OS4 GUI

[Slash]

@trgse

You see, my opinion is the exact opposite of yours. I hope ReAction dies quickly, no disrespect to the authors but MUI is THE best GUI out there.

I'm writing an app for OS4 and there is no way I'd even consider using ReAction, I even told Fleecy Moss this, no f##king way!

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

From your comments I suspect you've only used MUI on an AGA 030 Amiga. In which case I'll agree with you that it is slow and unresonsive, but on my 060 it's the complete opposite!

[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.

[Hooligan_DCS]

@Rogue

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

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

- If I have understood correctly MUI is PPC native these days under MOS. So on a G3/G4 it should be much faster and responsive.
- RTG cards are ten times more powerfull than the fastest p5/voodoo cards we are used to
- New, better and faster hardware and buses should make a difference aswell

I myself have always liked MUI. On a PicassoIV and 060/60 I haven't found it THAT slow to use.

[Waccoon]

I don't really care what it looks like so long as all the buttons are in the right places.  I still haven't gotten over how badly designed the HD toolbox is in those preliminary screenshots.  Getting a non-techie to use an app like that is equivalent to torture, regardless of how ugly or pretty it is.

As for the ReAction vs MUI war, I tend to think there aren't any good independent GUI toolkits out there.  That, and MUI is slow as a dog under WinUAE on my Athlon 2600+!  I haven't used ReAction.  I tend to limit my WinUAE sessions to old games these days.


@RedFox:  Hey, I have that picture as a 20x30 poster on my wall!  Just thought I'd share.   :-D

[z5]

Hooligan_DCS wrote:

- If I have understood correctly MUI is PPC native these days under MOS. So on a G3/G4 it should be much faster and responsive.
- RTG cards are ten times more powerfull than the fastest p5/voodoo cards we are used to
- New, better and faster hardware and buses should make a difference aswell
 

I'm rather glad they took Reaction (allthough it is not that important for me).

It's better to start with something that is already fast on a slow CPU. We don't want to fall into that windows trap: it's not fast, but give it a turbo this or that processor and it will run ok.

I hope that the attitude behind OS4 still is to make something so fast and elegant as is possible. And not to throw something at the cpu and hope that it will run fast because the cpu is fast. After all, this is what made the Amiga so awesome imo.

But then, i don't doubt that OS4 will be elegant and fast.  ;-)

[catohagen]

- If I have understood correctly MUI is PPC native these days under MOS. So on a G3/G4 it should be much faster and responsive.

I dont like the idea of throwing more cpu power
on stuff thats slow, i dont like mui that much,
and normal windows feels much more snappier than
mui, its good to know OS4 didnt go for mui as
standard gui.

MUI unregged with OS4 is good, so you dont feel like paying twice for it....i mean, everyone who
like mui have a keyfile anyway

[catohagen]

>Getting a non-techie to use an app like that is >equivalent to torture, regardless of how ugly or >pretty it is.

I think there is an expert and novice mode available, choosing novice will hide/remove all
the hi-tech-buttons...

[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.

[blubbe]

"As for the ReAction vs MUI war, I tend to think there aren't any good independent GUI toolkits out there. That, and MUI is slow as a dog under WinUAE on my Athlon 2600+! I haven't used ReAction. I tend to limit my WinUAE sessions to old games these days."

MUI is snappy here on Celeron 500.. it was okey
on 030/50. Something is wrong with your setup.

[PPC]

Now i wonder, ok i use every hack in the book te let my OS3.9 look good but i'm pretty happy the way my wb looks.

Even ppl who did not see an amiga for almost 10 years find it good looking.

But yes there are parts who could be very much improved and yes it would be nice if you did not have to install all that stuff before it looks nice.


 

[Hammer]

As for the ReAction vs MUI war, I tend to think there aren't any good independent GUI toolkits out there. That, and MUI is slow as a dog under WinUAE on my Athlon 2600+! I haven't used ReAction. I tend to limit my WinUAE sessions to old games these days.

What's wrong with yourJIT-WinUAEsetup?

MUI is fine in my AthlonXP/nForce2/JIT-WinUAE box and it’s also fine in my older Athlon@1.3Ghz/VIA KT/JIT-WinUAE box.

[Hammer]

Well, IMO, if you like toys and teletubbies, X(tra) P(roblems) GUI might look fascinating. I'm so used to AmigaOS 3.x GUI that I simply hate Windows look.

 wonder if Microsoft is heading for the fashion seen in fiction movies, where computer GUIs are very toy-like, ie. you get a message with a font that is about height of a cat and one big button in the middle of the screen
 

With standard WinXP (without WinXP Plus pack/StyleXP/WinBlinds enablers) one could select metallic silver theme instead of the blue  teletubbies look.