@Varthall

Quote:

What I don't really want to see on OS4 is more than one GUI toolkit and one type of desktop, with some programs using one solution and others another. The OS should follow one direction, so there should be one official interface

There's already more than one interface being used. The current situation is that any cross-platform Amiga software uses a crippled old version of MUI, and any OS4 only software uses an inferior toolkit that was the wrong official choice from Day 1.

Quote:

That's true, but that's valid only for those who develop on more than one Amiga flavours.

But can you see the implication of what you're saying?

1) There shouldn't be competing toolkits on OS4.
2) MUI is only for cross-platform development.

Therefore:

3) It's better not have to have cross-platform apps.

Yet the situation with OWB is a good example of why our platforms can't survive as islands. We *need* to be cross-platform. IMHO, if Hyperion won't support it, then the OS4 community need to what the Amiga community has done for decades, and do it their own way.

Chris

Last edited by clebin on 21-Aug-2010 at 02:30 PM.

@Varthall

Sure, but it was only an example, if you want dev with Amiga APIs (BOOPSI/MUI, AHI, Exec, AmigaDOS) and you want have a similar UI you are actually oblidged to use MUI.
If you want use a foreign API (XUL+XBL+XPCOM) you can use Mozilla framework, and perhaps you will see your software on OS4 work in right way.

Making Zune compatible with mui4 is verry, verry welcome. And then porting it to OS4 replacing MUI3.9 would be a must. As said porting apps from mos/aros to OS4 and the other way would save much time. I really hope that this comes in reality as i see mui4 wont come for os4.

Please help us to better define this bounty

@Varthall

>I have misunderstood you for the "Zune as main toolkit" part, sorry about that, and I >see now I was off topic with my post.

On AFA zune is too not the main part, because MUI miss many features and so programs use undocument features.

For MUI4 is told it is not 100% compatible to MUI3.8.So best is use zune together with MUI 3.8

zune can use on AFA when a programmer open the zune.library, or a user add a program with the zune promoter(thats a simple commodity that change all open library muimaster.library to zune.library when a program is in white list)

Scalos for example work in that way.first it call
OpenLibrary("zune.library",0)

if that work it use zune.if that not work it do
OpenLibrary("muimaster.library,0)

and use MUI

@ShInKurO

The problem with MUI is if author updates to MUI 5, we have to catch up again.

We have to follow MUI features and limitations.

MUI is for me hard to develop for.

If one wants to create a new GUI thats open source I prefere a platform independant GUI.

Use XML, like XUL.

I really like the idea of an app that can have 'plugins' to enhance it.

Failing that, use a script like LUA and wrap classes for functions to work on Amigaoid systems.

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@ShInKurO

This is a great idea IMHO !

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Just my 2 cts...

IMO Amiga UI's have always been a mess. At one point you could have 3 or 4 different looking programs running because of different GUI's used by them. And a couple that were using their own.. (IFX, TV-Paint etc)

This continues today. Very bad for developers.... very anoying for users.... A laughing stock for non Anigans.

Timberwolf.... uses yet another UI. I know why, but it IS anoying.
Cygnix.... Blah....
And so on....

I hate that ! CONSISTENCY people !!!!

Something has to change. Wish I had a solution.....

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@clebin
Quote:

Quote: What I don't really want to see on OS4 is more than one GUI toolkit and one type of desktop, with some programs using one solution and others another. The OS should follow one direction, so there should be one official interface There's already more than one interface being used. The current situation is that any cross-platform Amiga software uses a crippled old version of MUI, and any OS4 only software uses an inferior toolkit that was the wrong official choice from Day 1.

My point was valid in case Zune was to be considered an official toolkit together with Reaction or its successor, and included/supported by Hyperion. Since this bounty would consider Zune as a third party library, my opinion is a bit different now.

Quote:

Quote: That's true, but that's valid only for those who develop on more than one Amiga flavours. But can you see the implication of what you're saying? 1) There shouldn't be competing toolkits on OS4. 2) MUI is only for cross-platform development. Therefore: 3) It's better not have to have cross-platform apps. Yet the situation with OWB is a good example of why our platforms can't survive as islands. We *need* to be cross-platform. IMHO, if Hyperion won't support it, then the OS4 community need to what the Amiga community has done for decades, and do it their own way.

You need to make a choice here: either start using common components, and at the end merge all the OSes in one OS, or continue to follow each own's path. I think that the first solution is utopistic, seeing how different goals have each OS developer's community and how different are the user's wishes.

Varthall

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@Varthall

Quote:

That's true, but that's valid only for those who develop on more than one Amiga flavours.

It's valid for the communities as a whole. The cost for the community is lost developer time that could be spent actually writing more apps.

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@all

imho since we need software from anywhere, a thing like that was a must! :)

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@Metalheart

Quote:

Metalheart wrote: Just my 2 cts... IMO Amiga UI's have always been a mess. At one point you could have 3 or 4 different looking programs running because of different GUI's used by them. And a couple that were using their own.. (IFX, TV-Paint etc) This continues today. Very bad for developers.... very anoying for users.... A laughing stock for non Anigans. Timberwolf.... uses yet another UI. I know why, but it IS anoying. Cygnix.... Blah.... And so on.... I hate that ! CONSISTENCY people !!!! Something has to change. Wish I had a solution.....

Really? SO does that mean you are not in support of this ZUNE idea then?

Cheers

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@vidarh

Quote:

vidarh wrote: @Varthall Quote: That's true, but that's valid only for those who develop on more than one Amiga flavours. It's valid for the communities as a whole. The cost for the community is lost developer time that could be spent actually writing more apps.

Only for those willing to cross-develop apps, developing and maintaining two toolkits at the same time is also IMHO lost developer time.

Varthall

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@Varthall

Quote:

Only for those willing to cross-develop apps, developing and maintaining two toolkits at the same time is also IMHO lost developer time.

You miss the point. Those who cross-develop apps today waste a lot of time trying to target multiple versions because of the UI situation amongst other reasons. Those developers combined waste far more time in the long run than the (one time) cost of making Zune catch up to MUI4 + the (much smaller) ongoing effort to maintain and bugfix it going forwards.

That wasted time is significant in a community this small. It's not only people who care about cross platforms apps that lose out, but *everyone* since those developers could otherwise spend that time on writing more apps or improving functionality of their apps instead of having to mess around with porting.

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@Gebrochen

Sure, I'm all for it ! Just wanted to spill my guts about Amigas UI's.

Timberwolf, great !
Cygnix, great !
MUI, great !
Any software whatever UI, great !

But the consistency....... Oh my ffffffff god !?!?!?!

But i guess you don't agree then ?

Last edited by Metalheart on 21-Aug-2010 at 07:14 PM.

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@vidarh

Quote:

vidarh wrote: @Varthall You miss the point. Those who cross-develop apps today waste a lot of time trying to target multiple versions because of the UI situation amongst other reasons. Those developers combined waste far more time in the long run than the (one time) cost of making Zune catch up to MUI4 + the (much smaller) ongoing effort to maintain and bugfix it going forwards. That wasted time is significant in a community this small. It's not only people who care about cross platforms apps that lose out, but *everyone* since those developers could otherwise spend that time on writing more apps or improving functionality of their apps instead of having to mess around with porting.

I think you are missing the point: in order to get what you are thinking, there must be someone developing and maintaining Zune for OS4, while there are already others developing the official UI, be it Reaction or any successor. You have basically two developers (or two groups of developers) developing the same functionality in two different, incompatible projects. This time could be better spent by helping with the development of the official UI, or by writing more apps as you mentioned. Another point is that the cross-development issue isn't such for every programmers, even if it's possible to do so with MUI3 some coders choose to program for OS4 only anyway.

Another point: some OS4 developers have already stated that they are not concerned with API compatibility with other Amiga flavors. How can you guarantee that cross-development will always be feasible with no major code modifications, and that future changes in OS4's API will not affect the OS4 Zune port?

Varthall

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@Varthall

Quote:

You have basically two developers (or two groups of developers) developing the same functionality in two different, incompatible projects. This time could be better spent by helping with the development of the official UI, or by writing more apps as you mentioned.

The people *likely* to work on Zune are people working on AROS, or people that want or need cross platform compatibility, not Hyperion or OS4 developers that worry about ReAction. To believe that if the people that are working on Zune or are interested in working on Zune would otherwise spend time on ReAction is unrealistic.

So it's not realistically a choice between having those people work on ReAction or Zune. It's a choice between having them/us work on bringing an upgraded Zune to all of the Amiga-like platforms, or not working on either.

Personally, for example, I've not the slightest interest in working on ReAction, even though I do want an OS4 machine - putting effort into a toolkit that limits the audience for any apps I'd write with it to just a fraction of an already tiny community simply isn't the slightest bit interesting. Zune on the other hand, I will contribute to if I can, whether with actual development work or contributions to bounties, because it helps me as a developer reduce the effort in making the programs I want to write and port available to a larger part of this community.

And for those of us who are interested in cross platform compatibility, any effort in adding MUI4 capabilities to Zune will pay off *many times over* in reduced porting efforts simply because the vast majority of the work is a one off large lift, instead of having to duplicate work time and time again to rewrite the UI of nearly every app we want to make cross platform (and/or settle for more limited feature sets).

Quote:

Another point is that the cross-development issue isn't such for every programmers, even if it's possible to do so with MUI3 some coders choose to program for OS4 only anyway.

That's entirely irrelevant. The point is that as long as there are *anyone* that cares about writing cross platform software, anything that makes the life of those developers harder effectively means wasted effort for the entire community.

Every hour I, or any other developer, have to spend on working around incompatibilities or missing features in one or other of the platforms is one hour less spent on adding new functionality or writing new apps or fixing more bugs or porting more software from other platforms that would benefit everyone instead of having to be redone for one or more of the Amiga-related OSs.

There's good reason to believe that that time *very quickly* adds up to far outstrip the effort to add MUI4 features to Zune, or any other efforts to improve cross platform. Given the huge amount of time that's been wasted on multiple OWB ports, for example, that alone is probably a demonstration of this.

Whether you care only about OS4, or MOS or AROS or classic AmigaOS, an improved Zune (or improvements to any other aspect of cross platform compatibility) will increase the amount of software available for your platform by virtue of making it easier to target more than one of the platforms.

Quote:

Another point: some OS4 developers have already stated that they are not concerned with API compatibility with other Amiga flavors. How can you guarantee that cross-development will always be feasible with no major code modifications, and that future changes in OS4's API will not affect the OS4 Zune port?

The only way for them to prevent cross platform development from working would be to massively break backwards compatibility in ways that would pretty much make OS4 not resemble AmigaOS at all. In that case they consign themselves to total irrelevance.

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@thread

This isn't the first time I've proposed writing a hosted AROS for the other Amiga-like OSs. It would be the least common denominator for most stuff. There are already hosted AROS versions for Windows and Linux. If I knew enough about my Mac, I'd write one for it also. The fact that AROS is open-source means that all aspects of AROS are available for the other OSs.

--off-topic rant--
I think that Hyperion has overextended themselves with their most ambitious project and cannot bring AmigaOS up-to-date enough quickly enough to establish OS 4.x as a viable alternative OS to the mainstream. I don't give a rat's behind about the PPC vs. Intel vs. ARM vs. softcore debate. We need to find a way to pool resources among the Amiga-like OSs.

@Samurai_Crow

Quote:

I don't give a rat's behind about the PPC vs. Intel vs. ARM vs. softcore debateg

What was that about years ago... I mean that virtual CPU stuff ? Running the OS written for the virtual CPU on almost every hardware for wich the translator (emulator) existed ?

It wasn't Transmeta, was it that TAO stuff ?

Well, anyway that would have solved the CPU choice dilemma....

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