OS4 GUI

[Rogue]

The gui framework used will be Reaction. MUI is there for backwards compatibility, we encourage people to use Reaction, though.

The term "good-looking GUI" is enough for some people to start a Jihad. I can tell you that the screenshots seen so far are not going to be the default look (yes, we heard the thing about the colors over and over - but you'll agree that the colors was something that could be changed in the 1.2 preferences already).

A lot of stuff was changed in Intuition under the hood, but also a lot was done to improve the looks and make it customizable. You will not be able to customize every aspect of the GUI with OS 4.0, but things will be added later with 4.1 and 4.2. However, you will be able to change a lot without going for patches - the functionality of VisualPrefs and Birdie are now part of Intuition.

Just to prevent people coming up with the rumour that intuition V50 is based on Birdie, I am talking about functionality not code. You'd think that it wouldn't be required to explicitly say something like that, but after hearing some of the rumours coursing around I feel inclined to point this out.

Having said this, I can already vividly imagine the comments about the new Intuition default look. If you ask ten people about how a good looking GUI should look like, you will get at least 12 different answers.  :-D

[Rogue]

Hooligan_DCS wrote:
Coder's sick brains must have created those screenshots. Ugly fonts, , ugly textures, ugly colors and ugly icons :-)

Well, fortunately colors and fonts can be changed since quite some time...

Of course it was only for showing features...  

Indeed. It was there to show to what degree the look can be changed. Taste is obviously quite diverse, and I am glad about that :-)

Maybe there should be a place on amiga.org where you can upload and download suitable textures and background images?

What about Aminet?

[Rogue]

JurassicCamper wrote:

@ rouge

It's "Rogue" BTW ;-)

Is there a theme directory for example.
Eg: Sys:prefs/themes

Eg theme for the wont of a better description has its own directory and gui.pref file or whatever in it.

I don't remember the name, but it was something in SYS:Prefs/. Each theme becomes its own directory with all files in it, and you specify a directory. Other things like window border textures can be configured separately, same for gadget textures and the like.

Its would then be a standard place for themes to go
would make distribution of custom themes easier.

There might be a theme installer of some sorts. Dunno 'bout that.

As i can bet no two people keep there birdie textures etc in the same place.

Most likely not. These are hacks, so most people just put the stuff where it suits them. I don't think that the GUI prefs program enforces any placement though.

I like aminet and is great for classic software but for OS4 I think we need a site like download.com.

Maybe aminet.amiga.com if your reading HMetal

Some people hate it others love it. But you could log in. Search Items by author. Leave feedback on programs. Rate programs, discuss. etc.

I agree that a bit more modern features would do Aminet some good. But the big advantage of it is that it is distributed. You almost never get a crowded server where you have to wait for half an hour to start your download, like is the case with fileplanet.com for example. Just use your local mirror.

I think Aminet is one of the things that kept the Amiga alive over the years, and it should be able to do so when OS 4 is out ;-)

[Rogue]

z5 wrote:
I was wondering...will all programs have the same GUI, meaning will all programs be converted to the reaction GUI now?

The preferences programs will use Reaction in any case, as do all of the new tools. The Media Toolbox and Partition wizard are no exception, same for the Network Preferences, dialer, AmiDock config, AmigaInput prefs, and so on. They'll use a new preferences framework class.

Things like IBrowse will continue to use MUI of course.

[Rogue]

Kronos wrote:
maybe because they couldn't get any exclusive deal for MUI,
or the money asked for licence to include a regged version
was to high (OS4 will come with unregged MUI).

Just my best guess.

Nice to finally see such a comment :-) If [i}that]/i] is your best guess

The reason why Reaction was chosen is twofold:

 For one thing, you have to pick one, and I personally like Reaction bettern than MUI. That is a matter of taste, of course, but I didn't like most GUI's I've seen in MUI using programs because they tend to look good on one configuration and horrible on the other.

Secondly, Reaction was already chosen for 3.5. We felt that it was a bad idea to agan change the GUI (GadTools->Reaction->MUI).

Exclusivity has nothing to do with it. Yes, the MUI version that comes with OS 4 will not be registered, it will however be preconfigured to roughly match the default look of Intuition V50, and I think the old key files will still work (for what it's worth, I have also registered MUI a few years back. Too bad there wasn't any regular update)

[Rogue]

N7VQM wrote:

I suppose it could be done in theory.  But it would probably be ALOT of work.  It's just a guess but, I'd say the programming interface to Intuition is nothing like the interface to X.  If someone did write up a spiffy adapter class, it would be one helluva class!

I had a look at porting GTK (the toolkit used by GIMP and GNOME) before my involvement with Hyperion, but stopped doing it out of lack of time. By that time the aMozilla team (anyone remember them?) also wanted to start aGTK. I agreed to lead the effort, some people agreed to help, but in the end I was the only one doing work, and so I stopped again (I guess that quite some projects fared this way in the past). I'd say that a skilled programmer would take about a month or so to get GTK ported.

Qt is a different story, because it is either usable under GPL (which does not work in the AmigaOS context) or under the Trolltech commercial licence, which is a bit too expensive.

Both toolkits offer good functionality, I'd say Qt is the better one though.

[Rogue]

Slash wrote:
As far as a programmer is concerned MUI is awesome for creating gorgeous looking GUI's. Quick and easy.

I think (and this is my personal opinion of course) that MUI interfaces tend to look ugly because people tend to design them around looks not functionality.

Also many people don't try their stuff under different configuration, with different font sizes and different background settings. The results look horrible.

I am not saying that you can't do good user interfaces (IBrowse or AmFTP or AmTelnet are good examples).

From the programmer's point of view, MUI introduced this macro-orgy-single-command-makes-a-userinterface kind of programming that I hate deeply. Apart from the fact that a user interface designer is a must-have, I think that these things make finding a syntax error or other problem very difficult. Most of all, it just tells you that your GUI failed to be created, and leaves the user with no clue how to solve the problem.

I also think that MUI is unresponsive, especially under load.

But I mentioned it earlier: GUI's is something that you can start a Jihad about. Some people think that the MacOS X Aqua user interface is the second best thing since sliced bread. I personally think that it wastes a lot of space, although it admittedly looks nice. Every system has its pros and cons.

[Rogue]

Hooligan_DCS wrote:
I hope MUI will not be slow , and wouldn't be slow on a G4 AmigaOne or on MorphOS/Pegasos. Because:

I'm afraid that isn't really the point. MU tends to behave sluggish under load not because it does anything computationally intensive, but because all rendering (as far as I remember) is done in the context of the task that uses it. Reaction and Inuition run in their own task, at priority 20, so the GUI will react immediately even if the task itself is busy, or the system is loaded, because high-priority tasks that become ready on the Amiga will almost instantaneously get the CPU.

If the task using MUI is busy, it will not update the GUI, and it will not draw the mouseclick on a buttun ontil it calls the update methods again.

[Rogue]

Waccoon wrote:
 I still haven't gotten over how badly designed the HD toolbox is in those preliminary screenshots.

There is a lot of functionality that needs to go into the Media Toolbox, so it is either a multitude of windows, or a full single window. Also note that you can disable most of the stuff by using the normal and not the advanced mode.