We need an iBrowse replacement for 68k!!!

[chris]

What would be facts? When starting it reguires only 5mb ram?

Try 32MB.  It just about starts with 18MB so it might be possible to get it running with that amount, but I'd suggest the minimum should be 32MB.

I requires OS3.5/3.9 maybe it will work with OS3.1 with Reaction installed? It requires AGA or RTG.

The library versions requested basically ensure that OS3.5+ is required.  Maybe it's possible to get it running under OS3.1 but the amount of stuff I've already had to backport is rather high anyway (don't let anybody tell you OS4 isn't much of an improvement over 3.1 - it has so much that makes it far easier to develop for).  AGA or RTG, both should work.

What is current state? Is it bog slow or is it "semi useable"?

No idea.

What is needed by coder?

A Linux (V)M to install the m68k toolchain on.

What are current problems?

http://wiki.netsurf-browser.org/Todo/AmigaOS_frontend#OS3_Support

[chris]

you mean on a real amiga? its "bog slow", i havent tested late version, but i doubt it has much improved.

matthey's comments were that it was noticeably faster.

i went back trying to get netsurf build under debian, just a generic target for first, i think i have at least almost all dependencies (one might be missing), but there doesnt seem to be utf8proc package available. looks like i need to compile it by hand or something. i just wonder what (major) linux platform do the netsurf people really support for their build system. it seeems much more complicated to build it in comparison to, say, aros and ubuntu seems even less suitable.

The "NetSurf people" use Debian 64-bit.

utf8proc is here: http://git.netsurf-browser.org/libutf8proc.git/
As with all the NetSurf internal libraries, it doesn't get built as part of the toolchain.  You need to build those afterwards with make HOST=m68k-unknown-amigaos (I think)

I thought somebody had recently put some cross-compilation instructions for RISC OS up on the wiki (the process is more-or-less identical), but I'm buggered if I can find them.

[chris]

I've fixed a lot of bad crashing on startup and other problems, to the point where NetSurf now works - mostly - on an (emulated) AGA machine.

NetSurf post-3.3 ALPHA for AmigaOS 3.5+ (save everything, back up, etc before using!)

Prerequisites: AISS and a PNG DataType.

Some Choices options which might be useful:
friend_bitmap:1 - set to use a friend bitmap.  This is usually disabled as I wasn't getting much on screen with it set, but IIRC it was helping with RTG speed so I've made it an option.
window_simple_refresh:1 - set to use simple refresh mode, saves memory
redraw_tile_size_x:100 } change the values as you like, these set the off-screen
redraw_tile_size_y:100 } render buffer size and will save memory (default is full screen)

There are also the bitmap font options, but I can't remember if I ever got those working.  Have a look earlier in the thread if you want to try them.

[chris]

Congratulations Chris Netsurf start and "works" both of my AGA machines.

Woo-hoo!

a few considerations :

It asks TBImages assign in startup, where should I assign it?

Oops, I should have mentioned that. It needs AISS installed, even if the default theme is selected (not sure why, need to check that). http://www.masonicons.de

My RTG machine uses chip ram and it is even slover than my 040/AGA

Try adding friend_bitmap:1 to Choices.

My plain AGA machine "unable to open xxx" where xxx is font name, with prety much every font.

It should only be using the default CG fonts. Which fonts is it complaining about?

Plain AGA machine Netsurf uses about 13mb ram to start.

That's not bad. I haven't tried this build on my real A1200.

But BIG step forward! It works, now those who like to use emulated machine has a useable browser. Now some speed ups and we have a solution for browser problem.

Big thanks for your hard work and patience. If you need any testing I help as much I can with my Limited skils.

The main speedup will be to fix the GCC/NewObject optimisation problem. That will also allow me to enable JavaScript, which needs optimisation switched on (not that JS does much yet).

[chris]

Prety much every font. ie. numerous fonts.

When it is font scanning, displaying pages, or what?

Maybe a log file will help here. (NetSurf -V RAM:ns.log)

It doesn't need AISS it just asks it. Works with assign to any place and no complains latter.

OK, but it's getting that path from somewhere and it shouldn't be.

OK made some test with and without friend_bitmap:1

There is a very visible diffrence how Netsurf displays web page with it enabled and disabled.

With it enabled start page seems to be OK

With it enabled memory use is about 500kb chip ram, without it about 1000kb.

Which screenshot is which?  Is this on RTG?

[chris]

They are named aga / rtg, better looking is rtg

Ah, OK, didn't see the names.  I know friend bitmaps don't work properly with AGA, it's why they are off by default.

I may be able to force friend bitmaps on for RTG and off for AGA.

[chris]

Font problem must be something simply? Snoopdos says simply that it fails to open fonts. Looking them from Fonts: ?

I need the NetSurf log file to track this down.  Did you run "NetSurf -V RAM:ns.log"?  If so, can you post ns.log somewhere?

Any way, I noticed that without fonts scrolling is smooth, so there is a huge problem with fonts / speed. Or there is other reason for that.

Yes; the problem is that outline fonts take bloody ages to render.  It's the same on OS4, although that's more to do with plotting to the screen whereas the 68k struggles more with constructing the glyphs.

This is why I was trying to put the option of bitmap fonts back in.  They look crap, but at least they are fast.

[chris]

Also I couldn't quit because there was no "close" icon, and not enough memory left to open a pull-down menu, haha.  

Try RAmiga-Q.
Open your Choices file (Users/Default/Choices) and put in some of the suggested options from my earlier post - they will cut down memory usage a fair bit.

[chris]

@polluks

I'll fix those, thanks.

[chris]

@samo79

Yes, it dies horribly under OS4.  I don't know why and I don't care - because of all the updated components it's useless for debugging anyway (not to mention the version checks with embedded #defines checking for OS4, meaning most of the parts that are supposed to do blitting do nothing instead).

[chris]

It does something weird to memory?

There is some memory trashing going on I think, although I'm not sure where yet.

Can you check if you have a "FONTS:CGTriumvirate.otag".  If not, do you have "FONTS:CGTriumvirate.font"?  If you have the latter, the size should be 4 bytes.

edit Actually, I can see your list of fonts and the CG ones aren't there - they should be installed by default.  You might need to run IntelliFont and re-install them from FONTS:_bullet_outlines

If you have other outline fonts you can use those instead, but I'm curious as to why you and Oldsmobile_Mike both have them missing when they are part of a basic OS3.1/5 install (and should be part of an OS3.9 install too).

[chris]

Not sure if this is helpful info or not, but I am using diskfont.library version 45.8 (08/30/2010), my ENVARC: font cache is enabled, and I have both FONTS:CGTriumvirate.otag (205 bytes) and FONTS:CGTriumvirate.font (4 bytes) installed.

And you're getting the "Unable to open CGTriumvirate" message?
Can you run "NetSurf -V RAM:ns.log" so I can take a look at the log file?  Just want to see if it is tripping over opening the .otag file like utri's is.

(oh yes, and four bytes is correct, not eight, misread the structure definition)

[chris]

My mistake, I didn't have those fonts installed. Now when I copied them to Fonts: it doesn't gave that error anymore. My fonts are same size than Oldsmobile_mike has.

No fonts displayed though.

Just to be clear, you do have the files in _bullet_outlines and _bullet installed as well?

Can you do me another log file?

MCP and FBLit running.

I'm not sure what MCP does, but FBlit might have adverse effects.

[chris]

I believe it's mentioned somewhere that MCP can interfere with the way the system caches fonts, that's why I mentioned it.  

Still waiting for your log file, Mike

[chris]

Okay, last comment for a while, I promise!  (I really do, I need to run to the hardware store before it closes).  I finally got you a log!  I saved it to SYS:, so this time, when it crashed, at least I had something recoverable for you!  Enjoy!  

(note: it crashed during the process of scanning for fonts, before the application had even fully loaded.  If I run it without -V, from Workbench, and from the ram disk, it usually runs better than this.  That seems to be the "winning combination" for me, right now )

OK, it looks like it crashed after the font scanning, but because -V with the file redirection tends to buffer in memory, the end of the file is cut off (not your fault - unfortunately redirecting from stderr isn't possible on OS3, so getting NetSurf to write direct to disk is the only option).  You can try -v (lowercase), which will output to stderr so we can see where it is crashing.

I think your font "unable to open" problem is that you have a designed bold/italic font defined in an otag file, but the font itself doesn't exist (because the log is from a session which didn't get that far, this is a bit of a guess).  I might be able to add a fallback for that condition, and I don't have a clue how to add (or remove) these on OS3 (on OS4, TypeManager has the options to do it, I don't recall the same in Intellifont but it might have them).

Not trying to sound like a smartass here, but if a program fails when using the latest versions of libraries and utilities, chances are I don't want to run it.  Life is too short to be flipping around libraries and whatnot, just for one program.    But, I'll keep playing around with it.  Sometimes I like a challenge.  

Well, I did say it was alpha, with a big warning about saving everything

How do you change its cache and memory options?  Oh, it uses fast ram on mine, all right.  About 53 megabytes worth (most of that as cache), just to load Google!  

In users/Default/Choices (might be users/something-else/Choices) you can set:
disc_cache_size:0
That will disable the disk (disc) cache. If you've been running the installer, you'll find it creates the Choices file for you with a couple of entries, so it should be easy to find before you run it.

What filesystem are you using?  I'd like to know why it is crashing when on HDD.
It might be worth trying it on HDD again with the disk cache disabled, in case it is that causing it.

[chris]

Great!  I should have time to check out that Choices file tonight.  I managed to get into the preferences within the program (through one of the pull-down menus), and found all the tabs were blank!  

Be grateful the tabs are there at all - I'd only recently fixed them.  Haven't got round to figuring out what is wrong with the tab contents yet.

Oh, and I should've mentioned file system!  This is exactly what I was thinking, only I was too busy rambling about other stuff to put it into words.  I'm running the latest version of PFS3-AIO from Aminet, and I would bet good money that NetSurf and PFS3 are not getting along.  That's why it "almost always" runs from RAM:, but crashes immediately when trying to run from disk.  If I were a detective, I'd say I think we found a clue.  

Yep, and the disk cache is the only bit which is likely to do any slightly odd file operations, so it'll likely work with it switched off.