Wandering around AROS...

More Kitty! Now we're really rolling!...

2011-08-16T06:33:00.000-07:00

Manu is a first class artist, extremely dedicated, gifted, talented... Well I could go on, but you get the overall picture!...
When I proposed more development on the kitty design he was one of the first to throw it's own rendition. Later on he said that he wouldn't do more of Kitty, and that pretty much settled the case.

Well, I guess he got on the will and did a terrific job on a new and more closer design to the original from Eric Schwartz!

Just take a look at this post... But better yet - I believe he will bring more! Keep an eye on his site:
Drawing, Illustration & Animation

I guess with Manu and Alain I'm rest assured that Kitty will not only live on, but have a blast!

So happy summer for all of you and do support AROS and the people involved!
Sometimes a simple pat on the shoulder do wonders!...

Amiga History Library...

2011-07-10T01:28:00.000-07:00

The "Viva Amiga" Documentary pledge has reached 85% of the required $25000 to finish production! Thanks to everyone who has helped and keep it going as it's not over yet!

Of course this is not the first attempt to gather a piece of the Amiga History on video, and there's a lot of footage around. For example there's the famous "The History of the Amiga" with Amiga World interviewing the Original team:

Youtube Part 1
Youtube Part 2
Youtube Part 3
Youtube Part 4

And there are various videos regarding advertising, use of Amigas on TV shows, The Computer Chronicles and BBC Micro Live Show, Demos and Gameplay footage and a lot more to be found on the internet...

Then there's the Amiga History Guide Site where the majority of facts, less known stories and hardware and even rumours and vapourware are all joined in a wonderful library : AMIGA HISTORY GUIDE PORTAL

An interisting recolection of Amiga History can be found on the ARS Technica site:
Part 1 - Genesis
Part 2 - The birth of Amiga
Part 3 - First Prototype
Part 4 - Enter Commodore
Part 5 - Post Launch Blues
Part 6 - Stop the bleeding
Part 7 - Game on!

While this series isn't complete its very well written with various details not known to the general public...

And there is so much regarding the Amiga it's history and legacy on the WEB, yet it's just the point of the iceberg. There's a lot more scattered around in various forms of media and most important in our hearts and souls!

So for those who complain that the goal of $25000 is too high or unrealistic for this type of documentary, better think again - there's no way a 2 hour documentary will ever cover most of these... I just hope the Extras Discs are enough to cover a great deal of it! ;)

Viva Amiga Documentary

2011-06-29T07:13:00.000-07:00

Most of the active Amiga community should have heard about this, but like most things it doesn't hurt to promote a bit more.

Basically this is a documentary regarding the Amiga History, it's influences, the culture shock and its legacy.

In 1985, a powerful new kind of computer was born. It was 10 years ahead of its time, and ready to take on Microsoft, IBM and Apple for control of the PC market. The Amiga computer revolutionized video, multimedia and digital art, with Andy Warhol being a big advocate. It was also known for being a fantastic video games machine. Despite the computer's manufacturer going bankrupt in early 1990's, the Amiga has a huge cult following worldwide to this day. This film documents the rise and fall of the Amiga in the marketplace, and gives an inside look at the passionate and eccentric community that surrounds it. We've got in-depth interviews with the Amiga's designers, engineers and advocates, and we'll be shooting even more. This is a compelling and unique documentary, rich with animation and a distinctive style. Viva Amiga is also being written and directed by an Amiga user - Zach Weddington

Rather than just a simple historic documentary it also shows the impact and nowadays uses both the classic machines and New generations ones...
In the clip above it goes beyond and shows music artists using A1200's and other classic machines - covering the Blip Fest 2011 show in NYC...

It looks pretty high quality... Actually more professional quality is the word I should use!

But bear in mind that this documentary will only go ahead if the sum $25000 dollar is reached on the Kickstarter pledge site.

Check out this pledge video, and consider contributing...

Aros-tan mail stamp

2011-06-28T00:53:00.000-07:00

This is a slight change from the Kitty stuff - just a quick reference to the OS-tan imagery, and in this line of sight a new AROS-tan image I found on DeviantArt!

Something cute to add to your emails... ;)

Edit: One last thing - Aros Kitty Kart in STK is the most downloaded at:
http://stkaddons.net/

We love you Kitty!

2011-06-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

I've recently received more work from Alain Thelier, related to Kitty Mascot.
And I've to say that this is really Top class work - up there with Eric Schwartz original work.

This is very close enough to the Pin-up design as Kitty could get, still having some original and cute setting. Being sexy doesn't hurt I guess ;).
Words can't do justice to this work, in my humble opinion!

I have to say that Alain really understands Eric Schwartz work, and pays homage in its best form - not copying but improving!

So this continues the campaign to lift up the pride of Kitty!
More soon...

But before I leave there's another insight into Kitty - excellent work from the polish artist (I sure would like to hear from him!), but in rather more aggressive attitude not so recognizable for Kitty - but then women are known to have lot of facets. Go check the gallery: PPA Gallery - Gives a wonderful walpaper for any desktop (specially a Aros wanderer one)!

P.S.: I guess I'll have to do another theme as my blog is polluting the Planet AROS... Or hope that someone else writes something refreshing...

Hi Kitty!

2011-06-16T03:40:00.000-07:00

I had this kitty on my desktop for a while, made some adjustments and now I'm uploading...

I know! It's a Hello Kitty rip off! But at least I came up with something different regarding the Kitty "persona" - Not something that would outshine Eric, Saimon or Alain, AngloSaxon work...

This serves as an incentive so that our creative people come up with more artwork for AROS and specially regarding our beloved AROS mascot - Kitty!

On my farewell, I leave some avatars for use on AROS-EXEC and other forums:

Burning rubber on IcAROS desktop...

2011-06-14T07:44:00.000-07:00

It's a wrap (or almost)! The STK Kitty kart has finally reached AROS. I've been able to export Tom Wright model to AC3D file format, done some bug-fixing, altered the mascot icon to 3d (Version 0.62 presents all mascots in 3D render format - and one would want kitty to feel comfortable).

Here it is running on IcAROS (AROS distro by Paolo Besser)

Wonderful stuff... Hopefully Tom will pick up and continue to improve the character so that she becomes a standard selectable mascot within the game and not a simple add-on.
Also I hope that STK 0.7+ is ported to AROS as it's much better in presentation and playability (and faster pace also)...

2011-06-09T08:09:00.001-07:00

Just to let you know that I'm having a blast with my son with SuperTuxKart, and in the process I improved the Kitty icon to better suit the rest of the mascots present in the selection (just a simple affair of inkscape and gimp) - Also improved the aros logo on the car.

Apart from that didn't touch in a single hair of the model done by Tom Wright. We already exchanged emails and he has some ideas on improving the 3D model - and I hope he does, so maybe the STK crew could add the AROS Kitty kart as part of the main game! Good PR if I ever saw one!!

The changes I did are comitted do AROS-Archives but Tom has to give the go-ahead ( after all he is the author and the original submitter)!

Me? I'm just glad to play with kitty (although my son also wrestle to play with her also ;) )...

Kitty gets her driving license!

2011-06-06T01:06:00.000-07:00

First I would like to apologize for not updating my blog, I know there's been a lot of things going on regarding the AROS front both internally, cosmetically and apps...
Last week there was the lauch of IcAROS 1.3, which I strongly recommend you to grab it if you're a first time to AROS.

But I won't be posting nothing regarding those subjects - That would require a much more larger and elaborate post. So I'll continue to focus on Kitty at the moment.

And more specifically about the 3D model of AROS Kitty in a kart for the SuperTuxKart!
For those who don't know SuperTuxKart is a bit like Super Mario Kart, but in open-source form with the mascots of the various open source OS distros ( mainly linux and bsd distros) as the selectable characters/karts.

Interestingly enough AmigaOS4 had it's own kart recently... But not AROS (wich is as Open-source and has a port of SuperTuxKart although version 0.62 if I'm not mistaken).

I already had bugged a lot of people regarding the use of Kitty (firstly mentioned as far as the beginning of 2011 - and not by me) for a SuperTuxKart - I believe it's top PR!
People had discussed ideas, made sketches, like Saimon work here:

But it was tommywhright that actually took on the job (grabbing my suggestion) and starting the work on blender:

Well the goods have been delivered by tommywright, and here's the final product:

I guessKitty will soon leave some tire marks on the opposition! In a number of ways!!...

So how about a round of applause for the man!?!
Wonderful work, tommywright - just wonderful!

P.S.: This just serves to prove my point regarding AROS mascot as good PR and not something strange and perverted as some sick minds try to imply!

P.S.2: Maybe someone will take the Manga type Kitty (by A. Thelier) and use it in some AROS distro as well - ;)

Another Kitty from Thellier

2011-03-04T03:21:00.000-08:00

Firstly I'd like to apologize for not spotting this work earlier, but RL is becoming overwhelming, so I hardly take any time for personal stuff besides my family.

As for the main purpose of the article - We have another kitty!
Alain Thellier actually didn't just settled for the Manga type kitty, it gave another rendition more closely to Eric's Work, and it's actually pretty good.

I actually hope to see more work from alain in this department...

Kitty - Promise kept!

2011-02-27T03:49:00.000-08:00

MANU kept his promise and delivered the goods (AND IT'S GOOOOOD):

For those who have being negative about kitty being the AROS Mascot here's Manu's words:
- "Here's me pouring more fuel on the never ending discussion, is Kitty too hot for AROS ? I think not, but anyway it won't be much more Kitty from me after this I'm afraid. It was fun and the main reason why I did it was I needed the practice with GIMP. Now I'll head on to some other projects I promised ;-)"

Wonderful job MANU - I wish you luck with your next projects!

As for the others keep it coming - I would love to see more from anglosaxon - really loved his impression - But I think he can do more!

Kitty - work from Alain Thelier

2011-02-25T02:03:00.000-08:00

Now the artistic fluids are really going...

Alain Thelier presented its version of kitty in monochrome fashion. According to his words:
- "Here it is my own Kitty version
It looks like more a kinda manga sexy woman ... sorry i am french ".

No need to apologize IMHO - its magnificent work.

You can view and download it here: Kitty Sexy Manga Version by Alain

I did a mockup scaled down coloured version, in the expectation that Alain was going to take too long to finish it's drawing - So I could have something bright to present on my blog...

But, actually Alain provided a finished version faster than I imagined!...

Kitty - new work from MANU!

2011-02-21T01:15:00.000-08:00

There are two reasons why I post this image:

1. First it's in alpha stage as well as AROS. I know - it lacks the tail, that's why its alpha and not beta! ;)

2. I really think that MANU has really lived up to the challenge proposed in this blog...
I presents our beloved mascot in a total new dimension. And has its unique touch that I feel is deeply appreciated within the AROS community (and Amiga as well, based on post on multiple forums...).

3. Manu has promised to finish this one day - So I'm holding to his promise!

Great stuff MANU! Keep it coming!!!!

AROS EXEC is down (again and again...)

2011-02-17T03:23:00.000-08:00

It's just a friendly warning to the navigation - set your bearing to http://www.arosworld.org/
for the time being, 'cos AROS-EXEC is down again...

Anyway I would say that it's time for more user activity on AROSWorld.org portal.
Although I admit it really needs a design overhaul...

Merry Xmas from the Kitty

2010-12-23T04:29:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas!
These are my sincere votes to the AROS/Amiga community and everyone else, and here's a nice and quick treat for all of you!

I hope all your wishes come true in this holiday season...

AROS Kitty - So sexy and so lost...

2010-12-22T05:40:00.000-08:00

If you do read my blog from time to time, you'll notice that those lovely AROS ICE themed window skinning is missing from this BLOG - well the domain where the image sitted just expired, so I'll have to find another one (but first I'll have to redo the images! Ouch!...)

Anyway this time I'm letting myself go with the flow and talk about Kitty - AROS mascot, first designed by the famous Amiga Illustrator and animator Eric Schwartz. His work is vast and well recognized and appreciated by not only Amiga fans but a much wider audience. His most recent work is available in Youtube, but you can follow it's monthly web comic Sabrina Online (Which is also an Amiga inspiration character)...

So asked upon creating a character for AROS, he designed this sexy kitten we all grown found with...

Mascot images can be downloaded here: Aros.sourceforge.net/kitty

Lately interviewed on AROS-SHOW, Eric Schwartz admited the possibility of more work on Kitty - See the full inteview on AROS SHOW!
But the sexy kitten would never get another role or pose, and AROS users/fans begun to deliver some mockups and ideas based on kitty for several purposes...

Such as:

and lately I stumble upon a rendition on Amiga.org of Kitty on a completely new pose done by anglosaxonusa:

There's also a honorable mention on the MorphOS Tans and AROS one (check OS-TAN wiki for more info)

Lately there's been interest in getting Kitty mascot onto SuperTuxKart, as character driveing her own car... Info on AROS-EXEC and FreeGameDev Forums ... Quite a deserved honor, but I believe still pale regarding its role on AROS life, and it iconic presence that immediately makes AROS recognizable to the eye!

So here's my plea... Help Kitty get back to life - lift it to more modern design features, more poses, more personality, more life beyond a simple still iconic image for an about window or a logo on a Web site!... Either with drawings, mockups or nagging Eric Schwartz to get her fit! AROS identity is somehow tied to her, so let's have it - Show you work...

And please enclose your exploits to this address, so that I might add to the above collection - > joao (dot) r (dot) ralha (at) gmail (dot) com

AROS Strong points - POV

2010-12-20T05:35:00.000-08:00

I don't follow all the posts in the Amiga Forums, I mainly stick to AROS-EXEC, AmigaWorld.net and ocasionally wonder around Amiga.org, and Natami.org ones... I seldom got to Amigans.net and MorphosZone...

Naturally you find a lot of trolling in any forum, but that's specially true for the ones that are "multi-format"... Most of them are always the same lame attitude that plagues since Commodore demise, and in an ever increasing fashion. Usually the subjects are "What is considerered amiga, amiga like or amiga oficial or amiga spirit", or "Classic vs NG, Blue VS RED VS Black", or "your OS only supports Dead HW or not Amiga like HW"... The list goes on... A sane normal person can only think that Amiga community stands for some kind of Asylum Health type disease that everyone is trying to solve!...

So I can hardly look at these subjects with necessary objectivity. Anyway, I guess I'll put my reasons for backing up AROS (with no disregard for the other NG OS), and with the full clarity that it's not perfect even by a far stretch (but then again what is perfection!?)...

AROS has in my point of view some great strong points, in comparison with other OS:
- It's Open-Source nature frees it from an entity sole control, and has contributed for the development of the other OS due to its magnanimous license (APL), and maybe even to other software I'm not aware.

- Hardware support: True has to be said that both AmigaOS 4.x and MorphOS have their hardware reasonably well to fully supported. But they only support one CPU type (PPC) and limit themselves to a small range of GFX HW.
AROS on the other hand supports lots of CPU's but does not try to limit itself to only a few range of devices. So if a user decides to use an NVIDIA PCI CARD on a PPC machine, the porting affair should be relatively simple (probably comprising of endianess issues mostly). The development although more complex (and not so well optmized in certain issues) delivers a backbone for real multiplatform availabilty.
AROS can be found running from desktop type computers to Portable and netbook computers, and is aiming for ARM powered devices, so maybe soon AROS will reach the NG cellphones/smartphones.

- Connectivity: Both AmigaOS 4.x and MorphOs support modern TCP/IP stacks, AROS has its own rendition of AMITCP (ArosTCP), but it has more drivers available, and has support for both Wireless and Mobile Broadband from the get going. The only thing that does not currently support is modem through common phone line.
But the fact remains, that AROS offers more modern options for the ordinary connection to the internet.

- Ratio Price/performance: Right now you either have an MorphOS on a latest generation MAC, and that is a very nice combination (providing you got your hw on ebay for a low bid) or you have AROS (which was free) on X86 machine. That's as simple as that... And the quantity of options are much larger...

- Future prospects: While MorphOS has devoted its future focus to the Apple PPC line (and aims to support it fully), AmigaOS 4.x is backing the PPC custom machine with a few novel twists and offering (AmigaOne X-1000), the truth is that PPC hw is deemed to end, and even some Linux distros have ceased support on that platform (sounds familiar right). AROS is available to the EFIKA and SAM440 PPC, does not seem to further aim on to more PPC machines, but has extend it range beyond X86-32 bit and 64 bit , to M68k (as retrospective goal) and ARM (which is a sensible option regarding ARM supported devices prospect for future ones). So I would say that in that area seems ahead of the its "competition"...

- Specific Software: So far that's the point that AROS is alway lacking behind, both AmigaOS and MorphOS offer more, but maybe its time for some interesting developments in the media front in the future...

So While AROS is lacking in several areas, the truth is that it no longers sits in the pale shadows of the other Amiga like NG Offerings, it surpasses in certain degrees.

And its great because of its open-source development. It means that if any of the other OS wishes to add any of these enhancements or opt for other devices, AROS provides a shorter path to the required R&D.

One OS to rule them all...

2010-11-12T02:00:00.000-08:00

Many people who have heard of AROS have the wrong notion that it's X86 only, or that other versions are not maintained or abandoned.

Well if you take a look at the AROS download pages, you'll find a very different story. So let's take a look at the options. First the native ones:

amiga-m68k-system

efika-chrp-ppc

pc-i386

pc-x86_64

sam440-ppc

Then hosted options:

linux-i386-system

linux-ppc-system

linux-x86-64-system

mingw32-i386-system

Oh and guess what ARM cpu's should be added later if all goes well...

Of course, these are nightly builds, and naturally it happens that some are behind schedule because of modifications, or submissions that have some specific code relating with the hardware or compilation tools. But the truth is that all of these are more or less regularly maintained. And it's up to the general users to find some use and do some beta-testing.

The distributions are the best way to experience AROS as regular user should. Unfortunately these are made by enthusiasts and the natural target is the X86 compatibles. Although plans exist to make X86-64 distribution, it still leaves the PPC range behind in this respect - which is a shame.
I don't believe this will pose a problem for the Amiga-68k range though, enthusiasm is something which is not at fault, and with current emulation panorama and new hardware (Natami) coming, it seems more absurd that lack of support would be in place.

Naturally I hardly see the current PPC flavours to get much enthusiasm as HW manufacturers tend to see them as end-of the line or obsolete products, but the same could be said for the Amiga platform, and guess what?! Here is the Nightly Build on its first steps.

Maybe someone would also add the Atari-m68k and Mac-68k architectures to the AROS dev tree and N.B., (or even Acorn Archimedes and other eastern machines like X-68000) and I guess that would make World Domination... Even if retrograded... ;)

One OS to rule them all,
One OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the light bind them!

Well, It sound better than the megalomaniac domination of the world trolling and ghostly laughs... At least more refreshing! Cheers everyone...

I'll be back...

2010-11-03T06:14:00.000-07:00

Those were the imortal words of AROS before development plunging into more modern and widely available hardware! Returning to its original hardware and enhance AmigaOS 3.x - after all that was the original goal!
While time has passed, many believed that goal was deviated or totally forgotten!
Guess what... the ship is nearing the coast, and this time it might just get into port!

Of course I'm talking about the work done by Jason McMullan and Toni Wilen (WinUAE man himself)n on the Kickstart bounty (Phase 1 and 2). And they're finally delivering the promise goods... Check it out!

Boot sequence on WinUAE of current WIP

While it has still a lot of miles to get to port, everyone is confident that this time AROS will reach home - and by home I mean the original hardware range of Amigas. But not only that it might get to the next generation of hardware with compatibility in mind. I'm adressing NATAMI naturally! And this looks like the baby is going to rock...

Current mockup design for a possible Natami case

On the other hand the common known Next generation hardware (X86/X64 and PPC range) is getting more and more updates, and the recent developments might benifit of bringing on compatibility out of the box with AmigaOS 3.x software.
For the time being the J-UAE by O1i is definitely the reality to behold, and quite good from my POV.

Current incarnation of J-UAE

After all this who has the nerve to say that AROS is not Amiga! You're right - It's the next best thing! Real and modern and faithful to the original Amiga team leaded by Jay Miner! That's what it is!!!....

Now back to work... I'm sorry for not updating my blog more frequently, but I blame the International Crisis!...

A small off-topic - Laser Squad type game.

2010-10-06T01:55:00.000-07:00

It's a shame AROS hasn't got full JAVA support...
If it had I would say this would be the multiplayer game that all people from the AROS Community should play (But I'm biased).

This is a very good net - multiplayer rendition of the Rebelstar/Laser Squad type games by Julian Gollop. Developped by Stephen Smith it really shows some good strong points.
It's still under development and is using GFX and other resources either from other Open-Source projects or user contribution. Sources from this game are available, but like I said earlier they're JAVA, so not great use for AROS portability at the moment.
Anyway this proves that open-source rulez...

By the way - You should check the Julian Gollop interview on RETROGAMER - really good sutff: Retro Gamer Magazine

AROS - Back to GFX glory...

2010-09-15T02:56:00.000-07:00

We all remember that then AMIGA storng point known to public was GFX capabilities. And developers and artists used Amiga software, specially Deluxe Paint.
LunaPaint was to be our killer app, much like Dpaint was in early days of the Amiga... but that road took a diferent turn along the way, and we haven't the killer app everyone was hoping.

But magnifique Yannick Porter deluxe, begun work on AmiFIG and went beyond simple porting adding aditional features, and providing new functionalities (anti-alising, free-hand drawing, limited SVG support...).

And Manu is already taking benefit of this piece of software, with some wonderful images such as the one above. Reminds me the famous survivor pic so heavily abused in the late 90's early 2000's.
I Guess that Manu is for AROS what Eric Schwartz was for Amiga...

And here's a Video of Manu Working in Lunapaint and AmiFIG:

That's what we want - useful and killer apps! Keep them coming!...

Magellan found it first... Wanderer would follow...

2010-04-03T01:37:00.000-07:00

Politics and related fuss aside, there was an interesting project carried out in my country. The availability of netbooks for all students in basic school (primary studies or whatever you call in your country) at low or or no price depending on the fathers/responsible person income. The product/project was called Magellan named after the famous Portuguese Navigator who first circumnavigate the earth and prove indeed that the Earth was indeed round...

Like I said, politics and publicity stunts aside, the truth is that it made quite an impact on the public school population, and it became a reference. It's not say that it all went well... But in all it was pretty decent effort, with a large impact - it even was exported for Portuguese native language countries and a few Spanish ones (Hugo Chavez was rather enthusiastic about it - go figure)!...

Of course my 5 year old son is still in pre-school (or kinder garden) but immediately notice that his colleagues had something that he had not. And wanted something to play with...

I pick up my wife's obsolete portable (Compaq Pentium II 133 mhz with 64 mb) and removed the win2000 OS and installed AROS (with FFS) and later IcAROS (in SFS), it was a bumpy ride in such a modest setup, but I managed to install, enjoy and write the improved Theme Prefs with it!

Of course my plan was to introduce my son to AROS, and to my surprise he pick it up almost immediately, so it was nice warm and cosy feeling. My son enjoyed it so much that it made me feel that I had a companion at home with a taste for amiga stuff.

Naturally he wanders more in games, but he also uses LunaPaint and Grafx2 (he prefers the latest, quite understandably), and always is on the lookout for all the directory contents to find new stuff.

My point is, young age users are more open than old ones, and while he does not have any amiga background or is fueled by any anti-any-os or architecture, he seems to appreciate more the IcAROS setup than the Windows one (While using them both). I believe in time he will have a more pragmatic and oriented POV, but if he had all the necessary software for his necessities (learning stuff), I'd say he pretty much would prefer any machine with AROS (netbook, portable, or desktop) than any netbook with a cutdown Windows XP version (that's what magellan is - the linux option is just that... an option).

Two weekend ago, thanks to the USB install option I was able to show AROS with sound to my son, and he was happily playing a few of his favourite games with sound output on my Works' Acer travelmate portable. If AROS gets more hardware and software support we can put a lot more happy faces on many kids - of all ages!!

Being a optmistic type and adventurer type sailor guy, I would dare say that Magellan might be more enthusiastic about AROS, than other projects bearing his name...

AROS steping up in several diferent directions...

2010-03-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

First of all I'll try to put this in chronological order, because I haven't been here in a while, so do excuse me if memory fails me at this time... Also I'll try to number and categorize the AROS major points in these past few months...

1. Third Party software increasing in quantity and quality

For starters there's a word of praise I have to give... to Yannick!

Yes he definitely is on the runner up contest for Ports developer on steroids!
You can check his web-site here:Yannick's AROS Web page
A quick list of ports include:

1.Games
- Air Strike, Alien Blaster, Belcher Rescue, Billiard GL, Critical Mass, Eat the whistle, F1 Spirit, Glaxium, Mega Mario, Open Tyrian, Possible Worlds, SDL Ball, Shotgun debugger, Star Fighter, Super Methane Bros

- The Maze of Galious
2. Apps
- Unrar & Open Universe

And then there's it's own creations:
- Zunecalc
- ZuneArc
- AROS VNC Client
- WHD Menu

Pretty amazing stuff considering that these projects did not span more than 4 months ALTOGETHER. Keep it coming Yannick!!!
I guess as with Mazze it's about time for an interview on AROS SHOW! ;)

2. AROS is getting 3d Acceleration

Other major event is Deadwood work on Gallium 3D - pretty impressive stuff, but I haven't checked it out myself - my Nvidia card is an oldie - Riva TNT...
Anyway with his commitment AROS will have soon enough 3d Acceleration!

3. Amiga emulation and integration is nigh
We all know about O1i's effort to bring the AROS E-UAE integration port to a finish state, and it seems it's really there. This and Ami-bridge have been fueling the comeback of many Ex-Amiga users.

But there's a new guy in town! Say hello to Emumiga !
Moogen and Jakob have been working on a emulation layer so that AROS runs Amiga binaries within AROS internals (just like any AROS executable).

Emumiga goal is to run AmigaOS 3.x applications directly in AROS without emulating the Amiga chipset and without a copyrighted Amiga ROM image. For that it consists of a Motorola 68000 processor emulator that runs in emulated virtual memory. The virtual memory space contains mappings of real AROS system objects accessible from the virtual CPU. The mappings are set up to create AmigaOS binary-compatible system structures. Emumiga intercepts system calls made in the Amiga application and forward them to the corresponding AROS system calls. Emumiga constantly keeps track of all mappings, sets up new mappings as new objects are discovered and removes mappings for dead objects. The emulated CPU will not emulate any exact version of the MC68000 line of processors, but will behave in a way that runs the largest number of programs possible.

Right now they're able to open the Amiga Workbench Clock utility and show the menus (in AROS style naturally)!

Wonderful Stuff Really!

4. Booting AROS from USB
Yep! This is also a biggie! You can now partition, format and install an USB disk to work as AROS Bootable storage device from InstallAROS. And I must say that I've tested and it works like a charm, and it's pretty easy too... Naturally multiple partitions in different FS formats it's a different story in the difficult department but it's also doable...

5. Adding Mobile Broadband support to AROSTCP
Sami has added PPP support to AROS through USB modem devices! And this makes another world record for AROS - the first AMIGA NG OS to achieve Mobile Broadband support!
It's a shame that some Huawey USB pens do not work at the moment, but that may change in the future since the problem is already identified!

6. AROS gets Screen dragging
Finally the icing on the cake - Sonic work has expanded beyond Win-hosted version of AROS and now is working with AROS GFX internals and with a specific goal in mind - getting the most specific OS recognizable and distinguish aspect of AMIGA OS - Screen dragging. And it's already working!

7. AROS improves on other platform architetures
We all know about the AROS SAM port by Michal Schulz, well he's improving it with the help of Markus and some other folks (can't remember right now - sorry), and the small improvements are being fueled from other ports and back. This is what I call multi-cooperation!

EFIKA port is still in the works as far as I know, but it's probably improving as well specially with latest developments in the USB area (Poseidon and USB booting devices support).

But news arise from the nearly defunct m68k port that's being totally ressurrected!
Gaz is on the job and has already received help from Pavel (aka as Sonic is a pretty ocuppied fella - better watch ou for this one - started with the validator bounty and there's no stoping him!).
Better still the goal is to persue the Kickstart ROM Replacement Phase 1 bounty!
Well let's hope that a third time is a definite one!

So, to summarize...
These points are just the tip of the iceberg, I'm not even speaking of some internal changes and additions that have visual effects (GFX speedup, pointer prefs support) and others that do not!
So stick around... 2010 might be a pretty good year! Honestly!! - Where did I heard that before.... ;)

New AROS ALIVE movie on Youtube!

2010-02-17T01:53:00.000-08:00

AROS ALIVE PART III is out! Roman Eberle (aka Romancer) has delivered another installment of this special series of videos regarding AROS!

Link to the video is: YouTube Link

Or watch the video below:

Also check the other parts of AROS ALIVE:
Part II
Part I

Visit the Author's homepage at http://www.roman-eberle.de... And support AROS!

Theme Prefs - Preview window and more

2009-10-01T04:05:00.000-07:00

Well If you spend some of your regular web activity in AROS forums you've noticed that I've been busy. It was something I wanted to add for a long time, but never got the time to fully explore it - Lua Programming and adding some needed features to D980's Theme Prefs.

And of course the most requested feature has always been some kind of preview, so that one could actually have an Idea what the window skins will look like before rebooting.

This would not have been possible without Mazze's latest modifications to AmiLUA and the datatype.library. So thank's MAZZE!

It's in alpha/beta stage now, but as soon as all bugs have been ironed out, and I had some of the features I have in mind I'll release it. Can't say much more about theses features, because I don't know if they're actually possible/relevant.

Oh guess what!? I've just realized this is the first piece of actual code I do for AROS!

Games... Games! GAMES!!!

2009-09-11T08:18:00.004-07:00

Krzysztof "Deadwood" previous and recent work on SDL and MESA has made more accessible Multi-platform applications based on these gfx set of libraries.
And the proof of principle working is the latest abundant game port activity going on...

Just look at AROS-Archives and AROS-EXEC!

This all seems quite amazing! I guess an award should go for Matthias Rustler and for his never ending porting activity! MAZZE is working around the clock in getting more games on to the AROS platform...
Latest additions include:

Epiphany - a multi-platform clone of Boulderdash (a.k.a Emerald Mine on the Amiga) made with SDL library.

Abuse - A well known 2D side-scrolling platform game developed by Crack dot Com back in mid ninety's. It features light effects, realistic animation and nasty alien-like creatures to destroy.

CRIMSON - Turn-based tactical war game. It can be played against a human opponent in hot-seat mode in front of the same machine, over a network, or via e-mail, or against the computer.

BlockOut - adaptation of the original BlockOut game edited by California Dreams in 1989 - basically a 3d tetris clone.

And now on the works:

Red Alert - The well known RTS of the C&C series!

I guess AROS might not be such a wasted opportunity for Gaming after all. Maybe we will see dedicated AROS games in the future... Who knows?! ;) For now let's enjoy this current batch.

EXEC has a GURU MEDITATION ERROR!

2009-05-25T02:03:00.000-07:00

Actually what I meant is that AROS-EXEC is down due to some hacking problems, and the site admin is already taking care of the issue.

In the meantime I encourage you to use http://www.arosworld.org/ instead.
You'll find that this AROS portal/forum also offers a lot of contents specially from the USER's POV.

I'm currently very busy and have no more time to write or do anything relating with AROS, but I hope that will change soon... or not!...

The tale of the turtle and the rabbit...

2009-01-30T08:28:00.000-08:00

Recently, someone nagged me about the AROS User Manuals and getting the Portuguese Locale translation corrected and up to speed on AROS...

There are two reasons for this:
1. I just don't have the time! Work is more pressing and my personal life is a bit more demanding - first I was sick, then it was my wife, now is my son... So it's pretty obvious that I lack time.

2. Well I've been making a few head notes, but AROS is just getting to many development these days and I'll have to wait for it become more established (not like final or v1.00 or such). And I'm not talking about the browser bounty... Impressive stuff but it might not make into AROS User Manuals in the next version (Networking essentials are more important anyway)...
Native installation, hardware support and USB mass storage is probably the most notable subjects that might spring into mind, but there's one more complicated - the default icons.

If you have read my manual you've noticed that I've tried to capture the feeling of AROS looks onto the manual. Naturally if you change the Icons in AROS I will have to capture more screnshots again and make the design of the manual resemble the AROS default look.

I'm not complaining - if AROS gets Ken Lester iconset good for it! I will have to study the needed changes to AROS USER MANUALS that's all I guess... For now I'll just wait!

And as for the Portuguese Locale tnaslation - I'll be doing on AROS directly soon... ;)

AROS is getting more atention...

2009-01-15T03:50:00.001-08:00

In my last post people may have though that my optimism was misplaced or that I was just ranting... I won't hold it against anyone - it's a common cliche in the Amiga community, so it's easy to transfer onto AROS as well.

But guess what, AROS guys only have reasons to be smiling about...

With the release of VmwAROS 1.0, people got a much better idea of what AROS is able to do.

Features include (and not limit to):
- New, customized system files
- Shutdown Wanderer funcion on supported hardware
- Widescreen graphic modes on selected cards
- Added Ken Lester's iconset
- Added sound in Quake
- Complete development chain with GCC 4.2.2, Python, ecc
- VmwAROS can now compile AROS
- Added new games
- Updated many programs
- Added 68K application support with AmiBridge
- Added automatic extractor for multiple archive files (PoorARC)
- Added PDF document support (PoorPDF)
- Added first-run configuration script
- Installing VmwAROS won't leave volumes without icons anymore
- Fixed typing issue with SimpleMail
- Added many desktop wallpapers from M. De Angelis (JohnSmith)
- Updated VmwUpdate and SwitchMuiMaster
- Added GhostScript
- Fixed many file associations
- Corrected paths and ASSIGNs
- Added VmwAROS services manager in Prefs
- Improved PDF user/reviewer guide
- ...and many, many more!

Adding to this pinpoint release, MPlayer has been ported by Krzysztof Smiechowic (based on the MorphOS one by Fabien Coeurjoly) and so you can now watch several Video formats on AROS, and in an impressive fashion I might add. A lot of work regarding low-level drivers has been commited and so more hardware is being supported, as well as many bug-squashing.

As for the browser Stanislaw is working on AROS port of OWB, and has done a fantastic work so far. Everyone was just hoping for a simple, basic and only supporting of the most functional Web features, but the developer is going for the big prize including multi-tab browsing. Finally an Amiga modern WEB browser in almost every respect.

On the same subject I noticed that some Ill-minded subjects regarded Stanislaw work as more than simple copy-paste affair of Jörg Strohmayer AmigaOS 4 port. Jorg work was excelent and Stanislaw has given credit to what he "borrowed" (or looked into) from it:
- "(...) I replaced SDL events with intuition.library events provided by the Zune event handler registered in the custom class. Code from AmigaOS4 OWB port written by Jörg Strohmayer saved me a lot of work in this stage. (...)"
Other than the work on OWB port itself, Stanislaw wrote a new port of SDL for AROS ( the other was old and buggy). Messed with MUI fixing a few bugs and adding a new class to it (the dynamic tab gui) . He also aims to turn the web browser into a zune .mcc resource (a lot of software will benefit from this). And more is still in the works...

From the AmigaOS side (classic 68k) comes Ignition. This spreadsheet application has gone open-source. Right now is being ported by Mazze for AROS and seems to be nearing the end.
I must say that I await anxiously this because it's Amiga dev roots rather the *n*x ones - it should be interesting to have a program so needed that behaves in true AmigaOS fashion.
All that remains missing is printing support (in AROS)... Alas...

As a final note, and this will angry a lot of Amiga fanatics, but believe or not SAM, Pegasos and Efika are not the only so called modern amigas anymore. Why not iMica One - just because it's not PPC? Well this Mini-ITX computer will be bundled with VmwAROS1.0x and the initial profits will be reverted to AROS development. Check the specs yourself...

Ok, jokes aside this sexy mini-PC is a good machine to run AROS. Of course you can install AROS in any X86 machine (preferably above Pentium II 133 mhz), and with SAM440 and EFIKA soon, the truth is just one: AROS is not compromised by the hardware.
And on this subject (hardware availability) is AROS stronghold - let's face it, the other AmigaOS like are hardware compromised - So they better get stuck in good machines!
Well... Do they? While AmigaOS 4 has migrated from AmigaONE (dead PPC hw platform) to SAM440 (not so powerful but still good), MorphOS is still migrating to EFIKA (very low specs in comparison with other PPC hw) and Mac PPC hw (which has ceased production).

I have no crystal ball nor I have a degree in future foretelling, but I can say that this is not definitely the end, and guess what maybe 2009 will be the year of AROS ;) or 2010 or whatever... (just kidding regarding the hype)!

The end is nigh...

2008-11-28T06:54:00.001-08:00

We're nearing the end of the year and one must ask now - was 2008 the year of AROS?

Looking back at some of the remarks ans discussion about AROS , it looked like AROS was near completion (which wasn't) and that a lot of users and developers would join the the AROs effort.

There was two major points which were catalyst for these statements.
For one Amiga Users were becoming increasingly fed up by the MorphOS lack of update and the lack of hardware for AmigaOS 4 / Law suit between Hyperion and Amiga Inc. The official statements done by Amiga were even more painful regarding the vapourware nature of an AMIGAOS5 (or AmigaAnywhere 2) better then MacOS X!...

As the second point we could trace to the development of three major bounties at that time:
- AROS in SAM440
- Port an Open Source Browser To AROS
- UAE integration (basic/initial)

AROS native in SAM440 was regarded as a major step to make AROS more universal, and a Operating System across platforms. Hitting the PPC architeture was also a proud statement of ARO regarding hardware support. AmigaOS4 being tied to AmigaOne and lack of hardware for MorphOS was a critical point to both closed source OS. So people started to believe that AROS was actually going to make it where others didn't.
Indeed Dr. Michal Schulz ended the project and provided SAM440 with the first AmigaOS inspired OS. But eventually AmigaOS4 made it to the SAM440 also, and MorphOS 2 was released to the efika machines...
Still it was a significant success that changed many people opinion about AROS altogether.

The Open Source Browser work was conducted by Robert Norris, and his past record quickly made the project a huge success in all the forums. Traveler was going to be the name of the AROS App running a port of the Webkit. It reached pretty far with a simple app launching the Webkit work done so far. Then Robert Norris began to feel that the AROS wasn' aiming high enough, and proposed a fork from the main AROS dev tree.
Then alleging personal issues he abandoned the AROS and the Traveller project.
That was a painful time for AROS and it sure hurt all the AROS people who saw the exit of a coding genius with sorrow. The lack of a decent browser also hurted the AROS intended respect in the OS area.
But he left a near complete port of the SQLITE, CAIRO and WEBKIT engine among other important libraries, and that's something that will not doubt have significant impact future development.

E-UAE Integration was also a early bounty, and one that promised a lot since it was Richard Drummond (the E-UAE author). And there was a lot of optimism since early statements from Richard seemed to indicate it to be a relatively easy and almost complete.
But time gone and no word was heard from Richard anywhere. Even E-UAE stopped dead.
So the legions of amiga-fans coming to AROS quickly dispersed onto other projects...

To end all of this Michal Schulz expressed its desire to leave AROS development. A few months later AnubisOS is announced and while it's not a AROS fork it has many AROS dev team - so far no one know how to categorize this. But some hostile reactions have already been noticed in Amiga/AROS forums and blogs although mixed with some more positive remarks...

Reading all of these one would say that it was a pretty bad year. Well far from the truth...
In the mean time a lot of effort was directed to AROS itself and provided validation of the FFS partitions, improvement of the Installation procedure, ata.device, format utility, wanderer features, making AROS really usable. More apps and games were ported, including a MMPORG client Eternal lands.

Krzysztof Smiechowicz undertook a project aimed at reviewing the AmigaOS 3.1 API re-implementation status in AROS to better understand what is needed to achieve goal no 1. of the AROS roadmap, Staff is proposing the major steps towards AROS v1.0 ABI...

VmwAROS reaches version 0.91 and shows what AROS is all about!
Above all AROS is now self compilable - now that's something milestone and thanks to Stanislaw Szymczyk.

So more than hype and simple achievments AROS introduced serious and important core modifications which will make future development a bit more solid (hopefully).

Present status has 6 bounties open and they promise a lot.
- For starters finally the Kickstart ROM Replacement (Phase I) has been taken by bheron. No progress status is known so far...
- Port AROS To EFIKA & USB Mass Storage have been taken by Dr. Michal Schulz. More PPC platform development means more universal AROS, and the USB mass storage device will make the native versions independent and really usable.
- Port AROS to run on Windows/Cygwin is underway, and promises to provide the Windows devs more easier system to set up (Amidevcpp is pretty usable and standard for cross platform development).
- Finally we might get a complete all round USB stack system which support multiple devices such as scanners, cameras, pdas, audio devices and much more. The author has proposed it's own terms for the bounty: Poseidon USB

Out of the Bounty arena there's a lot of work going on
Regarding the Open-Source Browser, Stanislaw is already working on the Netsurf port. We might get a decent browser in AROS before 2009 - keep your fingers crossed!

As for the E-UAE integration thanks to Paolone Besser (AmiBridge) and O1i work we might just see it in the near future.

So was 2008 the year of AROS? Not maybe in the hype remarks that so many used, but considering the adversities that it has faced throught all these times I believe it was a pretty damn good year! Well I mean - still is...

New GOD on the block!

2008-11-10T09:28:00.000-08:00

So I've been working on the update of the AROS Manuals, doing some Locale adding in AROS (added a few countries and flags), working on the translation of some catalogs to Portuguese.
Because of alternative OS shows (more specifically a greek request), I've also made a 3 fold leaflet type promo for AROS. You can find it AROS Archives: Document/misc
I was really getting my head into AROS, and learning a few basic things about locale and zune...

When I woke up this morning I found a cryptic post in AROS-EXEC by damocles, which would turn my mind upside down.

There's a new name on the block regarding AmigaOS Family OSes. It's name is Anubis (The ancient Egyptian God of Death - no comments as every is already been made!) and it's main premise is to build an Amiga like OS on top of the linux kernel.
And guess what?! In the developper team there are some pretty top names from the AROS development, such as Ola Jensen, Robert Norris, Alex gappern, Hogne Titlestad, Michal Schulz, Michael Grunditz, Oliver Brunner, Olivier Tigreat, Pavel Fedin, Stanisław Szymczyk...
As it's in planing stage, there's still very few info and detail is scarce at the moment, but if you would like to know more check it's web-site (Still WIP): http://anubis-os.org/

More info also on the #anubis irc channel in freenode.

I can't quite express myself, but let's face it AROS lack of developers, and lack of interest by most of the Amiga Community always plagued it's advance. Still it got where it's reckoned as a wonderful reincarnation of the AmigaOS original API (but a lot better).
However the lack of direction, some technical issues and it's proposed roadmap wasn't helping the advance in future. Everyone always asked, and when AROS reaches 1.0, what then?
It's not new, (check an old entry in this blog) a fork was once proposed by AROS developers and although Rob Norris did not refer to it as the reason as for leaving AROS, it had it's significance no doubt.
Dr. Michal Schulz also sided with Rob on this subject at the time, and he had already expressed it's wish to leave AROS, so it should be no surprise his involvement (although I admit it was a bit shocking for me at first glance).

A next generation OS which aims to be hardware independent requires hardware drivers. Linux kernel has them in plenty... That combined with a more pragmatical attitude regarding other technical issues which plague the development of AROS and AmigaOS in general.
So the move towards Anubis (arix in sourceforge) is not entirely surprising, and makes general sense.

Does this means the end for AROS? Not according to the people behind Anubis - they're entirely diferent projects which have their own space. AROS might shape to be the best AmigaOS encarnation in any and all platform available. Anubis is aiming a bit higher and not compromising with AmigaOS altogether.

I just would like to say: GOOD LUCK ANUBIS-TEAM!

Don't worry... I'm still wandering around AROS. But who knows, maybe I'll wander in Anubis too...

Portuguese support for AROS

2008-10-08T04:38:00.000-07:00

Like AmigaOS, AROS allways had locale in it's core, offering international support for different languages. But while spanish, italian and even russian languages are fairly supported, there was no Portuguese locale support...

While it was never in my plans, I'm playing with AROS source code a bit, and naturally just for fun I started creating the various catalog files in Portuguese. Well and I got to a point that almost everything was roughly translated, so I guessed I should commit the changes to AROS SVN tree.

After a few problems with the encoding of filename and text - many thanks to MArkus Weiss for helping me with these - here it is!

AROS EXEC Image Album

New update on the AROS MANUALS!

2008-07-28T02:23:00.000-07:00

We got a new guy in town - Peter Hutchison - and he's the responsible for the updated versions of the AROS Shell and Install Manuals.

While the Shell manual has just some minor revisions, the Install manual nears completion, adding important info such as installing AROS alongside Windows and similar OS'es.

He's still getting the hangs of it, but I believe that in my absence he will keep the manuals going.

Maybe with the help of Michal Schulz it could be added some important issues on the specificness of SAM440 AROS and the install and use of it... Maybe minor but important additions, never the less!...

AROS is now trully multiplatform...

2008-07-25T01:32:00.000-07:00

While I've been extremely busy (work/study/family stuff...) I do track the AROS news from afar...

The latest news required me to update my blog. So here's my entry on the latest developments...

SAM440ep shipped with AROS
Ladies and Gentleman, the AROS is now released with hardware! The SAM440ep is being offered at a new price (around 300 Euros) and is being shipped with AROS Live CD (Work of Dr. Michal Schulz).

Of course, if the ACube Systems team wants more it will require to work on a appropriate DISTRO, with custom imagery and the likes to promote it's product for the AmigaOS loving community, a bit like VMWaros...

Too busy... Help wanted!

2008-06-18T04:42:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid that my life is taking a turn for the worst and my (very few!) free time has to used for other important tasks.

So what about AROS USER MANUALS?

Well, i won't be able to update them at least until 2009.

As for AROS... Well here's how it's going:
Work on efika and SAM400ppc is still undergoing, and going very well.
A lot of important internal and core elements of the AROS are progressing in normal pace...
AROS is picking up steam with VMWAROS distro, and some hefty press coverage, but there's been a lot of setbacks too...
First UAE integration wasn't finished and no word has heard from it until deadline.
Second the Traveller WEB Browser (based on Webkit) went to a stall, when the programmer started to have some personal issues to solve (I do understand...).

So some of the most visible and prominent projects are at a stand still.

Still there's a lot that AROS has to offer. Let's just keep our fingers crossed, and try to contribute as most as we can for AROS...

Speaking of which, if you have some free time, good knowledge of Amiga and AROS and have some good skills in using M$Word just drop-me an email and help-me in updating the AROS USER MANUALS... (hardwired ( at ) xsairsoft ( dot ) com - SPAM not welcomed!

AROS readable docs

2008-03-05T03:11:00.000-08:00

Again my thoughts go to AROS document reading capability...
As I've read the AROS-EXEC thread Port TeX I was reminded a subject present with AROS manuals, the only format that is readable is not supported in AROS (PDF).
A good form of support would be a PDF datatype, but unfortunately that would require to rewrite the all datatype library from scratch (not to mention the datatype itself) - but I'm getting away from the subject.

In fact the manuals themselves are not written in any AROS app - until recently there wasn't even TeX, let alone any Word processing or similar type tool.

I've already dwell ed with AmigaGuide, but although they can offer some form of shell documentation or help online, it's not what I had in mind for the AROS USER MANUALS.

At this stage it might not be very important since most people run AROS in hosted systems. But to be self sufficient the AROS has to encounter some modern days common apps. And not just for the manuals, but in a increasingly manner every technical resource is being made available through PDF type files.

As for AROS manuals - hmmm... I will go on trying other forms.

AROS WEB TRAVEL IN LIGHT SPEED...

2008-03-03T02:56:00.000-08:00

Traveling the WEB with AROS is a near soon reality (pun intended) - thanks to ROB. It's latest entry in his blog includes a early demo of the WebKit in action.

So in the network front AROS will soon become a common reality - TCP/IP stack / FTP / IRC / Mail client are already available. One would think that AROS is nearly ready to replace you current Os in your machine. Well... That's a different story!...

I'm afraid some important missing aspects of AROS are still plaguing it, namely:
- the Wanderer is still lacking some features and needs some serious bug-fixing;
- lack of printer device for printing support and postscript support;
- lack of full USB support of disk devices (such as USB pendisks and Cameras...).

Other missing items (not so important include):
- lack of datatypes (animation, modern document file types and so on);
- lack of usb audio support (as well as other common boards).

So while in some fronts the AROS seems to get ahead it's father OS in other simple but important areas is behind. While this is daunting, it poses a serious question to some developpers such as ROB, Michal Schulz, and others supporting the fork option - What priority is to be given to different tasks ahead?

Of course most of the current users will not replace their current OS, but most likely try to accommodate both OS'es (or more). But I believe that one has to think development of an OS should be to turn it as independent as possible from others.
In that field I totally agree with ROB, let's not make a Linux Clone - let's "supplant Linux".
As such the AROS has to be fully I/O capable regarding all common available devices and platforms.

Well that's my lousy opinion and It doesn't count for much as I haven't wrote a single line of AROS code. And like they say: "Opinions are like arses - everyone has one..."

On a diferent front I uploaded the manuals to AROS-Archives: http://archives.aros-exec.org/
The manuals can be downloaded on the Documents/manuals/ category.

Also I've uploaded a small update of the user manual, 0.56 which adds a few appendixes and adds more info on the AROS customization.
I'm hoping to have some time free near to review and update the manuals. Hopefully soon I'll add a more specific network and PPC support...

Aros User Manuals on SHOW...

2008-02-19T07:21:00.000-08:00

As I didn't spend much time in updating this blog, I've totally forgotten about AROS-SHOW from Paul J. Beel news about the AROS USER MANUALS. The AROS Show is probably the best advertising and PR site available in the WEB and it's author is actively supporting AROS and it's applications - now the AROS USER MANUALS that I started are the news.
Believe it or not this is one of downsides of AROS - the lack of good documentation. And with new features (and maybe the fork) custom AROS manuals are required - it's just not a matter of using the Amiga ones.

Also newcomer to AROS Vikram Upparpalli is willing to lay his hands on these messy e-books, so we just may start having more updated user documentation. Let's just hope that between me and him things start to shape up.

AROS SHOW site is available at:
http://arosshow.blogspot.com/

Been busy but AROS is moving...

2008-02-18T02:59:00.000-08:00

All right so I've been trying to find some time to update the AROS manuals but work seem's to take the best of me.

Right now they're available for download on:
AROS User Manual (50% complete):
http://www.mediafire.com/?2wyfczygxvt
AROS Shell: Manual (70% complete):
http://www.mediafire.com/?ezgcp2bot9p
AROS Install Manual (25% complete):
http://www.mediafire.com/?ey1mnggbtjt

I've being considering reviving some old Amiga projects of mine, such as AGeo-CAD, but time doesn't seem right - so I'll take a rain check and stick to what time affords me to do.

On AROS front things are moving, but I have to admit that I'm a little concerned about the fork option proposed by ROB. He also has the support of Michal Schulz, so to tell the truth when two of the most prestigious developpers "team up" in such effort it pretty much defines the AROS heading.

I agree with the principle of their intentions - the AROS requires more ambitious and modern guidelines, but I do not see the real need to completely break the 3.1 source-code backwards compatibility.

Anyway, if it remains the Amiga structure, feel and spirit, I'm all in favor of getting AROS the all modern OS features and settings. Amiga and AmigaOS was a revolution in home computer market, just getting AmigaOS 3.1 compatibility alone just won't simply do it anymore.

Of course I still hope to load AROS on my Compaq laptop with 4 gb hard drive and 32 mb ram, and actually be usable, (that's something I would not do with any other modern OS.) as well loading into any Next generation Intel or PPC machine and zoom along.

Also congratulations for Alain G. for finishing it's AROS TEX port - still beta at this stage - hope to have more bounties from you!

No Hype!

2007-12-10T08:58:00.000-08:00

This weekend I bought the Portuguese version of the Hype magazine - it featured a 4 page special coverage of the Commodore Amiga computer. Not a bad article - mainly focused on the games capabilities of the machine, but the magazine is some sort of computer and console entertainment magazine - so no complaints here.

I 'm working on the update the Devs / Prefs and Fonts support of the AROS in the User Manual.
I'm trying to finish the AROS User Manual, but it's complicated so far - the missing parts are the most complicated to get the info.
Also been wondering about the AROS current development - even got myself reading my Third edition of the AMIGA ROM KERNEL manuals. Maybe I should get AmidevCPP?... MURKS IDE is still a bit on the lacking side.

Better stick to the manuals - don't know if I'll have enough time for working on them...

P.S.: Also I've remembered that the @font problem may have something to do with the system fonts required to be monospace - I have to confirm this though!...

Documenting the Amigaguide docs...

2007-12-06T09:24:00.001-08:00

AROS supports almost everything that AmigaOS 3.1 supported (and a little more ;) ), and for that reason it has always relied on the Amiga sources for available documentation.
These includes Arrex (Rexx in AROS), installer script syntax and amigaguide basic doc structure and tags.

As it's widely known there's been a few twists, AROS has surpassed the original intents in some areas and dedicates documentation is now needed (as referred in my last post in this blog).
But my work on the AROS manuals has to be transposed to something that is readable in AROS. So the logical step is to provide the manuals in a hypertext document type that is readable by AROS.

In theory it should pose no prob as one of the major changes in v3.0+ AmigaOS was the introduction of datatypes. A recognizable file by the datatypes can be read and shared (up to some extent) by the AROS core libraries and tasks. And like AmigaOS, AROS offers a client tool for reading the files supported through datatypes - Multiview.

AROS supports two major hypertext docs through the use of datatypes. HTML and AmigaGuide.
Naturally the HTML would be the AROS natural choice, since there's already some documentation in this format. But the html.datatype does not offer fully support of HTML tags.

Amigaguide documentation is our other option, and to tell the truth a much better one. Supporting the V40 (3.1) tags, it's capable of doing all the basic HTML offerings and with a much better support of AROS specific features. Features such as running rexx scripts, runing other background tasks... (Example: you can have a help file stating that the X tool does the job y with a link that allows running the actual tool).
Besides it's a more natively environment integrated than html which tries to be as open to different env. formats as possible...

The only complaint i have is not being able to offer some form of embedded datatype support. This would make possible to include image files in a contextual manner to the text, helping to illustrate the text.
And the pen color control sticks to V2.0 intuition drawinfo structure (That means that you can only alter the background and foreground text color to the available drawinfo predefined colours - usually grey, black, white and blue...). A RGB type color changer would be nice (I wonder if there were changes in the 3.5, 3.9 and 4.0 amigaguide tags?)...

Also found a bug on the @font tag that ruins the most simple text formating possibility.

So I'll be trying to document the Amigaguide tags so that this documentation starts having more use!... Also KeenEars had the same idea regarding this - see AROS-EXEC post .

AROS Documentation

2007-12-04T09:02:00.000-08:00

One thing that striked me when downloaded the Night Build in October 2007 was that although AROS seemed pretty advanced since my AROS-MAX last boot in 2004, there were very little documented features.

And having the documentation in html was always a bit offside to me (a real paper freak - i'm afraid).

So I began the quest to produce a more updated documentation, that was useful and enjoyable to read. I searched for my A4000 manuals, but quickly decided that they were not much help in most terms.
I remeber V1.3 manuals to be enjoyable and complete in user terms (and that was it), but the V 3.0 weren't. Also by today standards what would be a reasonable layout design was not very appealing to the general user.

Some decisions were made regarding initial layout design - took a couple ideas from my HP95-LX manual, as well from some technical reports that i made earlier.

I've decided to separate the documentation in three manuals:
- AROS User Manual
- AROS Shell Manual
- AROS Installation Manual

That will make my life easier updating all the revisions and new features. Also the Shell manual should reach version 0.99 earlier than the others.
Still awaiting for SVN access so i can also try update the HTML ones.

And last but not least i would like to express my congrats to the AROS documentation team:
Stefan Rieken, Matt Parsons, Adam Chodorowski, Sergey Mineychev, Matthias Rustler, Neil Cafferkey. (I hope i didn't forgot anyone!)

Intro

2007-12-04T05:03:00.000-08:00

Hi and welcome to Wandering around AROS blog.
It's a simple blog so don't expect much of it...

If you don't know anything about AROS than you've missed a wonderfull AmigaOS incarnation which is totally hardware independent and as many modern features. Just check the Icon Links on the top left of this Blog!

Hope You like the ICE Theme (which is the current default theme for AROS GUI)!