Zune for all platforms

[Rebel-CD32]

takemehomegrandma, can you please tell us which MUI applications you have coded or are developing?

[HenryCase]

Backwards compatibility to MUI3.8 API, as the lowest common denominator?

If that works then that's fine, though this cross-compatibility does not seem to be reliable, from listening to Amiga devs. Plus, whilst it would be a great starting point, it would restrict access to future improvements, which brings us back to improving Zune.

[kickstart]

takemehomegrandma, can you please tell us which MUI applications you have coded or are developing?

Maybe takemehome... not develop mui applications but he can give opinions, no need to develop.

[billt]

Do they though, do they all have access to MUI3.8? As far as I understood, MorphOS has MUI4, OS4 has MUI3.9. It's only OS3 that has MUI3.8. Whilst it might seem like I'm being pedantic, the point is that these different versions of MUI are not fully compatible with each other. These incompatibilities leads to extra work for developers.

Are these incompatibilities documented somewhere, like in a chart or something? Eh, formatting lost below, use your imagination...

Feature name  works in MUI3.8  works in MUI3.9   works in MUI4.0
Thing 1            yes                    missing               yes
Thing 2            yes                    yes                      flaky
Cat                  yes                    yes                      yes
Hat                  missing              yes                      yes
etc...

Then we all know (1) what to avoid for full cross-platform, and (2) what to fix in our OS of choice's MUI.

[itix]

Do they though, do they all have access to MUI3.8? As far as I understood, MorphOS has MUI4, OS4 has MUI3.9. It's only OS3 that has MUI3.8. Whilst it might seem like I'm being pedantic, the point is that these different versions of MUI are not fully compatible with each other. These incompatibilities leads to extra work for developers.

They are compatible if developers are using documented features only. IBrowse, Voyager and IProbe (HTMLview.mcc) are known to cause gfx glitches but they are using undocumented API calls or data structures. Undocumented methods and attributes however have remained compatible and still work if used properly.

[takemehomegrandma]

Are these incompatibilities documented somewhere, like in a chart or something?

Code: [Select]

Feature name    works in MUI3.8     works in MUI3.9      works in MUI4.0
Thing 1              yes                 missing              yes
Thing 2              yes                 yes                  flaky
Cat                  yes                 yes                  yes
Hat                  missing             yes                  yes
etc...

Then we all know (1) what to avoid for full cross-platform, and (2) what to fix in our OS of choice's MUI.

I expect Zune developers to have some kind of list like this as their roadmap towards MUI4? If they haven't mapped out the differences between the MUI versions and current Zune, they ought to be quite lost. Maybe they could post it on the bounty page? Would also be a good way of doing progress reports to show how Zune is developing over time...

[jj]

I agree why does someone have to be a MUI Dev to post opinion or underestand what the issues are.
 
If you understand Software degv, APIs or just common sense you would understand.
 
The most obvious thing is that everyhting in Zune is called the same, the classes, the methods, the properties etc etc.
 
Then you won't even need to re-compile.  Like you dont have to re-compile system friendly 68k software on MorphOS.
 
Zune should just be an API re-imp of MUI, simples, anything else is a waste of time.

[kamelito]

I expect Zune developers to have some kind of list like this as their roadmap towards MUI4? If they haven't mapped out the differences between the MUI versions and current Zune, they ought to be quite lost. Maybe they could post it on the bounty page? Would also be a good way of doing progress reports to show how Zune is developing over time...

I suppose this is a starting point...

http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=5805&forum=4&post_id=54683#forumpost54683

[HenryCase]

@kickstart

Maybe takemehome... not develop mui applications but he can give opinions, no need to develop.

@JJ

I agree why does someone have to be a MUI Dev to post opinion or underestand what the issues are.

If I understood correctly, the reason Rebel-CD32 asked what MUI applications takemehomegrandma has worked on is because takemehomegrandma was implying he had an in-depth knowledge of MUI (implying you can code for MUI3.8 features without incident).

To have an in-depth knowledge of MUI, you need to have coded using it, end of. Learning about the real challenges of creating cross-platform programs only come from practical application of the tools. So whilst you're entitled to an opinion on the challenges coders face, if you're a non-coder forgive me if I take your opinion with a pinch of salt.

@takemehomegrandma

I expect Zune developers to have some kind of list like this as their roadmap towards MUI4?

We only need a map of features for MUI3.8 at the moment, as stated before the plan is to get to MUI3.8 compatibility first, investigation about MUI4 can wait until later.

[jj]

By non-coder do you mean non-mui coder or just non-coder?

[HenryCase]

By non-coder do you mean non-mui coder or just non-coder?

Both apply, but a coder that hadn't used MUI would understand it less than a coder that had, so whilst I'd be more likely to pay heed to the advice of a coder over a non-coder, I'd respect the opinions of a MUI coder even further.

In other words, in terms of understanding:

Less understanding - - - - - - - - - - - More understanding
Non-coder - - - Coder that hadn't used MUI --- MUI coder

I'd say the reasons for this are pretty obvious.

[kamelito]

While you could prepare a Zune that'd run alongside MUI on MorphOS, you would indeed need to compile all apps for it with modified headers so that all classes would use a different name (a prefix, like some "non-coder" here suggested could work, but not in the compiler but in headers obviously This of course means that you cannot compile a single binary that'd run using Zune or MUI depending on what's installed. You cannot replace MUI with Zune on MorphOS because MorphOS (for instance, intuition.library) relies on its internals heavily (structures, private methods, attributes, etc). Since those methods are, well, private, they wouldn't be available in Zune. And what would be the point of having two libraries alongside doing virtually the same (but Zune doing obviously less than MUI 4.0 and being poorly integrated)?

In the Morphos site "and AROS for providing the source base of many components, including but not limited to DOS, Intuition, GadTools, Locale, Commodities."

Then Morphos devs said that they gave back source code to Aros. So if intuition rely on MUI internals on Morphos then its not a problem as you gave back the corrected/modified source code to Aros, or Am I missing something?

Kamel

[Piru]

Am I missing something?

See APL section 1.9.

[kamelito]

See APL section 1.9.

I'm no good at licence terms, but is this not more related to the section below ?
Kamel
3.2. Availability of Source Code.

[Piru]

I'm no good at licence terms, but is this not more related to the section below ?
Kamel
3.2. Availability of Source Code.

I can't see how it would be. 1.9 specifies which files actually fall within APL, which is the key here.

[HenryCase]

@kamelito

Then Morphos devs said that they gave back source code to Aros. So if intuition rely on MUI internals on Morphos then its not a problem as you gave back the corrected/modified source code to Aros, or Am I missing something?

The MorphOS devs haven't violated the terms of the APL. They aren't required to share every change they made to the AROS code, APL is not like a GPL licence in this way.

@all
Can we get back to discussing the bounty please. Who is interested in donating (if not straight away, then later)? If you're not interested in the Phase 1 bounty, would you be interested in supporting later Zune Fix bounties?
http://www.power2people.org/projects/profile/61