A small article written by Colin. J. Wenzel was published from Amiga’s ‘Club Amiga Monthly’ online magazine regarding the new AmigaDOS library and its originally unintended TRIPOS roots. Last weekend new AmigaOS4 screenshots were published and the first report and photos of last weekend’s Swedish AmigaOS4 event are available. Next weekend OS4 events are planned for Italy and France.
From the photos of the screen, AOS4 seems to have taken some GUI ideas from QNX? Just the look, I mean.
I’m sorry to say, but amiga is one of the ugliest os at the moment! I don’t understand many people like it…
The up/down arrows look pretty darn tiny for DOPUS. I couldn’t imagine having to use an app like that for very long.
Maybe Amiga 1.0 will include a mouse and a little joystick built into it… for horizontal and vertical scroll. And if you press the joystick, you get zoom.
I may be wrong but if you think QNX looks like AmigaOS, it may very well be that QNX got it from Amiga. Im pretty sure QNX was developed well after the Amiga was introduced, and the Amigas appearance has not changed a lot from when it was first introduved…
Also im pretty sure past Amiga developers also work on qnx and im also pretty sure that maybe one of them founded the organisation who makes QNX.. Dont quote me, i could be wrong!
Also, i’ve used qnx i cant remember anything looking like AmigaOS, although i havnt used it in a while.
DOpus has fairly small buttons by default, but its all configurable… if you want them bigger, just go change them…
As for looks… I can’t say I understand this obsession with meaningless bells and whistles in a GUI. The first thing most people I know who are running WinXP do is make it look like Win2K, and OS4 looks better than Win2K. Give me clean, clear and uncluttered in a GUI anyday.
yep, new GUI has some similarities to QNX photon GUI.
it’s not the same, but it brings QNX picture in mind.
maybe because of those gradients and the way window buttons (max, min, close) are “glued” to background, and bottons itself.
Rodney McDonell: i’m sure QNX couldn’t take that from AmigaOS – i saw screenshots of AmigaOS and it was completly different style of windows.
Who cares the outlook of the gui when it is responsive like hell? You don’t have to wait seconds while a file requester pops up. You don’t have to wait if you change ‘screen’ and the system ‘draws’ the windows.
“Amiga appearance has not changed a lot since it was first introduced”
I would say it has changed a great deal. Compare the screen grab on this page
http://www.ntsc-uk.com/MainContent/Features/AmigaRetrospective/Amig…
with the new AOS 4 screen grabs.
Of course the basic logic has not changed as much as the look.
Even those old Amigas are very fun to use today. I cannot say the same about any pre-1995 PC or Mac.
It would be nice to see them back in the stores.
The current look is based on an evolution of the 2.0 look introduced back in 1990.
The Grey 3D effect looked great at the time compared with 1.3 but gosh, I wonder how they thought up such a thing:
http://www120.pair.com/mccarthy/nextstep/intro.htmld/desktop1.gif
I much prefer the solidity of BeOS and Workbench to any frilly KDE theme crap, much less the intellectual morass that is Windows UI design.
We love you, Amy!!11
http://www.bedoper.com
The default look is meant to be as consistent with classic Amiga applications as possible. And as the screenshots demonstrate, classic application still look pretty good with the new interface.
There are only little inconsistencies mainly because various applications use 3rd party GUI toolkits for drawing some of their GUI elements, but overall software still looks pretty decent:
Example inconsistencies:
MakeCD uses the Triton GUI kit and therefor does not use AmigaOS4’s default buttons with gradients.
http://amigaworld.net/images/features/snap1.png
The same goes for IBrowse which uses a Magic User Interface (MUI)
http://amigaworld.net/modules/features/os4/shot4.html
But overall everything still looks pretty consistent IMO.
Almost everything can be customized however (border thichness, colors, gradients, gadgets, sliders, etc), but as you modify the OS some applications, not using AmigaOS4’s GUI could start to look inconsistent with the OS.
Such problems will slowly move into the background when new software take full advantage of AmigaOS4.
I have asked around some amongst friends and coworkers about the gui look. Those that have not used the Amiga before does not seem to think it differs in visual quality from WinXP.
The ex-amigans i have spoken with generally smiles and go hohoho i remember that, one friend, ex amigan caught a glimpse at the older shots that were used to demonstrate the theming capabilities and he said something like “i can see that them amigans still likes strange colors”.
So far i have not met anyone actually complaining about the gui, they have most been concerned with what apps that are avaible, and sadly most asks for word, excel etc…
> and sadly most asks for word, excel etc…
Amiga and their partners understand these issues very well. The first AmigaOS4/AmigaOne product is however mainly aimed at AmigaOS enthusiasts and Amiga developers. (And some Linux users/Geeks). But at the time when AmigaOS4.1 and the cheaper AmigaOne boards are planned, the product is expected to become of interest to more general users.
Providing a good browsing and office solution is certainly a priority for the AmigaOS4 team.
Providing an office solution at this point, is is not a priority at all … They need to release the product, get the excisting Amiga community to use it and take it from there ..
No company at this point will use Amiga’s in their offices for daily usage.
Kees Witteveen
Amiga.org
Somebody providing a port of Open Office and Mozilla (work is underway on that one) would be nice too 😉
Hello Kees 😎
> Providing an office solution at this point, is is not a
> priority at all …
It’s not their *top* priority currently of course. As I said AmigaOS4.0 will be mainly aimed at current AmigaOS enthusiasts, but as Amiga and their partners want to expand onto a broader audience, they already have to start planning and setting up projects, as they have been doing already.
I’m sorry, but the GUI in these 4.0 shots just looks bad. There is something wholly unsophisticated about the widgets, the icons, and the whole look in general.
It also seems way too visually *BUSY*, which is more a problem of engineers designing the interfaces rather than UI experts, I would guess.
In ‘snap1.png’ e.g. the big ugly arrows used all over – what the hell kind of ugly widget is that? They probably could have used a less-wide font as their system font too, it reminds me too much of even older AmigaOS screenshots.
No accounting for taste, I guess.
Not much more to say then whatever they do they will never satisfy everybody cause everyone has theyre own taste what i may love another might think is the ugliest gui he has ever seen! right now they should concentrate on getting the current and perhaps some ex Amigans to like it (as thats theyre main focus as buyers now) and with this look im quite sure they will do just that at least out of look.
> the big ugly arrows used all over – what the hell kind
> of ugly widget is that?
Those arrows are application specific and not AmigaOS4 related. MakeCD as shown emulated in this screenshot uses a Triton GUI and thus the buttons shown in that picture aren’t ones created by AmigaOS4 itself neither.
I can’t believe Amigans still can’t figure out how to correctly gray a disabled push button. It still looks ugly.
–bzImage
The QNX GUI is newer than Amiga’s, but QNX began as an OS before the CAOS project (which was combined with TripOS and HiTorro’s Exec to create what we call today the Amiga’s OS)
The only OS among the three that are merged to become the Amiga’s OS that is older than QNX’s origins is, I believe, TripOS.
<<<
Those arrows are application specific and not AmigaOS4 related. MakeCD as shown emulated in this screenshot uses a Triton GUI and thus the buttons shown in that picture aren’t ones created by AmigaOS4 itself neither.
<<<
Then they should run only new apps and take a screenshot of it.
–bzImage
> HiTorro’s Exec
Just to clarify, Hi-Toro was a name used by Amiga Inc during the early days before Commodore acquired Amiga.
TripOS was only used for AmigaDOS, Exec was the true foundation (AmigaOS kernel by Carl Sassenrath) of the platform. The GUI core was originally created by R.J. Mical called ‘Amiga Intuition’.
> Then they should run only new apps and take a screenshot
> of it.
No, I am happy to know that older software seem to work fine. DOPUS, SnoopDOS, Colonization, MakeCD, SnoopDOS etc are all well known classic Amiga titles. 🙂
Hiya YesMaam. 😆
Hope you read all your congratulatary posts on A.Org.
I concur with you though … Get the damn thing out !!
The money’s burning a hole in my pocket !!
Mike, now you’re re-inventing history.
>> HiTorro’s Exec
>
>Just to clarify, Hi-Toro was a name used by Amiga Inc >during the early days before Commodore acquired Amiga.
No, Hi-Torro is the name of the company that created the Amiga, later renamed Amiga Corp. before finally being sold out to Commodore.
>TripOS was only used for AmigaDOS, Exec was the true >foundation (AmigaOS kernel by Carl Sassenrath) of the >platform. The GUI core was originally created by R.J. >Mical called ‘Amiga Intuition’.
This is very underreporting, and oversimplification to a serious degree there Mike.. “only used for AmigaDOS” is so underwhelming when you consider that AmigaDOS was most of the whole OS foundation. It was a full kernel in its own right.
Work on Exec began at Hi-Torro (It was not called Amiga Corp. yet) in the early 80’s, and proceeded well, gaining such things as the GUI core, Intuition. It is due to the speed of development that the kickstart ROM revision in AmigaOS 3.1 is in it’s 40’s. Exec had over 40 major revisions from 1983 to 1994. However, it was only partially complete when Commodore bought out Amiga Corp. Commodore, seeing the problem, took the shortest path, and licensed an OS, called TripOS, whose kernel became AmigaDOS. Does the fact that Exec is the foundation eliminate the kernel that came from TripOS? Not at all. TripOS rides on top of Exec in much the same manner that mkLinux rides on top of another microkernel. Only in this case the Amiga engineers had the wisdom to keep the drivers seperate from this kernel-on-top-of-another-kernel.
> Mike, now you’re re-inventing history.
Just trying to clarify things.
> later renamed Amiga Corp
The point I wanted to clarify was that Hi-Toro was the Amiga comany and not some 3rd party. The point was *NOT* what Amiga was called back then.
> Only in this case the Amiga engineers had the wisdom to
> keep the drivers seperate from this kernel-on-top-of
> -another-kernel.
The AmigaDOS library was not a kernel. Instead large *parts* of TripOS’ codebase were used instead of Carl Sassenrath’s own CAOS, with the intend to save some time. However TripOS is not AmigaDOS or vice versa, only large parts of the codebase were adjusted to work with the Exec kernel (would initialize the hardware, bring the system software up, handle interrupts and exceptions, do the low-level device control (like the trackdisk.device), provide system error-handling, supply the low-level timing routines and semaphores, handle the basic multitasking and more) and the Intuition windowing system.
An informative article can be found here:
http://www.thule.no/haynie/caos.html
Um mike, that article just backed me up. It called AmigaDOS a “top-level OS/DOS” which is exactly what I was trying to get across. I was not trying to claim that dos.library was a system kernel, but it is a kernel, as in it impliments many of the functions necessary for the system to operate inside of a single entity. But perhaps my choice of wording is what you are trying to argue with. How about then me saying AmigaDOS is a top-level OS implimentation in a single module, based on the TripOS kernel? Is that acceptable, so we can end this arguing?
It’s just the DOS used in earlier AmigaOS releases. Carl’s CAOS was an OS (+DOS) meant to use Carl’s Exec kernel at its core.
I understand that this may be confusing to you, but there weren’t two kernels used in the classic OS. The Exec kernel + AmigaDOS (mainly based on TripOS code) + Intuition + etc makes the OS.
Here’s a recent Amiga article regarding the history of the Amiga File System, which may clarify things better:
http://os.amiga.com/cam/index.php?i=4&p=4
“A few more details on AmigaDOS. Some people still believe that at the core, the Amiga operating system uses Tripos code. This is not true. All that was “borrowed” from Tripos was the file system layer and the functionality on top of it, such as the API, the shell and its standard commands (which are actually programs).”