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Author Topic: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?  (Read 3502 times)

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Offline TumbleweedTopic starter

Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« on: July 15, 2021, 09:47:11 PM »
Just installed OS3.2. What's your favourite new feature?

1. Ability to mount .adf
2. New edit pad
3. Show config
4. New glow icons
5. other

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Offline kolla

Re: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« Reply #1 on: July 15, 2021, 11:00:25 PM »
Amiga shell v47 would be my favorite, but only with bugs fixed.

It has been possible to mount ADFs for more than 25 years already, I *really* see no point in having yet another way of doing it, and DAControl is an awkward solution to what should really be integrated in Mounter.

Yet Another Editor, no thanks.
Including ThoR’s SED would be nice though.

ShowConfig with a pointless GUI? Give me something actually useful instead, like an LFORMAT option for formatting the output to simplify using this tool for scripts etc… meh!

I don’t grasp what’s so great with the so called “new” colour icons, they look chunky and rough, as if scaled down and reduced colours of larger true colour icons - I very much prefer old icons actually designed for the resolution they are used in, like old NewIcons, or even the very old original Glowicons.

I could really go on and on about things I find facepalm worthy with this OS release, and that is just from what I can tell from youtube videos, and not from personal use. So maybe someone can tell me one thing - do any of the following Workbench menu entries - “Update all”, “Redraw all” and “ResetWB” actually reread icon location from the .info files left out on the Workbench “desktop” and put them back to their specified positions? If not, then perhaps “Update all” ought to be moved to the increasingly cluttered “Window” menu.

And so called “radiobuttons” can die, even radios don’t have “radiobuttons” anymore, heck, even radios are getting rarities.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2021, 11:05:31 PM by kolla »
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Offline trekiej

Re: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« Reply #2 on: July 16, 2021, 02:04:20 AM »
The ability to work with  ADF's natively is a plus these days.
Works well with 68000 processors, and up.
Amiga 2000 Forever :)
Welcome to the Planar System.
 

Offline kolla

Re: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« Reply #3 on: July 16, 2021, 08:45:37 AM »
The ability to work with  ADF's natively is a plus these days.
It was always a plus, but the "solution" is very awkward, it should be generic and support not just ADFs, but disk images of _any_ supported filesystem.

Also the advertising is... odd  "DAControl & trackfile.device provide unprecedented functionality, as they enable users to create, mount, insert and eject ADF files" - unprecedented functionality if the year was 1990 perhaps? However, the year is 2021, and people have been creating, mounting, inserting and ejecting ADFs for three decades already, all the way back to when Matt Dillon (perhaps most famous for Dice and DragonFlyBSD) made FMS.
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---
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A1200/Blz1260/IndyAGA/192MB
A1200/Blz1260/64MB
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A600/Apollo630/32MB
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CD32/SX32/32MB/Plipbox
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A500/V500v2
A500/MTec520
CDTV
MiSTer, MiST, FleaFPGAs and original Minimig
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Offline olsen

Re: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« Reply #4 on: July 16, 2021, 01:36:18 PM »
The ability to work with  ADF's natively is a plus these days.
It was always a plus, but the "solution" is very awkward, it should be generic and support not just ADFs, but disk images of _any_ supported filesystem.

Also the advertising is... odd  "DAControl & trackfile.device provide unprecedented functionality, as they enable users to create, mount, insert and eject ADF files" - unprecedented functionality if the year was 1990 perhaps? However, the year is 2021, and people have been creating, mounting, inserting and ejecting ADFs for three decades already, all the way back to when Matt Dillon (perhaps most famous for Dice and DragonFlyBSD) made FMS.

No, this is very, very, very different. Until the source code is available (which is the plan: I'm going to open source DAControl and trackfile.device later this year), please trust me on that if fmsdisk.device had been sufficient for our needs we would have adapted it. fmsdisk.device is "just" a trackdisk.device-like layer on top of an AmigaDOS file handle which requires the use of the Mount command and matching mount files (alternatively, you could build a shell command which accomplishes the same thing). fmsdisk.device does not go to great lengths to make the disk accesses efficient and it does not implement much of the trackdisk.device command set to begin with. Furthermore, ejecting disks is tricky given the means available when fmsdisk.device was designed.

Hence the need to build something from scratch which was much better suited to let you install the operating system from double-density Amiga-formatted disk image files which happen to reside on a "slow" storage medium (CD-ROM). All the disk wrangling (insert, remove) is done through a special command which talks directly to trackfile.device which avoids the need to use the Mount command and mount files. Furthermore, both DAControl and trackfile.device are designed to make these tasks convenient, stopping and reporting errors if something cannot be done. It may not look like much, but there's a lot invested into making DAControl and trackfile.device work smoothly. This includes a cache for each virtual disk to reduce the less than frictionless interaction with the AmigaDOS file system interface and safeguards which avoid mounting the same disk image twice (what will happen if you do this? one file system will crash).
« Last Edit: July 16, 2021, 01:57:43 PM by olsen »
 

Offline Matt_H

Re: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« Reply #5 on: July 16, 2021, 03:11:32 PM »
@ olsen

Incidentally, what does the DA in DAControl stand for?

@ thread

I mentioned in a previous thread that the new help system is excellent. I think it will be really useful for users getting back into the Amiga after years away or new users altogether. Only downside is that new/returning users using emulation may not be aware there is such a thing as the Help key, nor which PC/Mac keyboard key it’s usually mapped to. (I think I’m a pretty experienced user and even I don’t know how to press the Help key in WinUAE! :) ) Easily rectified in public features lists or readme files, though, e.g., “by pressing the Help key (usually mapped to x on PC keyboards)”
« Last Edit: July 16, 2021, 03:13:05 PM by Matt_H »
 

Online TribbleSmasher

Re: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« Reply #6 on: July 16, 2021, 03:43:50 PM »
... think I’m a pretty experienced user and even I don’t know how to press the Help key in WinUAE! :)...
You can map the Help key like every other key wherever you like to. I  have a TKL keyboard and therefore i use PgDn key as it is almost at the right position.😊
 

Offline redfox

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Re: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« Reply #7 on: July 16, 2021, 04:25:48 PM »
I like the following features:
- preferences
- the new text editor
- the shell

I have been experimenting with emulation using e-uae on my MicroA1 OS4 system.
IMHO, A2000 looks best with grey background and standard icons (not GlowIcons).
GlowIcons look better with 68020 CPU, A1200 ROM, Picasso96 and uaegfx.
screenmode setting = uaegfx: 640x480 32bit BGRA

I am limited by available RAM on my "host" system.  GlowIcons would probably look better with higher resolution screenmode.

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« Last Edit: July 16, 2021, 05:29:28 PM by redfox »
 

Offline kolla

Re: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« Reply #8 on: July 16, 2021, 05:14:25 PM »
The ability to work with  ADF's natively is a plus these days.
It was always a plus, but the "solution" is very awkward, it should be generic and support not just ADFs, but disk images of _any_ supported filesystem.

Also the advertising is... odd  "DAControl & trackfile.device provide unprecedented functionality, as they enable users to create, mount, insert and eject ADF files" - unprecedented functionality if the year was 1990 perhaps? However, the year is 2021, and people have been creating, mounting, inserting and ejecting ADFs for three decades already, all the way back to when Matt Dillon (perhaps most famous for Dice and DragonFlyBSD) made FMS.

No, this is very, very, very different. Until the source code is available (which is the plan: I'm going to open source DAControl and trackfile.device later this year), please trust me on that if fmsdisk.device had been sufficient for our needs we would have adapted it. fmsdisk.device is "just" a trackdisk.device-like layer on top of an AmigaDOS file handle which requires the use of the Mount command and matching mount files (alternatively, you could build a shell command which accomplishes the same thing). fmsdisk.device does not go to great lengths to make the disk accesses efficient and it does not implement much of the trackdisk.device command set to begin with. Furthermore, ejecting disks is tricky given the means available when fmsdisk.device was designed.

Heh, I was putting the claim "unprecedented functionality" in doubt, in a historical context - nothing new about mounting ADFs, it (maybe) _started_ with fms, but moved on, and for the last decade it has been diskimage.device v53 that has been "the standard", open source and all - http://www.a500.org/main-menu/projects/diskimage-device.xhtml - and lastly, the GoADF! tool which now is in 3.0.

Quote
Hence the need to build something from scratch which was much better suited to let you install the operating system from double-density Amiga-formatted disk image files which happen to reside on a "slow" storage medium (CD-ROM).

150kB/sec CD-ROM is considered slow? Luxury! Try disk images located on NFS shares mounted over serial port PPP links :)

Well, I understand the need for this tool in the context of mounting disk images from the OS 3.2 CDROM fo the OS installer, but then again... the entire OS could just reside on the CDROM as files as well. Insidently, I don't even bother with CDROM drives these days, I just mount the iso9660 image directly, using - you guessed it - diskimage.device v53 - kinda daft to mount an iso9660 image just to mount ADFs from there again.

Quote
All the disk wrangling (insert, remove) is done through a special command which talks directly to trackfile.device which avoids the need to use the Mount command and mount files.

I did not mention the Mount command, I mentioned the Mounter tool - there seems to be alot of overlap between Mounter and DAControl.
« Last Edit: July 16, 2021, 05:15:58 PM 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 Matt_H

Re: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« Reply #9 on: July 16, 2021, 05:19:10 PM »
... think I’m a pretty experienced user and even I don’t know how to press the Help key in WinUAE! :)...
You can map the Help key like every other key wherever you like to. I  have a TKL keyboard and therefore i use PgDn key as it is almost at the right position.😊

Of course, but that requires paying attention to the host configuration. :)
All I'm suggesting is that there should be a little more communication about the default mapped key.
 

Offline NinjaCyborg

Re: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« Reply #10 on: July 16, 2021, 05:42:29 PM »
My favourite feature is that everything about it keeps kolla awake at night fuming with rage
 
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Offline olsen

Re: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« Reply #11 on: July 16, 2021, 07:27:13 PM »
@ olsen

Incidentally, what does the DA in DAControl stand for?

It comes from the name of the AmigaDOS device which trackfile.device tends to, such as DA0:, DA1:, etc. This follows the established pattern of DF0:, DF1:, etc. With the "F" in "DF0:" presumably standing for "floppy". So, why "A"?  Because it uses "ADF" media :)  And we narrowly managed to avoid creating a fully recursive name there ;)
 

Offline olsen

Re: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« Reply #12 on: July 16, 2021, 07:39:15 PM »
Heh, I was putting the claim "unprecedented functionality" in doubt, in a historical context - nothing new about mounting ADFs, it (maybe) _started_ with fms, but moved on, and for the last decade it has been diskimage.device v53 that has been "the standard", open source and all - http://www.a500.org/main-menu/projects/diskimage-device.xhtml - and lastly, the GoADF! tool which now is in 3.0.

In this package, with the functionality in trackfile.device (which works almost exactly like trackdisk.device does, with the only command it does not implement being "TD_RAWWRITE") and the "user interface" of DAControl to go along with it, it's new. It's purpose made just to simulate floppy disk drives, which simplified the design, and also made it more complex because of what's emulated.

It was "interesting" to see how many quirks there are in the trackdisk.device API design and which surprises are lurking under the surface. For example, trackdisk.device supports CMD_STOP and CMD_START. To which end I cannot tell... When TD_REMOVE was "augmented" by TD_ADDCHANGEINT/TD_REMCHANGEINT the implementation did not keep the 'struct Interrupt' which TD_ADDCHANGEINT installs, but the entire 'struct IOStdReq'. You have to use the exact same 'struct IOStdReq' you added with TD_ADDCHANGEINT to shake it loose again with TD_REMCHANGEINT, and you must SendIO() to add and remove it. If you don't do that, there's going to be surprises along the way ;)

Quote
Quote
Hence the need to build something from scratch which was much better suited to let you install the operating system from double-density Amiga-formatted disk image files which happen to reside on a "slow" storage medium (CD-ROM).

150kB/sec CD-ROM is considered slow? Luxury! Try disk images located on NFS shares mounted over serial port PPP links :)

This is pretty bad over classic Ethernet already ;)

Quote
Well, I understand the need for this tool in the context of mounting disk images from the OS 3.2 CDROM fo the OS installer, but then again... the entire OS could just reside on the CDROM as files as well. Insidently, I don't even bother with CDROM drives these days, I just mount the iso9660 image directly, using - you guessed it - diskimage.device v53 - kinda daft to mount an iso9660 image just to mount ADFs from there again.

Images upon images will eventually lead to a stack overflow ;)

Quote
Quote
All the disk wrangling (insert, remove) is done through a special command which talks directly to trackfile.device which avoids the need to use the Mount command and mount files.

I did not mention the Mount command, I mentioned the Mounter tool - there seems to be alot of overlap between Mounter and DAControl.
The approach is by necessity very similar. Even the mount information is practically identical with what the "strap" module uses to mount the Amiga floppy disk drives with.
 

Offline Matt_H

Re: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« Reply #13 on: July 16, 2021, 08:46:51 PM »
@ olsen

Incidentally, what does the DA in DAControl stand for?

It comes from the name of the AmigaDOS device which trackfile.device tends to, such as DA0:, DA1:, etc. This follows the established pattern of DF0:, DF1:, etc. With the "F" in "DF0:" presumably standing for "floppy". So, why "A"?  Because it uses "ADF" media :)  And we narrowly managed to avoid creating a fully recursive name there ;)
Thanks! That might be a detail worth adding to the documentation to help users learn the device naming paradigm and/or remember the name of the command that deals with disk images. (Or maybe it's already there and I missed it? I haven't been able to spend as much time with the new system as I'd like.)
 

Offline Mikhail

Re: Whats your favourite feature of OS3.2?
« Reply #14 on: July 30, 2021, 03:35:29 PM »
Strange that nobody yet liked the updated amigaguide, enhanced animation and working CDXL playback, better RTG support, refined system preference that change much more robustly then ever before, as well as many other features.   There are even entertainment features included.
A1260T/PPC/SCSI/BV/HPLJ4/HPSJ/CNET