The OpenAmiga Standard

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I love the thoughts flowing through the forums right now!!!


One such idea is the OpenAmiga standard, a way to define what features are avaiable across the AmigaOS clones, so that developers wishing to support all AmigaOS platforms can follow.  A type of POSIX style standard for the Amiga Platform.

This should be decided by the Community not the AmigaOS clone teams :-)

-Edit- Some common factors are:

AmigaOS 3.1 API
CyberGFX
AHI
BSDSocket
MUI
SDL
OpenGL

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Dagon wrote:
Me as an AmigaOS 4.0 supporter I like very much that idea, lets make also a poll (I wrote about it in the other thread) here in Amiga.org to see what others believe.

AmigaOS 4.0, MorphOS, Aros like the BSDs :-) (sort of...)

Well exactly that!!!

Poll arn't really necessary!! we just neeed to think about what API's are covered by all systems. (I've given a list of what I think is lowest avaiable spec, others may have thought about other stuff!!!)

Such a standard would open up the whole game to a lot more applications and hopefully Amiga users. I would be great to be able to, as tricly said, release software that is OpenAmiga compatible and know that it will include a version that will work on your system!!!  :-)

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DaveP wrote:
Hmmm.

I like the basis behind the idea but I think you will have a problem choosing either CyberGFX or Picasso96 "standards" as neither are particularly open or within our domain to control. Plus I think you get into the Cyber vs Picasso debate. Given you have made the decision to throw away WOS and PUP may I suggest you throw away P96 and CGFX?

Also including MUI will cause similar strains. What would be more useful is if you just stuck to the AOS3.1 API as being the open standard revision #1 and then allow other bodies to submit revisions to that for sound, graphics and higher level interfaces.

This forces subcommittees to get the political and technical issues out of the way.

Sort of the way that CORBA is handled by OMG.

Paccasso96, is CGX compatible... THat's why I went with CGX  :-o

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SidMan wrote:
Surely it is too late for this? Aros, Mos, and Aos have all been developed independently. I don't know the specific details but surely extentions to the core library APIs have already been written? Wouldn't going back to an older standard (3.1 API) as a base be a step backwards?

I may be missing the point here, so please enlighten me.

Not really, when I made the initial list I simply looked for the Common API's that exist in all the current solutions (Yes, we should include ELF too!).

So in reality the standard is already there, I just want to put a nice shiny sign on it so we can all see it and so that developers know it's there and that the OS teams make sure they don't deviate too far from it!!!

As I said it's pretty much all in place, we just need to protect it!!!  :-)

-Edit- AmigaOS 3.1 was chosen by me because it is what all the existing solutions are based on... thus it is the lowest common denominator... The only Wild card is AOS4, I have not idea if they've messed about with the API or not. But if they plan to run 68K apps (which will assume 3.1), I will assume £.1 is supported.  :-D

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AmiGR wrote:
Actually the initial list is fine.
All of these standards are supported everywhere.
MUI: MOS, OS4, Zune on AROS.
CGX API: MOS, AOS4 through P96's CGX emul,
dunno about AROS.
AHI: everwhere
BSDSocket: Everywhere
SDL: Everywhere.
OGL: soon to be everywhere.

I think that the ELF executable format should be added,
it's used by both OS4 and MOS.

Yup AROS has the CGX API :-), and all the others too... except OpenGL (planned, and an important part of SDL) and the BSDSocket (comming soon TM)... :-P

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DaveP wrote:
So basically what you are saying is that you want AROS to be the reference implementation of a standard that is basically the AROS design documents?

Not at all, as I've pointed out AROS doesn't yet support all those API's yet but if we set the Bar high, then AROS will reach it.  :-)

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mdma wrote:
http://openamiga.tk is up and running.  Anyone who's handy with HTML want to volunteer to do something better than the geocities autogenerated page? :-D

You might want to pop a list of the Standard APIs on the site.

The 3 OS solutions should have compatible API's to the ones in this list as standard.

And we can modify and amend that list if needed.

Kernel:       AmigaOS 3.1
Graphics:    Cybergraphics
Audio:           AHI
TCP/IP:          BSDSocket
SDL:               Media Layer
3D:                 OpenGL
File Format:  ELF
GUI Tool Kit:  MUI? (I know some would be against this)
C compiler: GCC

um... and any else?

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Almost forgot GCC!!!!!

-Edit- I personally think GCC should be the standard development compiler for the platform, not because it's the best, but becuase it is free, uptodate, easily portable and it runs on almost anythinging :-)

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filson wrote:
I can do html and servlet programming and that sort of stuff, but i suck at designing eyecandy. if you can get an artist to do the design, i can code it.

That's the spirit, if we all muck in it will come along!!!


BTW are you a guy or a girl? :-D I never did get an answer...  :-?

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mdma wrote:

Bodie wrote:
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Interesting, idea. Hopefully politics don't come into play :-( .

My idea, my idea ! ;-)

Joking apart, politics shouldn't come into it as developing apps that conform to the openamiga standard, is completely voluntary.  No one's forcing you to do it if you don't want.

Ineed, it's just a specification... I'm thinking that the Phoenix Greenboy might want to join us?  ;-)

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filson wrote:

BTW are you a guy or a girl?  I never did get an answer...

does it make a difference :-D
ok, here's the cut: designers are usualy women, coders are usualy guys (with a few exceptions -TM).
Now i'm a coder, so you do the math :-D

Never underestimate the power of suggestion  :-D  :-D  :-D

filson is a concatenation of my first and last name, where as my first name is Filip. So yes,  I'm a guy.

It makes no difference at all!!! since you asked the question "How do you know I'm a guy" It's been bugging me  :-D

@Downix

Good move, that's cool :-)


This is really taking shape, I hope we can knock all these flame wars on the head.

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filson wrote:
Is there any reason why OpenGL 1.2 is mentioned?
Not being much of a gfx programmer I'm just currious why the spec  isn't OpenGL 1.4.

We haven't decided base versions yet!!! Only just the common APIs...  :-D

But you are right, we will have to decide what the minimum version of each API must be... But that is what the OpenAmiga is all about  :-P

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takemehomegrandma wrote:
Hmm, as long as this doesn't become another "I've got an idea ... - Yeah that was a great idea, let's do something with this - We need a WEBPAGE! - Yeah and a logo! - And a contest! - And a paypal account! - and ...", and then it stops there. Webpages and logos are nice, but perhaps it is not the key issue this early in development?

Yeah, that's about as far as most things get, but getting this far is better than just a bunch of people moaning... at least something is happening!!!!

I love the logo... but you kinda forgot x86 :-D I personally see that as a big part of the platforms future along with the new IBM PPCs...

If linux can exist across CPU, damnit, so can we!!!

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NewRevolution wrote:
Can somebody please let me in on the loop here? There's a lot of termonology that I'm uncertain of:
MUI,  CGX, BSDSocket,  ELF......

And if you guys are gonna define a standard for OpenGL, why not also include Direct 3D?

And does ISO and IEEE mean anything for this discussion / idea?

The Standards were based on what already exists across the platform... DirectX does not exist, it is M$ proprietory code and we can't have it... so we'll have to cross that one off the list.

In one of my earlier posts I explained what each API related to...

AHI is an Audio specification for example, cgx is a graphics one...

ISO and EEEE are not in discussion here, they are standards but not really to do with APIs

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mrsad wrote:
The OpenAmiga platform is a great idea, but it probably will not work. Simply because we are not using an 'open' OS in the same way as the BSD or Linux people are.

AROS anyone? :-)

-Edit- Your comments are valid, but only if there was no open source alternative! But there is (AROS), and one would hope that Competition with a Free alternative will make Amiga Inc. and the MOS team put in more work and try to make better systems.