's not nearly enough to fix what's wrong with reaction.

There is much more that can be configured than just that.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by idrougge

It's really difficult to not use MUI in case you want to do any kind of modern development.

'Modern' development - on an Amiga 1000?

Originally Posted by Warty

If there's an easy/quick way to get a GUI up, that's enticing... if someone has a made a nice library that does what I need, and isn't entirely sucky, I'm totally ok with using that instead of rolling my own.

I wanted a simple text editor and found some MUI sample code that looked like it would do the job. Only problem was I didn't have the required MUI classes. Then after finding, downloading, and installing them the app crashed. Tried to debug it but the MUI code was too convoluted to step through. After several days of frustration I eventually managed to find a combination of different class versions that was reasonably stable. So much for 'easy/quick way to get a GUI up' - won't be doing that again!

[Alexco]

Ever looked at BGUI? Yes, also 3rd party, but source was released and ported to AROS, so at least bugs can be fixed. For OS3, the look & feel is much better than MUI IMHO.

[Warty]

I like the sound of BGUI, from what I could find, but do you know if it's dead? The readme has an owner with a dead web page, and the bgui web page also looks dead. In the BGUI manifesto, there is talk of open sourcing the code once it reaches version 42, but it's not clear that happened. Any more info available?

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Minuous

It will not be just for OS4. http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-...-00014-EN.html

enhancer software from aeon for amiga? i doubt it will happen any soon. and if so, it will simply contain their replacement reaction classes, which are only used by their own software, being commercial. to use reaction one will still need class act or 3.9.

i know your personal bias against mui and towards reaction, but for better or worse, mui is the only cross platform standard that works on amiga and all ng followups. hard to expect this id gonna change.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by jPV

MUI is in constant progress at least, sources/development is available for several platforms, and thus more future proof solution.

alas its not exactly as it is. sources are not freely available, except for zune.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Minuous

Nobody is writing UI-intensive Amiga software!? Programs like AmiArcadia, MCE, etc. have feature-rich, modern GUIs, done entirely in ReAction.

so you refer to your own software to back up your stance, that people are writing complex guis with reaction? its nice that at least one person does it and is as much enthusiastic about it. but, as christoph said, put in perspective, these are not exactly "modern" guis.

on the contrary, most complex amiga applications have mui/zune frontends, there are guis for several web browsers including odyssey (admittedly netsurf has a reaction gui on os4, but this is not portable). there are paint programs like luna- and zunepaint, system tools, desktop solutions, decompressors, you name it..

[Minuous]

@wawa:

>and if so, it will simply contain their replacement reaction classes, which are only used by their own software, being commercial. to use reaction one will still need class act or 3.9.

How are you in a position to know what it will or won't contain? And it is not correct that those classes are only used by their own software.

>i know your personal bias against mui and towards reaction

And I know your "personal bias" against ReAction and towards MUI. If having a preference for better things over inferior things means I'm biased then indeed I am.

>mui is the only cross platform standard that works on amiga and all ng followups.

No. ReAction GUI can be used on OS3, OS4, MOS and even AROS.

>these are not exactly "modern" guis.

In what way? I'm not a fan of the "flat" style that seems to be all the rage on some platforms these days, luckily that doesn't seem to have infested the Amiga yet.

>admittedly netsurf has a reaction gui on os4, but this is not portable

It isn't? How am I running it with a ReAction front end on OS3 then?

[jPV]

Originally Posted by wawa

alas its not exactly as it is. sources are not freely available, except for zune.

Yeah, not freely available, but available for certain developers and in development for all platforms anyway.

[Korodny]

Originally Posted by Warty

I like the sound of BGUI, from what I could find, but do you know if it's dead?

As somebody has already mentioned, the sources should be somewehere in the AROS source tree (source).

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Korodny

As somebody has already mentioned, the sources should be somewehere in the AROS source tree (source).

they are in
contrib/bgui

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Minuous

@wawa:

>personal bias

actually i have nothing against reaction as alternative. it isnt though available, or at least avaliable to satisfactory extent on my preferred systems, that means amiga and aros68k. i know i can substitute it with class act to a degree, which is good as far as it is enough to run most amiga legacy stuff dependent on that, just to name aweb, but since any futher support has been restricted to os4 i dont see it as a portable option.

[kolla]

You should use gtlayout.

[Alexco]

Originally Posted by Warty

I like the sound of BGUI, from what I could find, but do you know if it's dead? The readme has an owner with a dead web page, and the bgui web page also looks dead. In the BGUI manifesto, there is talk of open sourcing the code once it reaches version 42, but it's not clear that happened. Any more info available?

I think it is unmaintained at the moment. Source code can be found inside AROS contribution complete with demos, website and of course code.

[nogginthenog]

Originally Posted by kolla

You should use gtlayout.

I quite like gtlayout. 'Term' is a good example. Written by Olaf Barthel (OS 3.1.4 etc).

[Gorf]

You may also want to have a look at Triton:
http://aminet.net/package/dev/gui/opentriton-src

[Korodny]

It has to be said though that most of the GUI toolkits that have been mentioned in the more recent postings lack a lot of features somebody who learned C on a different platform might expect. BGUI did not have tabs or toolbars IIRC, and I'm not sure how much (if any) functionality was added to their list gadget compared to the Gadtools version.

Things like gtlayout were (mostly) meant to help creating requesters with a better layout or improved font sensitivity.