Zune Enhancement Bounty opened!

[SysAdmin]

News from ShInKurO via amigaworld.net

Zune is an open source implementation of MUI which is included in AROS project, it is compatible with MUI3.8 APIs and it has some features which are missed on MUI3.8. In the latest years Zune was ported from AROS to AmigaOS3, and so the only MUI registered features and Zune modern features can be used on OS3 for free.
Zune is even ready to be ported on AmigaOS4.

Many OS4/AROS/OS3 users are interested to have software like OWB-MOS and Ambient on their systems, but these software use new API of MUI4, so the better way to have these software on OS4/AROS/OS3 would be to have MUI4 on these systems. Even many developers waited to have MUI4 API available for all Amiga systems.

However MUI author seems not to be interested to do a port of his latest framework version to OS4/AROS/OS3, so only MorphOS users can use these software and only MorphOS developers can use MUI4 for their software.

This new bounty is opened to goal Zune MUI4 compatible. In a similar form Zune can give to their users software like OWB-MorphOS and Ambient with few work on system where Zune is avaiable.
To third parts developers a Zune MUI4 compatible would give an easy way to write their software in a easy portable way between different Amiga flavours without too much work because they could use a only powerful framework API instead to workaround different behaviours of MUI3.8/MUI3.9/Zune.

http://www.power2people.org/bounty_057.html

Please donate!

[Cammy]

Updating Zune to MUI4 standards and porting to OS4 is an important step towards uniting and updating our four favourite OSs and gives all developers access to a much more attractive, modern GUI API.

This is not only a bounty to help Aros, but for classic Amiga, OS3 through UAE, OS4 and the X1000, and MorphOS too. Please consider donating towards this bounty if you have never been sure which bounties were worth contributing to. If accomplished, an enhanced Zune can bring our Amiga GUI into the 21st century.

[cicero790]

/

[kolla]

What's so modern and attractive about MUI?
Whatever happened to the old "MUI sucks!" mantra of late 90ies?
How does this bounty help MorphOS too?

I, for one, do not see the point for Zune to chase MUI4, and as I see it there is only one single reason why this issue came up in the first place, and that's OWB. It would be much better to start a new toolkit from scratch, "done right" as they say, and let MUI (and MorphOS OWB) sail its own seas.

Besides, I paid for MUI twice already back in the days

[cicero790]

Edit

[kolla]

Can you make such a toolkit? Well, my guess to that one is yes.

My guess would be no.

What would the implications and benefits be if this road was taken from a broader perspective?

Exactly, that's what I ask myself as well. I see plenty of unknown implications and not many benefits, really.

Wouldn't this mean that sharing among the three will be harder?

With MUI4 the problem is that they do not want to share, so why insist?

Imagine if there was someone like Fab on the OS4 side, and that we had a fantastic OWB implementation done with ReAction GUI - would be then be having a bounty for having ReAction reimplemented for AROS and MorphOS?

I still like AWeb alot, and think it would be very cool with AWeb for AROS, AWeb is opensource but relies on ClassACT/ReAction that is currently in the hands of Hyperion - perhaps I should set up a bounty for a bounty for a  ClassACT/ReAction clone... let's call it "CounterACT" or something.

[Cammy]

Trolling was to be expected, it's just a shame no one else put in a good word before it ruined the chances of this bounty getting anywhere.

I just hope people have enough scope to see that there aren't really any other realistic options for improving the Amiga's GUI API cross-platform. The topic was discussed for several weeks on AmigaWorld before the bounty was formed, a lot of current Amiga developers agree it's the best way forward.

[SamuraiCrow]

I'm in favor of the SuperZune.  My objections to MUI were reduced after version 3.3 bit the dust.  I just hope they do away with the .MCC files in favor of raw BOOPSI or, better yet, some faster substitute for BOOPSI.

Reaction only works on OS 3.5+ and is buggy on anything less than OS 4.  It's based on ClassAct which worked on OS 3+ but takes as much memory as MUI did.  All of the aforementioned solutiuons were and are closed-source so the bugfixes will never be backported to OS 3.

If I were going to support only one GUI for the Amiga-like OSs it would be AROS' Zune because it has been backported to OS 3 via AfaOS.

[kolla]

Trolling was to be expected

Q.e.D.

(if I make the above "e" uppercase, everything in this entry is made lowercase - weird)

[Karlos]

Perhaps it's time we moved seriously forwards and built a GUI framework that is OO without relying on 25 year old notions on how that is achieved.

BOOPSI was far ahead of it's time conceptually but the implementation is not ideal. A simple function pointer call is faster than a BOOPSI method dispatch, even on a 7MHz 68000.

[kolla]

I'm in favor of the SuperZune.
...
If I were going to support only one GUI for the Amiga-like OSs it would be AROS' Zune because it has been backported to OS 3 via AfaOS.

And I'm all for that, but this bounty is not really about Zune - it's a bounty for MorphOS OWB with Zune.

Is OWB really a proper acid test for MUI4 compatibility?

Is there perhaps a dedicated acid test application for MUI4 compatibility somewhere?

What happens when MorphOS moves MUI4 further and Fab starts using new MUI4 features that have not been implemented in Zune?

But my bottom line question is, why let MorphOS dictate the future development of AROS? If Zune is supposed to be _the_ toolkit for AROS, it just doesn't make sense to let it be dictaded by the whims of MorphOS developers.

[eb15]

The Zune upgrade bounty exists because AROS has decided to use Zune as the defacto GUI toolkit, and updating the API should help to port whatever apps depend on newer features (I still haven't seen a good list of what those features are anywhere...)

And yes there are those who would love an open source clone of the reaction API to make porting code easier to AROS from OS4.  Anyone can start a bounty like that if they want to.  It doesn't mean anyone will actually take it up though.

Personally I'd like something new and different, that focuses on integrating outline fonts, stretchable bitmaps and structured drawing primitives (for more resolution independence and printing support), with the possibility of animation and 3D engine enhancements for extra eye candy appealing multimedia stuff.

[Vulture]

I still think it'd be better/faster if we got just the mui3.9->4 wrappers needed for OWB to be ported to OS4 first THEN improve Zune.

[itix]

What's so modern and attractive about MUI?

Developing UI without GUI builder is relatively easy with MUI. Developer does not use fixed coordinates but defines how GUI elements are placed relatively to each other. This leads to another advantage: with MUI it is easy to design dynamic and resizable UI. I have done UIs with Visual Studio using Windows Forms and it is supereasy but developing resizable UI is tedious job if there are more than few UI objects. It gets even more tedious if you wish to add UI objects dynamically.

In Windows Forms adding any random UI object to ListBox is apparently no go. In MUI listviews you can add any UI object to listview, tho it is not really straightforward in MUI either.

It also helps that MUI has OO design (being BOOPSI based) and you can setup notifications to do automatically something without ever calling actual user code. I.e. you can define window close event which automatically closes your program. Unlike on other Amiga UI toolkits you dont need stupid window/gadget/menu IDs in an eventloop to respond user actions.

What MUI lacks is C# support and C# Mono port for MorphOS There are also many points where MUI would need modernization but considering limitations of Amiga systems it does not in my opinion lack that much compared to Windows Forms, for example. To modernize MUI, Amiga system must be modernized too. The drawing system is very limited on Amiga.

Whatever happened to the old "MUI sucks!" mantra of late 90ies?

Who said that?

I, for one, do not see the point for Zune to chase MUI4, and as I see it there is only one single reason why this issue came up in the first place, and that's OWB. It would be much better to start a new toolkit from scratch, "done right" as they say, and let MUI (and MorphOS OWB) sail its own seas.

There would be no existing applications and everything has to be written from scratch.

Imagine if there was someone like Fab on the OS4 side, and that we had a fantastic OWB implementation done with ReAction GUI - would be then be having a bounty for having ReAction reimplemented for AROS and MorphOS?

Not really. Reaction still encourages this old school eventloop with huge switch/case for each UI element. I took a look at OWB-OS4 eventloop and I can understand why Joerg is not willing to extend its UI. Every UI event is handled manually using switch/case. Compare this to OWB-MUI where you virtually dont have an eventloop. Zune btw made it even better - there is none. You only call Zune method which wont return until application is terminated. But you still can have an event loop (MUI style and switch/case style) if you wish.

[krashan]

Zune btw made it even better - there is none. You only call Zune method which wont return until application is terminated.

This is not such a big deal. In my MUI application skeleton I have a subclass of MUIC_Application, which has APPM_MainLoop() method. It behaves exactly the same and has no more than 20 lines of code :-).