Interview with Toni Wilen

[Daff]

Today, the magazine Obligement publish an interview with Toni Wilen, the coder of WinUAE, the Amiga emulator for Windows. You can read it on http://obligement.free.fr/articles_t...wwillen_en.php

[Zetr0]

Awesome!

Cheers Daff!

[AmigaBoy]

Nothing really surprising in the interview. It's basically everything Toni has said on this forum but collated on one page. It was still a good read and should be linked to whenever someone asks for something like PPC emulation. Quick and easy.

I'm posting because of the "portable GUI library" question. While mainly directed at Toni, I feel that maybe others can assist in this matter too.

Long ago I found wxWidgets ( http://www.wxwidgets.org/ ) and have used it in every project since. I've looked at them all and the only other true contender was Qt, but as Toni says in the interview it requires a "huge separate library.". In addition, Qt is an enormous download with an unbelievably long build time.

wxWidgets on the other hand:
- Is a small download (~20mb)
- Is under a compatible licence (wxWidgets licence which is essentially LGPL - http://www.wxwidgets.org/about/newlicen.htm ) to WinUAE (GPL)
- Builds quickly (around 5 minutes for the entire library)
- Is cross platform ("Win32, Mac OS X, GTK+, X11, Motif, WinCE, and more")
- Has a native look and feel so you never know that wxWidgets is being used (I've confirmed this with programs I've written)
- Produces decent sized executables, even when statically compiled
- Has a few 3rd party GUI builders, the best free one in my opinion being wxFormBuilder ( http://wxformbuilder.org/ )
- Has a thriving community and is well supported
- Has extensive documentation, tutorials and a good wiki
- Is still actively maintained

I don't use any OS other than Windows so I personally have no need for a cross-platform UAE, however I know it's important so I'm a long time supporter of the concept. At one point many months ago, I began porting the GUI to wxWidgets and it was progressing fairly well, however due to time constraints, I couldn't go any further. Since then the code has been lost and I have no intentions of restarting.

Hope the above helps in some way.

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by Jason

Nothing really surprising in the interview. It's basically everything Toni has said on this forum but collated on one page. It was still a good read and should be linked to whenever someone asks for something like PPC emulation. Quick and easy.

Indeed, Toni's words are a wiki of all EAB comments he made in the last few years. It's pretty clear that he only prefers the 68k Amigas and not the so called "Next Gen". Me too. That's why i'm here on EAB and not in other Amiga forums.

[TCD]

Interesting read, thanks Daff Indeed this should be linked for the next PPC emulation question

@Jason
OT here. Maybe someone moves your post or you start a new thread.

[pmc]

I really enjoyed reading that. The answers were, in my opinion, typical Toni: blunt and to the point.

You gotta admire the guy's style - and also his dedication to WinUAE - constantly updated and improved and easily the best emulator out there let alone the best Amiga emulator.

[john4p]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

I didn't understand at that time how something can be impossible to emulate. I still don't understand.

Without Toni I'd probably never got to see and play AGA-games (abandoned my Amiga 500 for a 386DX - of course the strain imposed by suffering soon became so heavy I had to buy another A500 not even two years later; still never had an Amiga 1200).

[Avanze]

Thanks for posting that interview.

[StevenJGore]

Good informative interview, but a shame the website couldn't spell Toni's name correctly.

[Ironclaw]

Originally Posted by StevenJGore

Good informative interview, but a shame the website couldn't spell Toni's name correctly.

Not just that, wording and the overall grammar in some places is bad. Talking about the interviewer ofc.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Jason

wxwidgets

There is only one (huge) problem: C++ requirement. UAE is C-only and it simply won't compile as C++ without painful changes. Having mixed C/C++ source files is not worth the trouble.

This is perfectly acceptable GUI solution if there is solution to C++ "problem".

[Retro1234]

Nice little read thanks But Toni WinUae is Next Gen

[Shoonay]

Nice read, as someone on PPA.pl said "If only other programmers didn't care as much about his programs as Toni"

[Paul_s]

Is there an audio cassette alternative? I'm hard of reading

[seuden]

Good read.

[Hobbe]

"For me "Amiga" means only Classic 68K Amigas"

Amen

"Unfortunately getting 100% cycle-exactness takes too much time (fixing last 1% takes 99% of time and so on...) and I recently haven't been really interested anymore"

Not interested as in "I ain't touching that code again" or as in "no longer a priority but will not be fogotten"?

[TheCorfiot]

Toni.. You are a true Legend...

Wish you all the best for the future, The community wouldn't be the same without you.

TC

[frikilokooo]

Toni is almost a god and the Amiga a religion.Pray for the emulator that we will enjoy

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by Hobbe

Not interested as in "I ain't touching that code again" or as in "no longer a priority but will not be fogotten"?

Never forgotten. "when I feel interested enough again"

[Hobbe]

Good to know!

You see, I lost 2 perfectly functional Amigas to probably worn-out hardware in the lapse of 3 months. Most of my disks are no longer readable and the place I moved in isn't as big as I thought it would be...I just realized Amigas won't last me a lifetime, so I've put my faith and hope in your magnificent work. There the reason of my concern