Looking for an AmigaOS Task Manager

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by bwinkel67

The version of SoftPC I had could only do CGA which is 4 colors. Not sure how that would impact it. I could have set the monitor to monochrome using only black & white...that may have sped things up.

If it is not the same 4 colors - and it's most probably not - then it can perfectly impact it.

Originally Posted by bwinkel67

I actually experienced that same thing today when running PC-Task in a window on my Amiga 600. For some reason the system freezes up for a short time (maybe 5 or 10 seconds) and then the window finally updates and moves. It was the weirdest thing. That also happened a few times in full screen mode when pulling the window down.

A program taking over for a while can make the system unresponsive, but that's not the same thing as a window manager doing bad things.
To see what i mean, take your average windowed app and open a file selector. Now check what happens to your app's window.

[bwinkel67]

Originally Posted by meynaf

A program taking over for a while can make the system unresponsive, but that's not the same thing as a window manager doing bad things.
To see what i mean, take your average windowed app and open a file selector. Now check what happens to your app's window.

PC-Task wasn't actually doing anything at the time, just sitting at the A prompt. I had opened it in window mode (i.e. it used a Workbench window) and I was moving and resizing the window and the whole system froze for a few seconds. Just very odd and no idea what it was doing.

I'm confused though by your modern window example. Are you saying that in Workbench, if a program opens a file selector you can ignore it (move it to the side) and continue to use the program? That has not been my experience. I just tried Notepad on Windows 7 and when I have a file open with text in it and try and open a new file, it first asks to save and then brings up a dialog. The text in my Notepad is still visible but it won't let me edit it since it assumes I'm about to open a new file to replace it. Is that what you mean?

[Daedalus]

No, he means that you can't do anything with the Notepad window - minimise, resize, close, move it around. And some applications are worse in that the window contents aren't even refreshed. It effectively becomes a completely dead entity taking up screen area as if it had crashed, and it's one of the things that frequently bugs me when using Windows. It's not some considerate choice made by the application developer to prevent you from editing it - it's the result of a far deeper-rooted design. On the Amiga (Workbench itself isn't really involved in this example), the application's window can still be moved, depth sorted, and depending on the application, sometimes resized and closed, meaning it doesn't become a dead weight blocking up your screen.

Being able to use a window without it being in front of another window is also a great feature of Amiga OS that I wish was available by default on other systems.

For what it's worth though, I really like how the moving off-screen has been implemented in Amiga OS 4.x/3.1.4/3.2 - there's a resistance at the edge of the screen so if you don't want it to move off the screen, you can still move it exactly to the edge. Best of both worlds...

[bwinkel67]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

No, he means that you can't do anything with the Notepad window - minimise, resize, close, move it around. And some applications are worse in that the window contents aren't even refreshed. It effectively becomes a completely dead entity taking up screen area as if it had crashed, and it's one of the things that frequently bugs me when using Windows. It's not some considerate choice made by the application developer to prevent you from editing it - it's the result of a far deeper-rooted design. On the Amiga (Workbench itself isn't really involved in this example), the application's window can still be moved, depth sorted, and depending on the application, sometimes resized and closed, meaning it doesn't become a dead weight blocking up your screen.

Ah, I see. Correct, with Windows 7 in Notepad or Paint, with a dialog box open, the window can't be moved. It refreshes and you can move other things in front of it, but you cannot move it. So in Workbench, you are saying this differs in that the dialog box and app window can both be moved independent of each other. If that's the case, I would agree, it would be nice to be able to move the app window with a dialog box open.

[Edit: You can still minimize both Notepad and Paint with a dialog box open. The unfortunate thing is that the option doesn't appear in the task bar at the bottom (seems silly that it doesn't) but you can open Task Manager and minimize each from there.]

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

No, he means that you can't do anything with the Notepad window - minimise, resize, close, move it around. And some applications are worse in that the window contents aren't even refreshed. It effectively becomes a completely dead entity taking up screen area as if it had crashed, and it's one of the things that frequently bugs me when using Windows. It's not some considerate choice made by the application developer to prevent you from editing it - it's the result of a far deeper-rooted design. On the Amiga (Workbench itself isn't really involved in this example), the application's window can still be moved, depth sorted, and depending on the application, sometimes resized and closed, meaning it doesn't become a dead weight blocking up your screen.

It's called a modal window: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_window
It's been used in horrible way by many and that includes Microsoft.

[bwinkel67]

Btw, speaking of Task Manager...is there a similar graphical tool (hopefully that opens in a window) in AmigaOS (preferably Workbench 2.0) that gives you a look at running tasks, their priorities, and some control over them? I guess this goes back to the original purpose of this thread, with regard of a task manager app? I wrote one of those for the Mac OS and its handy to be able to graphically see and control things. I believe you can do some (or most) of this on the command shell, correct?

[TCD]

Funnily enough the person that wrote [ Show youtube player ] also wrote software for the Amiga: [ Show youtube player ]

[bwinkel67]

Originally Posted by TCD

Funnily enough the person that wrote Task Manager also wrote software for the Amiga

Around the same time he was developing Task Manager, I was developing my kernel hack for the Macintosh (CPU Doubler). It has a window that brings up running processes and allows you to change priorities. It was the number 3 utility in the Japanese market at one point but never sold much in the US (partly because of the SoftRAM debacle causing US distributors to distrust any utilities that claimed to modify/improve the system -- i.e. it was hard to sell a program that claimed to double processor power in software since throughput cycle optimization wasn't easily understood and it was an easy target to "could it be another sham utility like SoftRAM that just claims to do something but did nothing."

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by bwinkel67

PC-Task wasn't actually doing anything at the time, just sitting at the A prompt. I had opened it in window mode (i.e. it used a Workbench window) and I was moving and resizing the window and the whole system froze for a few seconds. Just very odd and no idea what it was doing.

Does it do this every time you resize the window ?

Originally Posted by bwinkel67

Btw, speaking of Task Manager...is there a similar graphical tool (hopefully that opens in a window) in AmigaOS (preferably Workbench 2.0) that gives you a look at running tasks, their priorities, and some control over them? I guess this goes back to the original purpose of this thread, with regard of a task manager app? I wrote one of those for the Mac OS and its handy to be able to graphically see and control things. I believe you can do some (or most) of this on the command shell, correct?

I use ARTM or XOper for this.

[bwinkel67]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Does it do this every time you resize the window ?

No, just at unexpected times. So everything seemed to be working and then you'd grab the window and it would hang for a while. It was only with PC-Task so maybe something with that software.

Originally Posted by meynaf

I use ARTM or XOper for this.

Cool. Just took a quick look at them on Aminet. Will give them a try. Thanks!

[daxb]

Some more monitor tools to find: http://aminet.net/util/moni

[nogginthenog]

Originally Posted by bwinkel67

PC-Task wasn't actually doing anything at the time, just sitting at the A prompt.

Emulators don't work that way. The system under emulation knows nothing of AmigaOS so cannot give control to the OS when it's waiting for input etc.

Scout is a good task manager.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

Emulators don't work that way. The system under emulation knows nothing of AmigaOS so cannot give control to the OS when it's waiting for input etc.

That depends how the emulated OS does its idle loop. AmigaOS does it with STOP instruction which allows (at least) WinUAE to be able to relinquish cpu control when emulated machine does nothing special (if, of course, it has been configured to do this).

[bwinkel67]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

Emulators don't work that way. The system under emulation knows nothing of AmigaOS so cannot give control to the OS when it's waiting for input etc.

Well I know the PC-Task emulator is still emulating its 80286 instruction set when MS-DOS is sitting their waiting for input at the A prompt. My point was that the emulator wasn't doing anything special like going into graphics mode. The emulator usually behaves well, it's just at times it seems to glitch and hang/freeze the window in Workbench.

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

Scout is a good task manager.

I'll take a look at it, thanks.

[daxb]

Another one is OMon: http://aminet.net/package/dev/moni/OMon

[Wayne]

Originally Posted by bwinkel67

Btw, speaking of Task Manager...is there a similar graphical tool (hopefully that opens in a window) in AmigaOS (preferably Workbench 2.0) that gives you a look at running tasks, their priorities, and some control over them? I guess this goes back to the original purpose of this thread, with regard of a task manager app? I wrote one of those for the Mac OS and its handy to be able to graphically see and control things. I believe you can do some (or most) of this on the command shell, correct?

Used to use this one:
http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/PriMan20

It’s from ‘94 but should suit your needs and there’s even C source inside.