Native 68k Netsurf

[fishy_fiz]

For me the biggest arguement for a non SDL version is so it's not restricted to graphics card users.

[unusedunused]

For me the biggest arguement for a non SDL version is so it's not restricted to graphics card users.

this of course does with native version work more slow.netsurf have no planar graphic, all is render in 24 bit and need then convert with complex code to 8 bit planar

If you can test how slow AGA is on a 640*256 screen in 8 bit, you can see how slow all go with scrolling.

8 bit look very ugly, because web designer never test a page how it look on 8 bit, because all Systems today in use support more than 8 bit.

I dont believe that anybody use netsurf in daily use on amiga without GFX card.

I think you have a PC or mac right, and show a webpage cost you 4-8 sec of time.

And i dont think that you use then your amiga AGA daily (what CPu you have btw ?)which need to show a page around 50 sec or more(with a 68060 50 MHZ CPU), and give a programmer money for this.

I know there are some users that have a naked A1200, which they use very rare and want see that this old system can run new software same fast as a modern PC and only then they maybe want pay some donate

but this is impossible, and if try to do that, is only waste time.
on amiga there are so few developers and i think this time should spend do more usefull projects.

and if somebody develop for free, he do that mostly because he want use it himself, or hope that other help him and share work.

[fishy_fiz]

I dont expect to be using 256 colors with my A1200, but I'd still like to be able to browse with it. Also I dont think anyone using a Classic Amiga expects it to be as fast as a modern PC. Classic users are enthusiasts, not stupid.
I simply want to have a better browsing experience than whats available with Aweb/IBrowse or Voyager and netsurf seems the most likely candidate. Going by the required specs of other system, the engine should hopefully be usable on a moderately upgraded Amiga.

[NovaCoder]

And i see in the output that all SDL calls are not listet, so teh consuming is below 10%

all higher time usage is netsurf non graphic core.

even if a wonder happen and speedup really is 30-50 % its too few to be usable

remember this inet site need on classic 37 sec.so 50% speedup is a time of 25 sec.

I really notice no diffrence if the inet page need show 25 sec or 37 sec.all is too long in compare to other AOS browsers.

on other side use a X86 and winuae, page show is around 4 sec.

Yes of course you are right, as the internet gets more demanding (almost by the day it seems), more processing power is required.  Even if 68k NetSurf rendered in AGA 'for free' it would still be slow compared to any browser running on x86.

I guess the 'fun' would be seeing just how fast/usable it could be on AGA 68k and there's obviously room for improvement.

[Khephren]

@bernd_afa
 You've explained your point well, but AGA classic users want a new browser. Once we have a working version of Netsurf, it will probably spur classic developers to work further on it to improve it's speed (As Nova Coder has managed to do with day of the tentacle and scumm using kalms c2p etc). It's up to them if they want to give it a go. The amount of time you've spent posting negativity, you could have spent helping.

Classic users are like any other retro computer hobyists, they all own PC, mac and Linux machines, but they want to see how far they can take their old favourites. But you already know this. I'm typing this on a dual core PC, but I still get excited about a new browser on my A1200. Go figure

[eb15]

My idea, and I'm not working on this is at the moment, so don't ask...

To get an idea of how fast netsurf or OWB or whatever browser could be on slow machines one could port it so it just writes to a fast-mem buffer without displaying anything, except a "loading... block in window area" and see how that times out, then work on how to transfer the buffer data to Amiga window rastport depending on how it's updated and what screen type it has to render to.  Maybe draw some best match luma levels first then add best match chroma info for some fixed pallette pens, etc. for low color screens such as a 16color workbench, or even open its own 8bit greyscale only screen and use that.  It might not be pretty, but might be usable...  Then go on to investigate profiling the underlying HTML, etc. and layout engines in more depth, options for javascript, plugins, etc.

[utri007]

Netsurf could be THE brower that people use daily and many of them are browsing sites like aminet.

8bit and 640x256 should be ok

Hope you guys succeed to make it native, with prober amiga style gui

[desiv]

8 bit look very ugly, because web designer never test a page how it look on 8 bit, because all Systems today in use support more than 8 bit.

I dont believe that anybody use netsurf in daily use on amiga without GFX card.

But there are people who are currently browsing with AWeb and iBrowse on their Amiga's without graphics cards...
For the most part, we're OK with the dithered pix and slower performance, but wouldn't mind at all a browser that renders better..

Personally, I wouldn't say 8-bit web is "very ugly," but then again, I grew up with old school dithering and I kind of like it..  ;-)

desiv

[Khephren]

And who says 8bit would be the end, rather than the start? Shapeshifter runs on a chunky HAM8 screen....and who knows what goodies AROS might bring in the future?

[wawrzon]

hmm. i wasnt into this for a week, but maybe really given as bernd says that the x11 game i ve compiled was quite snappy on my a4k, maybe it would be interesting to update the x11 68k port as far as possible. i suspect though it was just due to its pure line vector gfx.

[unusedunused]

>I guess the 'fun' would be seeing just how fast/usable it could be >on AGA 68k and there's obviously room for improvement.

Yes, but only for fun for others code hundreds of hours doesnt make fun any programmer.

and when you see who is here that do speedoptimize, i see only Peterh and cosmos, but they do speed optimize on near unmeasurable parts.so who should do speed optimize then.

look on OS4 and partly AROS/MOS they have not many programmers fun to code on this systems, because there was much bounties and donations, for things that in windows and linux world everbody can get for free.

so if you want something not very usefull for the programmer you have 2 solutions, learn programing yourself, or do a bounty and hope that somebody do that.

I have no time to help on AGA or native netsurf if i not see a real advantage.

money i not need, i better do things that have more usability, but maybe somebody else is with money more motivate to do that.

[utri007]

Even when I say that SDL sucks for 68k CPU, SDL versin of Netsurf proves that Netsurf could be useable with 68k amigas. It doesn't need to be much faster to be useable.

1. Get rid of true type fonts
2. Native Gui
3. Support for 8 bit screens

That should enough to give about 50% speedup and SDL allso locks Netsurf when loading, wich makes it feels even slower than it actually is.

How many would be interested to support boynty of this?

And please, don't start to talk about firefox or OWB 68k, they are not possible for real amigas

[chris]

1. Get rid of true type fonts

Doable, but won't look pretty due to ambiguous sizing  of text on web pages - you're looking at scaled bitmap fonts for the most part (or a lot of different sized bitmaps converted from a TrueType/CG font).  You'll also lose UTF-8 character support.

If you delve way back into SVN there is a font.c set up exactly like this.  It's probably best left as a user option (fast+ugly, slow+pretty)

2. Native Gui

All the popupmenu.class stuff should be removed now for OS3 compiles.

3. Support for 8 bit screens

Something that needs doing for OS4 as well.

[utri007]

It doesn't need much to be pleasant experience. Big part of SDL Netsurf slowdown is because it locks itself when downloading pages.

This is something wich classic amiga users has wished from 1995, so all of you should be interested of this. Here are doable coders, one of them tries to do it. He needs a help, so could you help him?

Maybe not because:

1.)
x1000 has announced to announced to be prudtion, that is BAD and we should spam every possible computer related forum with information that it is expensive and old.

2.)
Sam460ex mobos are availlable, wich is simply wrong because it is expensive and powerless like old washmachine

1.) & 2.) requires all attention from us, no other efforts are possible.

Point is what are you doing with your spare time?

[unusedunused]

>But there are people who are currently browsing with AWeb and >iBrowse on their Amiga's without graphics cards...

Can you tell how much memory this classic systems without GFX Cards have ?

netsurf nead at least a amiga with 48 megabyte of RAM to run usefull.
Now tell me which AGA only user have in his amiga 48 megabyte of RAM
the netsurf engine render all pages complete in 32 bit.This all browser do, but other browsers need lots more RAM.

If you use MUI or Reaction you need more RAM usage, because many unused libs are load

>1. Get rid of true type fonts

if this bring a speedup on your system, you can easy check, with first netsurf version.
there are two versions released, 1 with truetype fonts, 1 with internal and fast font that need no AA.
But in real world nobody see a speedup of internal fonts, so there is no time spend to support this.thats too an argument that graphic is no problem, and netsurf Core need most time.

normaly AA truetype fonts are 10* slower as non AA Fonts.

The mistake most amiga users do that do not program, is they live in theory.
Only when you look on praxis and measure speed use a profiler you can see if speedup is really possible.

and this i have done and i see that Problem is the netsurf core which use 95% of time.
and when you with a wonder speedup graphic part that is do from SDL by factor 8 you get only a overall speedup if 4.5 %.

but if you slowdown with AGA by factor 8(yes it cost lots time to convert from chunky to playnar) you get 8*5% 40% slowdown.

[unusedunused]

>Big part of SDL Netsurf slowdown is because it locks itself when downloading pages.

then there should give the donwload task a higher task pri.please tell that Artur

other do not help because when download and render a page, always time is share between render and download.and when render a page, and it take on a classic always 40 sec or more then of course download rate decrease, if system is too slow.

but when Artur change task pri of download task, then download is always fast.this must every other AOS browser do in same way, and have nothing to do with SDL or nor