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Offline Romanujan

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Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #44 on: September 27, 2018, 10:34:44 AM »
:) There is NO NEED anymore for any Kind of Boing-whatever.... 3.1.4 is much more newer.

I assumed that OS 3.1.4 won't contain most BB2 updates (Reaction, Amplifier, and several others) - in fact, I assumed it won't contain these components at all... do you have access to 3.1.4 beta to confirm this, or is that statement just your guess?
 

Offline Rotzloeffel

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #45 on: September 27, 2018, 11:02:10 AM »
I assumed that OS 3.1.4 won't contain most BB2 updates (Reaction, Amplifier, and several others) - in fact, I assumed it won't contain these components at all... do you have access to 3.1.4 beta to confirm this, or is that statement just your guess?

Yes, I have Access to 3.1.4..... I talked about the ROM-updates, so maybe I missunderstood.... for these Special 3.9 addons of course no, they are not included.

Reaction is Copyrighted by Haage&Partner I think.....
Save Planet Earth! It is the only one in the galaxy with fresh and cold beer :laughing:
 

guest11527

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Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #46 on: September 27, 2018, 11:25:19 AM »
I assumed that OS 3.1.4 won't contain most BB2 updates (Reaction, Amplifier, and several others)
It will not contain any extternal contributions that were made to 3.9, nor anything H&P developed in-house. However, fixes to Os core components that arrived through the BoingBags are included to the degree we could, either directly, or indirectly by re-checking the defect reports from back then and re-integrating appropriate bug fixes.

For example, H&P shipped in 3.9 a customized printer.device, which we did not have, so we had to restart the work on this component, which turned out to be a much longer and tedious job than we originally hoped. This is probably another story...

Workbench was also updated by H&P, but there is a later version from Olaf, plus more bug fixes, we include. So the workbench is in a post 3.9 state, and the printer.device is, too. The 3.9 version for example never worked reliable with my Nec P6 (or actually, any slow printer), but the new version does.

Reaction and components using reaction are not included, though. We don't have reaction.
 

Offline Thomas

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #47 on: September 27, 2018, 12:17:33 PM »
I assumed that OS 3.1.4 won't contain most BB2 updates (Reaction, Amplifier, and several others) - in fact, I assumed it won't contain these components at all... do you have access to 3.1.4 beta to confirm this, or is that statement just your guess?

You are right. 3.1.4 is an update for OS 3.1. OS 3.5/3.9 components are not included.

However, some common components like icon.library, workbench.library, scsi.device and such got updates beyond those of OS 3.9, so you should use these instead.

I think all of the components of the AmigaOS ROM Update received updates, so you should remove/disable the ROM update and use the disk-based/LoadModule'd versions instead.

IMHO mixing OS 3.9 and 3.1.4 is not a good idea. It's for version-number-junkies only. But I'm also happy with OS 3.9 BB2, I never felt the desire to update beyond it. So my opinion might not count that much.

Offline bubbob42

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #48 on: September 27, 2018, 01:16:59 PM »
IMHO mixing OS 3.9 and 3.1.4 is not a good idea. It's for version-number-junkies only.

You forget the updated shell commands which have been updated to tolerate long filenames and large harddisks, among other bugfixes. Or the printer stuff.

I'd recommend updating almost everything, except for the prefs maybe. Those have been overhauled to offer just the functions of their 3.9 counterparts, except for using GadTools instead of ReAction. And even that might change in the future.
 

Offline Romanujan

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Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #49 on: September 27, 2018, 01:23:38 PM »
IMHO mixing OS 3.9 and 3.1.4 is not a good idea. It's for version-number-junkies only. But I'm also happy with OS 3.9 BB2, I never felt the desire to update beyond it. So my opinion might not count that much.

Well, I like Amplifier (IMHO it feels better than AmigaAMP). And I don't mind the latest Reaction sitting there on my SD card - it's probably good for compatibility. I already got rid of several OS 3.9 components I consider bloatware (like the dock included with the system, I forgot it's name).
 

Offline number6

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #50 on: September 27, 2018, 02:44:01 PM »
I assumed that OS 3.1.4 won't contain most BB2 updates (Reaction, Amplifier, and several others)
It will not contain any extternal contributions that were made to 3.9, nor anything H&P developed in-house. However, fixes to Os core components that arrived through the BoingBags are included to the degree we could, either directly, or indirectly by re-checking the defect reports from back then and re-integrating appropriate bug fixes.

For example, H&P shipped in 3.9 a customized printer.device, which we did not have, so we had to restart the work on this component, which turned out to be a much longer and tedious job than we originally hoped. This is probably another story...

Workbench was also updated by H&P, but there is a later version from Olaf, plus more bug fixes, we include. So the workbench is in a post 3.9 state, and the printer.device is, too. The 3.9 version for example never worked reliable with my Nec P6 (or actually, any slow printer), but the new version does.

Reaction and components using reaction are not included, though. We don't have reaction.

Did you or Olaf speak to Detlef Würkner (tetisoft)?
I only mention this because we went through most of these issues concerning printer during AmigaOS4.x development, and he surely did a lot of work on this.

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guest11527

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Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #51 on: September 27, 2018, 03:24:25 PM »
Did you or Olaf speak to Detlef Würkner (tetisoft)?
I only mention this because we went through most of these issues concerning printer during AmigaOS4.x development, and he surely did a lot of work on this.
It is more complicated like this. We had the original 3.0 (v39) printer.device, but this was not an option because it did not support RTG prining. Then I looked into the Os 4.0 version, but this was neither an option because it had so many Os 4-isms that it would have been a lot of work to even make it working back on the legacy system. Then, we decided for an interim release, one of the drilled-up versions before it became an Os 4 version. That did compile, but...

Up to then, I believed that graphics was the worst part of the Os. I learned I was wrong. It is really hard to say, but there were probably more changes than there was code to begin with, and the printer.device we have now is certainly in a much better shape than the Os 4 version. To name a few:

- Of all the printer.devices I have seen, only the v39 version and now the v45 version handles double-buffering correctly.

- Aborting a printer.device request was broken in one way or another in all versions I revisited. Traditionally, the printer.devices handled "paper out" and "printer not connected" just the wrong way round, and this was just one problem. Another was that not all requests were terminated (v39) or some requests were terminated but such that the abortion was in the middle of a ESC sequence such that you had to turn the printer off and on again to be able to continue printing.

- All the Os 3.9 printer drivers, but none of the v39 (Os 3.0) printer drivers returned the wrong result code from initialization. Nobody noticed since none of the printer devices actually checked that the driver could actually initialize itself successfully. In case it could not, the code would just crash right away.

- All printer devices from Os 3.9 on did not buffer printer drivers. Whenever you started a new print job, it insisted to reload the driver from disk.

- Scaling was broken, that is, if you printed with some printer drivers, the graphics was simply not scaled at all, or scaled wrongly.

- Floyd-Steinberg dithering overrun the buffer and then left artefacts at the right edge of the printed graphics.

- Rotated HAM printing did not work as the color information was not carried over correctly.

... The list goes on and on like this. The whole printer device, including the Os 4.0 version, is a medium-sized nightmare. We worked on this about six weeks, such that the release note "Printer device  updated (oh no, not again!)" became a running gag in the team.

I hope we edged out the majority of bugs by now - at least we haven't found any new ones anymore, but the printer was really the buggiest part of all. In terms of features, we may be behind the 3.9 version (no fancy preview) but in terms of correctness, I believe we are well ahead of v39, and pretty much ahead of the Os 4 version as well. This thing was really beasty.

The bad part is: Once you have done a job like this, it looks like "evident and obvious" that things "simply work". Be aware it wasn't. There is nothing particularly fancy in 3.1.4 that makes it "stand out". So, no eye candy, no advanced features. Just working.
 
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Offline number6

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #52 on: September 27, 2018, 03:38:36 PM »
@Thomas Richter

Thank you very much for your detailed response.
One related item popped up in our long discussion during OS4.x work performed  by Detlef:

Are there any known conflicts with Turboprint?

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guest11527

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Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #53 on: September 27, 2018, 03:47:39 PM »
Are there any known conflicts with Turboprint?

I haven't tested, but the interface of the printer.device is still the very same interface CBM defined in v39, except that we have now more than one possible back-end printer we can serve (as in 3.9). Thus, clearly, you cannot use the 3.1.4. printer drivers for TurboPrint, but that is old news and was always like this. Other than that, I do not quite see in how far it could conflict. TurboPrint just replaces the printer.device completely, so how could it conflict?
 

Offline number6

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #54 on: September 27, 2018, 03:57:51 PM »
Are there any known conflicts with Turboprint?

I haven't tested, but the interface of the printer.device is still the very same interface CBM defined in v39, except that we have now more than one possible back-end printer we can serve (as in 3.9). Thus, clearly, you cannot use the 3.1.4. printer drivers for TurboPrint, but that is old news and was always like this. Other than that, I do not quite see in how far it could conflict. TurboPrint just replaces the printer.device completely, so how could it conflict?

re:prefs

Quote
TurboPrint installed? IIRC it messes with the prefs

Forgive me if I'm a bit behind as of any status change since 2006.

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guest11527

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Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #55 on: September 27, 2018, 04:28:21 PM »
re:prefs

Oh, the preferences format. Yes, 3.9 used an integrated overall preferences with graphics and printer in one single file. 3.1.4 supports both, and by default, uses the 3.1 preferences system. So that aspect should be fine. But I have not tried, really.

There is an entry on the FAQ (as soon as 3.1.4 is released) that covers how to handle preferences. If you want to continue to use the 3.9 preferences, you need to delete one file.
 

Offline number6

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #56 on: September 27, 2018, 04:43:21 PM »
@Thomas Richter

Different topic. Pardon me is this has been mentioned here or on eab, but it's related in the sense of "sources".
Has a new icon editor been developed, or is the intent to use iconedit as it stands?

This is not a big issue to me, but I get questions...

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Offline olsen

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #57 on: September 27, 2018, 05:03:15 PM »
Did you or Olaf speak to Detlef Würkner (tetisoft)?

Not to my knowledge. Porting code from OS4 is a thorny issue indeed.

Some of the earlier work on OS4 (2003-2007) was still built and tested on 68k machines before it was ported and developed further on PPC hardware. This is code which is both useful or interesting and likely to port easiest, but it is also code which has not been touched in more than 10 years. I still believe it would be a good idea to look at what we have in the archives, but code review and rework are guaranteed to follow. As small as the team was, this was not always an option.

Another constraint results from the code ownership. We can only work with material for which the author and owner consents that it may be adapted. So far we have limited ourselves to material for which the author's consent had already been granted or was easily obtained. Please do not assume that the "easy way" was at all easy in the end. It was "just" a trade-off in terms of time and manpower. Even something seemingly simple such as the whole set of tools and drivers for mass storage devices (e.g. scsi.device, HDToolbox, ProdPrep) quickly ballooned and required that we seek advice before finding an acceptable solution to apply fixes and enhancements. This kind of thing happened again and again over time. And the HDToolbox saga, for example, still is not over -- some of the work we began has in fact turned into research projects.

If anything, the Amiga operating system and its components are, or have become over the course of a decade, more demanding of finding clever ways to resolve their shortcomings, or to find robust workarounds.
« Last Edit: September 27, 2018, 05:06:11 PM by olsen »
 

Offline number6

Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #58 on: September 27, 2018, 05:12:21 PM »
Did you or Olaf speak to Detlef Würkner (tetisoft)?

Not to my knowledge. Porting code from OS4 is a thorny issue indeed.

Some of the earlier work on OS4 (2003-2007) was still built and tested on 68k machines before it was ported and developed further on PPC hardware. This is code which is both useful or interesting and likely to port easiest, but it is also code which has not been touched in more than 10 years. I still believe it would be a good idea to look at what we have in the archives, but code review and rework are guaranteed to follow. As small as the team was, this was not always an option.

Another constraint results from the code ownership. We can only work with material for which the author and owner consents that it may be adapted. So far we have limited ourselves to material for which the author's consent had already been granted or was easily obtained. Please do not assume that the "easy way" was at all easy in the end. It was "just" a trade-off in terms of time and manpower. Even something seemingly simple such as the whole set of tools and drivers for mass storage devices (e.g. scsi.device, HDToolbox, ProdPrep) quickly ballooned and required that we seek advice before finding an acceptable solution to apply fixes and enhancements. This kind of thing happened again and again over time. And the HDToolbox saga, for example, still is not over -- some of the work we began has in fact turned into research projects.

If anything, the Amiga operating system and its components are, or have become over the course of a decade, more demanding of finding clever ways to resolve their shortcomings, or to find robust workarounds.

Right. I'm aware of that and obviously am aware of the code ownership restraints. You are to be commended for finding workarounds.

I only mentioned/linked to detlef because at that time we seem to have encountered similar issues to what you are discussing...lack of sources, working with a binary only, issues with prefs, etc. I just happen to see a lot of parallels in the struggle.
I thought perhaps if all of detlef's postings from that era were examined, you might find something helpful, or perhaps an issue not considered yet.

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guest11527

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Re: The Os 3.1.4 Thread
« Reply #59 from previous page: September 27, 2018, 05:35:55 PM »
Different topic. Pardon me is this has been mentioned here or on eab, but it's related in the sense of "sources".
Has a new icon editor been developed, or is the intent to use iconedit as it stands?
Neither - nor. We did simply not have the capacity to develop a new one from scratch, nor did we have the sources of the 3.9 one, nor reaction available. So, what happened in the end is what happened with many components: We took what we had (the v40 version) and fixed as many bugs as we could find. Which were also a number, such obvious ones as forgetting a WaitBlit() such that the editor rendered nonsense, broken picture import functions, incorrect handling of rtg screens and a couple of others I would need to look up in the release notes.

This is pretty much the theme of 3.1.4: It looks very much like 3.1 looked, but we tried however our best to iron out all bugs we could find. There are only very few components we did not touch - some of the shell commands did not require a change. Probably the half of them has been updated to support the new features such as working softlinks or long file names.

The problem is: If you have so few active developers, and only partial access to sources, it already takes a long time to review all of the Os. In this case, almost three years, "all in".