Need Feedback for (wip) UHC-GUI

[DisasterIncarna]

Created what was a small project for myself to more easily use UHC-Tools found at https://aminet.net/package/util/misc/UHCTools created by Patrik Axelsson & David Eriksson, as these are amazingly useful commands/tools to have on an internet available Amiga or Emulated Amiga.

Unfortunately this is a blatant case of "Works for Me", but seems to break for some other people mostly when launching as WB app, launch as CLI seems to work....for unknown reasons, I use this on OS3.1 and OS3.2.x and as mentioned i have zero issues, my Workbench is of course far from standard as with most of us, i would like some feedback if possible to see who this does or does not work for, features/updates as always are added now and then and ofc more bugs to smash.

UHC Tools linked above is ofc the main requirement, and needs to be installed properly and not only installed, please update it after installation or when using a newer GUI as i may be relying on features the UHC-Tools crew have added more recently, do this by simply opening a shell window and typing

uhcupdate

if stuff happens like an lha file being downloaded and extracted then its updating, if nothing happens your probably all up to date already and theres nothing to worry about.

Secondary requirement is: https://aminet.net/package/util/cli/System this "should" download and be copied to C: automagically so long as UHC Tools is installed correctly when you first run the GUI, if you encounter any issues with this not installing correctly, just manually install the "System" utility and the issue should be resolved.

This was made with AmiBlitz3, so "sometimes" the GUI i made can go a bit wrong as playing with a workbench UI is work in progress learning for me, hopefully it works well enough to use even if something glitches.

i have deleted some old/obsolete text on this original post and the current version should always be found here.

Current Version (22/Nov/2022 - Updated) - See Attachment.
Test Version (Oct/2023 - Updated) - See Attachment.

Features Update Added on 22/Nov/2022:
- UHC-Tools devs added native support to Search/Get from RKO making old HTML scraping method redundant/obsolete.
- AmigaRemix and RKO have gained the ability to list "Recent" uploads.
- Double Clicking a file "should" download directly.

Minor Feature Update Added on 14th November 2022:
- UHC-Tools devs added support to Search/Get from AmigaRemix.com
- updated GUI to support new addition.

Minor Feature Update Added on 10th October 2022:
- UHC-Tools devs added support to Search/Get from HVSC
- updated GUI to support new addition.

Minor Feature Update Added on 27th Sept 2022:
- UHC-Tools devs added support to Search/Get/Extract from TURRAN's FTP
- aka Grandis.nu, updated GUI to support new features.
- this addition is new and still work in progress, there are some issues
- when attempting to auto extract filenames with non standard characters,
- future updates will hopefully fix these teething issues.

Minor Changes 23rd Sept:
- Fixed pen/color issue on rightmouse menus so should be readable now.
- Added View Readme button, kind of self explanatory thing tbh.
- Added an About entry in the rightmouse menu because reasons.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Moved the errorer message here !

As you can see from the screenshot, the Shell command "aminetrecent > ram:T/UHCSEARCH.TXT" works fine, but nothing is written inside the UHCSEARCH.TXT file.

It could be an AROS problem, I'll report the problem on aros-exec

[DisasterIncarna]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

Moved the errorer message here !

As you can see from the screenshot, the Shell command "aminetrecent > ram:T/UHCSEARCH.TXT" works fine, but nothing is written inside the UHCSEARCH.TXT file.

It could be an AROS problem, I'll report the problem on aros-exec

found an issue, for anything less than OS3.2.x, for some reason the UHC commands output to a cli window and not the UHCSEARCH.TXT file which ends up blank, running the command manually outputs text to the cli window and leaves the file blank, this should "NOT" happen when using the > operator.

For some reason this IS working with OS3.2.x and "used" to work on my OS3.1 but now for some reason does not work correctly on my old MWB OS3.1.

need to play with OS3.1 for a while to see why UHC commands will not redirect output to a file, only more weird as it does work on OS3.2, so atm i'm kinda stumped. Wondering if its a recent change to UHC perhaps? i did update not that long ago to a newer update.

[DisasterIncarna]

And here is UHC not redirecting text as it should with OS3.1

[ Show youtube player ]

The same thing DOES work with OS3.2.x

Stumped why as it used to work, so i'm guessing a previous UHC update did something weird? but if so, why does it work with OS3.2.x ???

[DisasterIncarna]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

Moved the errorer message here !

As you can see from the screenshot, the Shell command "aminetrecent > ram:T/UHCSEARCH.TXT" works fine, but nothing is written inside the UHCSEARCH.TXT file.

It could be an AROS problem, I'll report the problem on aros-exec

yeah, your probably fine, as is AROS, looks like something wrong with something else, possibly UHC not permitting redirection of its output to a file, not sure how/why tho, ive never had a program fail to redirect text to a file before so im kinda stumped atm, doesnt help that it does work with OS3.2.x either to help complicate further.

[patrik]

The reason text is not redirected is because the 3.1 shell and older does so if you try to redirect output from scripts. You can get around it by starting scripts with something like http://aminet.net/package/util/cli/System or start the scripts as a new process yourself in code, setting the output filehandle (redirection) yourself.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Originally Posted by DisasterIncarna

ive never had a program fail to redirect text to a file before so im kinda stumped atm

As you can see from the screenshot, AROS 68k can redirect text to files, the problem is that "aminetrecent" includes more options that maybe are not supported by AROS 68k.

AROS 68k is based on Amiga OS 3.1 so it inherits the same shortcomings as it does

[Swe_Kryten2x4b]

Well, I restate the issue I have here as well so everything is in one place.

For the record, this is on wb 3.2.1 (both kick and wb). Wb is hardly standard since it has been tweaked a lot to my liking.

UHC is fully functional. As evidenced by the fact that t:aminetsearch and t:whdloadsearch are populated with the recent files aminetrecent and whdrecent scripts finds when launched from the shell.

The problem occurs when trying to use the "Recent uploads" or search-for-file function from within UHC GUI.

I get a clipped error. And when looking in t:uhcsearch.txt I see:

uhcrecent: unknown command when using "Recent uploads". In the other case I get
uhcmirrorsearch: unknown command

A which uhcrecent shows that it is indeed located in workbench:uhc/s
Same with uhcmirrorsearch.

UHC: points to workbench:uhc, and uhc:s as well as uhc:c are in my path.

Just noticed another weird thing...If I try to do a search and then opens t:uhcsearch I see the error message. I keep the textfile open, and quits UHC GUI and restarts it. Textedit then complains that the file has changed. If I click the reload button the new content is the complete list of assigns and volumes I have in the system. That is, the list you get if you just type assign in a shell with no arguments. Maybe that file should be filled with that info on startup.

GUI-wise the vertical-scrollbar looks a bit odd on my system. Odd as in it doesn't look like scroll-bars in other apps. Just a minor graphical issue so no biggie.

Wait, scratch that. It looks the same in ASL but not say the scrollbars in a workbench window. Kinda wondering where the disrpeancy comes from, but doesn't seem to be problem with your app. Probably caused by one of my wb-customizations...

[DisasterIncarna]

the text file having assigns in it at start is the GUI using assign to dump all assigns so the GUI can scan that file and check if UHC is indeed installed, if it is not, it produces an error asking you to correctly install UHC Tools.

[DisasterIncarna]

Originally Posted by patrik

The reason text is not redirected is because the 3.1 shell and older does so if you try to redirect output from scripts. You can get around it by starting scripts with something like http://aminet.net/package/util/cli/System or start the scripts as a new process yourself in code, setting the output filehandle (redirection) yourself.

i'll mess around with those solutions, thanks.

[DisasterIncarna]

Originally Posted by patrik

The reason text is not redirected is because the 3.1 shell and older does so if you try to redirect output from scripts. You can get around it by starting scripts with something like http://aminet.net/package/util/cli/System or start the scripts as a new process yourself in code, setting the output filehandle (redirection) yourself.

i read a few old posts scattered around with others trying to capture text output from various programs, apparently the issue is which of the 2 ways to output text a program uses, those being via stdout or stderr, 1 of those redirects perfectly fine to a text file, the other method is the one that gives us issues.

Also OS3.2 seems to force everything into 1 of those by default? which is likely why my GUI has no issues with the output.

Confirmed this by messing with various other programs on OS3.1 and OS2.x that output text such as lha/lzx and more, lha being the weird one, some versions work and others do not suggesting that various versions changed their output method.

Interesting read all round tbh, wasnt aware of the differences.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

I have installed UHCTools on AROS x86 successfully, it would be interesting to have also a UHC-GUI version for AROS x86 !

[DisasterIncarna]

new version up and running, link changed in first post.

note the weirdness occuring in the updated post, again everything works perfectly fine in OS3.2 and things go weird in OS3.1.

I'm thinking maybe making this using OS3.2 as my normal OS environment is a mistake at this point, no issue with OS3.2 ofc, i mean it works great, just its not catching the issues I'm getting now with OS3.1, no idea if its the OS or AmiBlitz3 or a mix of both.

Either way, new version on 3.1 works IF run from Shell/CLI, when run from icon it seems to break, either Icon or Shell works totally fine on OS3.2.

I have lots of testing/scratching my head to do now to figure out why 3.1 is going bonkers from icon launch but not shell/clu launch.

[DisasterIncarna]

Originally Posted by Swe_Kryten2x4b

The problem occurs when trying to use the "Recent uploads" or search-for-file function from within UHC GUI.

I get a clipped error. And when looking in t:uhcsearch.txt I see:

uhcrecent: unknown command when using "Recent uploads". In the other case I get uhcmirrorsearch: unknown command

yeah, found this issue myself with a combination of OS3.1 and launching the program via wb/icon, if i launch from shell/cli this issue you mention vanishes, now trying to figure out why as this shouldnt happen just because of how it was launched.

Try the new version in the first post and launch it from shell/cli, it should work this time.

[Swe_Kryten2x4b]

Originally Posted by DisasterIncarna

yeah, found this issue myself with a combination of OS3.1 and launching the program via wb/icon, if i launch from shell/cli this issue you mention vanishes, now trying to figure out why as this shouldnt happen just because of how it was launched.

Try the new version in the first post and launch it from shell/cli, it should work this time.

Now it does indeed work. And good thing you can circumvent that "does not work if launched from wb" bug by changing the icon to "Start from shell" and uncheck the "Prompt for" box.

Well, I needed that for 3.2 as well. But it works, and that's the important bit.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Perfect now works well on 3.9 BB4 AfA OS, I used a project icon with Iconx to eliminate the Shell window

With the same method it also works well on OS 3.1

[DisasterIncarna]

glad its working, altho its still frustrating i have no idea why it doesnt work as it should when ran normally via icon.

[jayminer]

I did give this a quick go in UAE, on my Workbench 3.2 install it worked just fine from the start, but on my somewhat old Workbench 3.9 install I had some issues. When I was launching it (from the shell) it did it's thing of downloading System but this failed with lha giving a crash (8000 000B). At first I thought it was maybe a stack issue but I've not really had any issues with lha before on this setup.

Anyway, it never managed to install System, not even when I tried raising the stack manually before launching UHC-GUI, but after I installed System manually in C: the program worked just fine like on my 3.2 setup!

Oh also, the included icon doesn't show up at all on my 3.9 system so I have never tried launching it from WB.

[npagonis73]

Originally Posted by DisasterIncarna

glad its working, altho its still frustrating i have no idea why it doesnt work as it should when ran normally via icon.

As we spoke in the other forum post about UHCTOOLS i installed your GUI on my V1200 running Amiga OS 3.2.1 and it seems to work just fine both if run it from WB or CLI. Well done and thanks for letting me know about your GUI

[DisasterIncarna]

Originally Posted by jayminer

I did give this a quick go in UAE, on my Workbench 3.2 install it worked just fine from the start, but on my somewhat old Workbench 3.9 install I had some issues. When I was launching it (from the shell) it did it's thing of downloading System but this failed with lha giving a crash (8000 000B). At first I thought it was maybe a stack issue but I've not really had any issues with lha before on this setup.

Anyway, it never managed to install System, not even when I tried raising the stack manually before launching UHC-GUI, but after I installed System manually in C: the program worked just fine like on my 3.2 setup!

Oh also, the included icon doesn't show up at all on my 3.9 system so I have never tried launching it from WB.

3.9? i'll have to dig my old cd out, if i have 3.9, i remember buying 3.5 tho, sounds liek i need a full range of WB's to test on first rather than relying on using 3.2 as standard, probably should have thought of that from the get-go tbh.

As for the icon, yeah its a PNG icon, the user AMIGASYSTEM made me an icon for glowicons, i might knock together the full range of icons, wasnt expecting anyone else but me to use the GUI originally so kinda forgot about other icons, or a readme/etc... stuff for later

As for system failing to install, i'll take a gander at that later, tbh all it does is check if system exists in c: and if not it uses aminetsearch then aninetextract to get the file then copies the file to C: given the GUI already uses aminetsearch/etc then its strange it bombs doing pretty much the same thing, maybe the copy part is throwing it off, more to play with and figure out.

glad it works (so far) for those it eventually works for tho.

All this reminds me ages back, i made a tool called BOOTDUMP, a pre-workbench startup-sequence tool for my personal use, i think i gave up when some other tool outdid my pathetic attempt, but i cant remember the other alternative now so am using my old BOOTDUMP program (if i hold RMB at boot the startup-sequence program shows up with a load of useful options)

I lost the code for that ages ago when my old eyetech a1200/040/ppc combo got smashed to bits in a truck (it was already failing badly/non functioning relic by then). Might redo that old project until its the same then improve upon it.

Quick snap:


Anyone know of something better? i did use something similar someone else made once but ive not been able to find it, i'd rather not reinvent the wheel if i have to.