NetSurf 3.2 68k released

[wawrzon]

That's nice to hear.  A few years ago the chance of getting a 'new' 68k browser port were very slim and now it's a reality.


Can someone do a video of the latest version running on a fast RTG Amiga (not WinUAE)?

Well done Artur

unfortunately im away from my studio for weeks. otherwise i would probably try.

[wawrzon]

alas i cant tell without trying out myself. i see the version on aminet is fairly old. in the meantime i tested too many different versions (i think the links may still be publicly available somewhere here, on eab or ppa) and just lately one that didnt rely on ixemul.library, which was working fairly well. as usual the devil dwells in minor issues, which is why artur has not released anything new yet. in short, if you mind tinkering yourself, i would advise you to wait till next release. other than that you can et snoopdos catch whats missing. i wouldnt copy netsurf stuff all over the place. i think an assign to the directory it has been decompressed to should be enough. with the new version even this isnt necessary.

[wawrzon]

the sdl netsurf is being developed by artur. different versions are the result of transition to noixemul port as well as targeting differen hardware settings, such as aga vs rtg, fast (uae) systems with true type font or without for "lowend" amigas.

ideally, what i would opt for, was one for all version with switchable features, but this depends all on artur. or anyone who would like to join and help him. i from my side can assure the last versio was very promissing, only few problems dragged it down again.

[wawrzon]

A bug report which just states "it does not work" is not very helpful.

chris, it wasnt a bug report, just an observation on his part, he is entiteled to.

you have seen how far we got mostly thanks to mattheys exprtise in testing. except me who wasnt much help none stepped forward. it almost proves that porting stuff from os4 to amiga is actually too much hassle.

[wawrzon]

Chris' version of Netsurf 68k is only native version of NEtsurf for 68k Amigas. It uses official sources meant to be used with desktop systems and it has a proper gui. Problem is that Chris is not "very interested" to support 68k Amigas, it is more like a proof of consept than a actual browser.

All other versions use Framebuffer frontend wich is meant to be used with "no gui" sytems and debugging also they are build to top of SDL.  Thats why Arthur version from Amiga Netsurf is NOT here http://www.netsurf-browser.org/downloads/ and never will. Frambuffer is not meant to be used like that.

so what? could you stop mindlessly repeat stuff about things being "official" or whatever? there is one working browser and another port in an early alpha stage, so whats your problem?

Netsurf requirements for RiscOS is 16mb ram and 030 equvalent ARM6 CPU. SDL/Framebuffer requires 060 and 64mb ram, so if someone decides continue/help Chris with native version, it would be possible to use it with 030 hopefully.

again some buzz words like "native". have you even tried chris version? its considerably slower than the sdl one, and it still doesnt render correctly, far from that. it might catch up, but i doubt, against all claims that have been made a priori, that it will beet it. perhaps simply sdl isnt that slow after all? also, how about you try to help, as far youz can, instead hoping someone else does?

Chris: Could you explain what framebuffer means in this case? I would also like to know what means "no gui systems"?

why are you even arguing if you dont understand it?

[wawrzon]

I suspect that was an older version of NetSurf but the 68k should have better code density (smaller executable) than ARM processors when optimized (Chris's NetSurf currently isn't optimized). I would recommend 32MB minimum for Chris's NetSurf to be usable in its current state. I would also recommend at least a 68040 for usable speed but a fast 68030+68882 should work. A 68030@50MHz with fast memory is almost as fast as a 68040@25MHz with slow memory for integer performance but lacks the larger caches of the 68040 and the 68882 is a fraction of the performance of the 68040 FPU.



I don't know if Chris's native NetSurf could be much faster than Arti's version but you are correct that it uses less memory. Chris's version is more forgiving of installation problems but there are known problems including rendering clearing and font crashing for some users (not reproducible here) which make it less than usable, IMO. Most of Arti's NetSurf versions crash after some time on my real Amigas but not in my AmiKit/WinUAE install.

NetSurf is a bear to compile which keeps me from helping more. Wawa had all kinds of trouble and I am even less of a Unix person (I tried Cinnamon Mint but went back to XP). NovaCoder probably could have done some good but he is leaving the Amiga. It would be nice if Arti tried to help Chris more but Arti is still learning programming and has a different philosophy. Part of the problems with Chris's NetSurf is bugs and lack of support in AmigaOS 3.x compared to AmigaOS 4.x. I talked to someone "important" about porting AmigaOS 4.x Reaction to AmigaOS 3.x and there was some interest but Reaction is highly dependent on the intuition.library and graphics.library. There is a known bug in one of the intuition.library BOOPSI classes (parent classes of Reaction and datatypes classes) which I think I could fix with a patch (intuition.library and graphics.library are in ROM) but newly compiled modules with new support and new ROMs are the proper way to add support. Also, the AmigaOS 3.x intuition.library is an inefficient mess currently as the ancient Green Hill compiler requires stubs for all external functions. Updating AmigaOS 3.x to be more API compatible to AmigaOS 4.x would be a major undertaking and take a considerable amount of work. Users may be disappointed without a level of optimization and integration at least equal to AmigaOS 3.9. Current high end (FPGA based) 68k systems are perpetually delayed and/or have other problems I won't go into. There isn't much motivation to do anything as the Amiga hits new lows and dies more everyday.

sad news that nova is leaving, but cant blame him. id probably be able to compile netsurf, with chris help but at some point ive lost temper. im not very patient person. and netsurf build system is too complicated. on aros you simple do configure and make, its easier to try things out and finally contribute something. i doubt i could have done that with netsurf,so after seing how far arti has got with the sdl version i felt it wasnt worth a hassle and turned to other things.

[wawrzon]

If you disable FPU, please consider to make two different versions.

With 68040 FPU makes big difference, compared to 68060. With 68040 and FPU, Netsurf is actually useable. Disabling FPU makes it about 30% more snail. With 68020/30 with FPU or not, it woun't be useable or at least requires a lots of patience.

making multiple binaries simply adds up to the mess. 30% is not a big deal what concenrs usability. if some page loads two minutes it doesnt make it critical if it needs three. the binary should be compiled against existing libraries, in this case the math libs, and the system should decide, if it has fpu or if it needs to use soft floats. then people can simply try to use netsurf with a 68020 and see if it suiets them.

[wawrzon]

Could it be possible to make it support tool types? So that FPU could be enabled/disabled that way.

either tool types or some proper perfs file or program (i know about the one in resources, but not everybody gets that, even if it contained an appropriate entry)

Though, one question is Chris still interested to develop Netsurf further? There has been extreme low interest to Netsurf. Arthur's version is OK under emulation, but not with real Amiga. I ques that both of them has very few users. No feedback, no bug repoerts, etc

thats normal. you need to accustom to this, its only not that visible on other systems, since amiga and especailly whatever spinn off it has really very few (able) users.

I gotta say that I'm actually very surprized how fast Chris' build is. I thought that something like 2x slower would be maximum speed. It starts to be as fast as iBrowse is when downloading this site.

downloading or rendering?

[wawrzon]

Arthurs version would not work with your system anyway. It requires more memory than you have.

You should consider update to OS3.9

33mb seem to me as rather much, i doubt arturs version requires so much initially, but i woulkd have to recheck. its rather the cpu that hasnt enough power im afraid. i would wait a bit longer, but upgrading to 3.9 on such a config? im not sure..