Ranchero: Pop-up Notification System for OS 3

[Daedalus]

I've just uploaded a simple pop-up notification system for OS 3 Amigas. I like OS4's built-in notification system, Ringhio, and thought OS 3 might also benefit from such a system. Ranchero is my offering for this, and is fully compatible with the Ringhio ARexx interface so the same scripts should work on both. It's currently in the Aminet uploads queue and available from www.robthenerd.com/ranchero.

It runs as a commodity, so can easily be disabled or made to quit using Exchange. Currently it doesn't have any library-level API (since there's no application.library on OS 3), so it's controlled through ARexx.

Example scripts are included to demonstrate how to use the notifications from any ARexx-supporting application or ARexx script.

[HardStep]

Sweet, thanks! Heard you mentioning it in the last podcast, wanted to look it up but here it is.

[indigolemon]

Thanks for this man, it works great

[Daedalus]

No problem And thanks should go to Indigolemon for the included example scripts and the betatesting!

[kolla]

Very cool. How about an option for tiny boring square (not rounded corners) popups?

[Daedalus]

Sure That one's easy - I'll include it in the inevitable bug-fix release.

[Samurai_Crow]

Speaking of different style notifications, can the current framework support a custom screen scrolling up from the bottom of the display quickly until it's in position like an Android cookie? It need only work on planar displays because the Copper will do most of the work and a cookie need only be 1 or 2 bitplanes using a custom palette.

[Daedalus]

Hmmm, that's not actually a bad idea at all, and should be easily done using a standard Intuition screen. I'll put it on the list for the next release.

[Samurai_Crow]

Thanks Daedalus!

[Romanujan]

A small piece of great software, thank you! Two remarks from my side:

- It requires jpeg.library, which is not included in e one supplied with AmiBlitz3 seems to work - IMHO this should be mentioned in the documentation

- As Kolla mentioned, it would be nice to display rectangular popups WITHOUT rounding the edges. Reason: if the popup covers the window, and something changes within it (for example user moves it), it leaves the old window content visible near the rounded edges; this is common problem with all the transparent/semitransparent windows on AmigaOS

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Romanujan

A small piece of great software, thank you!

Thanks, and you're welcome

- It requires jpeg.library, which is not included in e one supplied with AmiBlitz3 seems to work - IMHO this should be mentioned in the documentation

Ah yes, this should indeed be mentioned in the documents. I completely forgot it was a requirement. It's the image loading library for Blitz that I used that uses it (and possibly also zlib for PNGs - I'll need to check). I'll either update the documents or remove the requirement altogether - datatypes alone should be enough for such simple image use.

- As Kolla mentioned, it would be nice to display rectangular popups WITHOUT rounding the edges. Reason: if the popup covers the window, and something changes within it (for example user moves it), it leaves the old window content visible near the rounded edges; this is common problem with all the transparent/semitransparent windows on AmigaOS

Indeed, transparency needs to be faked on OS3. It is only a small area and I was trying to replicate the Ringhio look, but of course that has the benefit of true alpha support from the OS. It'll be an option in the next update

Thanks for the feedback!

[Minuous]

Nice concept, but is it possible to make it more Amiga-ish? Eg. grey window with blue+white close gadget. Also the close gadget is not changing its appearance while the button is held down unlike a real close gadget.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Minuous

Nice concept, but is it possible to make it more Amiga-ish? Eg. grey window with blue+white close gadget. Also the close gadget is not changing its appearance while the button is held down unlike a real close gadget.

That's certainly possible, and was actually how it looked when I first started developing it. I like the white background because it looks less like an ordinary window or requester, which is an important distinction I think. But that does mean that the close gadget can't use the traditional shine/shadow pens because the white edges just gets lost.

I'll add an option for a classic window look using the standard colours anyway.

[Minuous]

It just occurred to me, perhaps the window background colour could be specified by the user, so eg. red for important warnings, white/yellow for less important, grey for unimportant, etc. Although I suppose if the API was extended it might cause issues for those using the scripts with Ringhio.

[Daedalus]

Yeah, I'd like to keep it as compatible as possible, but I'll have a think about it. In reality though, if something is actually important it should use a requester instead of a notification that disappears after a few seconds and could easily be missed.