new os3.x software ?

[guest7146]

Cammy that is a work of art. I too like many it seems have decided that running OS3.1 is better overall than 3.9 . Just bought the developer cd 2.1 so I should be coding soon for the Amiga myself. I do a little php etc, so "how hard can it be??!?!"

I'm in a similar boat.  I've also just bought the developer CD, and my background is embedded programming (C, assembly), plus I know a bit of Windows application programming in C++ (though I'm not well practiced in this respect).

I'm also looking to get into Amiga programming over the Summer.

Apple_Hammer

[matthey]

@DavidF215
Actually, Payback is pretty CPU bound since it is a 3D game.  Having a better compiler would make a HUGE difference.  As for GCC vs. SAS/C, they both optimize code but neither produces near-perfect code so comparing those two might not be the best idea.  The main advantage of SAS/C is its top-notch debugger.

Have you tried BDebug by Ralph Schmidt in the Barfly archive on Aminet? It's very powerful but still has a bit of a learning curve...
http://aminet.net/dev/asm/BarflyDisk2_00.lha

I used to use Metascope which is the friendliest debugger but It sadly doesn't support the 68060.

If somebody would offer a bounty for porting LLVM and its associated versions of GCC and the Clang C compiler to OS 3.x, I'd gladly take it.  It doesn't have a decent source-level debugger yet but that can be left for a later bounty.

That would be interesting and probably easier to work with than GCC but it doesn't look like it supports 68k? Wouldn't that be a lot of work? It would be nice for the PPC Amigas.

[chris]

How complicated would it be to code a MUI front end for NetSurf?

I know nothing of MUI, but I am pretty well versed in the NetSurf frontend code.  Firstly, Itix has already written a MUI frontend for NetSurf for MorphOS - however NetSurf has changed a fair bit so it will need updating.  I have no idea how feature-rich or complete that version is, having never seen it.  Knowing nothing about MUI, I couldn't begin to say how much work it is to back-port to OS3 as well as make the necessary changes to bring it back in line with trunk.

Starting from scratch, a native basic working port of NetSurf should take a matter of weeks.  I would of course rather see one based on my OS4 version, as it aids bug-fixing and development for me.  Back-porting the OS4 version to OS3.9 shouldn't be massively complicated, however some routines might need to be completely rewritten.  Pre-OS3.9, I'm not sure which functions and features were in ClassAct.

and dont forget that Netsurf currently lacks javascript !

Slowly being worked on.  There's nothing to stop you helping

Somebody mentioned memory usage.  There is a problem with the cache in current versions of NetSurf which is in the process of being rewritten.  That's causing extreme amounts of memory to be used on some sites.

Chris

[matthey]

@DavidF215 & AppleHammer
I would recommend using C and VBCC for any new Amiga projects. It's the easiest to install, generates pretty good code and getting better, and it's supported on all flavors of the Amiga. Have a problem or bug then drop Frank Wille an e-mail. If you need C++ then probably your best option is GCC for now but realize it's going to be very slow and eat a lot of memory.

vbcc web site: http://sun.hasenbraten.de/vbcc/
Amiga coding help can be found here...
http://utilitybase.com/
http://eab.abime.net/forumdisplay.php?f=37

[ChaosLord]

@Matthey

BDebug / Metascope can debug C source?!?

[DavidF215]

@DavidF215 & AppleHammer
I would recommend using C and VBCC for any new Amiga projects. It's the easiest to install, generates pretty good code and getting better, and it's supported on all flavors of the Amiga. Have a problem or bug then drop Frank Wille an e-mail. If you need C++ then probably your best option is GCC for now but realize it's going to be very slow and eat a lot of memory.

vbcc web site: http://sun.hasenbraten.de/vbcc/
Amiga coding help can be found here...
http://utilitybase.com/
http://eab.abime.net/forumdisplay.php?f=37

But my code is already in C++.

Okay, so I've read through the Amiga Developer Docs (http://amigadev.elowar.com/), but I couldn't find functions to load an image (i.e. a PNG or a BMP) from a file. I've also read through the old ACM and Cmanuals, but nothing there either.  ??

What would be the AmigaOS3.x native equivalent of the SDL function:
 SDL_Surface *Image=SDL_LoadBMP("image.bmp");    
...to load a BMP image as, I presume, an Amiga bitmap?

[Tumbleweed]

Starting from scratch, a native basic working port of NetSurf should take a matter of weeks.  
Chris

So if a bounty were to be raised for a MUI version of NetSurf it wouldn't take too long for someone to produce some results?

If that's so then I'd be up for contributing to a bounty for a MUI version of NetSurf.

Weed

[Gulliver]

If that's so then I'd be up for contributing to a bounty for a MUI version of NetSurf.

Weed

+1

[SamuraiCrow]

But my code is already in C++.

Okay, so I've read through the Amiga Developer Docs (http://amigadev.elowar.com/), but I couldn't find functions to load an image (i.e. a PNG or a BMP) from a file. I've also read through the old ACM and Cmanuals, but nothing there either.  ??

You should be looking at the documentation for Datatypes.library.  It loads files of many types.  Picture.datatype is the mainly used datatype.  You don't have to care if the filetype is IFF, GIF, PNG, or BMP as long as the user has the appropriate datatypes to load them.

[chris]

So if a bounty were to be raised for a MUI version of NetSurf it wouldn't take too long for someone to produce some results?

There was some discussion on the dev list about this very topic, unfortunately I can't find the emails where times were quoted for how long it takes to port to a new platform, but it was a matter of weeks (a recent Java port took something like two days).  IIRC I got the OS4 version running usefully in less than two months.

If somebody starts from the OS4 version rather than from scratch they can probably do it quicker and retain most of the features.

Please can I request that if this bounty is created, there are conditions to "join the NetSurf-dev mailing list" and "get the source merged back into SVN".

[B00tDisk]

@Fanscale

Well you shouldn't pirate anything just because it doesn't fall within your budget -that's like saying "I can't afford that car, so I will steal it instead".

Except, of course, for the part where it is totally not like stealing a car, which is all of it.  That is to say, it's entirely not at all like stealing a car.

[B00tDisk]

You know, it comes to me that the m68k linux development community might be a place to start.  A lot of more "modernized" linux apps are very dependency-heavy, so that might be problematic, but still, its an idea.  There's sources out there to be ported!

[kolla]

But m68k linux devs live in an alternate reality where gcc 4 does not make code that is so much worse than gcc 2.95.3, so I don't think there is much to gain from that.

Yes I have been doing some experimentation, compiling up the very same programs using different version of gcc (2.95.3, 3.4.6 and 4.2.4) and the resulting binaries are similar in size, allthough the ones made with 4.2.4 are typically a little smaller, and the speed is pretty much identical. Newer gcc requires updated (e)glibc, and that is also coming RSN, so I'm looking forward to gcc 4.5.

[DavidF215]

You should be looking at the documentation for Datatypes.library.  It loads files of many types.  Picture.datatype is the mainly used datatype.  You don't have to care if the filetype is IFF, GIF, PNG, or BMP as long as the user has the appropriate datatypes to load them.

Thanks. Guess I'll just buy the Dev CD if I can find one.

I've been re-reading the Amiga C Encyclopedia and Amiga was ahead of its time. It was DirectX before DirectX was even thought about. Nicely integrated Library system. It gives evidence that a good product can fail with poor marketing.

[SamuraiCrow]

The Dev CD is good for up to AmigaOS 3.5.  If you need 3.9 documentation you can look at http://utilitybase.com/ref/?action=List&funcgroup=AmigaOS instead.

[nicholas]

Just for the hell of it, I thought I'd post the latest screenshot of my A1200's Workbench. It's running in 16 colours so it's nice and responsive, and you can see both GlowIcons and NewIcons, the drawers for the Christmas game competition games, icons for SabreMSN and AmiMSN (two up-to-date OS3 MSN clients), and Tiny Invaders.



I'm running in PAL High Res Interlace with as much Overscan as my LCD TV will display, running through an RGB-S-Video adapter from AmigaManiac, so there's no flicker, just a nice solid display (with noise-reduction which helps soften the dithering).

WOW!!!! :cool::eek: