AmigaOS 3.2 and beyond

[Minuous]

Originally Posted by Kyle_Human

There's no AmigaOS release which has ever solved the problem.

It was solved as part of OS3.5 in 1999.

Most modern applications provide a GlowIcon. If a developer insists for some reason on only providing icons in an obsolete format and refuses to provide palette-mapped icons, I'm not sure what you expect the OS to do to help in that situation; it is something to be taken up with the developer of the application concerned.

[E-Penguin]

Originally Posted by Kyle_Human

It would also be nice if we could set workbench to snap icons to a grid

Actually that's not a bad idea; have a standard grid size and snap icons to it; any large icons snap to multiple of the grid size. Set grid size in Prefs?

Any chance of getting compactflash.device into rom? It'd be marvellous to be able to boot of a CF card in the pcmcia slot.

[Hewitson]

The Workbench implementation of icons has to be one of the most poorly written pieces of code of all time.

Simple solution: Don't use them.

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by Kyle_Human

It would also be nice if we could set workbench to snap icons to a grid, because having to manually sort and snapshot is beyond irritating. Occasionally snapshot doesn't even stick.

This is doable. Tradeoffs will need to be made, of course. For example, resizing a drawer window while the drawer contents are still being scanned will interrupt the scanning process and take a while to produce results. The big limitation being that the sizes of the icons and the labels of these icons need to be updated as needed, and this process scales poorly. Once you know their sizes it becomes less of a problem, though.

Snapshotting icons is something ridiculous that only makes sense if you think "it's always been this way", and that "there's no other way". No other OS acts like this, it doesn't allow the user any better control, so it's not a feature, it's an annoyance.

We inherited the Workbench as it is from our forebears, if you will, and that goes for the limitations as well. The original Workbench had to fit into the 256 KiByte ROM and that meant cutting complicated and clever solutions for the sake of shipping the Amiga.

Almost 35 years have passed since then and while Workbench has changed and improved over the decades, some of the design choices borne out of necessity are still very much with us and keeping us back. For example, how Workbench processes user input, and how it reads the contents of drawers, matching the icon files with what it finds and the other way round, are virtually unchanged.

The icon reading process, coupled with drawer scanning is perhaps the single most inefficient aspect of Workbench. If you were to design such a process to be most memory efficient, sacrificing processing time to it, you might arrive at exactly the same procedure today. It does not have to work like that, but it is, unfortunately, part of the core functionality of Workbench and most resistant to change.

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

The Workbench implementation of icons has to be one of the most poorly written pieces of code of all time.

Simple solution: Don't use them.

You can't not use them. Even the "show by name" option falls back onto the same drawer scanning code that makes the icon scanning process work.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Olaf Barthel

We inherited the Workbench as it is from our forebears, if you will, and that goes for the limitations as well. The original Workbench had to fit into the 256 KiByte ROM ...

but it never did ...

The icon reading process, coupled with drawer scanning is perhaps the single most inefficient aspect of Workbench. If you were to design such a process to be most memory efficient, sacrificing processing time to it, you might arrive at exactly the same procedure today. It does not have to work like that, but it is, unfortunately, part of the core functionality of Workbench and most resistant to change.

given todays (retro-)hardware capabilities icons should be part of the filesystem's metadata...

(but I am fully aware, that this would probably break compatibility at some places ...)

[gulliver]

A workaround for the icons mess is to use Workbench's Arexx port and bind it to a hotkey to apply this to the active window:

window clean up by (choose whatever option you want here)
window resize to fit
window clean up (choose same option as above here)
windows snapshot all

And with that you could at least make it less painful.

[malko]

I just hope that if a "grid" is implemented, it will not force users to have a fixed size for icons.
Big icons like in "Monkey Island" or "Faery Tale Adventure" & "Dragon's Lair" (just to name a few) should still be possible.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by malko

I just hope that if a "grid" is implemented, it will not force users to have a fixed size for icons.
Big icons like in "Monkey Island" or "Faery Tale Adventure" & "Dragon's Lair" (just to name a few) should still be possible.

I think that is one thing, Microsoft actually did right:
the "tiles" in the "Startmenu":
these icons can be tiny - a group of four tiny icons will form a regular sized one.
the regular sizes icons can be doubled to large icons (occupying two slots).
(most of you will be able to look a it anyways ...)

this scheme could be expanded to allow even bigger icons, which certainly would be nice for games...

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by E-Penguin

Actually that's not a bad idea; have a standard grid size and snap icons to it; any large icons snap to multiple of the grid size. Set grid size in Prefs?

Any chance of getting compactflash.device into rom? It'd be marvellous to be able to boot of a CF card in the pcmcia slot.

+1 from me

[thyslo]

Sometimes I accidentally open a drawer in Workbench / "Show all" mode that contains many files. Then the Workbench is blocked for some minutes until all the files are read and displayed as default icons.

As an example: I have a copy of the Developer 2.1 CD on my hard disk. Therein, by enabling “Show all files” a drawer 'Guides' becomes visible. This directory contains about 2000 files. Opening this drawer takes about some minutes.

On the other hand, opening this same drawer in Directory Opus only takes about two seconds.

So it would be a nice new feature if the 3.2 Workbench for the case of many files in the to-be-opened drawer automatically would switch to "Show by name" mode and displaying the files (e.g. without the analyzing / readying file type that I suppose normally is done?) as quick as Directory Opus does.

This new feature could be made configured or just switched off in the Workbench Prefs.

[thyslo]

Another feature I had missed for Workbench is something along "Undo last action" or "Show last action". Could be handy on some occasions.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by thyslo

Sometimes I accidentally open a drawer in Workbench / "Show all" mode that contains many files. Then the Workbench is blocked for some minutes until all the files are read and displayed as default icons.

As an example: I have a copy of the Developer 2.1 CD on my hard disk. Therein, by enabling “Show all files” a drawer 'Guides' becomes visible. This directory contains about 2000 files. Opening this drawer takes about some minutes.

On the other hand, opening this same drawer in Directory Opus only takes about two seconds.

So it would be a nice new feature if the 3.2 Workbench for the case of many files in the to-be-opened drawer automatically would switch to "Show by name" mode and displaying the files (e.g. without the analyzing / readying file type that I suppose normally is done?) as quick as Directory Opus does.

This new feature could be made configured or just switched off in the Workbench Prefs.

I'd like to go one step further and just completely remove icons from the OS.

They're useless. They serve no purpose. They're nothing but an unnecessary annoyance.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I'd like to go one step further and just completely remove icons from the OS.

They're useless. They serve no purpose. They're nothing but an unnecessary annoyance.

That's like, you know, your opinion...
I like them icons..

I just wished we didn't have the annoyance of them lying around where ever they want.
There should be an option of an "auto order by %whatever%" and always show every folder and file.
Simply that would solve so many problem for most people.
Using the WB always just makes sense to a certain point, and then you need to switch to CLI/Shell to get shit done.

Screw the fancy pansy shit, just simply automate this.

The way Workbench works now is simply a pain in the ass.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Kyle_Human

So you did something I wasn't talking about, so you didn't see what I described, instead you accidentally demonstrated a second icon handling problem.

If you read my entire post, you'll see I did what you were saying too, and got identical behaviour. I mean, you even quoted where I said I did that too... But anyway, I'm very curious to see what your explanation is for the differing behaviour you think exists between files with no icon from an lha archive and from another source. Care to enlighten us as to how Workbench knows the difference? Also, not sure what second problem you're talking about. Extending to the right? How is that any different a solution to extending downwards quite a distance?

A completely trashy behavior, unknown on other platforms.

Funny, I can stack up icons on top of each other on Mac OS without issues.

No.

Well, work with us, and maybe together we can all find out what your problem is.

No it hasn't. There's no AmigaOS release which has ever solved the problem.

As has been explained, this has been fixed since OS 3.5 was released over two decades ago, and that fix has been carried into 3.9 and 3.1.4. Which is why I still think your issues are to do with using older versions of the OS, despite your denial. Although, here the issue could simply be that you don't know your OS that well, in which case I'd suggest exploring a little, or even reading the manual for 3.9, which is available online if you're using 3.9 and can't find your original OS CD. The same feature is in 3.5, 3.9 and 3.1.4 so it will still be relevant if you're using one of the others.

In fact AmigaOS is designed to encourage it because of the .info files. If a developer decided that he's shipping README with a README.info with blurple MWB icon, then that's what you'll get, and you can get rich betting it's going to try and open in some weird program nobody uses anymore like muchmore too.

These issues are either your setup being too old, or the developers making assumptions about the users' machines. The latter isn't ideal unfortunately, but at least when you make all your welcome contributions, you can set the default tool to something sensible.

It would also be nice if we could set workbench to snap icons to a grid, because having to manually sort and snapshot is beyond irritating.

See below regarding snapping icons to grid. If you have 3.5, it included scripts that may help you...

Occasionally snapshot doesn't even stick.

Sounds like something wrong at your end (again).

Snapshotting icons is something ridiculous that only makes sense if you think "it's always been this way", and that "there's no other way". No other OS acts like this, it doesn't allow the user any better control, so it's not a feature, it's an annoyance.

That's legacy behaviour for a system that's designed to run from floppy disk without modification. It is mildly annoying (though far from the big deal you seem to think it is), and could probably be improved with automatic snapshotting as an option. I'm not sure I'd want every icon move to be permanently recorded though...

Originally Posted by thyslo

Sometimes I accidentally open a drawer in Workbench / "Show all" mode that contains many files. Then the Workbench is blocked for some minutes until all the files are read and displayed as default icons.

You can click the close button to cancel any drawer opening operation and close the window without having to wait until it's finished. Of course, if you want to access that drawer in Show->Only icons mode, you can't switch to that mode without deleting the drawer's icon and changing the parent drawer's mode to Show->Only icons, but at least you can get control back and switch to Shell or DOpus without having to wait.

So it would be a nice new feature if the 3.2 Workbench for the case of many files in the to-be-opened drawer automatically would switch to "Show by name" mode and displaying the files (e.g. without the analyzing / readying file type that I suppose normally is done?) as quick as Directory Opus does.

I don't think any drawer should automatically switch modes like that. It should respect the saved or cached mode for that drawer, or if not, inherit the parent drawer's setting. What might be more useful would be for the Show All or Show only icons shortcuts to be available before the window has finished populating. That way you could decide to switch back to only icons mode mid-way through the process.

This new feature could be made configured or just switched off in the Workbench Prefs.

So long as the current behaviour of not automatically changing modes remains, this would work.

Originally Posted by gulliver

A workaround for the icons mess is to use Workbench's Arexx port and bind it to a hotkey to apply this to the active window:

window clean up by (choose whatever option you want here)
window resize to fit
window clean up (choose same option as above here)
windows snapshot all

And with that you could at least make it less painful.

OS 3.5 shipped with THE on the CD, which is excellent in itself, but also included a bunch of ARexx scripts that had ready-made functions for tidying and sorting icons. It was also updated for 3.9, and is available on Aminet for anyone who doesn't have the original OS CD or is running 3.1.4. Of particular interest might be the IconAlign, IconSorter and SnapToGrid scripts (SnapToGrid even includes an option to snapshot all when it's finished tidying up). So, not part of the OS per se, but they were bundled with 3.5, and available on Aminet. Simpler than writing your own (although that's not difficult either). Perhaps these scripts could be included with 3.2?

Originally Posted by malko

I just hope that if a "grid" is implemented, it will not force users to have a fixed size for icons.
Big icons like in "Monkey Island" or "Faery Tale Adventure" & "Dragon's Lair" (just to name a few) should still be possible.

The icon tidying scripts from OS3.5 / THE that I mentioned above simply snap the icon's position to the nearest user-definable grid position. It works fine with larger icons because other icons would already be further away from them, so no need to worry about losing compatibility with larger icons. From memory, the sorting script modifies the grid to suit the largest icon it finds, which caters for huge icons too.

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I'd like to go one step further and just completely remove icons from the OS.

They're useless. They serve no purpose. They're nothing but an unnecessary annoyance.

At this point I'm wondering if most of your posts are just Poe's Law at work...

Originally Posted by Steril707

Because you are used to them, I guess.

I'm used to all the shortcuts on all the platforms I use, with Windows and Linux being used far more than the Amiga.

Yep, I can reach r-Amiga+X as well with one hand.
Doesn't mean that it's ergonically making sense to stretch your hand like that for a function that's used so many times during normal daily work.
That would be using cut copy paste and saving. Which are all on the left side of the keyboard.

Which is why I use two hands most of the time.

It's horrible if you have to copy and paste a whole lot of items and need to use this key combo on the Amiga.
On the other side, having to use both hands for this if you'd like to steer your mouse to the place where you want to copy and paste to is bad as well..

When I'm using a mouse at the same time is about the only time I use the single hand stretch.

Twist it as you like, it's just shitty and much worse for real work situations than what's on Windows or MacOS.

I honestly can't see how, as someone who does "real work" on all the platforms. But fair enough, you don't like it and that's fine.

[James]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Of course, if you want to access that drawer in Show->Only icons mode, you can't switch to that mode without deleting the drawer's icon and changing the parent drawer's mode to Show->Only icons, but at least you can get control back and switch to Shell or DOpus without having to wait.

There are scripts that allow you to open a drawer in any mode you like.




Don't remember what collection they are in, will look into it...

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by James

There are scripts that allow you to open a drawer in any mode you like.

Don't remember what collection they are in, will look into it...

Interesting, could be an updated version of the one included with OS 3.5 (which simply opens the drawer/file). Would be nice to see how they're implemented.


@The Devs
Actually while we're talking about icons, there's what appears to be a bug in icon selection in 3.1.4 (and 3.1.4.1) that doesn't appear in previous versions including 3.9. When selecting multiple icons by dragging a box around them, if the selection box includes icons in the Workbench window (e.g. left out icons or drive icons) and icons in an open drawer window, the icons that get selected in the Workbench window are somewhat random, sometimes including all expected icons, but most times only selecting a few, and in some cases, none of the icons in Workbench get selected. In previous versions, all visible icons within the selection area get selected, regardless of which window they're in.

It's only a minor thing, but has caught me out on a couple of occasions. Any chance that could be looked at while it's being worked on?

[James]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Interesting, could be an updated version of the one included with OS 3.5 (which simply opens the drawer/file). Would be nice to see how they're implemented.

Sorry my memory was faulty, it's not a script it's a shell command:

http://aminet.net/package/util/wb/QOpenWB

The only scripts are the ones I made myself to use it from the menu.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by James

Sorry my memory was faulty, it's not a script it's a shell command:

http://aminet.net/package/util/wb/QOpenWB

The only scripts are the ones I made myself to use it from the menu.

Cool, thanks! It basically does the same thing as the ARexx script except it accesses the Workbench library features directly through workbench.library, which is how it's able to specify the view mode. Accessing through ARexx only allows that to be changed once the drawer is already opened. Perhaps that functionality could be exposed to ARexx in 3.2?

[duga]

Originally Posted by thyslo

Another feature I had missed for Workbench is something along "Undo last action" or "Show last action". Could be handy on some occasions.

It's there:
Workbench>Show last message