AmigaOS 3.2 and beyond

[ProfPlum]

Originally Posted by Romanujan

Will he talk about OS 3.2.1?

Funny you mention this, I logged on to ask whether or not there will be more revisions and/or patches to OS 3.2. If so, by any chance, is there a running list of TO DO items posted somewhere.

Many thanks to all the developers who brought us this revision.

[boemann]

Originally Posted by ProfPlum

Funny you mention this, I logged on to ask whether or not there will be more revisions and/or patches to OS 3.2. If so, by any chance, is there a running list of TO DO items posted somewhere.

Many thanks to all the developers who brought us this revision.

No TO DO list, and we just enter issues into our issue tracker whenever we see something on a forum that looks like a bug.

Which issues we actually fix is ultimately decided by our own personal motivation, but we all feel responsible to fix bugs that touch a lot of people. Similarly, bugs that we ourselves have introduced in 3.1.4 or 3.2 have a high priority.

If you have questions about a specific issue just ask and it is likely we will give you an answer.

[Romanujan]

I have a small suggestion: shouldn’t the hard drive partitions default to block size of 4096 nowadays? 512 bytes block size is outdated nowadays, probably no current media (especially flash devices) uses such a small block size anymore.

[daxb]

As far as I know the new block size for FFS partitions is 4096. Have you checked it?

[Swe_Kryten2x4b]

Just a few suggestions. I've been meaning to post these for a while but for some reasons I've never gotten around to it. And I've looked through the backlog here to see if they've been mentioned before, but couldn't find anything (may have missed it though) so here goes.

Not bugs per say but minor things that would be great for me and hopefully others.

1. The find utility.I for one would love the ability to save the search-result into a textfile or csv-file.
2. Textedit. Great tiny editor, but I would love to have a "Recent files" menu entry so it's easier to just jump to the last one(s) you used.
3. The new iconify-to-app gadget in windows. I understand why it's not present on stuff written prior to 3.2. Or at least I think I understand why...however, why is it not present on ordinary wb-windows? That is, why can't I iconfify a window for say dh1:docs/pictures?
4. Wish: To incorporate the feature of WarpWB right into the OS. That is, an option to automatically close the parent window when you open a drawer. It is already possible to do if you keep the right amiga-key pressed when you double-click the drawer. It would just be a nice to set globally to not having to remember to do so constantly to keep the desktop uncluttered. Kinda goes together with 3 really.

Hope I make myself clear!

[Steady]

Thanks for your suggestions Swe_Kryten2x4b. Noted.

[nailbite]

Hi, not sure if it has been reported, but
- when renaming a file on Workbench the "arrow up" and "arrow down" keys just close the requester.
- when executing a comand on Workbench (Right-Amiga+e", the "arrow up" and "arrow down" keys delete the content of the string.

Is this intended behaviour?

Her it happens on UAE, WinUae and on real hardware (A1200, A4000). Always fresh installation from the CD-version of AmigaOS 3.2.

Btw, is there an update available somewhere?

Thanks

[Minuous]

AsyncWB, which is installed by default, adds a command history feature to the Execute Command function. So if you have used it several times already in the current session, you can use the cursor up/down keys to move through the history.

The cursor up/down behaviour in the Rename function is different between OS3 and OS4, it probably should be changed to be ignored (like on OS4).

There has not been any update of OS3.2 released at this point.

[wiz12]

Originally Posted by gdonner

.

Is it possible to have "Update Rom Modules" unticked by default at every bootup? I'm using a Vampire and have to manually untick it each time otherwise I'll get a guru meditation error and the system won't boot?

[Jope]

You should instead rename or delete the offending ROM module from your hard disk.

[Swe_Kryten2x4b]

Originally Posted by wiz12

Is it possible to have "Update Rom Modules" unticked by default at every bootup? I'm using a Vampire and have to manually untick it each time otherwise I'll get a guru meditation error and the system won't boot?

Weird that. I'm also using a vampire and does not need to do that.

[buggs]

Originally Posted by wiz12

Is it possible to have "Update Rom Modules" unticked by default at every bootup? I'm using a Vampire and have to manually untick it each time otherwise I'll get a guru meditation error and the system won't boot?

The Vampire relies on a kickstart patch in exec and thus it is not compatible to the ROM update method of 3.9BB2, 3.1.4 and 3.2 of exec.library.

You might delete the exec.library from your 3.2 installation or (better) follow the instructions in the 3.2 FAQ.

Depending on your Vampire model and core revision, you have the choice of MapROM (where the 3.2 image is to be loaded from HDD after a cold boot) or FlashROM where it is installed on the Vampire permanently.

[Thomas Richter]

Hold on, this update mechanism has nothing to do with exec, and nothing to do with the Vampires. It just checks for system libraries to load from disk instead of ROM, and exec is none of them. In particular, the following ROM modules can be upgraded by this mechanism:

*    UPGRADABLE MODULES
*       At the time of writing, the following ROM-Modules are upgradable
*       from disk:
*       - "filesystem" aka "FFS", taken from the RDB if a newer version
*         is available there.
*       - "con-handler", taken from "L:".
*       - "ram-handler", taken from "L:".
*       - "shell", "BootShell" and "CLI, all taken from "L:Shell-Seg".
*       - "intuition", taken from "LIBS:", with
*         the option for downgrading to V40.
*       - "console.device", taken from "DEVS:"
*       - "gadtools.library", taken from "LIBS:"
*       - "syslog", taken from "L:"
*       - "mathffp.library", taken from "LIBS:"
*       - "mathieeesingbas.library", taken from "LIBS:"
*       - "audio.device", taken from "DEVS:"
*       - "workbench.library" and "icon.library" are already RAM-based
*         but use the same search path.

The ROM-Updates mechanism checks all mounted devices(!) for *newer* revisions of the above modules, and loads them if present. Thus, please check whether you have some junk modules left that have revisions that are later than those in ROM as those would be loaded then instead. Thus, for example, if you boot from DH0:, but DH2: contains a "console.device" v50 from whatever source, and this inofficial device is not compatible to the ROM, then the ROM-Updates mechanism will pull it in, and load it.

If you *do not* want to ugrade a particular module for your boot device, but still have a newer revision somewhere on some other partition, create an empty dummy file(!) in the particular location of your boot disk, e.g.

echo "" >DEVS:console.device

would, for example, prevent the ROM upgrade of the console.device.

In general, however, please check your installation as something is broken there, and get rid of non-working modules in your partitions. All partitions that are reachable during boot, in particular.

[nailbite]

Thank you for the answers.

IMHO for the "Execute comand..." the very last entry should be buffered too. If I just started the system, call "RAmiga+e" enter something and press the arrow because of "muscle memory" telling me "go to the first position of the line" everything is deleted. Not so convenient.

As for the "rename requester", please yes change it to ignore the arrow keypreses.. Having "arrow down" or "arrow up" to behave like "enter" seems a bit of a strech..

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by nailbite

If I just started the system, call "RAmiga+e" enter something and press the arrow because of "muscle memory" telling me "go to the first position of the line" everything is deleted. Not so convenient.

To be fair, up or down arrows aren't intended for moving to the first position of the line - that has always been Shift+left arrow, though it's been changed to Ctrl+left arrow for 3.2.

I hadn't noticed the up and down arrow behaviour in either of those requesters until now since I always used the Shift+(arrows|delete|backspace) shortcuts in the past. Still trying to get used to the usage being split in 3.2 now, with shift meaning "to the end of the line" when used with delete and backspace, but not with the arrows...

[Thomas Richter]

You find the intended and recommended meanings of the qualifiers along with cursor keys in the RKRM Interface style guide. I recommend following this style guide. IIRC, shift+cursor is "one visible element forwards or backwards", ctrl+cursor is "to the very extreme", and alt+cursor "one word forward or backward", but please check yourself to be sure.

[Daedalus]

I'll take your word for it. In that case, it's just a shame that the recommended meanings haven't been followed for the past 30 years, instead a different but more consistent use has been implemented right through OS 2, 3 and 4 until this point, with reversed actions of Ctrl and Shift. It's also a shame that, while correcting this error, it wasn't corrected across the board since the shift meaning still applies for delete and backspace. It wouldn't be so bad if it was all changed to Ctrl, so at least the consistency was preserved. Maybe for a future update...

Edit: Here's the text from the copy of the style guide I have here:

Shift + Cursor
Move to the appropriate extreme of the window, or shift the view by one windowful if you're already at that extreme. In applications such as a word processor where the two directions are not symmetrical, shifted cursor keys could take on different meanings. Shifted up and down cursors would page through windowfuls while the shifted left and right cursors would show more on the left and right if there is more to show. Of course it is often the case that the width of the document fits in the window, so the shifted left and right cursors could act as beginning- and end-of-line commands (or edge of window if the cursor isn't constrained to the form of the text).

Alt-Cursor
This is used for application-specific functions. It's usually semantic units such as words in a text processor or fields in a spreadsheet.

Ctrl-Cursor
Move to the appropriate extreme of the project (beginning, end, extreme left, extreme right).
In the word processor example, the up and down cursor keys would take the cursor to the beginning and end of the file, respectively. But again, if the file fits within the width of the window, the left and right cursor keys
combined with Alt would act like their shifted cousins.

So to me it seems less cut and dried as strictly requiring one or the other. The shift combination is the one that mentions the beginning or end of line, and this seems to be the interpretation used by the OS developers prior to 3.2, as well as most 3rd party implementations like MUI.

And while the delete and backspace keys are mentioned as being "special keys" just like the arrow keys, they're not explicitly called out in the same way as the arrow keys with the shortcuts, so I guess there's the get-out needed to drop that consistency. Again, maybe at least that consistency can be restored in a future update by swapping the Shift and Ctrl actions for backspace and delete...

[boemann]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

To be fair, up or down arrows aren't intended for moving to the first position of the line - that has always been Shift+left arrow, though it's been changed to Ctrl+left arrow for 3.2.

I hadn't noticed the up and down arrow behaviour in either of those requesters until now since I always used the Shift+(arrows|delete|backspace) shortcuts in the past. Still trying to get used to the usage being split in 3.2 now, with shift meaning "to the end of the line" when used with delete and backspace, but not with the arrows...

Ah I hadn't even noticed the delete and backspace behavior - Agree they should be ctrl too then.

[Firestone]

Originally Posted by wiz12

Is it possible to have "Update Rom Modules" unticked by default at every bootup? I'm using a Vampire and have to manually untick it each time otherwise I'll get a guru meditation error and the system won't boot?

Have you tried to load the kickstart with VampireMap? I assume you don't have 3.2 in ROM?
I got 3.1 ROM-chips on my motherboard.

On my vampire600v2 my first lines in S:Startup-sequence is:

C:VampireMap Devs:Kick32a600 >NIL:
Version exec.library version 47 >NIL:
If Warn
   LoadModule L:System-Startup ROMUPDATE
EndIf
Setpatch >NIL:

[wiz12]

I've only tried the VampireFlash utility and successfully updated the core rom on my V1200 to Kickstart 3.2. I can try the VampireMap method instead and see if it makes any difference.