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Offline kollaTopic starter

AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« on: September 23, 2015, 11:05:53 PM »
The last year I have been away backpacking, and only touched Amiga through UAE on various hostels around in latin America. I finally came back home and at the same time I got my MIST which I have been playing with lots lately. I have it running OS3.9 with one of many custom 3.9 kickstarts I have assembled (including the awesome new layers.library), and it is running very smoothly :)

Anyways, there are many little quirks with OS3.9 still, and I would like to point out some of them, and knowing that certain people are on this site, maybe something can be done to improve, or simply just clarify things.
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline kollaTopic starter

Re: AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« Reply #1 on: September 23, 2015, 11:12:32 PM »
First up - C:List

C:List could really need a flag to drop "human readable" terms for days. There are times I want to use output from ´List file LFORMAT "%T"´ as variable in scripts for example, and then having words like "Today", "Friday", "Yesterday" - and even localized - is not at all useful. Pretty please, an update to C:List with a "code readable" option.

(if there are other ways to get timestamp from a file, I'm eager to know)
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline dschallock

Re: AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« Reply #2 on: September 23, 2015, 11:18:45 PM »
I think its great that your starting a list that could potentially lead to boingbag5.  Others currently running 3.9 with with boingbags1-4 should chime in too with ideas for improvements.  I hope to join those ranks soon! :laugh1:
 

Offline kollaTopic starter

Re: AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« Reply #3 on: September 23, 2015, 11:20:44 PM »
The icon of Ram Disk:

This is ThoR realm - Ram-Handler has been updated and improved, but still we need tricks and fiddling to make sure the icon - RAM:Disk.info - somehow ends up being saved on disk when we update it (change icon, snap shot). Since one of the updates done by ThoR involves soft links working on RAM:, I have a line in Startup-sequence that says "MakeLink RAM:Disk.info ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info", and this works nicely (softlinks are default too with C:MakeLink).

But - would it not be so much better if Ram-Handler also handled the Disk.info issue by itself, using ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info by default, updating it when user changes RAM:Disk.info?
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline kollaTopic starter

Re: AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« Reply #4 on: September 23, 2015, 11:34:58 PM »
I continue with time/date/clock related issues. Since neither of my current main Amiga systems (the Minimig and the MIST) have RTC, I resort to dirty tricks to keep the clocks fairly correct on them.

It would be great if C:Date could take a given file as argument, and use the timestamp of that file to set the time.

(I found a great piece of software on Aminet that is truly useful, "Timekeeper", which updates a timestamp in resident RAM, and on reboot sets the time from that (plus a given number of seconds to compensate for the few seconds of reboot), and when the timestamp in RAM is messing, executes a command that can set the system time using a different method, for example letting user set time).
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline kollaTopic starter

Re: AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« Reply #5 on: September 23, 2015, 11:41:44 PM »
When AmigaOS boots and no RTC is found, it sets the system time to what creation time of the filesystem it boots from is (at least as long as FFS is used - no idea about PFS and SFS). Does the structures of FFS perhaps contain a "last changed" timestamp too? If so, it would make sense to use that instead. And if not - can I suggest that C:SetDate is updated to not just change the timestamp of a file or directory, but also filesystems? :)
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline matthey

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Re: AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« Reply #6 on: September 24, 2015, 01:56:53 AM »
Quote from: kolla;796201
First up - C:List

C:List could really need a flag to drop "human readable" terms for days. There are times I want to use output from ´List file LFORMAT "%T"´ as variable in scripts for example, and then having words like "Today", "Friday", "Yesterday" - and even localized - is not at all useful. Pretty please, an update to C:List with a "code readable" option.

(if there are other ways to get timestamp from a file, I'm eager to know)

Just add the "dates" switch. It works with or without LFORMAT for dates but doesn't do anything for your "%T" (time) example.

>List dates LFORMAT "%D"


Quote from: kolla;796203
The icon of Ram Disk:

This is ThoR realm - Ram-Handler has been updated and improved, but still we need tricks and fiddling to make sure the icon - RAM:Disk.info - somehow ends up being saved on disk when we update it (change icon, snap shot). Since one of the updates done by ThoR involves soft links working on RAM:, I have a line in Startup-sequence that says "MakeLink RAM:Disk.info ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info", and this works nicely (softlinks are default too with C:MakeLink).

But - would it not be so much better if Ram-Handler also handled the Disk.info issue by itself, using ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info by default, updating it when user changes RAM:Disk.info?

Peter K's icon.library will use the ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info for ram disk by default and without using MakeLink. In more recent versions of his library, the ram disk icon will be ghosted as there is no real icon in the ram disk but he added a "NoGhost" ToolType which will keep any icon from being ghosted.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=64079&page=69

The other option is to copy the ram disk icon to the ram disk on bootup but that uses memory.
« Last Edit: September 24, 2015, 01:59:00 AM by matthey »
 

Offline kollaTopic starter

Re: AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« Reply #7 on: September 24, 2015, 08:45:28 AM »
Quote from: matthey;796209
Just add the "dates" switch. It works with or without LFORMAT for dates but doesn't do anything for your "%T" (time) example.

>List dates LFORMAT "%D"
%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!778;


Huh - I was 99% sure I tried using "dates" option, and only saw it display dates or not on listings. But you are right, it turns those localized strings to standardized dates. And yes, I meant %D, not %T *facepalm* - Thanks :)

Quote

Peter K's icon.library will use the ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info for ram disk by default and without using MakeLink. In more recent versions of his library, the ram disk icon will be ghosted as there is no real icon in the ram disk but he added a "NoGhost" ToolType which will keep any icon from being ghosted.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=64079&page=69

The other option is to copy the ram disk icon to the ram disk on bootup but that uses memory.


I see - I am using Peter K's icon.library, but it does not save back up ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info, for example if I move RAM Disk on Workbench, snapshot it, it will just create RAM:Disk.info, but ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info is untouched, and on next reboot RAM Disk will be back on it's original location.

With a soft link from RAM:Disk.info to ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info, when I do changes to RAM:Disk.info, the soft link will save those changes to ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info - which is what I think pretty much everyone wants.

I am not sure which part of the system that should have the task of maintaining ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info, but feel ram-handler is an obvious candidate.
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline kollaTopic starter

Re: AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« Reply #8 on: September 24, 2015, 08:50:36 AM »
Next up - a tip regarding s:startup-sequence

First of all, too much >NIL: in there, hehe :)

Secondly, Assign and Execute are made resident manually, they could however be made resident simply by making sure they have the "hold" bit set, with which they will go resident the first time they are run.

So, I typically set the H bit on them and remove those lines :)
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline kollaTopic starter

Re: AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« Reply #9 on: September 24, 2015, 08:57:52 AM »
Speaking of icons - once upon a time, I had drawers that were projects, their Icons were of type project with an associated default tool, there are programs that take drawers as argument - THIS WAS PRETTY DARN NEAT! :)

For example - I could turn a drawer full of pictures into a project, give it an appropriate icon and set a picture viewer as default tool, on opening that icon, the image viewer would launch and show slideshow of all the pics in the drawer.

More useful example - I had a rexx script that would take a drawer as argument, and build a GUI based on resources found in that drawer, very much like how !Apps work on RISCOS (I was inspired by RISCOS on this), or OSX.

Today, all drawers are treated as drawers, regardless what the icon type says, I _really_ would love to have project drawers back. I guess it is PeterK's icon.library I can blame for this.

EDIT: I just asked PeterK on that EAB thread.
« Last Edit: September 24, 2015, 09:48:33 AM by kolla »
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline itix

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Re: AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« Reply #10 on: September 24, 2015, 09:54:40 AM »
Quote from: kolla;796218
Next up - a tip regarding s:startup-sequence

First of all, too much >NIL: in there, hehe :)

Secondly, Assign and Execute are made resident manually, they could however be made resident simply by making sure they have the "hold" bit set, with which they will go resident the first time they are run.

So, I typically set the H bit on them and remove those lines :)


Hold bit is not supported by SFS (where it has different purpose) and it is often lost when copying files around.
My Amigas: A500, Mac Mini and PowerBook
 

Offline itix

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Re: AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« Reply #11 on: September 24, 2015, 09:58:14 AM »
Quote from: kolla;796219
Speaking of icons - once upon a time, I had drawers that were projects, their Icons were of type project with an associated default tool, there are programs that take drawers as argument - THIS WAS PRETTY DARN NEAT! :)

For example - I could turn a drawer full of pictures into a project, give it an appropriate icon and set a picture viewer as default tool, on opening that icon, the image viewer would launch and show slideshow of all the pics in the drawer.

More useful example - I had a rexx script that would take a drawer as argument, and build a GUI based on resources found in that drawer, very much like how !Apps work on RISCOS (I was inspired by RISCOS on this), or OSX.

Today, all drawers are treated as drawers, regardless what the icon type says, I _really_ would love to have project drawers back. I guess it is PeterK's icon.library I can blame for this.


Are you using 3.1 or 3.9? If 3.9, I think it is related to Workbench. Icon.library does not care about icon type, really.
My Amigas: A500, Mac Mini and PowerBook
 

Offline paul1981

Re: AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« Reply #12 on: September 24, 2015, 01:06:46 PM »
Quote from: kolla;796217

I see - I am using Peter K's icon.library, but it does not save back up ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info, for example if I move RAM Disk on Workbench, snapshot it, it will just create RAM:Disk.info, but ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info is untouched, and on next reboot RAM Disk will be back on it's original location.

With a soft link from RAM:Disk.info to ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info, when I do changes to RAM:Disk.info, the soft link will save those changes to ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info - which is what I think pretty much everyone wants.

I am not sure which part of the system that should have the task of maintaining ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info, but feel ram-handler is an obvious candidate.


If using Peter K's icon library, I suppose it's the responsibility of the end user to snapshot his or her ram disk icon and then copy the resultant amended disk.info file from RAM: to ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info. It only has to be done once so I personally don't see it as an inconvenience.
 

Offline kollaTopic starter

Re: AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« Reply #13 on: September 24, 2015, 01:47:44 PM »
Quote from: itix;796221
Hold bit is not supported by SFS (where it has different purpose) and it is often lost when copying files around.


As does the P flag that still needs to be set, so ...

Really, SFS uses it for what?
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS
 

Offline kollaTopic starter

Re: AmigaOS 3.x improvements
« Reply #14 on: September 24, 2015, 03:53:30 PM »
Quote from: paul1981;796226
If using Peter K's icon library, I suppose it's the responsibility of the end user to snapshot his or her ram disk icon and then copy the resultant amended disk.info file from RAM: to ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info. It only has to be done once so I personally don't see it as an inconvenience.


Every time you change icon.
Every time you move the icon to somewhere and snapshot it.
Every time you tell Workbench to remember the position and view of open RAM Disk window.

It is not at all obvious that all this information is stored in RAM:Disk.info and that users are expected to copy Disk.info to ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info manually.

It could just automatically be saved in ENVARC:Sys/def_RAM.info by ram-handler, in fact RAM:Disk.info would not even need to exist at all.
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC
---
A3000/060CSPPC+CVPPC/128MB + 256MB BigRAM/Deneb USB
A4000/CS060/Mediator4000Di/Voodoo5/128MB
A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
A1200/Blz1230III/32MB
A1200/ACA1221
A600/V600v2/Subway USB
A600/Apollo630/32MB
A600/A6095
CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
CD32/TF328
A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
Peg1, SAM440 and Mac minis with MorphOS