@OlafS25

You said "users decide" Chis_Y said "when I use" thus by your own definition he is correct.

If you personally like OS3.x more than OS4.x that's completely fine.

_________________
BroadBlues On Blues BroadBlues On Amiga Walker Broad

@broadblues

I do not talk about me personal preferring 3.X or something else

most people use 3.X in any form so they will judge any extension pack about how much they benefit from it and decide then if it is worth the money for it. If it is world class super-hyper for 4.X is not important when you only use 3.X. Simple as that...

the 4.X user of course think the opposite

Last edited by OlafS25 on 22-Mar-2016 at 01:46 PM.

@Chris_Y

Quote:

This is a very strange statement. application.library works similarly to commodities.library - a program registers with it if it wants to use it. If it isn't used it isn't taking up memory. If you don't want notifications then don't start up the Ringhio server. If you want the screen blanker to come on in the middle of playing a game... well, that's your problem.

so what are the programs that actually take advantage of application library? i mean external software, not the os4 components, as there is no option to port these to amiga anyway.

because this is one of major factors that decides if its worth an effort at all. obviously ringhio has been dropped from os4, so it is questionable if it remains relevant for os4 users themselves in the future. it may not be enough to justify a port, especially if no applications will take advantage of it.

Quote:

The problems I've encountered are because OS3 is so primitive compared to OS4.

could you elaborate what major changes or updates may be desirable in your opinion?

Last edited by wawa on 22-Mar-2016 at 02:03 PM.

@wawa

Quote:

so what are the programs that actually take advantage of application library? i mean external software, not the os4 components, as there is no option to port these to amiga anyway.

Well, NetSurf does for starters.

Quote:

obviously ringhio has been dropped from os4

I don't think that's the case at all.

Quote:

could you elaborate what major changes or updates may be desirable in your opinion?

All the gadget/BOOPSI/Reaction classes including the internal Intuition ones need updating - some don't work the same, some don't exist and some are so buggy as to be unusable. The memory system needs a revamp to be more efficient. Various useful blitting operations are missing especially wrt alpha channels, and then there's a ton of small improvements which reduce multiple lines of code to single statements, or reduce the chance that an error has crept in... and these are just things I've encountered that I can think of off the top of my head.

_________________
"Miracles we do at once, the impossible takes a little longer" - AJS on Hyperion
Avatar is Tabitha by Eric W Schwartz

@wawa

Quote:

could you elaborate what major changes or updates may be desirable in your opinion?

Just picking out of the hat:
- better memory management system
- safer allocation of and access to system resources
- greatly improved DOS with a vector-port API
- much more advanced and complete GUI programming API
- graphics.library with an integrated RTG and compositing (which is not just for fancy screen effects but also significantly extends blitting capabilities)

As the saying goes: "It's the little things..."

_________________
The Rear Window blog

AmigaOne X5000/020 @ 2GHz / 4GB RAM / Radeon RX 560 / ESI Juli@ / AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition
SAM440ep-flex @ 667MHz / 1GB RAM / Radeon 9250 / AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition

@wawa

It was there in OS3.x.

@broadblues

Yes OS4 has the color wheel gadget but for some reason the Palette Prefs program has been broken the last ten years and hasn't caught up to OS3.0 standards yet. If OS4 was built off OS3.1 source as minimum this doesn't make sense.

okay, netsurf uses application.library. we have now one use case besides ringhio. is this something essential its being used for, because it seems it hasnt been an issue while porting reaction netsurf front end to amiga?

i expected memory allocator to be brought up here, but apparently the one provided when linking against libnix and ixemul isnt that bad. its clib2 that makes solid problems and its the same library os4 is using if im not mistaken. so its either a platform dependent problem with clib2 implementation on 68k or os4 has the same problem, only masked by more performant hardware it is running on. i remember here a number of complains about uncertain memory usage and allocation under os4 that have been brought in the past. for instance the os doesnt report properly when its running out of memory till today as far as i gather, and the user needs to be aware of it that he might find himself in a low memory situation without any warning. i wouldnt rely on such an implementation as being superior to what we have.

another option is tlsf. it is available for amiga and aros, but i doubt it is for os4. never heard of it at least. it has certain advantages, but apparently it depends on a use case and it has compatibility drawbacks. so it hasnt gain much popularity.

yet another option is buddy allocator as used with bernd roschs ixemul library. it can be used by an application with running in parallel with those using a genuine one. seems sensible choice if libnix is not an option.

what concerns an advanced gui programming api we have mui, even with an "inofficial" 4.x update. mui is a dependable cross platform standard used by all amiga-like platforms. 68k reaction or class act is of course very likely limited in comparison to what os4 offers, but this is due to the very os4 politics not to update anything for amiga target. it certainly wont change in the future, so the option is reimplementation and update of lacking classes under an open permissive license. this can be done contributing to the reimplementation of classes already present in aros. i dont see other reasonable way. certainly no further closed source approach will solve anything.

what concerns graphics library with alpha support, we have that working on aros, it still needs some improvements for 68k, but the work is ongoing and the sources open. the result might even be backported. the question is if and when the alpha support is applicable without introducing computing burden the amiga hardware is not capable to carry.

what im not sure of those dos improvements and the safer allocation of system resources. can that be told more precisely? what does that improve for the user? system stability? because that doesnt seem to be the case judging by forum posts.

Last edited by wawa on 22-Mar-2016 at 03:06 PM.
Last edited by wawa on 22-Mar-2016 at 03:05 PM.
Last edited by wawa on 22-Mar-2016 at 03:04 PM.
Last edited by wawa on 22-Mar-2016 at 03:04 PM.

@wawa

We have a few new ReAction classes for OS3 which will be included on the Enhancer Software package.

For example, our new Shared Image Class that MultiViewer and ClipViewer both use is concurrently developed for both OS3 and OS4.

Here is the shared.image class running on my Amiga 1200 under 3.9 (used by the OS3 version of ClipViewer):

Last edited by amigakit on 22-Mar-2016 at 03:52 PM.

_________________
Amiga Kit Amiga Store
Links: www.amigakit.com | New Products | A600GS

@wawa

OS4's memory allocator is completely re-written, only the public API is the same.

_________________
"Miracles we do at once, the impossible takes a little longer" - AJS on Hyperion
Avatar is Tabitha by Eric W Schwartz

@wawa

Quote:

i expected memory allocator to be brought up here, but apparently the one provided when linking against libnix and ixemul isnt that bad. its clib2 that makes solid problems and its the same library os4 is using if im not mistaken.

We are not talking about malloc etc here, but the OS level memory system. AllocVec() et al....

newlib.library is the default on AmigaOS 4.1 and has been for sometime.

_________________
BroadBlues On Blues BroadBlues On Amiga Walker Broad

@Hypex

Quote:

Yes OS4 has the color wheel gadget but for some reason the Palette Prefs program has been broken the last ten years and hasn't caught up to OS3.0 standards yet.

It's not broken, at all. It's functionality is much increased interms of what you can control, but split accross two programs palette prefs and GUI colours tab.

Quote:

If OS4 was built off OS3.1 source as minimum this doesn't make sense.

Clearly the GUI system has significantly extended the numbers of pens usable in the GUI, requireing a rewrite, don't why they chose to leave out the colourwheel, but it's absense hardly make it broken.

_________________
BroadBlues On Blues BroadBlues On Amiga Walker Broad

@Trixie

Add greatly improved fonts support to that list. With better rendering, font size creation and charset support, though the absense of unicode support leaves room for improvement.

_________________
BroadBlues On Blues BroadBlues On Amiga Walker Broad

@broadblues

Quote:

Add greatly improved fonts support to that list.

The issue I have with bullet fonts, is that they are converted from TrueType fonts,

using TypeManager, but type Manager some how fails to do it correct,
so if you try use font before using FixFont you get a DSI error.

So you run FixFont, now the DSI error is gone, some what silly to need two program to do one operation. Way was TypeManager not able to do it correct the first time?

Quote:

With better rendering, font size creation and charset support,

Well that’s mostly done.

http://os4depot.net/index.php?function=showfile&file=library/misc/utf8_library.lha

Manipulating and Displaying.

What is missing now is a GUI toolkit that fully support UTF8.
and UTF8 Menus, and so on, and so on.

And yes some changes to workbench, so icons can have file names in UTF8 format, and changes console again, so text can be UTF8.

Quote:

though the absence of unicode support leaves room for improvement.

Some unicode support was added to utilitys.library in AmigaOS4.1, but was mostly about converting chars, not using. Anyway, there C++ has a UTF8 class. So even with absence of UTF8 in AmigaOS, there is some ways it can be used now.

http://utfcpp.sourceforge.net/

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 23-Mar-2016 at 02:29 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 22-Mar-2016 at 07:13 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 22-Mar-2016 at 07:06 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 22-Mar-2016 at 05:12 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 22-Mar-2016 at 05:10 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 22-Mar-2016 at 05:06 PM.

_________________
http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

@amigakit

Really impressive!!!! In my point of view, it is an unofficial OS4.1 FE update. Well done!

_________________
www.amigalinux.org

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

The issue I have with bullet fonts, is that they are converted from TrueType fonts,

No they are not converted at all. They remain as TrueTypefonts (or postscript ot compugraphic or whatever)

Quote:

but type Manager some fails to do it correct, so if you try use font before using FixFont you get a DSI error.

Never ever had a DSI after runing TypeManager, what actually DSIs ?

Do you have log?

You do not need to run fixfonts after.

_________________
BroadBlues On Blues BroadBlues On Amiga Walker Broad

@broadblues

Quote:

It's not broken, at all. It's functionality is much increased interms of what you can control, but split accross two programs palette prefs and GUI colours tab

I can't find any increased functionality here. I check out GUI and can't see any way to even drag RGB sliders in the Colours section. If this is meant to be better then it's all confused.

Quote:

Clearly the GUI system has significantly extended the numbers of pens usable in the GUI, requireing a rewrite, don't why they chose to leave out the colourwheel, but it's absense hardly make it broken.

The maximum number of pens would be 256. No point going higher as you get into true colour ranges from then on. And pens relate to CLUT limits.

But to me. OS3 it works. OS4 it's gone. And I can't see any other way to set colors from a wheel.

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: I can't find any increased functionality here. I check out GUI and can't see any way to even drag RGB sliders in the Colours section. If this is meant to be better then it's all confused.

GUI prefs colours section is for setting which predefined colour is used for each pen type, it is not for setting the colours themselves. Think of it as an artist... The palette is for mixing your colours and the GUI is your canvas where you apply the colours.

Quote:

But to me. OS3 it works. OS4 it's gone. And I can't see any other way to set colors from a wheel.

Honestly I don't care, I don't like colour wheels and always use the sliders if possible. There's nothing stopping you from writing your own palette prefs program. Would make a nice little project to learn coding with.

_________________
OS4 Rocks
X1000 beta tester, Sam440 Flex (733)

Visit the Official OS4 Support Site for more help.

It may be that your sole purpose is to serve as a warning to others.

@broadblues
Quote:

It's not broken, at all. It's functionality is much increased interms of what you can control, but split accross two programs palette prefs and GUI colours tab. ... don't [know] why they chose to leave out the colourwheel, but it's absense hardly make it broken.

Isn't it an old left-over from VisualPrefs and FullPalette? IIRC VisualPrefs is basically what GUI prefs is now, and with GUI prefs the old Palette prefs duplicated functionality, but only allowed 8 pens to be modified, hence FullPalette.

I guess adding a Colorwheel to Palette prefs wouldn't be hard, but it's probably not high on the priority list (and probably, one would want to merge the two prefs programs, and then you'd probably also want to make GUI prefs a bit more user-friendly with previews, etc, and then all of sudden it takes way more time).

_________________

@wawa

In addition to Netsurf, also SysMon uses Ringhio. What I can remember right now...

Last edited by marko on 05-Apr-2016 at 12:56 AM.

_________________
AmigaOS 4.1 FEu2 on Sam440ep-flex 800MHz 1GB RAM
C128, A500+, A1200, A1200/40, AmigaForever 2008+09+16, 5 x86/x64 boxes
Still waiting (or dreaming) for the Amiga revolution...
m4rko.com/AMIGA