[News] New AmigaOS 4.0 ROM Kernal Reference Manuals in the works! | ANN.lu |
Posted on 24-Apr-2002 16:18 GMT by P Ericson | 86 comments View flat View list |
In a recent interview with Hyperion Software, we're told that Olaf "Olsen" Barthel is working on new ROM Kernal Reference Manuals for AmigaOS 4.0! [The "RKRM" books are the official and prime development documentation/tutorial for AmigaOS developers] As some readers of Amiga Network News may already know, Mr Barthel has previously compiled the Amiga Developer's CD.
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New AmigaOS 4.0 ROM Kernal Reference Manuals in the works! : Comment 59 of 86 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Olaf Barthel on 25-Apr-2002 18:53 GMT | In reply to Comment 58 (SlimJim): > [..]
> A question from one that have never read a kernel manual... I thought those
> manuals were very old and dated?
Yes and no. Yes, they are now ten years old (the RKM Libs shipped when the
first Kickstart 3.0 test releases were made available to developers). No,
most of the documentation covers features that did not change in all these
years. The manuscripts certainly do not cover the features introduced in
3.0 and 3.1. You will have to look that up in the AmigaMail Volume 2 text.
And some of the information was never really updated at all. For example,
the graphics.library documentation is almost identical to the RKM text of the
AmigaOS 1.3 volumes (published in 1987/1988).
> Now that AOS4 is moving not only towards updates but on a completely new
> processor... How much use are the old manuals then?
My best guess is that technically, 60-75% will still be accurate. The
remaining 40-25% are outdated either because they have been outdated
since Kickstart 3.0 was released, or because the underlying hardware
base will be different/new APIs will be introduced.
> Olaf said one of them was >1000 pages. Is all info still useable in the
> new system? I would have thought, in my ignorance, that the major work-part
> was to remove heaps of old stuff to update or even write a lot from scratch?
It's hard to get rid of APIs and data structures, even if you are replacing
or updating old code. For example, the icon.library that shipped with the 3.5
and 3.9 updates was rewritten from scratch. Yet the documentation in the RKM
Libs could still be used to write software to use it. |
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