Amiga.org
Operating System Specific Discussions => Amiga OS => Amiga OS -- Development => Topic started by: jeffimix on December 12, 2003, 04:37:30 AM
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I thought since their are threads on Amigaworld and Amiga Inc's forums, I'd start one here, I'm just gonna leave links to the others for now (lazy SOB I am)
Amigaworld (http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=2471&forum=14)
Amiga Incorporated (http://os.amiga.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=16721#16721)
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Now, that's actually a project that might be worth pursuing!
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Oh man .....
That was tried ~2 years ago, but failed (miserably) due to the lack of
dedicated AND good developers. Source is over 100MB PACKED!!,
so better forget it, and concentrate on something realistic :-(
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It's a big job, but it's definately doable assuming there is a AOS4 STLport and working GCC.
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OpenOffice on Amiga is impossible, just like Mozilla. Why? It uses too much of linux, to put it simply. You'd have to port maybe dozens of external parts OpenOffice uses. Replacing them is pointless: it would be almost as much work as coding a fully featured office from scratch.
Anyone wanting to port it will at very least have to port the GUI kits or wrap them to native GUIs (which don't have all the features you need, so you'd have to implement them manually). Then they'd have to implement APIs and features that AmigaOS doesn't have, the infamous Fork() being the simplest.
It's not a big task - it's an enormous task. There is no-one left who has the time and the skill, and there is too little code infrastructure to help them.
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I really think it is more important too port a decent browser first...
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KennyR: Nah.. let them try.. At least it keeps them busy for years. :-P
Not that I might not like to see it running on OS4 and MorphOS, but I really can't expect that to happen in few years. If these systems become resonably popular (like 10-100 thousand active and knowledgeable users) it'll be possible to find coders etc.. But at this time, not much a chance.
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Isn't that like Petition #24693 on WrongPla.net ?
; }
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Without a decent Office there will never be then- a hundredthousand people using Amiga. So either we try to port a descent Office or make a new one. I think we really should support people trying it. Because it failed once doesn't mean that it has to fail always.
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I know that no one wants to hear it can't be done, but I agree with KennyR.
AmigaOS is too far behind, too much not like linux, too much to write from scratch.
My idea for porting a browser, or this, would be just to port a linux environment to AmigaOS. This has been done before.
But it doesn't capture the imagination of the public nor other developers, and so, what I thought was the only reasonable path, doesn't appear will ever happen.
oh well, tis ashame.
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If it is less work to write a modern Amiga Office Suite from scratch, why has nobody done it yet?
Why not get some coders together on a new native set of programs rather than try and port the bloated, slow OO ?
I am not much of a programmer so excuse my ignorance in such matters.
I am only going off what others have said. I have no idea how involved a task this would be.
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Ever heard of Papyrus ? And the little fact that Titan allready showed a demo
of the MorphOS-version ? Now, all you "reds" be nice to them and they might
be nice to you :-o
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Why? It uses too much of linux, to put it simply
I don't see anything Linux'y about the Win32 version...
Aside from that -
OpenOffice and Mozilla (or derivatives) are the most important apps that should be ported to AmigaOS/compatibles. They provide the 'stepping stones' for any Windows/Linux/Mac user to think about going for AmigaOS/compatibles, something that is familiar to them, and they know satisfies their needs. They may then decide to try out a more AmigaOS native set of applications afterwards, and they still have that fallback solution. This is average users or techies I'm talking about.
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GadgetMaster wrote:
If it is less work to write a modern Amiga Office Suite from scratch, why has nobody done it yet?
I guess nobody wants to spend months of their life in hard work with no return, and the only thanks being bug reports, criticisms and their software being pirated to hell.
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I guess nobody wants to spend months of their life in hard work with no return, and the only thanks being bug reports, criticisms and their software being pirated to hell.
Open source, free software? Pirated to hell? Phaaa...
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jeffimix wrote:
I thought since their are threads on Amigaworld and Amiga Inc's forums,
Figures. I bet wrongpla.net had it as well...
Would be kinda funny with an office suite that's much bigger and much more complex than the operating system(s) you're talking about porting it to... :) Especially when those OS's have had quite a few years of payed work by professional programmers put into them.
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Kronos wrote:
Ever heard of Papyrus ? And the little fact that Titan allready showed a demo
of the MorphOS-version ? Now, all you "reds" be nice to them and they might
be nice to you :-o
Reds? i'm a neutral so i gues that makes me purple :-D
Right now let me just clarify we are talking about open source here
As far as I know Papyrus is commercial.
If someone is going to use a lot of man-hours porting Open source software anyway then why not use the same time writing a new Open source Amiga Suite?
I hope you get my point.
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God.....not again!
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odin wrote:
God.....not again!
hehe :-D
It is one of those threads that has to pop up at least every few months ;-)
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If only they could die in peace and never be resurrected again...
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I guess nobody wants to spend months of their life in hard work with no return, and the only thanks being bug reports, criticisms and their software being pirated to hell.
Open source, free software? Pirated to hell? Phaaa...
I was talking about doing an office from scratch. What makes you automatically assume it would be open source?
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I've often thought of tinkering and producing such apps. The way I see it the following steps should be done to produce "office" type apps.
1) Build a common framework, so that tool bars, documents, copy paste, etc are all in that framework. (ala document view architecture)*.
2) Build each app from this, for a spread sheet, perhaps one guy works on making it display the data in the cells, another the math engine stuff, and another for the input/validation.
Like I said I might fiddle with such things as a hobby, since I am a C/C++ programmer (games industry), and would find programming "serious" apps a change.
However some requirements.
1) I get an AmigaOne, (I can afford this, so Yay!)
2) AOS 4.0
3) A good compiler
4) Some sort of IDE/tools to simplify the build process. (a bit of work fine, but I don't want to spend hours trying to set up a compiler/fiddling with make files/command line options)
5) Some way of defining gui items. MSDev has a WYSIWYG editor, but typing the things in by hand won't be to bad so long as its not eye bleedingly painful.
6) Librarys to actually do the main bread and butter GUI stuff. I dont fancy coding my own draw a dialog in a convoluted way.
Basically I want to spend time doing "fun stuff", not loosing my sanity trying to get a dialog box appear as it should.
*Would be best to use C++ to implement the Object Orientated Architecture.
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If only they could die in peace and never be resurrected again...
@ odin
A lot of people say the same about all things Amiga.
PC folk hope we just vanish and let the platform die in peace insted of dragging it along in a frankenstien form. :quickdraw:
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MikeyMike wrote:
I don't see anything Linux'y about the Win32 version...
I've never used OpenOffice for win32, but if it's like Mozilla, it doesn't use the Windows GUI system, but rather its own inbuilt GUI. This is one of the reasons Mozilla is slow.
Is OpenOffice the same? Or has someone spent a lot of time and effort Windows-izing it?
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mikeymike wrote:
OpenOffice and Mozilla (or derivatives) are the most important apps that should be ported to AmigaOS/compatibles. They provide the 'stepping stones' for any Windows/Linux/Mac user to think about going for AmigaOS/compatibles, something that is familiar to them, and they know satisfies their needs. They may then decide to try out a more AmigaOS native set of applications afterwards, and they still have that fallback solution. This is average users or techies I'm talking about.
I agree that having these specific apps/suites would provide extra "stepping stones", but I think providing any equivalent solutions to "stumbling-block" problems would work almost as well.
Problem: People want to work on MS Office files, do the same things as they can do with MS Office, and share their work with MS Office users. People want to browse the web with a browser that supports modern standards.
Solution: OO.org and Mozilla -- or whatever that will solve the problem. The name recognition and familiarity of Moz/OOo would be bonuses.
I'm afraid I don't see ports of Moz/OOo as realistic options. What's worse, I'm pessimistic about alternatives as well, at least AmigaOS/MorphOS specific ones (or originating as such).
I don't know how well Papyrus (is that a complete suite (yet)?) stands up against "lighter" open source things like AbiWord, Gnumeric et c.
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Open source, free software? Pirated to hell? Phaaa...
I was talking about doing an office from scratch. What makes you automatically assume it would be open source?
Sorry, thought we were still talking about OOo :-)
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MarkTime wrote:
... I know that no one wants to hear it can't be done, but I agree with KennyR. AmigaOS is too far behind, too much not like linux, too much to write from scratch. My idea for porting a browser, or this, would be just to port a linux environment to AmigaOS. This has been done before...
Very, very much seconded. However, if anyone from Hyperion is reading this thread: would you care to make a few comments on the simplicity or difficulty of creating a proper glibc2+ emulation library for OS4+, please?
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I sometimes think that some in this communityl have observed the success of the Open Source movement and come to some very wrong assumptions about development.
Sometimes developers work on something without immediate expectations of payment. But they almost never work without any reason.
One of my frequent motto's is this, the world is not insane. The market is not insane, your neighbors aren't insane, and in this case, developers are not insane.
come up with a compelling reason, if its truly compelling, then it will succeed.