AK-Datatypes In Development

[amigakit]

Recently, AmigaKit Ltd acquired AK-Datatypes.

Since then development has been ongoing and we are very pleased to confirm that the package has been internally updated significantly.

The development will continue and a new public release for OS3 will be made shortly.

The  question we have is should we release this as free downloadable archive  to the Amiga community and ask for a small donation to cover the costs  of ongoing development?  Alternatively should we charge a nominal fee up  front?

Our initial thoughts are to release it for free, and if  we get enough donations then proceed to the next revision and so on.  If  we fail to receive enough donations then move to a commercial model to  sustain it's ongoing development.

I welcome the feedback.  Please  indicate if you would be willing to support this project by a donation  so we can gauge the response.

Thanks!

[amigakit]

Thanks, link fixed.

We were thinking of maybe $5 to $10 for each development cycle/major release to cover the ongoing developer costs assuming we have enough interest in it.

The AK-Datatypes package was last updated way back in 2009 before we took over development this year.   Our developer has already brought akPNG and akTIFF  components up to standard with the latest LibPNG, ZLib.   The JPEG datatypes are now being worked on.

Once the hard work of catching up from 10 years ago is done, then smaller, frequent updates will be much easier.

[amigakit]

After a year of development and struggling "in the dark" without any documentation, the datatype.library has been built from the ground upwards.  It has been a long journey and hard work but the same developer who created a new sound datatype for us has gone further and created a modern datatype library that can be built upon going forward with some exciting new features.

The collection of AK-Datatypes, datatype.library and sound datatypes for our Classic systems are now progressing to beta test.

[amigakit]

No, it is a replacement and enhancement for the system datatypes library.

[amigakit]

@kolla

No, our developer who wrote the enhanced sound datatype from scratch has also spent the last year writing the datatypes.library from scratch too.

It has been very hard work without documentation and a lot of trial and error to get things to work but we are almost there.  These new datatype libraries and classes are re-implementations with a future vision on how the current limited datatypes system should grow.

[amigakit]

Then why don’t you just let “your man in Havana” join the OS team, so he can benefit from documentation, official support etc??

Hello,

There are a few problems with doing that:

1.  From what I have read, there seems to be a legal dispute around OS 3.1.4 currently and who knows what will happen to the IP in the future?   We prefer not to build our house upon sand.
2.  Our developer is a professional coder and doesn't invest months of hard work in Amiga software projects for free.  Are any of the OS developers paid for their work? 
3.  We are paying a lot of money for development and we need the freedom to release our own IP and build upon it regardless of other circumstances.
4.  Our developer for this project has not been involved in any OS team in the past and the resultant code has been developed in a "clean room" scenario.  We don't want to change this as this could jeopardise the entire project.

All of our developments are conducted through our Amiga Developer Team.  This was established way back in the ninetees by the original Amiga.org management and we have been for some time continuing this.

[amigakit]

The new datatypes.library is complemented by the new AddDatatypes command.

[amigakit]

What does datatypes v46 offer over the official datatypes then? And how is compatibility with future “official” OS3 releases, or is this the dawn of yet another OS3 “spin”?

Our developers are working hard to make sure that it is compatible with legacy versions.   However with almost zero documentation, there is a lot of trial and error.  Additionally the guidelines that Commodore published back in 1993 have not been adhered to by third-party datatype developers since and this means that our new library needs to be forgiving enough with the many datatypes out there on Aminet.

For the future, we have some interesting plans.  If you recall the sound datatype project replacement introduced streaming for the first time to the Amiga.  The new project of the datatype library is a foundation for many progressive developments.  No one has worked on the datatype system in any meaningful way since the late 90's.  It is exciting to plan for the possibilities and follow the path that Commodore would have gone down with the system if they had survived.  Watch this space!

[amigakit]

@bubub42

I have greatest respect for the good quality work you do, giving up your valuable free time in the process.  As professional coders by day, I trust you make this choice with your eyes wide open.   I hope that those that collect the significant proceeds of that work with ease take a moment to recognise the immense contribution that volunteers give.

Sadly we have witnessed commercial exploitation of goodwill far too often in the past in this community, unfortunately having witnessed it first hand.  We have always endeavoured to re-invest our business income back into the Amiga eco-system, including funding developers.

[amigakit]

Getting closer to the pre-release now.

A few problems showed up in testing using the v46.1 datatypes library:  in some datatype descriptors - the built-in function was indicating it could handle the data, yet the pattern was failing.  A solution was found by our developer after many days of debugging.  We are now working towards v46.2.

[amigakit]

@remotenemesis

That is a distinct possibility so there will be a unified library for Classic and the X5000, X1000 and A1222 Plus platforms.

[amigakit]

The developers have been steadily working on the V46 datatype system files to bring them closer to release standard.   They have made some great progress recently.

An update to the datatypes.library to v46.2 now fixes some unwanted Enforcer hits and tests so far are positive.

Datatypes library has CPU versions for 68000, 020, 030, 040 and 060.

The AddDatatypes command also gets a version bump to v46.1 with some additional improvements added.

[amigakit]

After feedback from beta testers work has continued and our developer has just completed a new version:




Fixes:
- a fix for allowing the ascii escape code to be allowed when detecting ascii text
- a fix for creating an object directly using the class and not the usual detection route

[amigakit]

The new AK-Datatypes Prefs have been completed:

[amigakit]

Some good development work in the last few weeks on AK-Datatypes:  AK-ILBM updated, Picture Datatype updated and Datatypes Library updated in their PPC (V54) and 68K (V46) versions.  We are upgrading these ready for the A600GS and also the forthcoming Enhancer Software V2.3

AK-ILBM Datatype V54.19 / V46.19
AK-DEEP Datatype V54.1 / V46.1
Datatypes Library V54.24 / V46.24
Picture Datatype V54.9 / V46.9