AmigaOS 3.2 and beyond

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by utri007

I would suggest that if you could offer 1mb rom, at least for those machines wich has proven to work with it. It is easy to end up to problems is all the modules are not in rom.

We don't have the manpower to maintain so many rom variations, and even then, the idea is to get everything we can out of the rom, not in. This is because roms are by nature not flexible and it is hard to update its contents (you need to flash them).

Roms were a great idea when back in the 80's almost everyone used their Amigas with floppies almost exclusively, and hard drives were absurdly scarce, slow and expensive.

Todays hard drives are fast, huge and cheap. They provide a way to load components and have them quickly updated without requiring specialized hardware.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by gulliver

Be warned that in AmigaOS 3.2 we added even more cool features to Intuition.

Screensmenu/window menu? Built in sysihack gadgets? Resize from every edge? :-)

[Edders]

Sounds great! Thanks for continuing the development on the 68k OS. Since there was a mention of a text editor, I have one request regarding that.. Would it be possible to make it such that when I'm editing somewhere halfway the screen and do page-down, followed by page-up my cursor ends back where it was originally?


Will the syntax-colouring also support 68k assembly source, or only C sources?

[utri007]

Originally Posted by gulliver

We don't have the manpower to maintain so many rom variations, and even then, the idea is to get everything we can out of the rom, not in. This is because roms are by nature not flexible and it is hard to update its contents (you need to flash them).

Booting without startup-sequence is easiest way to enter non solvable situation if there is no need modules on ROM. Bootin from Floppy wich loads WB is another way. There is no way to get rid of ROM with current hardware.

[E-Penguin]

Originally Posted by gulliver

be warned that in amigaos 3.2 we added even more cool features to intuition.

vr mode! Vr mode! Vr mode!

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by Leandro Jardim

I would like to give two suggestions and one bug report.

First, the two suggestions:

* Multiview works as an ANIM player, albeit it is slow (I have not tested it with graphics cards), and reads the entire ANIM to RAM. Do you think in the possibility to update Multiview and the datatypes to play animations from the hard-disk, at the real speed, now with the new OS 3.2?

I believe that the current behaviour is the best compromise, given how MultiView, the animation.datatype and its anim.datatype/cdxl.datatype classes are designed to play together.

The animation.datatype provides general access to and control over how animation frames are retrieved and played back, along with sound, if available. This generalization "has teeth" in that what does not fit within its boundaries will invariably suffer.

For example, CDXL and IFF-ANIM playback are made to fit the same restrictions in spite of the makeup of these file formats being radically different. You could stream CDXL video/audio data on a double-buffered display, but IFF-ANIM type 5 and its descendants requires triple buffering, for example. Some animation file formats offer random access to the entire time frame (CDXL), some do not (IFF-ANIM type 5 and its descendants).

It may make better sense to consider how MultiView and animation.datatype handle animations as providing a "preview" of the animation, with dedicated tools being much better suited to proper playback which plays to the strengths of both the respective format and the Amiga.

* For users that run Workbench on a color mapped OCS/AGA screen, would be best if Multiview for OS 3.2 had a menu item to select the color and the dithering precision for pictures and animations displayed on the Workbench screen.

I think we don't yet have a menu, etc. for choosing the quality of the animation/image/sound, but it could be added along with more general controls for the classes which affect the choice made.

And now the bug report:

* I am using the old MagicMenu 1.29 (very similar to the version used by Bloodwych in ClassicWB LITE). But it have some incompatibilities with Intuition, which hopefully are fixed when I install ObtainGIRPort.lha. Unfortunately this patch is incompatible with the external Intuition library that lets the user drag windows out of screen. With the new library, AmigaOS crash when I drag the horizontal slider of any Workbench window to any direction.

I understand that MagicMenu 1.29 is a too old program to support in the new OS, and the bugged program here is MagicMenu, not OS 3.1.4, but then I thought, I will at least try to ask for a kludge in the new OS to fix MagicMenu, since MagicMenu is a much used program by everyone, and the crash did not happen on the old OS 3.0/3.1.

MagicMenu 1.29 goes way back to 1993 (I just checked my archives). It has its share of problems which are really hard to resolve at the operating system level because it second-guesses the behaviour of Intuition. Invariably, these design aspects will collide with how Intuition deals with the menu rendering, among other things. This is why MagicMenu versions 1.30-2.31 and beyond were created over the course of 7-8 years, which play nicer with the operating system. That's a lot of change, in the right place, which is hard to retrofit into the operating system. We need to choose our battles, so to speak...

[Kyle_Human]

In no particular order I would like to see:

- prefs pane that can add items to workbench tools menu without using a toolsdemon type thing

- Improved drive cache behavior, like PowerCache.

- Software blitter like FBlit, FText etc for CPUs faster than hardware blitter

- tooltype to redirect programs who want to open on workbench screen into their own screens instead

- better control over opening multiview on other screens. its annoying when it wants to go from a window on workbench to some 300x240 screen when you want to look at 800x600 image...

- some program to setup included cdfilesystem, or at least easy to find instructions.

- bar clock with date and time on workbench screen

- ADF mounter

All of this stuff is extremely popular third party commodities or patch programs. I think the best direction for further development is making those patches obsolete.

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by utri007

Booting without startup-sequence is easiest way to enter non solvable situation if there is no need modules on ROM. Bootin from Floppy wich loads WB is another way. There is no way to get rid of ROM with current hardware.

Of course, we know that the rom is needed!

What we dont't want is the rom to impose its limits on so many components. So the less components we can have in rom, the much better for everyone because they can get to update their system in a much simpler way.

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by Kyle_Human

In no particular order I would like to see:

- some program to setup included cdfilesystem, or at least easy to find instructions.

You will find instructions to do almost everything, not only to handle cd-rom mountlists.

I can't say anymore.

[boemann]

Originally Posted by Edders

Sounds great! Thanks for continuing the development on the 68k OS. Since there was a mention of a text editor, I have one request regarding that.. Would it be possible to make it such that when I'm editing somewhere halfway the screen and do page-down, followed by page-up my cursor ends back where it was originally?

I must double check, I believe I made it so. If not I will make sure it does.

Originally Posted by Edders

Will the syntax-colouring also support 68k assembly source, or only C sources?

Neither 68k nor C will be in 3.2 as it stands today - it is only an idea for post 3.2. I first have other more important things to do to intuition and other high profile components

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by boemann

I must double check, I believe I made it so. If not I will make sure it does.


Neither 68k nor C will be in 3.2 as it stands today - it is only an idea for post 3.2. I first have other more important things to do to intuition and other high profile components

That stuff you implemented for 3.2 is already amazing, from my POV.

[kamelito]

More readable font like on modern editor for coding.
If possible a way of switching from RTG to native mode and vice versa.
Being able to use different theme like on OS4 but better.

[boemann]

Originally Posted by kamelito

More readable font like on modern editor for coding.
If possible a way of switching from RTG to native mode and vice versa.
Being able to use different theme like on OS4 but better.

For that to be possible the OS first needs to "know" about RTG. Currently any RTG is patches to the system, and not something built in. While we would like to tackle this and bring graphics.library into the future, it is not something we even dare do now considering our limited resources. Maybe in the future.

[nogginthenog]

I really like the 3.1.4 intuition/layers change where you can move the window outside the screen. I think we need some kind of 'maximise' gadget though.

[boemann]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

I really like the 3.1.4 intuition/layers change where you can move the window outside the screen. I think we need some kind of 'maximise' gadget though.

I think so too But it is not done yet, and not possible to do for all windows - mainly because there are so many apps and hacks out there that would break if suddenly we added another gadget. But rest assured I'm thinking about it.

[duga]

Would prefer:
Compact Flash-release (aimed for models with built in IDE-controller like A600/A1200/A4000).
CDROM-release (for all models included those already mentioned).
Download only-release (the same way as for 3.1.4).

For models without IDE-controller, without CDROM drive and without Internet connection: a "self-transfer" null-modem solution in the style of Amiga Explorer where all you need is a Workbench 1.2 (or higher) floppy disk to boot from to be able to transfer the files via null-modem cable to the Amiga, where you can write the ADF files to your own floppy disks.

[Solskogen]

Will you, or are you, talking to the AROS guys? Or are there license issues and/or developer issues with you guys combining forces?

[th4t1guy]

To go back to talk about version numbers, I think it's a bit more clear if the version number is kept as 3.1.x instead of 3.x

The reason would be that it seems 3.5/3.9 are viewed more as forks of 3.1. 3.10 or 3.11 would imply that it's built on top of 3.9. 3.2 also seems to imply that it's older than 3.5. But a 3.1.5 would imply that it's built on top of 3.1

[AlphaAmiga]

Does anyone in the team have any timelines for further announcements/feature lists/updates lists etc as well as where (i.e. which website) the information is likely to roll out on?

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

I really like the 3.1.4 intuition/layers change where you can move the window outside the screen. I think we need some kind of 'maximise' gadget though.

OS 4 works around this by using the zoom gadget with a qualifier (shift). So clicking with shift on the zoom button maximises the window. It works really well and doesn't interfere with existing gadgets, border frames etc.

Originally Posted by th4t1guy

To go back to talk about version numbers, I think it's a bit more clear if the version number is kept as 3.1.x instead of 3.x

The reason would be that it seems 3.5/3.9 are viewed more as forks of 3.1. 3.10 or 3.11 would imply that it's built on top of 3.9. 3.2 also seems to imply that it's older than 3.5. But a 3.1.5 would imply that it's built on top of 3.1

It's built on top of some parts of 3.9, but is meant as a continuation of 3.1. I don't understand how 3.1.5 implies that it's based on 3.1 but 3.2 doesn't...

Originally Posted by kamelito

If possible a way of switching from RTG to native mode and vice versa.

I don't understand what this means? If you want native screenmodes, just request one in the screenmode requester. Or am I missing something here?

Being able to use different theme like on OS4 but better.

That might be nice but it might be a heavy ask to keep it compatible. Quite a lot of software has issues with VisualPrefs for example.