Submitted by AbiWord 2.5.1 has been released for AmigaOS4 using Cygnix. Besides AbiWord’s usual word processing features, this package also includes a KHTML-based browser for AmigaOS4. “Additionally, for displaying the online help files the KHTML based browser, ‘osb-browser’, is included! This browser has following features: standards compliant (x)html rendering engine with CSS support; Javascript support; SSL support.”
Woohoo
Webcore on Amiga
Absolutely surprising news – but nice to see the Amiga’s still kicking
Dumb Question Of The Day – is OS4 avaiable? Is anyone here using it? Last I knew the release date was TBD and the hardware was TBD.
OS4 exists and works well. I have it for a while and I use it as my main machine even if I use a laptop (WinXP, Linux), a PowerMac (Linux Debian PPC), a Pegasos (MorphOS), …
You would be surprised to see OS4 and MorphOS running !
I don’t know why I got modded down, but I was serious about my question about the availability of OS4. How can I try out AbiWord for OS4 until I know how to get OS4? Makes sense to me, at least.
So, how do I obtain OS4? I am very interested.
Considering they now have a complete working browser to read html ‘help’ files, does it communicate with the network stack as well?
Oops, third last line, yea it can go out onto the net.
Can’t seem to find it on the website.
Just so you know, this isn’t a native port.
Someone “only” made work an X11 server for OS4 and recompiled AbiWord so that it may run within this X11 server… Nothing more, nothing less.
(And just so you know, this server is a direct recompilation of something that has been working on AmigaOS 3.x since at least a decade…)
I aggree, that it had to be mentioned, that it only runs on an X11 server,
but why so negative? Do you have any idea, how much work it was, to make
this possible? It was much more, than starting a compiler. AmigaOS 4 is not
Linux and not AmigaOS 3.x.
alex : thanks for the information to fretinator.
cyngusEd : Do you want to know why Leo43 is so negative ? Because he has no hope in the Amiga and does not accept the current situation. So he prefers to depreciate things that are done and to point the negative aspects. Maybe it makes regrets sweeter …
Leo43 : You really sad ! 🙁
I just want to say that we miss some leading programs and if in a first time we can run them with X11, this is a good point.
>So, how do I obtain OS4? I am very interested.
While the OS has been finished for some time, there’s currently a shortage of hardware to run it on (ironically the reverse of the situation a couple of years back). The most likely solution appears to be the SAM440EP PPC mobo that’s been under development for a while now (there was some news about the company behind it on OSNews recently), as well as the version of OS4 for PPC accelerated “Classic” Amigas that’s in the works. At the moment, however, you’d need to get yourself a second-hand AmigaOne system to run the OS.
I didn’t want in any way to depreciate its work… but rather depreciate the interest of it.
This has been available for 68k Amigas for over a decade, and yet, not one barely uses it: guess why ?
I’m not sad, I’m just real… By using an X11 server, you remove all the advantages you may find in OS4 (being: small memory requirements, speed,…). Not to mention that most X11 programs won’t run well (or at all) without SWAP, something OS4 does not offer.
What’s sad though, is that people don’t get real about that…
Of course X11 is not the final solution for everything, but a first step to get up to date software.
And the X server is not completely an alien. He uses a lot of features of the AmigaOS.
I may be entirely wrong here, however isn’t the Firefox port for RiscOS done through an X Server? As far as I know the idea with that is to slowly add native WIMP menus etc, and such a path towards a native app could presumably also work on the AmigaOS. Even if that’s not the case, however, the presence of a modern wordprocessor on the OS4 desktop (instead of having to switch over to Linux) will do a lot to alleviate one of the two main gaps the platform has in terms of software (the other being a modern browser, which this project has started to provide). I suppose you could think of it a bit like WINE – some people wouldn’t use Linux exclusively if they couldn’t run a few essential Windows applications, and WINE facilitates this. Of course, an X11-based port is better as it offers the opportunity to slowly integrate the software into the OS more.
>most X11 programs won’t run well (or at all) without SWAP, something OS4 does not offer
The updated virtual memory system for OS4 supports paging to disk. From what I understand, this isn’t enabled in the current release as it’s undergoing more extensive testing, and will be released as an update at some point in the future.
…but it exists and give AmigaOS the opportunity to run with a minimal recompile vaste quantity of software directly from Linux world.
– This enhances compatibility
– This removes a major gap. The absence of a MODERN wordprocessor on Amiga.
(to be honest the old WP programs for Amiga such as Final Writer and Wordworth work fine IMHO and are quite usable on new AmigaONE and Pegasos/MorphOS)…
The “OSB” browser it is only a bonus because AMAYA was released with a precedent version of X11 and works fine.
As a Pegasos user I have no problem because Sputnik Browser By Martin Marcik is working fine even in beta and growing at every release. It is native for MorphOS and requires no external dependancies from alien OSes…
As soon as MUI (Magic User Interface) graphic engine version 4 will be ready for AmigaOS, Marcik promised he will realize Sputnik Browser for AmigaOS too.
There was issued a bounty collect to pay Marcik and his porting of Sputnik, and this bounty has been completed some weeks ago.
So when MUI4 will work on AmigaOS 4.0, then immediately we will see Sputnik running on Amiga OS, as being one of the first portings on that graphical engine.
So at least we could use three modern browsers into AmigaOS/MorphOS (osb, AMAYA and Sputnik).
I wonder if Firefox will be the next porting from Linux to Amiga X11.
—–
“Grande Pahia” Browser development it is currently stopped due to the fact that it is a one-man only project, and the author who wanted to develop it in parallel for both AmigaOS and Windows he found he has not the time to develop it, and can’t keep the efforts to continue a double development in parallel.
But he said he could soon release the engine he realized as Open Source.
Edited 2007-04-19 08:40