Mobileconnect Quote:

Unicode really didn't exist until late 1991. Before that it was a concept existing on paper only. Until unicode, all platforms used 7 (ascii) or 8 bit (ascii + whatever codetable for the upper half, or JIS etc.)

There were Unicode drafts starting in about 1990 but they were mostly failures that were not promoted to standards. The variable character width UTF-1 was a major mistake and the fixed character width UTF-16 made the mistake of not being large enough to encode all living languages. The intent was a universal character set standard and Unicode was a failure on both fronts. The Unix community made suggestions that resulted in a much improved UTF-8 circa 1992. Extended UNIX Code (EUC) was similar to UTF-8 but required swapping out different character sets based on the language. Both use the base ASCII encoding with the most significant bit set of bytes indicating multi-byte characters for easy recognition, mostly compatible text processing and self-synchronizing code (not true of Shift-JIS).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-synchronizing_code

UTF-8 has a few other niceties added and went from inferior to EUC to superior but still required some time to be adopted which is likely why the Amiga Japanese support was EUC. The following website calls EUC a "precursor" of UTF-8 and "the forefather of most Unix transformation formats (UTF)".

Unicode Transformation Formats: UTF-8 & Co.
http://www.czyborra.com/utf/

It also gives advantages and disadvantages of the related formats. Many of the AmigaOS changes that were made for EUC Japanese support likely could be used for UTF-8 support although some further optimizations for UTF-8 string handling may be possible. There could be some string related incompatibility problems too but they should be relatively rare as Japanese support was mostly working.

@Hypex

From my readings of Fleecy's descriptions of where he wanted to take the in-principle AmigaOS 5, it was not by any stretch of the imagination an evolution of AmigaOS 4.

What he outlined was definitely based on a semantic file system, and what he envisaged back at the turn of the millennium has all the hall marks of a precursor to a semantic operating system. It would just not be very practical to create a compatibility layer for older software because it wouldn't fit the paradigm. AmigaOS 4 apps would essentially be highly sandboxed with their own separate file system.

So yes, the outsourced AmigaOS 4 was seen as a "bridge" between the legacy Amiga OS 3 and in-house AmigaOS 5, but more so to bridge the time gap, rather than a bridge for a smoother transition.

In an alternate universe where the Kouri Capital Group didn't go bankrupt in 2001, and Pentti Kouri had funded Fleecy's vision, we would've seen many versions of AmigaOS 4 and potentially ports to other CPU architectures before the semantic AmigaOS 5 was ready.

AmigaDE is unrelated to AmigaOS 5, insofar as it is not a constituent component of the future semantic operating system, and more like a a technology that could make it easier to compile highly portable multi-media binaries, a la Java. And perhaps could've been the sandbox mechanism to make it easier for AmigaOS 4 apps and even games to run on AmigaOS 5.

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@agami

Quote:

agami wrote: In an alternate universe where the Kouri Capital Group didn't go bankrupt in 2001, and Pentti Kouri had funded Fleecy's vision,

You are giving far to much benefit of doubt here.

"Fleecy*s vision" always has been "how much BS do I need to spout to fleece investors/partners/fans" and Kouri was at best a willing participant in that scheme or more likely trying to use those incompetent scamsters as fall guys in bigger schemes.

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@Mobileconnect

Very little, More was continued by ESCOM.
Workench Nostalgia gives good overiview of these features,
but all surpassed by newer OS 3.2 by Hyperion and team of free coders.
https://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/os_versions.html

Web site only needs update on new OS 3.2 and OS 3.1.4.
even both versions are confusing ,as they existed

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@vox

To me it looks like you’re the confused one, 3.1.4 and 3.2 are there.

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@kolla

Ah Kolla glad to see that after all these years you're still a condescending piece of shit

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@Kronos

I most agree that that sentiment, however, I do see a way for it to work,
if AmigaDE was ported to AmigaOS4, the software base can grow in similar way as Hollywood applications does now. By doing so, the move to full AmigaDE based OS can been possible, in similar way as JavaOS did for kiosks.

But Amiga Inc was stupid, they picked a fight instead.

They forgot the concept behind Amiga anywhere, to put Amiga software on any device, despite the OS.

they had a vision, but they got greedy, and lost focus, and perhaps did not understand their own, strategy because it was mostly just a copy & paste of Java strategy, and not their own.

AmigaDE tried to solve a problem that was already being solved. Of couse we all know by now JavaOS and JavaVM failed, only JavaScript lives on.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 28-Sep-2024 at 05:07 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 28-Sep-2024 at 05:06 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 28-Sep-2024 at 05:05 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 28-Sep-2024 at 05:00 PM.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

NutsAboutAmiga wrote: They forgot the concept behind Amiga anywhere,

was to put just enough lipstick on TAO's SW to fool investors.

They clearly never had the intention nor the skills needed to pull of anything on the scope they claimed to.

It is like saying you could have build an OSX style AmigaOS out of Amithlon, technically possible, just not feasible with the resources at hand and surely not what Bernie intended to do.

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- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

Since it keeps coming up, I'll repeat the story: I used to work for Symbian circa 2001-2004, in technology procurement. I licensed the Opera browser, Java, fonts from Monotype, etc for inclusion in SymbianOS. I met Fleecy Moss and the Tao group people at that time.

The Tao group people seemed genuine, they had a game runtime they had ported to Symbian and were trying to get Nokia et al to include it in phones. It worked a lot like Java but was proprietary, much like Flash and a dozen other also-ran game runtimes of the day. Later, Nokia made the n-gage platform in-house since J2ME was a pile of shit crippled largely by Motorola who wrote most of the J2ME standards.

They certainly didn't have an Amiga version, as it only ran on ARM.

I met Fleecy in one of those meetings and asked him about Amiga, him not knowing I was an Amiga super-fan. He told me they were just using the name and had no plans to deliver on any of the things they had promised. They were hoping it would give them credibility with game publishers that's all. Since there was no such thing as a complete UAE at the time, and the ARM hardware of the day was nowhere near fast enough to run it if it had existed, there was no prospect of them making an Amiga emulator as a way to get lots of games to market quickly. And of course Amiga wasn't Nintendo - they didn't hold the rights to any games, the publishers did. I suspect Fleecy and Bill probably didn't explain that part to Kouri.

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@kamelito

Quote:

Read the Amiga Devcon from 93 (Denver).

That was an interesting read, with some good ideas that were implemented in later releases and NG operating systems, but some odd ideas too including suggesting reverting to the original 1.x window depth gadgets! Whenever I go back to 1.3, I find the depth gadgets much less intuitive than the single gadget of 2.x up.

@danwood

Wow, the real Dan Wood. Didn't realise you were a member here. If you ever want to do a 'retro' show on Symbian, Ngage etc... I can give you all the gossip LOL

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@Mobileconnect

Glad I'm living up to your expectations? I honestly don’t know where that came from… I was just pointing out that Hyperion’s 3.1.4 and 3.2 releases are on the web page vox linked to… there’s nothing wrong about being confused every now and then and do such mistakes, we all do. Maybe I’m confused about vox was communicating, maybe I misunderstood…

Last edited by kolla on 29-Sep-2024 at 02:42 AM.
Last edited by kolla on 28-Sep-2024 at 11:16 PM.

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@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: @agami You are giving far to much benefit of doubt here. "Fleecy*s vision" always has been "how much BS do I need to spout to fleece investors/partners/fans" and Kouri was at best a willing participant in that scheme or more likely trying to use those incompetent scamsters as fall guys in bigger schemes.

That's called selling.

I've been in more investor meetings than I care to remember, here locally in Melbourne and Sydney, and remotely with investors up and down Sand Hill Road, and Tel Aviv. You have to pitch a big game or these people just aren't interested, so of course there are many superlatives.
But that doesn't mean that there isn't some actual intent to realise the vision being sold.

Many times, when you can't raise money for Plan A, you try for Plan B, which if successful can be a source of income for Plan A. But hen you can't raise money for Plan B because your USP doesn't include [insert trending tech buzzword], then you go change your business plan to include trending tech buzzword (Plan C), then you're told you're not thinking beg enough or pointy enough, and you get referred to investors who turns out are all social equity investors who would like to see better alignment with specific social impact targets (Plan D).

Anyone seriously entertaining your proposal would like to get some PR off of it, and then next thing you know people who heard your original Plan A are now reading/hearing about your Plan D, and think you're some sort of sell-out and you never were serious about Plan A.
Of course I'm a "sell-out". I'm trying to "sell" the capabilities of a team to output a value proposition with enough growth projection to attract those with money to risk a portion of their fortunes.

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@Mobileconnect

Quote:

Mobileconnect wrote: Since it keeps coming up, I'll repeat the story: I used to work for Symbian circa 2001-2004, in technology procurement. I licensed the Opera browser, Java, fonts from Monotype, etc for inclusion in SymbianOS. I met Fleecy Moss and the Tao group people at that time. ... I met Fleecy in one of those meetings and asked him about Amiga, him not knowing I was an Amiga super-fan. He told me they were just using the name and had no plans to deliver on any of the things they had promised. They were hoping it would give them credibility with game publishers that's all. Since there was no such thing as a complete UAE at the time, and the ARM hardware of the day was nowhere near fast enough to run it if it had existed, there was no prospect of them making an Amiga emulator as a way to get lots of games to market quickly. And of course Amiga wasn't Nintendo - they didn't hold the rights to any games, the publishers did. I suspect Fleecy and Bill probably didn't explain that part to Kouri.

I never had the opportunity to meet or correspond with Fleecy, but in 2000 I did correspond with Bill McEwan regarding Amiga brand licensing for my proposed Amiga hand-held gaming hardware.

The hardware at the time was targeting native AGA compatibility via shrunken silicon, and the games distribution model took into account the diversified ownership of the existing Amiga games library.
To my surprise, Bill showed quite a bit of interest in my project, even though it in no way directly supported his Amiga Anywhere strategy.

Were they just trying to enrich themselves via the legacy capital still available in the Amiga brand, history, and community? I have no doubt. At the time it was still a rich source to be mined, and I guess to some degree I was attempting to do the same. But from my brief interactions with Bill, I got the genuine impression that he believed the digital world would be a better place with Amiga in it.

From all the current legacy Amiga value extractors, I do not get that same impression.

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@agami

Quote:

agami wrote: I never had the opportunity to meet or correspond with Fleecy, but in 2000 I did correspond with Bill McEwan regarding Amiga brand licensing for my proposed Amiga hand-held gaming hardware. The hardware at the time was targeting native AGA compatibility via shrunken silicon

This requires the schemas for the custom chips. Had Bill any chance to get them?

@Mobileconnect

I can't remember much about the MUI drag and drop system I have to be honest.
I can recall that I thought that the Workbench implementation, as you mention also, was too limited.
I can't remember in what ways without revisiting it.

I had written a new set of BOOPSI base classes called moveclass and zoneclass.
These worked in conjunction with a commodity I created called MouseZone.
It's job if I recall was to operate through the zones and communicate with the current move object.

At the time I had only written, or was in the process of writing:
- window.zone a window that can contain zones
- group.zone a way to group zones
- pointer.zone, and a zone that changes the mouse pointer whilst over
- complement.zone a zone that would invert
plus:
- icon.move draggable icons
- outline.move draggable outline
- and marquee.move draggable marquee

I guess I had the same Acorn thoughts as you?

Definitely the latter two were works in progress if I recall and possibly icon.move as well?
I had been working to make icon.move draggable across draggable screens boundaries with different configurations if I recall correctly.

I will have to dig out the old code sometime soon and add it up here...
Maybe it will be of some use towards making these features more universal?

Last edited by gonegahgah on 29-Sep-2024 at 04:59 AM.

@agami

I do like Taos (or intent) myself. But the Audiovisual Enviroment (ave) needed to be redesigned with a new approach, not in terms of just looks, but how it went about achieving things.

I got to hear the "semantic" word too, from Fleecy I think, in relation to another particular function that you haven't mentioned. It seems like a good idea to me. I can also see that a "semantic file system" might have had some relationship to it?

@gonegahgah

Wow I'd love to know more about this. any->any drag and drop rather than only workbench->any is definitely a missing feature on the platform.

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@agami

Quote:

agami wrote: That's called selling.

In that case, might I offer you a bridge?

There was no Plan B/C...Z, just Plan A aka scam anybody for everything.

Neither Fleecy or Bill had any clue about tech, Fleecy just knew enough buzzword to impress with even less understanding.

Everything they have done within Amino/AInc was to make them look just real enough to fool investors, real work towards a viable product was never done.

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Fleecy admirers

Quote:

Kronos wrote: Quote: NutsAboutAmiga wrote: They forgot the concept behind Amiga anywhere, was to put just enough lipstick on TAO's SW to fool investors. They clearly never had the intention nor the skills needed to pull of anything on the scope they claimed to.

I never saw something with a real Amiga legacy in the announcements of "Amiga Incompetent" they where bragging about their business plan, about Amiga being known for "high quality came content" for their clueless investors and about potential business partners to us.

TAO might had a chance when 'Java ME' wasn't widely available for PDAs or mobile phones but it lost it's value after mobile phones had it integrated and that was long before the appearance of iPhone.

Only thing that is left from this mess was Hyperion who where bound by contracts to the corps of "Amiga Neverwhere". Hyperion + AOS4 never had enough impact to get all the Ex Amiga users on board or gain new users.

It's time to move on, emulation of AOS3 on UAE and maybe some systems with an Amiga styled GUI might be something remaining in a niche of die hard hobbyists.

----

But if you look back about the topic of that thread, AOS5, TAO and even AOS4 are Off Topic and if not, we should seen it on the same level like WindowsNT (Hombre), Unix/QNX//Linux (AmigaUX, AmigaMCC, Amithlon, ...) , MorphOS AROS, ...

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 29-Sep-2024 at 11:54 AM.