P96Prefs - a new P96 preferences editor

[Thomas Richter]

There was some (probably well-justified) critique on the current P96 preferences editor, and it was probably about time to create something new.


The result is P96Prefs, which is attached as beta version, and as "Easter Present" (no easter eggs present, though, and hopefully as few bugs as possible).


The attached version is provided here as a gift to the community, and I'm also hoping to receive some feedback as I'm already a little blind on its usage.



First, what do you need to bring?


P96 3.0.0 or better. No, older versions will not work.


AmigaOs 3.2 or better. Again, no, older versions will not work. The program depends on the font-sensitive gadtools library that came with 3.2, and the iconification gadget, which also came with 3.2.


What am I hoping for? Well, some feedback if this program is useful, usable, and probably some ideas for improving it.



What can you expect (except bugs): A new, hopefully easier/simpler to use preferences editor for P96 which not only configures screen modes, but also all other configurations around P96, settings that are stored in the monitor icon or in environment variables.


What is the state of the tool?


Well, it is beta software. Except that, it will remain freely available on Aminet, but it will also become an (optional) component of P96 once it sufficiently tested.



Thus, it wil remain available for free, it will become part of P96 as well, and it will continue to require P96 3.0.0, and it also will continue to require AmigaOs 3.2.



With all that - Happy Easter!


Thomas

[alexh]

Thanks for all the hard work

[mfilos]

Thanks a lot for the work Thomas. \o/

[macce2]

Great news!
I was waiting for just something like that..

I had some problems with the old Pvs app (Picasso variable setter).
Maybe it isn't fully P96 v3 compatible...!?

Oh no... Any chances to make this new app OS3.9 compatible...?!

[Thomas Richter]

Please see above, this requires 3.2 onwards.

[Phantomz]

Thank You.

[spudje]

Cool, any screenshots? It will be some time before I can do some Amiga-ing again

[Storm]

Thanks Thomas, will test it out.

[Thomas Richter]

Here is a new update of the program, with some minor fixes for the GUI - it fixes a couple of glitches.

There is one new feature in this release, namely the possibility to add monitor specifications to a board. If such specifications are filled out, P96 attempts to adjust modes it creates to the needs of the monitor.

Again, please kindly test the release and provide feedback.

[Thomas Richter]

Here is another version, this time 47.4. This version addresses multiple glitches in the GUI, but also provides a couple of new features. Most notably, you can now load a binary dump of monitor EDID data describing the timing of a monitor, and creates modes from it. You can also configure monitors manually and P96 will honor constraints by monitors.

Unfortunately, Amiga hardware has typically no ability to load EDID data directly from the monitor, so some manual steps are unfortunately necessary.

Also, the context-sensitivity of the guide has been improved such as selecting "HELP" for a particular tool type brings you directly to the node describing the tool type.

Please provide feedback and improvement requests.

[Jacques]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

AmigaOs 3.2 or better. Again, no, older versions will not work. The program depends on the font-sensitive gadtools library that came with 3.2, and the iconification gadget, which also came with 3.2.

While I can understand it, If it won't work with 3.5/3.9, that would be a bit shame because of user-base limitation, though.
I'm registered P96 user, personally happy using both systems mentioned above and have no intention to move to 3.2 or similar.
After all P96 itself works on any AOS 3.x.

[rzookol]

So I understand that Reaction is buried down as official AmigaOS3.x UI framework and franken gadtools is main library now. Good choice, the more standards the better.

[Thomas Richter]

How you come to such conclusion is beyond me. I'm only a user of the Os, not a designer of the Os.



Note that boopsis in general require disk-based classes, such as a class that would implement the tree-view gadget I have in the prefs. Now consider what would happen if a user boots from an emergency disk just to get his graphics card working. Would you consider it helpful if the program fails just because the boopsi classes are not available?



All of this OO stuff is nice, but it has too many dependencies to make this a worthwhile approach for a program that should even run under constraint conditions. In such a case, I rather spend a little bit of code and implement it myself such that it works with what is available on ROM.

[Thomas Richter]

Here is an updated version. I fixes one interesting corner case, namely if drivers inject their own modes into the P96 database. This happens for example for UAEGfx which creates its own modes. Such modes are now visible in the editor, but cannot be edited or saved as their definition is up to the driver.

The editor now also shows the tool type names and environment variable names on the left, and the translated name on the right. This saves some space, and also provides some information to the user.

[mfilos]

Thank you Thomas for the updates

[pixie]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Note that boopsis in general require disk-based classes, such as a class that would implement the tree-view gadget I have in the prefs. Now consider what would happen if a user boots from an emergency disk just to get his graphics card working. Would you consider it helpful if the program fails just because the boopsi classes are not available?

If only we could find a way of getting those pesky files into an emergency disk we could have a MUI based program that covered all the releases