Layers.library V45 on the aminet

[wawrzon]

on an opportunity to thank thomas for another act of support towards amiga users i just would like to mention that powerwindows is a little patch that adds up a hell of functionality to a system where its probably most outdated and limited in its genuine shape. especially the relatively low res native amiga resolutions benefit from that feature imho, and it is one of yet not so many advantages of aros68k on genuine hardware. it would probably be worth to incorporate it properly into a system some day.

this said, the amount of reworked and improved libraries and patches has become overhelming these days. from my own experience with the maintenace of an improved kickstart in flash i start to wonder about some simple and unified possibility to dependably maintain and update the (remapped) kicksart, that would be easier for those inexperienced users for whom diassembling the rom image, applaying patches from command line or loading modules on startup remains a major showstopper. as example i wonder if a package could be created that automatically assembles and installs such a kickstart reading out the content of the original roms, applaying appropriate patches and properly modifying the startup sequence. i think an boing bag (4?) archive  along with an a little more sofisticated installation script might play that role.

[wawrzon]

@wawrzon

to tell the truth probaby even someone like me might be able to prepare such a package if it doesnt yet exists. the requirement would be likely that doobrey tools could be used for the task ( if they can be run from console instead graphically from workbench) and also that all the components are available with a proper free license.

but this is an offtopic. sorry.

[wawrzon]

Yes. I think it could be a major enchancement for many to have it at hand without messing with patches. Just fyi its a feature in aros that works on amigas too. You might consult aros v1 sources.

[wawrzon]

What i see as a problem here is that a user needs to look up the whole internet himself to collect and apply those bits and pieces. There is some sort of central repository, bb4 maintained by gulliver i think, but best would be an updated os in a single download. Aros vision by olaf is a good start even if a little messy. Alas aros is still not as fast, complete and stable as the genuine os.

[wawrzon]

Just algorithmically, it's rather trivial because it is clear what has to be done, and where it has to be done. There are two "hard" parts. Problem one is a legal problem, namely getting the permission to work on intuition. Problem two is to actually *compile* intuition.  

It currently depends on some old obscure C compiler, I believe the greenhills compiler, which nobody has anymore. Thus, it's a matter of re-organizing the code to make it compile with a more standard compiler. I haven't tried that, I just remember that Olsen was cursing about it, and I didn't dare to look where the problem was, in particular. Probably reaching the elements of IntuitionBase from inside the code, I do not know.

The solution if one cared could be to port aros intuition to aos. It compiles with current gcc aros 68k backend 4.6.x or 4.7 now. There is a version 4.5.0 for aos by bernd rosch. He even tried to compile aros intuition for afa-os but has not succeeded. It was before aros68 kickstart replacement has been started though. It might be easier now.

[wawrzon]

I believe AROS took a much different approach to implementing layers though. I suppose there is the gfx.library abstraction in between so maybe Intuition wouldn't be too difficult to use. I would love to get development of AmigaOS classic going again but the legal problems remain as ThoR pointed out. There is a thread over on Amigaworld.net talking about buying the Amiga name, AmigaOS and the Amiga.com web site but it's a legal mess.

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=39217&forum=2

I might make an offer to buy everything myself but I don't know who owns what and I don't really want to give any money to the crooks at Amiga Inc. or a bunch of lawyers. Like I said over there, the legal fees (to insure ownership and property rights) could easily cost more than the purchase price (assuming the low kickstarter target price of only $125,000 U.S. would be enough to buy everything AND fund a new hardware project).

PLease not again. Let be done with buying the name, the source whatsoever. Was discused to the death. As for intuition im not sure about dependencies on aos and aros but i guess its graphics lib on both. The hidds are lower below. Some aros dev reading here might comment on that.
@thor
Yes. Alas it seems it counts you out. Hard to tell if there is anybody up to task. I cant think of none.

[wawrzon]

And that gives you which right? Exactly... none-so-ever. Would it help to mention that I had contact with him just months ago? And that we had a friendly exchange on the P96 subject?  Ok, point is that I do not exactly know what the legal situation with P96 is and wether Alex can even decide what can happen with it. But you or me can do that to an even lesser degree. The situation might be delicate, it is delicate to me, and it is probably even more delicate to Alex, I really don't know, but all I can do is to find out and understand where we are.   Now, instead of trying to have some patience and thrusting people that they'll try to do their job properly to their best of their knowledge, you just jump ahead and ruin the entire situation. Thank you for that so much.

i dont think you will be able to stop anyone from modding amiga these days, people are modding other stuff not asking the designers for permission. especially when it is obsolete or abandoned anyway. as long as it remains within the low there is nothing to do against it i guess. sometimes they improve things, its just all their own risk if they break something.

[wawrzon]

yes, having a family is greatly overrated, but the whole talk here is just another proof that open source is the only sensible solution in a given situation. alas neither great part of developers nor users seem to acknowledge it.

[wawrzon]

@minous
i see you want to have a cake and eat it too. what concerns amiga operating systems none is open source, not os4 nor mos but neither the original one. that leaves you with aros or nothing im sorry. this is why i have chosen aros, because there was no alternative to contribute. we can discuss it to death but i dont see anything else happening, none will open source amiga system, none will probably even answer to such enquiries, none will establish a bounty and almost none will contribute to it. lets live with it.

[wawrzon]

Drawback of open source. You cannot have an "open source that works only how you want it to work". That's a closed source model.

as if closed source software behaved always as the user expects..

[wawrzon]

Sorry, but you don't get my point. A model where "one person defines how it works", is a closed source model. If the makers of AROS prefer MUI, then that's it. If *I* want something else, and I want nobody to talk into my decisions, I have to run my software as closed source. That's then the only option. Of course, the resulting software might still not work as its users want it to work, but at least it works how I want it...

quite contrary it seems, if aros devs prefer zune you are still free to introduce reaction yourself, if os4 devs do not want zune then thats it, the user has to live with it.

[wawrzon]

Why do you say this? There have been many successful bounties to open source Amiga applications, eg. DOpus. Surely it is at least worth making the attempt before giving up.

there were some successful larger aros bounties (open sourcing poseidon usb stack) and two or three other bigger bounties (dopus magellan and odyssey), all organized by people whom you are arguing against, olaf as example. the bounties were successful because the people in question actually did something instead of bragging and demanding. and remember magellan bounty has not been met. the owners agreed to lesser amount. and now you are talking abut the bounty for whole operating system. it will not be another ten thousand dollar bounty im sure. if it was i might have been interested few years ago when there might have been enough people to support it. anyways if you want to risk money parked on some account for years, go for it and try, but judging by this thread alone there isnt much interest anymore.

Has someone redrawn those atrocious icons by now then?

i took a shot at it, as well as an iff theme that works well on planar gfx. theme is about half done and proven working, but there is bugs in themeing i had to wait to be fixed but none did. maybe matthias is about to do it now. i dont know. i did some research to find an appropriate icon convention too, but after some basics i have lost motivation for now. takes much more time than just posting in forums, which is what people are primarly interested in so why really bother.

Fork AROS? Then we have 5 Amiga-like OSes instead of 4, hardly an improvement.

why fork? you can just contribute the missing classes and mui and reaction programs will work fine side by side like they do on aos, or are you demanding to remove the feature of mui compatibility altogether losing this functionality, because you hate it? but in this case why at all improve the system? by this logic everything is fine as is. you are a bit hard to understand i must admit.

[wawrzon]

A very old OS no less,

yet magellan was just a very old workbench replacement, just a component of an os in comparison and what did that cost? and odyssey? its "just"a mui frontend for webkit. dont get me wrong, i am all for open sourcing whatever amiga, just do not see it happen.

[wawrzon]

>there were some successful larger aros bounties (open sourcing poseidon usb stack) and two or three other bigger bounties (dopus magellan and odyssey), all organized by people whom you are arguing against, olaf as example. the bounties were successful because the people in question actually did something instead of bragging and demanding. and remember magellan bounty has not been met. the owners agreed to lesser amount. and now you are talking abut the bounty for whole operating system. it will not be another ten thousand dollar bounty im sure. if it was i might have been interested few years ago when there might have been enough people to support it. anyways if you want to risk money parked on some account for years, go for it and try, but judging by this thread alone there isnt much interest anymore.

I very much doubt they would want >$10000 at this point, considering they have left the Amiga market. I'm not "arguing against" anyone, simply having a discussion, much less "bragging and demanding". So explain what have I bragged about or demanded from anyone? In fact, you are the one demanding that I work on your pet project. At what point in this thread or anywhere else have I ever demanded anyone ever work on one of my programs? I welcome code contributions but I don't go around demanding that everyone else work on my programs. All I've said is that an AmigaOS clone should be like AmigaOS, I don't know why this would even be a controversial point, it's just common sense.

>takes much more time than just posting in forums, which is what people are primarly interested in so why really bother.

Yeah, right, that's all I do, go look on Aminet or my site then before making such stupid statements.
 went
>why fork? you can just contribute the missing classes and mui and reaction programs will work fine side by side like they do on aos, or are you demanding to remove the feature of mui compatibility altogether losing this functionality, because you hate it?

It shouldn't be included in any AmigaOS replacement as it has never been a part of AmigaOS. If people want to download it they can, no one is stopping them.

then why dont you find out what it really costs? olaf just went and asked. when you have an answer, then we can go talking about concretes. speculations are worthless.

and aros is neither my pet project nor am i demanding you to work on it. i just indicated the available realistic options. i went to support aros because i dont see the possibility that amiga 68k gets much improvements. i dont know your work but im pretty sure that you do your best and i respect that.

[wawrzon]

Not what I meant. The owners of said software obviously decide what they do and don't do with their property, and I'm not complaining about that. What I am complaining about is that we're stuck with AOS on our 68k Amigas, while something much better is possible, where we're also not tied to AOS anymore (including Aros). I'm specifically not talking about other old software.


Yes, Aros is an AOS derivative after all, and it would be nice to be able to get rid of that completely, because 68k can do better than AOS and Aros.

im not sure what you are proposing here. as i understand you want to get rid of os and bang the hardware. this is fine as long as all hardware you have is compatible to each other, which in reality is never completely the case. it certainly wasnt on amiga. but the os abstracting the hardware can compensate fr it and this is what we need it for. or do i understand you wrong?