29-Mar-2024 06:50 GMT.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Anonymous, there are 80 items in your selection [1 - 50] [51 - 80]
[Forum] Removed PostANN.lu
Posted on 17-Aug-2004 06:32 GMT by Tryo80 comments
View flat
View list
What happened to oGALAXYo's post "Stuff that worries me" ?

It would have fit well into the Forum category.

Any moderator is brave enough to comment?

Removed Post : Comment 1 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Senex on 17-Aug-2004 04:37 GMT
What had it been about? Haven't noticed it.
Removed Post : Comment 2 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Tryo on 17-Aug-2004 05:51 GMT
In reply to Comment 1 (Senex):
It was a mssive post about the wrongs in this community, especially with developers.

I'll repast the first part here:

--snip--

I (oGALAXYo) like to flame ahead with some stuff that bothers me for a while ... ... I am following this community for quite some while now and the only things that I have discovered so far is that 2 very hatred groups are trying everything to kill the last bits of the remaining bits of the Amiga community by verbal attacks, defamation and the worst stuff I've seen.
After all these months I am playing with the thoughts to maybe leave the MorphOS community again (this means the entire Amiga community). But all this will be decided once I am back from my vacation from greece (21.08.2004 - 25.09.2004).

I've been a bit worried about the future of MorphOS, the silence around it, the development material there exist and the applications that people write an offer. But basicly this isn't a MorphOS issue per se since the OS is quite cool it's more the remaining normal developers who work on Amiga, AROS and MorphOS stuff, the lack of standards, the lack of scientific work on software which bothers me.

Please allow me to write ahead and please do not feel insulted or offended but I think that writing this one time is necessary for people to understand the problems that I see and the keyproblems we need to work on.

We all know that Amiga has stagnated for many years and that we also lost quite a lot of powerful real developers. People who nowadays do professional work on either Linux, Windows, MacOS or wherever and what remains nowadays are a handful of people with different skills, different ideals, different views and different approaches of doing things. From most people that I met in the past months I can say that they are some sort of 'one person rambos' lack of co-operation, lack of teamwork, lack of professionalism, unwillingness for a change for the future and the better, strange attempts of software design. This is not because of their skills or something. I think it might be a bit lack of manpower or coordination because there is so much that needs to be done but not many people are available who are willing to do all the work. Then money and private life is also an issue.

Problem with AmigaOS are the people, so many "experts", so many "know it betters", so many hatred conversations, so many different views, impossible to even talk, convince or having these people accept compromises or work in teams to achive a goal faster and better, things to be re-invented 20000 times, 20 types of the same approach and all 20 suck more or less ... And here are the core problems I think.

I stare on this architecture, looking back to my good old Amiga days and I sit here asking myself why I waste my time with all this and this community.

Let's switch over to the open source world for one moment. See at the KDE architecture. People found together, creating a nice framework, where you build your tools on it and when you look behind the IRC names of these people you mostly find physicans, computer scientists, people with a doctor title, normal users, some companies who back the stuff up with financial money, hardware, resources so people can work on and can keep motivated working on it. People with a clear idea and clear roadmap how things have to look. Due to the perfect framework like mimesystem, like vfs layer, like object system, like component system, unified toolkit, themes and so on you are able to write powerful applications for all types of areas, sound, video, 3d, graphic, unified window creating, unified components like toolbars, menus, etc..

On Amiga (specially MorphOS now) we are trying to convince people to go for one GUI system which here is MUI and we try to convince people to write proper code, re-usable code and so on and follow some sort of styling guide for the applications.

But I also noticed that many of these suggestions are not paid the attention that it really requires. I see people using different Toolbar classes for a MUI application which makes the applications behave differently and less pleasing when using them, I realize that people use different entries for Menu. e.g. Some use Quit in their first Menu entry, and some use Quit in their last Menu entry, some have About in their first Menu entry some in the last and so on. Also noticed that different applications have different keysequences for the same thing which totally confuses people. Then again some apps look like they are blown together in a hurry and their GUI looks like that as well. Different padding for button, some apps come even with own colorschema for MUI, or own different Font for the Buttons or the GUI itself when loading these apps and normal apps they do look differently even if they use the same GUI system. Looking at the translations (catalog) files is also painful by times where you see some people translate "wallpaper" with "tapete" or "hintergrund" e.g. using multiple different terminology for the same thing which only increases the glossary unnecessarily. Also a problem is having people do their own 20 ways of reading and storing configurations which then appear in either PROGDIR: S: ENVARC: then some of them are plain textfiles, some of them are tooltypes some of them iff files and so on and this is plain insane and not something that is visionaire for the future. Also some Toolbar elements are in IFF, others in PNG, others in GIF ... different graphicans and different look of these things make the entire use of the apps unpleasing. Different own custom routines for doing stuff rather than using what's offered by the system, hacks, half solutions and so on.
Removed Post : Comment 3 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Tryo on 17-Aug-2004 05:53 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Tryo):
Ok, here's the second part too:

--snip--

I know there are plenty of people here who say how much Linux sucks and yes, not everything there is on Linux makes sense but there are plenty of areas where people at least try to work together, finding compromises, trying to implement standards, trying to agree on some junk like common classes, objects, types, styles, translation and so on but on the Amiga architecture this seem to be not possible. And it looks like that this way has been proven to be a nice way and the correct way to go because it finds more and more acceptance. A good framework, good development material (documents), people who agree on a vision, using what's offered by the architecture etc. makes it possible to write powerful applications. With powerful applications I don't mean yet another pron viewer or texteditor, we need powerful programs to get work done such as textsystems, scientific and educational programs, entertainment programs and so on but these apps need to be writen and based on scientific work and not halfassed hacking, this means that these programms should follow some styling guide rules, follow some RFC's, standards, they should embedd into the system nicely and behave, operate and communicate correctly with the users.

This somehow totally lacks on the Amiga and it's certainly sure that this is reflected to the current situation of the hatred communities, lack of developers and lack of teamwork and cooperation. A lot of people simply fear the changes and some even say how much they like their old 1995 written programs or something like that, while the competition on Open Source is moving ahead adopting all types of technologies, standards and so on. We urgently need to step in their path and do the same as sad it sounds. I saw that some people already ported nice things to MorphOS but some stuff explodes the good means of the porters because they start to get 'creative' with what they do. E.g. when you port a library which is crossplattform compatible then many people forget that these libraries have some sort of frozen API (that is an API specially made for a certain version, which should be kept untouched or unchanged). Unfortunately after the port people start to become creative and mess around in it, duing huge changes of the API, the internal code, the include files and so on and you wonder that application XYZ which seamless compile on Linux or Windows complains about missing headers on MorphOS (again this is not MorphOS specific only a problem with the ported library done by someone else).

These things we must work on and get rid off and it's urgently required that we work on these things as soon as even possible before we continue writing new stuff for it because it doesn't make sense to hack yet another pile of junk together which doesn't follow any standards, rules, guide lines, standard classes etc.

I don't really know at the moment. There are also other things (mostly development related) that worries me, when I look back to Amiga and how I coded 1995 and how I am coding today 2004 (and then all the improved systems and the scientific approach that people are trying on Linux or MacOSX or whatever).

We need to change here as well, we must improve here and I don't really know how this should go specially when I tried to talk with different people who simply cut my word in my mouth even before being able to finish the sentence or making foolish jokes about the stuff I try to say because they don't fucking know what I am talking about.

Amiga is indeed a nice architecture and I do believe in the people to be able to do better and the MorphOS team (the internal developers now) are demonstrating it at the moment the same goes for the AmigaOS core developers who of course follow a vision and try to be as consistent as even possible with a polished GUI, with some rules and styles etc. But what we need here is to reach the other developers as well. It is important to not just think for your own sake, please also think for the future of your beloved architecture that you are working for and the people and users who want to use your stuff. I am tired of people cooking their own soup and play the one man rambo army. Either we sit together on one table and work something out for the better of this community or we'd better head off stop wasting our time here and work on something with future.

Comments are welcome.
Removed Post : Comment 4 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Emeric SH on 17-Aug-2004 06:10 GMT
Oh my, that was a sensible post. But unfortunately it has the answer right at the top of it: we have too few developers. These developers may be walking their own way, but forcing them to do things the way they don't want to may make them simply go away. I always admired the efforts of the MorphOS core development team in pointing out the style flaws in some code snippets, and suggesting better solutions though. Whether the developers accept it or not is entirely up to them.

Sadly, we're lacking resources to mimic Linux or MacOS development.
Removed Post : Comment 5 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by gary_c on 17-Aug-2004 06:17 GMT
Yeah, I was wondering where that post went, too, especially since the braindead post pointing to a religious site is still here....

-- gary_c
Removed Post : Comment 6 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Senex on 17-Aug-2004 06:28 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Tryo):
Thanks, Tryo! I think Galaxy is right in many points, while others are just a natural effect of the microscopic size the Amiga community has dwarfed to.

Regarding open source one could point to AROS (an approach one certainly has to keep an eye on - being open and multi-platform, they could really turn out as the "laughing third" in the end), but - again because of the community's small size - of course that wouldn't make it better; on the opposite, one of Galaxy's main points could even become worse without a limited group of "dictators" at the top for style guides, etc.

As far as it concerns the hatred, I'm not sure if this is really still valid. If I look at the comments over at us at amiga-news.de, there are mainly just always the same few trolls and fanatics left, while - unfortunately - the big majority of users and even more developers has quit commenting there, ignoring the trolls. So it might be a not too unlikely guess that most Amiga users - even those who had got overwhelmed by enthusiasm for one of the three AmigaOS successor solutions in the beginning and participated in the public fights back then - have reconsidered their common appreciation of the amigaish way of computing and are just enjoying their hobby now instead of flaming.

That the people at the helm of OS4 and MOS development won't get along ever seems to be an unfortunate fact - but I really do think that the vast majority of Amigans, no matter if they prefer AROS, MOS, OS4 or 68k, are adult enough to enjoy their common hobby and their common roots, their strong similarities compared to other operating systems, in a friendly way.
Removed Post : Comment 7 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by hooligan/dcs on 17-Aug-2004 06:29 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Tryo):
>I stare on this architecture, looking back to my good old Amiga days and I sit here asking myself why I waste my time with all this and this community

Because you were given a free motherboard to develope a browser on?
Removed Post : Comment 8 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by oGALAXYo on 17-Aug-2004 07:36 GMT
Hello,

I emailed Christophe Decanini yesterday and asked him to remove my own posting. I do stand for the intention that I like to explain with my posting (problems like lack of standards, inconsistency and so on) but the way I have phrased my sentences was quite offensive therefore I'd liked to have it see removed.

Even if I had a good thing in mind with what I intended to write but the way I have written it might cause a lot of people to certainly get entirely pissed off and quite often this has proven to cause even more problems like losing or destroying the creditibility faster than being able to fix all the misunderstandings afterwards which will be a time consumming and cumbersome process.

I have planned to rephrase the entire text in a more mildy way once I am back from my vacation (but seems now that someone else came up with reposting my own stuff again).

The problem Is that I saw some technical problems in the Amiga developer world that I'd like to see solved. Such as common components that we the developers can use and some more consistency in the applications and styling guides as well as some improvements in how settings are being saved on Amiga, core components and classes to be used in MUI and so on. I tried to shift these issues to the various remaining developers (now NOT MorphOS developers) and tried to have the other participants to understand these problems so we can sit together and argue. ANN was chosen because it's a meeting place for various Amiga like architectures. In the past I have tried to get in touch with various developers trying to have them understand that it would improve usability for our plattform if we offer the users and customers a system where the apps feel similar e.g. when I start a handful of applications that they offer a similar user interface, similar looking toolbar, similar looking styles and proper naming of the menu entries, proper layout of buttons and so on. These important things sadly aren't given much attention in our community and it is hard convincing the remaining developers that this is an improvement which we all benefit from. The major response I got was being flamed because the people do not see the clear intent behind it and it's also hard to teamwork with some people in the community to find some sort of agreement or alternatives howto improve all this.

Look at MacOSX for example where all the apps look similar, share a similar internface, share a similar menu layout and even are properly translated into different languages. The same good things that happening on the Linux Desktops nowadays.

My fault is that I should have better phrased the sentences and probably should have reread it before submitting (or even better not have submit it at all as I realized now). What I wrote sounds quite inflamatory and is probably hitting under the belt as well. Once I am back from my vacation I try to set up a better text with help of others that clearly demonstrates the benefits of this approach.
Removed Post : Comment 9 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by DC on 17-Aug-2004 07:41 GMT
> Also some Toolbar elements are in IFF, others in PNG, others in GIF ...
> different graphicans and different look of these things make the entire
> use of the apps unpleasing.

In the good old days there was an unofficial standard for Amiga OS 3.5/3.9: www.masonicons.de

Plenty of glowicons and toolbar images. All in the same look.
Too sad that it isn'nt continued! :-(
Removed Post : Comment 10 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by oGALAXYo on 17-Aug-2004 08:14 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (DC):
Images can easily be replaced this is a minor issue and easily solvable. What is not so easily solvale is the different Toolbar classes there exists.

Even today people still keep using:

- Toolbar.mcc
- Speedbar.mcc
- Thebar.mcc
- <if I was missing something, then add here>

And these are the more problematic issues, all these Toolbar classes work, behave, act, interact, look, <add your own stuff here>. Some people even use custom Push buttons ontop of the Window area to "simulate" some sort of Toolbar behavior and this is quite disgusting.

Problems here are technical nature.

a) we have to maintain a good chunk of Toolbar classes,
b) we have to maintain own propritary code,
c) we need to install a dozen classes where we already have similar classes default to our system,
d) none of these solutions mentioned above are 100%, they lack features, lack usability,
e) look differently, behave differently, interact differently, <add own stuff here>.

The Toolbar class is just one example from many there are. Now AROS has ported Toolbar.mcc to their architecture and people kee using it. On MorphOS I was told to use Thebar.mcc now you can imagine that we run into problems once we want to port application from A - MorphOS to B - AROS due to the different Toolbar classes the system offers and most likely they ported Toolbar.mcc not because of the good code, no because it was matching with the licensing model they need for AROS (well not making it a licensing issue now) and they also started writing some programs using it.

We need improvements here and it doesn't make sense starting to write applications which are unchangeable afterwards. We need to have some HIG, some standard classes that cover all areas.

Example:

Papyrus Toolbar
Yam Toolbar
Voyager Toolbar

Now look at these different applications and their Toolbar. None of them look consistent, similar or interact the same way.

Now for example look here what you see here is that the technical Toolbar is always the same while the content might differ (look at the other pictures on that page as well). We need to work towards this. No, not everything must have a Toolbar this is also not the point but we must offer and have a handful of common classes where we can sure that everyone uses them and that we know that we can rely on them being improved for the future. There are so many other things we must improve as well such as the settings madness (ENVARC:, S:, PROGDIR:, IFF files, Text files, Tooltypes) etc.

We need some sort of modernized HIG or development guide.
Removed Post : Comment 11 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by brotheris on 17-Aug-2004 08:29 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (oGALAXYo):
But why do you need this rant ? Yabba yabba. You were asked to send some private messages to one developer with sugestions. Write your sugestions on 'paper', send them, they'll be corrected a bit and later you could push 'programming styleguide' or whatever. Do it and not yab about it. Everyone is tired of your 'leaving' and the 'staying'. Sorry to be a bit offensive, but someone asked for it.

Just do it. We will applause such a thing, cooperate with few left developers, but not by talking. Create code snippets, guides.
Removed Post : Comment 12 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by oGALAXYo on 17-Aug-2004 08:36 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (brotheris):
You might have missed the part where I wrote that I asked Christophe Decanini to have my initial own written posting removed. He did so, someone else started the thread again and reposted something that I initially had not in mind to have post as such. The leaving part was of course one that I'd better had not written like this but on the otherhand it does make sense for developers to think whether it makes sense to continue coding in all different directions without a common sense of agreement and arrangement how things should look like and how we can make the system become better. How much from what I wrote did you understand actually (ignoring the offensive bits) ?
Removed Post : Comment 13 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by pixie on 17-Aug-2004 09:16 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (oGALAXYo):
Diferent programs diferent needs.. But I agre with the overall point you're trying to make though
Removed Post : Comment 14 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by brotheris on 17-Aug-2004 09:24 GMT
In reply to Comment 12 (oGALAXYo):
You might have missed the part where I wrote that I asked Christophe Decanini to have my initial own written posting removed

No, but you've written it. I've read a lot of your rants and I do know the pattern. You want others to be constuctive when you're not. Period.

How much from what I wrote did you understand actually (ignoring the offensive bits) ?

Yes, I am stupid and I don't understand a shit.
Removed Post : Comment 15 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by hooligan/dcs on 17-Aug-2004 09:31 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (brotheris):
Yes, I am stupid and I don't understand a shit.

What is 'shit'
Removed Post : Comment 16 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by oGALAXYo on 17-Aug-2004 09:35 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (brotheris):
Actually you are only confirming what I wrote about people that I met and who are incapable to teamwork, incapable of accepting other opinions, <add other rant here> and so on. Basicly the main problem in the Amiga world.

What rants in particular are you refering to ? And if they are rants, who cares anyways, compared to your everyday rants mine are quite a minority and unimportant. But rants asides, this doesn't change the problems that I described you are only picking on 1 of 50 sentences I wrote (and follow up comments that I made). Maybe you like concentrating answering on these which imo makes more sense and is more important to deal with.

And yes, I wrote the stuff, realized that it was phrased badly and asked Decanini to have it removed (which some short time later was the case). So please do not blame me if someone else cut&paste my text 1:1 here again without even bothering to ask me for permission to do.
Removed Post : Comment 17 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Senex on 17-Aug-2004 09:36 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (oGALAXYo):
You are right, but - how to implement such a common approach?

Since unfortunately the ideal solution - a superior committee of all the OS's main developers, moderated by some Amiga celebrity who is respected by all sides - seems to be impossible without force of arms, all that could indeed be done would be an independent suggested style-guide to be worked out by you and/or others. For third-party developers to voluntarily keep on mind.

But since it seems you didn't make satisfying experiences when you approached those developers before, I have my doubts... :-(

On the other hand such a committee, formed by the community with the aim to keep the applications for the three operating systems as compatible as possible for us who we are standing outside of the MOS-, OS4- and AROS-devteams, could evolve to a useful guide for those third-party developers who want to keep their programs as portable between the Amiga operating systems as possible (see your toolbar.mcc example).

So if you and/or other developers could work on such a document, this could indeed become useful. If the main programmers of the respective operating systems don't get along, the community can at least try to limit the damage by measures like that one mentioned above.
Removed Post : Comment 18 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by oGALAXYo on 17-Aug-2004 10:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 17 (Senex):
Hello Senex,

Thanks for your good replies here even if the debatte gets heatened up in some areas. You seem to be one of the sunshines here with good constructive feedback.

Well I still believe that we all want that our architecture continues to survive and that the overall quality of the software increases. I think we can blindly assume this because everyone would want that.

The problem is that as soon as you start conversation with people about these things they then come up with their l33t stuff and all types of counter arguments that goes so far offtopic that it's not possible anymore to bring up the exact detailed points of what the initial concern was.

Yes a HIG (Human Interface Guide) is really necessary not the old stuff from Commodore which I believe is quite outdated and doesn't fit nowadays requirements anymore. I don't really care who writes it or who starts writing it and I am not forcing my rules on anyone but I really like (as we all hopefully do) to improve he overall quality of Software using on the Amiga and common simplification for coders to quickly produce new powerful Software for everyones satisfaction. And yes such changes are seen either in a good way or in a bad way and it certainly makes enemies as well but we need to get through here and start it.

A good thing for Human Interface Guides people can find here:

Apple User Experience
Apple Human Interface Guide
GNOME Human Interface Guide
User Interface Standards
User Interface Design & Usability Testing
User Interface Design and Usability

There are other HCI related documentations when you follow the Links on the pages. We urgently need something like this for Amiga (it doesn't matter whether this is AmigaOS, MorphOS or AROS). Otherwise we keep stuck in old dirt forever and never get out of it.
Removed Post : Comment 19 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by koan on 17-Aug-2004 10:02 GMT
In reply to Comment 17 (Senex):
> You are right, but - how to implement such a common approach?

I disagree.

What is wrong with having some diversity, some choice in which toolbar to use ? As a programmer, I want to use the one that best works with my program. It could be a MUI toolbar or maybe I chose Reaction or something else.

Asking everyone to use the same "x" is like saying everyone use MorphOS - it isn't going to happen. What you should be asking for is to make sure that the standard OS has such a kick ass toolbar, there is no reason to use another one. Then, as a programmer I will prefer to customise the standard one to fit my application best or simply use another one if it doesn't have the feature I need.

koan
Removed Post : Comment 20 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by oGALAXYo on 17-Aug-2004 10:15 GMT
In reply to Comment 19 (koan):
See, and this is wrong!

Sure you do have a point to say that you want to chose what fits best for YOU but you see the things from YOUR point of view and not the view from USERS who want a pleasing looking Desktop, who wants to learn one way of keycombos, one way of Toolbars. The software you write should be used by you and others and using 20 different Toolbar classes will only cause problems:

a) when one of them crashes you need to report bugs for exactly THAT Toolbar,
b) then you need to wait until someone sits down to fix that bug,
c) then you need to deal with users asking why this Toolbar looks differently than other Toolbars,
d) then you need to deal with users who complain why the forward arrow on that Toolbar looks differently than the one from the other Toolbar (User recognition),
e) then you need to deal with users who complain why the application XYZ uses a different font for their UI than application ZYX who uses the custom system font.
f) benefits of using one common Toolbar class is that you are in the position to have it improved, better maintained (due to the less developers we are), that you can react on bugs better, fix it quicker and know that the applications look consistent and people and users won't get confused. I don't want do dumbify people down to no skills here (as GNOME sadly does in some cases) but it does make sense to have a set of common classes that everyone should be told to use so things look consistent.
g) Also a huge benefit here is the increasing stability because we work on one thing, size of the system is reduced as well due we use one class of this.

Please look at the HCI links that I have provided above this probably opens a new area of scientific things that you might not have thought of before. It is important for this. Sure if AmigaOS4 goes for Reaction/ClassAct then of course things are valid for them as well, they simply need to applicate the same things for Reaction/ClassAct then. This is a real important thing we talk here and not some junk that I have cut out of my butt. Even I had some rough times to understand and realize how important all this is. Sure not everything in GNOME HIG for example I agree with and we the developers must not agree with everything but all we must agree for is a common way of doing things and doing it throughly for the benefits of a consistent and better future for our Operating System and for our Applications.
Removed Post : Comment 21 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by brotheris on 17-Aug-2004 10:21 GMT
In reply to Comment 16 (oGALAXYo):
you are only picking on 1 of 50 sentences I wrote

Yes, you are the master in that.

Just do it. We will applause such a thing, cooperate with few left developers, but not by talking. Create code snippets, guides.

As I said before, rants will get you nowhere and you'll later say that fools like me destroyed the comunity. Better to bitch about end than to create future.
Timofonic was right. EOT for me. Good luck.
Removed Post : Comment 22 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by understander on 17-Aug-2004 10:22 GMT
In reply to Comment 12 (oGALAXYo):
Galaxy, it would be wise, if you would try to treat participants of
a discussions as grown ups. Your way of implying that others are not
able to understand your thoughts is a very arrogant way of asking for
trouble. However you could still improve your statement by being more
precise and getting to the point.

Some issues are very reasonable, others have been explained many
times and you seem to ignore them. As a late-starter with a Pegasos-II
you did not experience the process of evolution that MOS did with
a slow but steady pace. But you should contemplate the possibilites
when trying to attain the best with very limited resources.

Senex wrote exactly what I think about your "hatred" issues. IMHO
the situation relaxed very much with only some lonely trolls left.

Besides the situation inside the MOS-community was helpful and mostly
friendly from the beginning. But this gets us back to the point: if you start in an
aggressive and arrogant mode dont expect others to react friendly.

My 5 cents.
Removed Post : Comment 23 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Lasse F. Pedersen on 17-Aug-2004 10:28 GMT
I think oGALAXYo is bringing up some valid points here. Someone has to take the stick and run with it.

We need visible leadership in order to accomplish this.
Removed Post : Comment 24 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Senex on 17-Aug-2004 10:48 GMT
In reply to Comment 19 (koan):
Besides the practical examples Galaxy just provided (thanks for the links!), the main aspect why I'm with him in this regard is - as I outlined already - the interportability of applications between MOS, OS4 and AROS.

Looking at that mess of three post-Commodore OS solutions (PCO) heading in different directions (okay, talking about three always here is a bit unfair, given the partial cooperation that exists between AROS and MOS), one could initially hope that one of them would become that predominant that it would set the needed standards just by its success, forcing the two others to stay as compatible as possible.

Unfortunately, this settlement of the market didn't take place - instead, we do currently still have too little users for a viable platform even if all three were taken together. So if we really like the Amiga way of computing - and just like Galaxy I think we do - then we as the users of these PCOs just can try to limit the damage by helping to keep the interportability as easy as possible for us who we are not members of any of the PCOs devteams.

And such a style guide as suggested by Galaxy, collecting everything a third-party developer who wants to keep his stuff portable between the PCOs has to keep on mind ("for toolbars, use toolbar.mcc; for xyz, use ..."), would be an excellent start, IMHO.

I'm the last one advocating against some diversity - but as with everything, also here applies that too much of it is toxic. With our three, microscopic sliver operating systems, we'd really benefit from at least some common basis.

I think there is a reason that for example epic in their latest press-release - besides Mac and Linux - just spoke cautiously about plans for "further systems", instead of calling them by name (and therefore kind of promising versions for them). I really don't wanna know how "many" pieces they and other developers have sold of their respective software to each of these three PCOs so far.

Argueing for even more diversity against the beforementioned background - that is something at least I am unable to understand.
Removed Post : Comment 25 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by itix on 17-Aug-2004 10:58 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (oGALAXYo):
There is one big problem: lack of developers. The one official toolbar (it must be cross compiled to OS3/OS4 too, not just MOS) is needed but who codes it?

Lot of basic tools and guidelines (like GUI standards) must be developed... only if there were enough developers...
Removed Post : Comment 26 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Amon_Re on 17-Aug-2004 11:15 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Tryo):
I agree on some of his points, and yes, if we are to survive, we need to get on the same wavelength.

Yes, there's poison in the community, and it comes from both sides, and it grew from the seeds of the past (ever since the P96 vs CGFX & WOS vs PUP), but it should also be noted that when most of us come together, we tend to put our differences aside & get along, the question is, why can't we succeed in doing the same online?

Part of the problem is again something that evolved out of previous situations, and the fact that some lowlives seem to thrive on reopening old wounds, i suppose it'll get worse before it'll get better.

It's ok to use eighter MOS or AOS, and it sure as hell is ok if people from both sides work together, but we need to get to work, alas, we lack developers.

I'm not going to comment on his view of the "sides", as it's pointless.
Removed Post : Comment 27 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Amon_Re on 17-Aug-2004 11:19 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (oGALAXYo):
No need to apologise, because the points you are raising are indeed valid points, so what if the wording is inflamatory, we can behave



Oh, wait, we can't :P
Galaxy, if there's something i can help you with, i will
Removed Post : Comment 28 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by koan on 17-Aug-2004 11:56 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (oGALAXYo):
Hi Galaxy,

> See, and this is wrong!

No it's my opinion. That's why I said I disagree, not "you are wrong".

> Sure you do have a point to say that you want to chose what fits best for YOU > but you see the things from YOUR point of view and not the view from USERS

Actually, when I program something I use both points of view.

Your points a) - g) are all solved by doing a decent job as a programmer and only working with external libraries that I'm happy with the quality of.

As I said before and you seem to ignore, you need a compelling reason to use a standardised toolbar. Put your effort into making the standard one amazing and everyone will want to use it.

I think you've been taking far too much of something, caffeine is it ? Chill out!

koan
Removed Post : Comment 29 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by oGALAXYo on 17-Aug-2004 12:10 GMT
In reply to Comment 28 (koan):
> Actually, when I program something I use both points of view.

And your views are based on what ? On what measurement ? What technical documents ? What research papers ? The next developer that comes up says the same but does his job differently, then the next developer comes up assuming to do the same and does his job again differently. This is exactly what we have now everyone assuming to do it right - but yet the results are all differently due to no standards or no guidelines.

That's why I think some sort of HCI (as mentioned above with links for further reading) is required and important. Right now everyone does it 'right' but yet the results are all differently. It's not a matter of being 'right' or 'wrong' or that a coder is 'right' or 'wrong' since different people have different ideas. What we need to find is an arrangement for some things and this is the hard part. After this has been done then we still find developers who says 'this is wrong' but it's not the matter of things being wrong. It's a matter of using it even if the developer believed that this might be wrong but at the end (the result on the longer view and longer run) will be consistency across applications. The HIG or standards we trying to agree (our own standards) are a matter of being improved over time. They won't be perfect immediately, we surely need to improve and even learn from the mistakes and release new versions of our standards (HIG) guide.

> As I said before and you seem to ignore, you need a compelling reason to use
> a standardised toolbar. Put your effort into making the standard one amazing
> and everyone will want to use it.

We do have Toolbars already, we only need to agree on one and have it improved and throughly worked on. You can't expect to get a 100% working Toolbar from one day to another that suits all your needs, sometimes you need to accept some limitations but still need to understand that keep using this Toolbar guarantees that all applications are similar from look, work similar from looks and behave similar from using same technical code beneath the Toolbar. This is not the matter of yet writing again a new Toolbar (which is quite pointless). No, we can say right now that we agree on one there is already and keep improving, fixing and expanding it but we should get know to the one we should use or continue using. But which one it should be, that's what we need to keep discussing same for the other classes we need to use.

But as you of course carefully read the Toolbar issue is just one of many other things that I have mentioned.
Removed Post : Comment 30 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Fabio Alemagna on 17-Aug-2004 12:59 GMT
In reply to Comment 29 (oGALAXYo):
Galaxy, a friendly advice: talk less, do more.

Come up with a sensible idea/design which everyone (or close to it) can agree upon, and you'll see everyone will use it.

You need to understand that if things are like they are it's because they couldn't be any other way, given all circumstances, so simply talking is not enough.
Removed Post : Comment 31 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by o1i on 17-Aug-2004 13:18 GMT
Thanks for that thread, Galaxy, even if you wanted to take it back.

I think, we are entering a new phase, first everyone tried to
make a somehow complete OS, get all the functions done etc. Style
did not matter so much, the core developers knew each other
(more or less).

But know, the fight for a version 1.0 of the OSes is over (or nearly
over) and there are next steps to take. One of them is a HCI.

There once was a document by C= wich was published 1991
(AMIGA User Interface Style Guide), this could be starting point, but
I don't know, if it's available online (or allowed to be used at all).
But it will be quite outdated, most likely.

But the question remains: who?

IMHO this can only be part of AROS. You can say, that AROS isn't
mature enough, ok, but it is a free and common ground.
Removed Post : Comment 32 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by o1i on 17-Aug-2004 13:22 GMT
In reply to Comment 31 (o1i):
Well, a reply to my own comment..

AROS has something like that, but it needs some work:
http://www.aros.org/documentation/developers/ui.php

So, if someone has some time left, feel free to help.
Removed Post : Comment 33 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Kolbjørn Barmen on 17-Aug-2004 13:32 GMT
In reply to Comment 30 (Fabio Alemagna):
> Come up with a sensible idea/design which everyone (or close to it) can agree upon, and you'll see everyone will use it.

Nonsense - this "answer" is exactly why we have this problem in the first place. :)
Removed Post : Comment 34 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by o1i on 17-Aug-2004 13:48 GMT
In reply to Comment 31 (o1i):
Hmm, the C= book seems to be available as a printed version only.

It was converted to an online version, but that maybe got lost.
Read:
http://tinyurl.com/6f9o2 (short link to google newsgroups)
Removed Post : Comment 35 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by miksuh on 17-Aug-2004 13:53 GMT
I have to admit there is lot's of good points in messages in this thread.

And it feels good to have discussion like this, maybe friendly co-operation between MOS, OS4 and AROS guys is possible after all :)
Removed Post : Comment 36 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Fabio Alemagna on 17-Aug-2004 14:31 GMT
In reply to Comment 33 (Kolbjørn Barmen):
> Nonsense - this "answer" is exactly why we have this problem in the first place.
> :)

Ohoh, so we are plenty of "sensible designs" already? Didn't notice.

If, on the other hand, you mean people cannot agree with one another on what is a "sensible design", then it simply means there's no solution to the problem.
Removed Post : Comment 37 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Fabio Alemagna on 17-Aug-2004 14:34 GMT
In reply to Comment 36 (Fabio Alemagna):
"so we are" -> "so there is".
Removed Post : Comment 38 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by JKD on 17-Aug-2004 15:10 GMT
It should have been posted in the Forum category...
Removed Post : Comment 39 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by oGALAXYo on 17-Aug-2004 15:12 GMT
In reply to Comment 30 (Fabio Alemagna):
> You need to understand that if things are like they are it's because they
> couldn't be any other way, given all circumstances, so simply talking is not
> enough.

Yes but you need to understand too that before you do something that you need to talk with people about the idea first. I am not willing to sit here at my place spending one Week of writing a proposal for a HCI text specially suited for AmigaOS requirements only to find out afterwards that people feel offended because they haven't been asked before or weren't part of the conversation or think I would play the new Amiga dictator here.

No this doesn't work. First of all we need to have some conversation with a group of people and then look forward to write the collected ideas down to paper and then have the results presented to this community. Of course the written down stuff should reflect some sort of qualified research and not plain written out of mind without any technological investigation.

Let's talk first, write the ideas of the people down and see what we can make out of it.
Removed Post : Comment 40 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by JKD on 17-Aug-2004 15:14 GMT
In reply to Comment 30 (Fabio Alemagna):
+1 for that comment..what I was going to say and I don't need to now. :-)
Removed Post : Comment 41 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Amon_Re on 17-Aug-2004 15:42 GMT
In reply to Comment 39 (oGALAXYo):
What looks to me to be the biggest problem is the MUI vs Reaction situation.
On AOS4, Reaction is being pushed as the standard toolkit, and i do believe that, if one writes such a text, it should be possible to comply to it using both toolkits.

The question remains, however, how?
Removed Post : Comment 42 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Amon_Re on 17-Aug-2004 15:44 GMT
In reply to Comment 39 (oGALAXYo):
BTW, for the talking, i could open a forum on kefren.be & appoint you moderator of it, and allow for anonymous posting on it.
Removed Post : Comment 43 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Johan Rönnblom on 17-Aug-2004 16:43 GMT
I haven't read the whole thread, but regarding the "people use
different GUI classes", I don't think this is a "problem". The day
someone writes a class that caters for all needs, I'm sure apps will
converge towards that one, as has happened for several classes. But it
remains a basic strength of MUI that it is extendable and that you're
not limited by a fixed set of available classes.

Ideally, for something like a toolbar class, there should be something
that makes every style used out there possible and user configurable,
while at the same time letting the app developer set a default that
suits the particular app. So all that's needed is for someone to write
such a class and bugtest it really well. :-)
Removed Post : Comment 44 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Fabio Alemagna on 17-Aug-2004 17:01 GMT
In reply to Comment 39 (oGALAXYo):
> Yes but you need to understand too that before you do something that you need
> to talk with people about the idea first. I am not willing to sit here at my
> place spending one Week of writing a proposal for a HCI text specially suited
> for AmigaOS requirements only to find out afterwards that people feel offended
> because they haven't been asked before or weren't part of the conversation or
> think I would play the new Amiga dictator here.

Uh, If I didn't know better, I'd call that paranoia, my friend. From personal experience, it works like this:

1) if you have some ideas, write them down
2) if you can come up with a first draft already, then by any means do it
3) at this point, and only at this point, submit your draft to a selected group of people for peer revieweing, and start working with them to modify it so that it can become ready to be considered final.

At stages 1 and 2, it's good to have one or two people (no more!) to work with.

> No this doesn't work.

If you do it like I said, it does.

> First of all we need to have some conversation with a group of people and then
> look forward to write the collected ideas down to paper and then have the
> results presented to this community.

If you don't have ideas to be put on paper yet, then I don't understand all this fuss, if you do have them already, then you can already put them on paper and proceed like I told you. Any other approach is doomed to failure.

> Of course the written down stuff should
> reflect some sort of qualified research and not plain written out of mind
> without any technological investigation.

Then define "qualified research" and "technological investigation".

Let's talk first, write the ideas of the people down and see what we can make out of it.
Removed Post : Comment 45 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Fabio Alemagna on 17-Aug-2004 17:03 GMT
In reply to Comment 44 (Fabio Alemagna):
Oops, the last line is not mine, of course.
Removed Post : Comment 46 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by the man in the shadows on 17-Aug-2004 18:54 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (oGALAXYo):
> We need some sort of modernized HIG or development guide.

Personal opinion on this matter. Both MUI and ReAction need to be tossed by the wayside for a much improved human interface. For that matter, the OS needs the same "upgrade" where the human interface can be programmed from one gui to the next without the loss of functionality from one aspect to the next. Such a foundation would need to be as lightweight as the Exec but as robust as gecko (without all the extremely sloppy code). This would allow for malformed windows, window depths and buffers, better handling of 32bit alpha channels, blends, bleeds, wipes, fades, scaling, and a whole slew of other options all at the level of the OS without any 3rd party keyware. The GUI should be able to be modified through a skinnable package technique. Everything from Icons to window elements.

But that's my personal gripe. Good rant oGALAXYo... much needed and definately needs to be read by any and all developers.
Removed Post : Comment 47 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Ronald St-Maurice on 17-Aug-2004 19:17 GMT
I agree 100% with you oGALAXYo (Ali). If you check the screenshots from MorphOS and AmigaOS4, you'll see very poor consistency between apps. This leads to usability problems. Plus the more unique code out there, the more bugs out there.

One thing I found weird: I googled to see if MUI (widgets toolkit) had an official site (www.mui.org like GTK does) for the docs and other necessities. I didn't find much besides Windows and UNIX motif, QT and GTK stuff relating to MUI. Such a site would be great to view as a reference and as a standard.

*back to lurking mode*
Removed Post : Comment 48 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Darth_X on 17-Aug-2004 19:32 GMT
I agree with much of the comments here ;)
Removed Post : Comment 49 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Nicolas Sallin on 17-Aug-2004 19:54 GMT
In reply to Comment 47 (Ronald St-Maurice):
http://www.sasg.com/mui/index.html
Removed Post : Comment 50 of 80ANN.lu
Posted by Ronald St-Maurice on 17-Aug-2004 20:00 GMT
In reply to Comment 49 (Nicolas Sallin):
Thank you.

Now I know where the term BOOPSI comes from.
Anonymous, there are 80 items in your selection [1 - 50] [51 - 80]
Back to Top