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ROTFLMAO...they did, didn't they? That's just hysterical!

For those who don't get the joke the name of the group is: The Superior Haiku Applications Group!

--bornagainpenguin

After this article was submitted we got MIDI working.
From Terminal:

cd /boot/system/data/synth
wget http://ocmnet.com/saxguru/TimGM6mb.sf2
ln -s TimGM6mb.sf2 big_synth.sy

This means CL-Amp plays MIDI, Sequitur now works, and internal app MidiPlayer works!

This is an exciting time to be working on Haiku. There is so much happening.

Edited 2010-06-14 15:37 UTC

Just what I was interested in. I'm planning an ambitious project, a high-quality music notation editor inspired both by the likes of Sibelius and by the 90s trackers (Scream, Fast, Impulse,...). I intend to do it either in Java or in C++.

But I was wondering MIDI and audio output on Haiku. What's the current stance of Haiku regarding Java? Will a JVM be ported or is it just not on the to-do list? Maybe even the want-to-do list...

Starting a GUI Java apps now don't seem a good idea to me. Not that Awt+Swig is that bad, but the future is not really bright for it. Oracle don't care that much about native GUI apps. Even if they have some, JSP and JavaFX is higher on their priority list. If I had to start a project now, I would pick Qt and C++. The ecosystem is alive and improving, and with MeeGo, Symbian, WinMo and possibly more soon, it is the toolkit of choice to develop smartphone apps, so it is not going to die soon.

I'll make the update.

I'm not so sure about pacman, I'd rather have a graphical package manager directly written for haiku. As for Blender, indeed I'd love to see that. Personally, with Blender and Inkscape ported I would be able to do alot more productively in Haiku. Until we get 3d hardware acceleration in Haiku Blender will likely not be very useful other than for rendering, but Inkscape should perform well.

This might interest you:

http://joomla.iscomputeron.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=vi...

aljen made a more recent port than that but it was integrated into the haiku build system I don't know if the patch is still around.... it might be worth asking

Pacman itself wouldn't be ideal... but it is just a frontend

what would be neat is to the pacman libraries with a native haiku frontend... some small and simple applications can be installed via the packagefs system which is in development. However, large complex programs will probably always need a more normal package manager for which libpacman fits the bill quite nicely since there are already multiple projects using it it will probably be well supported in the future as well.

libpacman + BeGui could also be complemented by combining it with haikuports so that similar to arch some packages could be rolling release for instance Web+ updates or the latest and greatest blender... which probably wouldn't mean a complete rebuild of the system.

Pacman is a good place to start with, but I think the package manager should have the source code/package management abilities of yaourt to be begin with.
Packages are nice, but the ability to easily compile applications from source with specific options enabled is really nice. Source compiles from ports is one of the reasons I love FreeBSD, and I would like to see Haiku make a serious effort to put binary packages and source code tarballs on equal terms.

Xeon, HaikuTwitter is an awesome app but I could not get it running on Alpha 2 after several tries. There are actually 2 versions of HaikuTwitter. Some people will want to try the Beta version which runs with extra libs.

Caya is in rapid development but is listed as pre-Alpha release. But please download and try them both out with the understanding that there may be issues.

Also, BeCalc has no executable yet. It was just released as open source last week.

Re: GOBEProductive - Do I have a quote? No. Have I spoken with GOBE Software and a Sr. Haiku developer? Yes. GP is not open sourced but there is a possibility of a Haiku port. I'm hoping this will inspire some positive discussion and a new efforts here.

Thanks for your patience!

Edited 2010-06-14 16:18 UTC

In May 2008, when I was still heavily involved with the Haiku project, I had discussions with Bruce Hammond of Gobe Software that lead to a concrete offer from him to give Haiku developers the opportunity to work on a Haiku port of Gobe Productive 3; in exchange for the development work, Bruce committed to make the resulting Haiku binaries available for free.

In response to Bruce's generous offer, several Haiku developers of stature volunteered to work on the port, and they were given access to the code, but for some reason the project never went anywhere. It is kind of disappointing that nothing has materialized after more than two years, but maybe there is still hope.

Do you not know who these developers were? IMO a gobe port would be as important as a native browser. Meaning haiku inc funding would come into play assuming an interested developer who can handle the job is avaiable.

Another unknown is the state of the code... would it be hard to get the port working again? I have to say though Gobe v3 looks very Beish even on windows...

Use a non-profit's donated funds to work on proprietary software for a commercial company? Even if you could sell that idea to the community, it doesn't really seem worth the effort for a one-off binary release.

We have bounty money that comes from Karl at Haikuware. So it doesn't have to be from Haiku LLC.

I would say that this doesn't have to be a one-off relationship. And I would also say that if you don't think it's worth the value, then you probably don't understand the full functionality of GOBE Productive. Please read this before commenting further:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/02q2/gobe/gobe-1.html

This application will fulfill most people's Office needs. When I say it is a kill app, I don't use that term lightly.

While normally I would agree the Haiku devs would have source acess (formal rights to access/distribute would be needed if they payed anything for access)

They might even be able to buy the code... I doubt Gobe is very profitable as a product at them moment even on windows.

Yes, I know who the developers were (four, if my memory does not fail), but it's up to them whether they want to come forward or not. You could always ask on one of the Haiku mailing lists.

BTW, there was no money involved whatsoever; the agreement was that the devs would do the work for free and Gobe would release the GP3 binary for Haiku gratis.

I have no idea on the state of the code; that would be another question for the devs, which they may not be able to answer as they were unders NDAs.

Just to clarify, bounty would hypothetically be for development, not for licensing.

Understood. But it would still be funding a closed source solution, something that may not be well seen by some in the community, particularly those who advocate open source.

:-D
what is that app of yours?

why not submit it to haikufire.com ?

Haikuware isn't the only Haiku app site in town

That's great news! I was thinking throughout the entire article: "why not go for an Ubuntu-like package manager?" It would make that out-of-the-box experience for new users much easier, especially if in later versions there is a preview screenshot with every app (like in the Zeta installer).

There's an old version of SoundPlay (4.7.2) that works (and can be found on BeShare).

imkit is dead and is being resurrected as Caya (which is as interesting as any other multi-protocol client on any OS but not working as good).

Also, I haven't ever heard of someone even referring to ftp_fs. NetPenguin works perfectly for me.

Thanks. I hadn't heard the name "Caya" before, didn't realize it was the continuation of the im_kit.



IMO, the interesting thing about about im_kit/Caya isn't the fact that it's a multi-protocol IM client (yes, those are a dime-a-dozen) - but the way it's implemented. Specifically, the way that makes full use of Haiku's unique/interesting features.



It was fairly well-known within the Haiku/BeOS community when it was still in active development (admittedly that hasn't been the case since 2006 or thereabouts).



Don't get me wrong, NetPenguin is probably my sentimental favourite FTP client. But the lack of a queue can be a problem when transferring a large number of files - E.g. if you're uploading a complex web-based application. If one file fails to transfer, then you have to start the whole transfer over again (as opposed to just re-queuing the files that failed to transfer).

Well, AFAICT from a user perspective caya is a pretty "normal" multi-protocol IM client. While it seems to reuse some of the IMkit's code, it is not resurrecting the IM kit approach - which I find really sad. Don't get me wrong! It's great that a modern IM client is developed at all, and as non-developing, non-paying user I really shouldn't complain. But for me the IM kit was the prime example of Be-ness.

IM Kit was really a mess... Everything could be replaced with another component that did the same thing, even the deskbar icon. That was horrible IMHO kind of Linux stuff

Caya offers just one chat client that works.

Eventually, Caya will export contacts to People file to make IM Kit users happy or maybe a People Kit that apps can use to find or create People file for contacts and add information to them!

I liked much more of Caya approach

That's a neat idea.

Well, AFAICT from a user perspective caya is a pretty "normal" multi-protocol IM client. While it seems to reuse some of the IMkit's code, it is not resurrecting the IM kit approach "

Ah. I hadn't use it before and assumed, incorrectly, that it was just im_kit under a new name.



Definitely agreed.



Completely agreed.

The im_kit was responsible for the last example I can think of where something *positive* happened as a result of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

(warning: anecdote-ahoy)
I had been setting up MSN/passport accounts for a local business, and I'd been testing them with GAIM (cum Pidgin) in Windows. When I got home and hopped onto my BeOS machine, which ran im_kit at the time, I had to write an EMail one of the people I had setup IM accounts for.

I had a bit of a "WTF" moment when BeMail auto-completed the address, even though I'd never corresponded with that person before. Then it dawned on me: im_kit had automatically download the new contacts that GAIM had saved to the server, saved them as Person files - and because I'd used their EMail addresses for the passport usernames, they were all in my address book automatically.

It basically gave me (to use current buzzwords) integration with cloud storage for contact info, with automatic offline synchronization. And a few years before the terms "cloud storage/computing" were coined.

Haiku now have MIDI support by default

SVN r37153