Workbench Tools Menu Enhancement: WBCutnPaste.lha

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

As explained on other threads the AfA picture_datatype.exe cannot be replaced with any datatypes.library because it could cause problems on graphic backgrounds as it happens with ls WBStartup bar (see screenshot).

Even if with "picture_datatype.exe" the thumbnails of "Eastern" are not of quality.

The AfA icon_lib.exe can now be totally replaced with the Peterk icon.library, as shown in the video now all works well.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cjG...ew?usp=sharing

I got rid of the AfA picture.datatype.exe library and am 100% on picture.datatype 45.17. I may be misinterpreting what you wrote above. Eastern's thumbnails are excellent using 45.17.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

I got rid of the AfA picture.datatype.exe library and am 100% on picture.datatype 45.17. I may be misinterpreting what you wrote above. Eastern's thumbnails are excellent using 45.17.

Yes with picture.datatype 45.17. Eastern's thumbnails re excellent using, but as shown in the screenshot there are problems with other things.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

Yes with picture.datatype 45.17. Eastern's thumbnails re excellent using, but as shown in the screenshot there are problems with other things.

Ok - I'll check it out. I have not run into any other issues with 45.17. Edit: Which toolbar are you using in which the background is messed up like that under 45.17?

[AMIGASYSTEM]

See screenshot, The problem occurs with any background format. Probably the problem may affect other applications.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

See screenshot, The problem occurs with any background format. Probably the problem may affect other applications.

Ok. I'm not having any such issue with 45.17 and I can't explain why you would be.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

I need to see if the problem is only on WBstartup++ and WBStartup+.

However, there is a solution with WBstartup++ using option "Transparent"

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

@Daedalus: If you haven't gotten AfA running, I would like to suggest you do. I myself am sold on it and could never go back. The font-smooting alone is worth it. The best part is that it doesn't increase load - it decreases it and I'm still unclear as to why but it has a real-world dividend of lowering the CPU load and heat on my MBP running FS-UAE and it is significant. I was already running a virtual A4000 w/ 68060 and the WB is just faster with overall lower CPU load which as I wrote earlier, translates into a real-world decrease on the Mac's own CPU load.

Thanks, but I tried AfA a while back and it wasn't for me. That was on my real hardware (060/66, RTG, SCSI etc.), but it was clunkier, and the differences from a standard setup caused some issues which meant I pretty quickly went back to a standard 3.9 setup with a few enhancements. And since I typically only use emulation for testing and some development work, it's better to have a standard setup there too.

As an aside, unlike real hardware, emulating a 68060 doesn't give you any significant speed advantage over a 68030 for example. Its the instruction set that's emulated, not the silicon.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Thanks, but I tried AfA a while back and it wasn't for me. That was on my real hardware (060/66, RTG, SCSI etc.), but it was clunkier, and the differences from a standard setup caused some issues which meant I pretty quickly went back to a standard 3.9 setup with a few enhancements. And since I typically only use emulation for testing and some development work, it's better to have a standard setup there too.

As an aside, unlike real hardware, emulating a 68060 doesn't give you any significant speed advantage over a 68030 for example. Its the instruction set that's emulated, not the silicon.

I beg to differ, at least where AfA is concerned. I honestly expected the WB to run slower with the additional software layer. The speed increase was immediately noticed as was the lower CPU usage. This had a real-world effect on the MBP running FS-UAE. My average temperature was 69-70C with an average CPU temp of 92-95C. Now with AfA, the average temperature in 65-66C with an average CPU temp of 85-86C. The ambient temperature here tends to be a bit warm and my airflow is typically around 34-35C and that's with the MBP elevated and an external fan blowing at the intake below the hinge.

There was always a significant increase in speed running a 68060 over a 68040 system. This is noticeable in iBrowse most of all, and in Netsurf as well. In fact, there's no comparison - I would never go back to the 68040 library. Are you are suggesting that a 68030 running the 68060 instruction set would be just as fast and would run Demos designed for the 68060, AGA/RTG at the same speed? Perhaps it would but pages that choked in iBrowse on the 68040 don't any longer running the 68060 and of course I am able to play 320 kbps mp3s in stereo at 22050 without latency. Whether one is actually emulating the silicon or not, the differences are real-world. If they weren't I wouldn't see much point emulating an A4000 over an A1200. Just my 2 cents.

[Weaselrama]

All is well with backgrounds running on my Bench with 45.17. I tried a couple of patterns in the windows and all was well but prefer the Gray since I have to stick with white text against the dark wallpaper.

By the way, I contacted the DockBot developer and he was open to some of the suggestions, such as adding support for folders.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

The problem is not the wallpapers but only from "particolary Player" like WBStartup ++, moreover picture.datatypes 45.17 ruins also the thumbnail icons on the new MUI ASL, see screenshot

The Grey Backgrounds don't go well with White Fonts, you have to use the Black fonts, what Pointer are you using? I have a nice series that fit well on AfA OS.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

With picture_datatype.exe of AfA OS everything works perfectly, only Eastern has some small almost imperceptible flaws, see screenshots.

[Daedalus]

Emulation is a very different beast entirely, and it could well be that your experience with AfA differs to mine as a result of that. Differences between our use cases will also affect perspectives.

The main point in emulating a different CPU is for completeness, and for compatibility with CPU-specific software. After all, what's the point in emulating the IDE interface of an A1200 when the UAE device is far better? Or all the different accelerator types when a generic CPU is simplest? The real-world difference between those CPUs is enormous, of course - the difference between an '030 and an '060 is night and day, but that difference is not emulated. The only CPU that's (optionally) fully emulated right down to cycle timing is the 68000 - everything else above that is just emulated at the instruction set level. And that means that the host will emulate each instruction as quickly as it can, regardless of which CPU it's pretending to be.

Back when my Amiga was my main computer, it had no trouble playing MP3s at 192 and 256kbps at 44.1kHz - I never went up to 320 because it left very little time for multitasking, and the difference was far lower than running at half the samplerate. There shouldn't be any reason you couldn't play MP3s at 44.1kHz at 320kbps on your emulation with *any* CPU selected.

Try it yourself: Run a benchmark program and run the exact same setup with different CPUs. You'll get natural variations of course because of the host's CPU load. Or try play those same MP3s on an emulated 68020.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

The problem is not the wallpapers but only from "particolary Player" like WBStartup ++, moreover picture.datatypes 45.17 ruins also the thumbnail icons on the new MUI ASL, see screenshot

The Grey Backgrounds don't go well with White Fonts, you have to use the Black fonts, what Pointer are you using? I have a nice series that fit well on AfA OS.

The white fonts look fine. I can't use black fonts because they disappear against the dark wallpaper I use. I'm not going to change my wallpaper. I wish there was a way to display Workbench Icon fonts in two different colors but you can't so far as I know. I no longer want dark patterns in my windows as I used to, but something closer to windows in 4.1 which are white.

You've just given me another reason not to upgrade to MUI 5. I've played with it and I think it's slower and just doesn't provide any advantages I'm interested in. MUI 4 works just fine for me.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Try it yourself: Run a benchmark program and run the exact same setup with different CPUs. You'll get natural variations of course because of the host's CPU load. Or try play those same MP3s on an emulated 68020.

I started out with an emulated A1200 with a 68020 which is (or was) the FS-UAE default for the A1200. I began building from there. I had to run AmigaAMP in MONO at 11025 with the 68020 mpega.library or the latency was awful. I didn't run a benchmark program but when I built the A4000 with a 68040, the difference was stark but I still had latency issues trying to run in Stereo at better quality. The difference was even more pronounced running a 68060. I make sure I run 68060 versions of libraries where available. I could never go back to a 68040-based configuration just as now, I could never go back to pre-AfA. I often wonder if people build UAE configurations based on their experience with real-world Amiga hardware. The last real Amiga I ran was my A1000 back in early 90s so I never ran an A1200 with a Blizzard or Warp accelerator so I have no real-world experience with faster Amiga hardware. I do read what others do and try which led me to trying the 68060 libs. I also know there are differences between emulation in FS-UAE as compared to WinUAE.

[Daedalus]

Well, all I can do is suggest that you try it yourself. My guess is that there were other settings that changed between your A1200 and A4000 configurations. Did you change to an RTG setup, for example? Did you also happen to enable JIT at the same time? Bearing in mind, of course, that JIT can only be used to emulate a fully 32-bit CPU, whereas the 68EC020 of the A1200 is 24-bit, and that will make a *massive* difference to your emulation speed and isn't otherwise dependent on the CPU chosen.

To be honest, if you're having problems decoding MP3s in an emulator on any reasonably modern machine, there's something wrong with your setup. Where do you think the extra speed comes from? If 68020 emulation is running as fast as it can, how is it possible to emulate more instructions per second?

I was going to just leave you to explore it yourself, but I decided give you a hand. As an example, my standard emulation setup is a generic '030 setup, and clocks in at anywhere between 900 and 1,100 MIPS on my PC, depending on what else is happening. Changing that to a 68020, exactly the same result. Changing to a 68040, exactly the same result.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

. I wish there was a way to display Workbench Icon fonts in two different colors but you can't so far as I know.
.

It would be nice to have what you're asking for, if OS 4.1 exists I think you can bring it to OS3.

You've just given me another reason not to upgrade to MUI 5. I've played with it and I think it's slower and just doesn't provide any advantages I'm interested in. MUI 4 works just fine for me.

"PatchASL" I use it on all my systems, this Patch in addition to speed up the opening of windows, provides a functional GUI where once called from an Application, this one remembers the GUI size, path and last file used, very useful feature to speed up any operation, see attached video.

The only problem that slows down is the display of the thumbnails, which also causes the system to freeze if you don't wait for all the thumbnails to load.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MwT...0244rlmsp/view

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

To be honest, if you're having problems decoding MP3s in an emulator on any reasonably modern machine, there's something wrong with your setup. Where do you think the extra speed comes from? If 68020 emulation is running as fast as it can, how is it possible to emulate more instructions per second?

Some of what you are suggesting appears to be in conflict with the experiences of those who've tried to get an AmigaAMP configuration stable on both real hardware and in emulation and the need for several builds of the mpega.library for different processors.

I do remember playing with JIT on the first A1200 I built and receiving a message from FS-UAE about the lack of a 32bit-enabled processor. This led to building faster configurations and yes, adding Picasso96 for RTG. I used JIT on the 68030 A1200 and 68040 A4000. I was also having issues related to RTG and higher screen resolutions vs audio latency on both mp3s and Mods which were *not* AmigaAMP or processor related which I discussed at length with Frode on the FS-UAE forum here. 1280x1024 was the best resolution I could manage AND maintain good audio latency. This is known issue and is being addressed in future versions of FS-UAE adopting more WinUAE code.

This latency issue corrected itself when I purchased my 2019 MBP 2.4 Ghz to replace the 2017 for which I fell into the lucky 30% of buyers who experienced battery issues as in, mine popped twice. Apple fixed it the first time but refused the 2nd - not an uncommon experience. I have several legacy applications which is why I stuck with the Mac but I'll leave that for another time. I was able to run 1920 x 1080 and eliminate audio latency in *audio* on my 68040 config but had to keep AmigaAMP at 11025 max.

There are entire threads on EAB dedicated to the issue of getting mp3s running better on both real hardware and in emulation, the latest being a thread in which Meynaf had built and optimized version of the mpega.library which allowed better performance on 68030 machines.

I don't claim to be as knowledgeable as others here regarding the inner workings of OS3 or the differences between real hardware and emulation. All I can tell you is that my 68060 config flies and I'm extremely happy with it. I had to go back to an earlier 68040 .hdf backup to get some Hollywood plug-ins I'd inadvertently deleted - there was little difference in configuration other than the 68040 lacked 68060-optimized libraries. Browsing in iBrowse was really noticeable and there was latency on my 320kbps mp3s if I kicked that AmigaAMP config up to 22050 as I've been able to do with my 68060 config.

I just don't have the background to argue with your opinions on emulated 68k except other than I note some conflict with what I read in the FS-UAE forums and all the forums dealing with AmigaAMP configuration I've been reading for the past year. I turn JIT off to play certain games, otherwise, it's on all the time. Time and further experience on my part will no doubt yield new revelations as to why there was such a dramatic difference between my former 68040 config and the 68060 config or why I'm seeing better CPU usage on the Amiga which translates to better CPU performance on the Mac using AfA. I've been at this for just over a year. I've been using OS 3.9/Boing Bag 1-4 since around the time I switched my A1200 to the 32-bit enabled 68030 and decided I wanted to convert the look and feel to a more OS4.1 appearance. All that led to upgraded libraries and datatypes along the way.

I have a very fast Amiga running in emulation. I can load news sites in iBrowse which used to cause iBrowse to shutdown or the Amiga session to die using my former 68040 config. That configuration is the basis of the 68060 configuration which came later.

One more thing just occured to me. I had been using AMPlifier 2.3 (the update from the Boing Bags) in lieu of AmigaAMP because I got better performance while I tested 3 separate upgrades to AmigaAMP. I switched to AmigaAMP with version 3.27 as it just ran better than AMPlifier and certainly better than previous versions. Oddly, and before 3.27, I found myself using AMPlifier for mp3s and AmigaAMP for streaming Internet radio (although AMPlifier also could stream mp3s) because the latter worked better for that task.

One thing that EAB users can count on is everyone has a different opinion as to why things work the way they do. AMIGASYSTEM and I have both become AfA "evangelists" and he long before I did yet its obvious others don't share our enthusiasm and have had less than stellar experiences trying to run AfA.

[Weaselrama]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

The only problem that slows down is the display of the thumbnails, which also causes the system to freeze if you don't wait for all the thumbnails to load.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MwT...0244rlmsp/view

Again, I don't have a practical reason to install MUI 5. I see no compelling dividend. I use Eastern and right now it functions as advertized. I have too many pictures and photos and the thumbnails load very quickly without incident. Perhaps some day, Zune will come to OS3 and the MUI stuff which Zune is based on will get cleaned up and optimized for OS3 without the need for a patch. Until then, MUI 4 does as advertized and I'm perfectly happy with it.

[Weaselrama]

Here's a screenie of tasks in Scout. Interval is 0.50 seconds. Tasks below this showed almost no activity. Is Scout reliable in emulation?

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Originally Posted by Weaselrama

Perhaps some day, Zune will come to OS3 and the MUI stuff which Zune is based on will get cleaned up and optimized for OS3 without the need for a patch. Until then, MUI 4 does as advertized and I'm perfectly happy with it.

Zune already works on OS3 with AfA OS, many MUI applications you can run with Zune instead of MUIU, example screenshot AHI Prefs