Im going to get a few apps from Aminet tonite and use amiga exploror to put them on the amiga. in the mean time can anyone quickly explain how to use datatypes? Im just getting back into this and I am quit rusty! Thanks again to all!
The Datatypes concept was a way to modularize programs that 'view' other files that contain data (text, Amigaguides, sound, images, animations, etc). Multiview is an engine that can view or play any data file provided there is a Datatype for that file in your "SYS: Devs/Datatypes" directory. Unused (inactive) datatypes are stored in your "SYS:Storage/Datatypes" directory.
Each time a new picture format, for example, evolves, Multiview does not need to be revised to "see" it. There simply needs to be a new Datatype that tells Multiview how to interpret the data in the file. Very cool! Multiview came with OS 3.x and above (there is a Multiview for OS 2.x that uses the WhatIS library, I believe). Since it came standard with the OS, Multiview has always served as a great default viewer for files that are to be distributed among many Amiga users (so you should configure it,
). Other Amiga programs use datatypes and make use of this modular concept as well.
Datatypes are great but not always the fastest way to do the job. The reason Visage and Viewtek were recommended by others is that they are optimized to render the most common picture formats with less delay than the stock Commodore Datatypes. There are, however, faster datatypes available on Aminet. The Warp series datatypes are much faster than stock.
Some other fast and convenient viewers are: Textview and Next (text files), APDF (for Acrobat PDFs), Play16 and Songplayer (for sounds), MooVID and Riva (for video, very fast for RTG).
