03.Aug.2021
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AmigaOS 4/MorphOS: Controlling Sonos speakers (update)
Michael Rupp, well-known by his Workbench simulation TAWS now has started a new project: Learning the programming language Hollywood.
Specifically, he is currently developing an application for AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS for controlling Sonos speaker.
The programm is called 'SonosController' and will have the following features:
- listing your speakers with the info of the currently playing song, with an icon that is downloaded from the speaker itself
- subscription of the speaker's UPnP events (that was probably the hardest one to crack, man-o-man), it means that the controller gets a notification if the Sonos system receives a command from some other controller (f.e. from your mobile or on some other computer) or directly from the speaker's buttons
- sending control commands:
- Play
- Pause
- Next
- Back
- Jump to time index
- Volume
- Mute
- Shuffle
- Repeat (everything, current song)
- Crossfade
- display of the current song's title, artist, and album on the selected speaker
- download and display of the album cover if possible (f.e. if embedded into the playing MP3 file)
- local cache for album covers for better performance
- local cache can be emptied in the Preferences dialog
- listing the selected speaker's current queue
- playing a song by clicking an entry in the queue
- listing the Sonos favourites incl. starting one
- listing the Sonos playlists incl. starting one (normal oder shuffled)
- listing TuneIn's saved radio stations incl. starting one
- listing TuneIn's saved radio shows incl. starting one
- browsing your music library incl. starting songs, albums, etc. (normal or shuffled)
- searching your music library by search string and search type (artist, album, composer, genre, song or imported playlist)
- the last x search strings are save, whereas x can be configured in the Preferences (0 - max. 50)
- saved search strings can be emptied in the Preferences dialog
According to the author, he "absolutely wanted to have an Amiga exclusive feature in it, something that the original Sonos app doesn't feature:
- Exporting playlists in M3U format. These can be put into your music library's "playlists" folder to be re-imported into Sonos, thus enabling you to kind of backup and restore your playlists.
All these features already have been implemented and currently are bug fixed. In future versions the following features will be added:
- grouping / ungrouping of speakers
- integration of music services such as Spotify, etc.
- modifying the current queue, adding songs (or whole playlists), remove songs, change song order
- save a queue as a new playlist
- modifying playlists (change, rename, delete, etc.)
- sleep timer functionality
- alarms functionality
- Ringho notifications
Regarding his experience with Hollywood, Rupp told us:
"I got into the new syntax very quickly, especially because the documentation is simply exemplary and full of sample code. Also, you can find an example for practically every programming aspect in the provided sample projects. And if I had any questions, I was always helped promptly in the Hollywood forum, be it by Andreas himself or other Hollywood programmers.
Hollywood is a programming language and so programming knowledge is necessary. Using the Hollywood Designer, however, you can do one or the other without, but this is more comparable to Scala or PowerPoint and is not a programming toolbox in the sense.
However, if you want to learn programming, I can recommend Hollywood as a starting point, especially because of the excellent documentation. Or you can click together something simple in the designer (a small slideshow or so) and then look at the generated script and try to understand what is going on."
Update: (05:53, 10.08.21, dr)
Michael Rupp emphazies that he is looking for beta testers. If you have a MorphOS or AmigaOS4 system and a Sonos speaker, then please contact him via mail. (dr)
[News message: 03. Aug. 2021, 20:24] [Comments: 0]
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03.Aug.2021
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Dev Diary: 'This week in PiStorm'
In his weekly column 'This week in PiStorm', the developer Andrew Hutchings gathers progresses and insights on the 'PiStorm' project.
In his latest entry among others he reported that the PiStorm-Wiki was updated and now includes a FAQ as well as a detailed software installation guide. (dr)
[News message: 03. Aug. 2021, 07:11] [Comments: 0]
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02.Aug.2021
Amigaworld.net (forum)
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From Vultures to Vampires: Shipping of book by Pleasance and Dickinson (vol. 1)
The first volume of "From Vultures to Vampires", a book by the former Commodore UK manager David Pleasance and the A-EON Technology co-founder Trevor Dickinson, is currently shipping to those crowdfunders who pledged for the e-book version. Printing of the real book is expected to be finished August 20.
For the Kindle variant, its manufacturer currently states September 6 as date of availability. Regarding prices, on his website David Pleasance mentions 15 (e-book, same amount as previously for crowdfunders) and 35 British Pounds, respectively (printed book, for crowdfunders it had been 30 Pounds; for volume two, the latter get a discount of 50 % on both variants). (snx)
[News message: 02. Aug. 2021, 08:34] [Comments: 0]
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01.Aug.2021
Alain Fontanin
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Text editor: Amiga Source Editor 1.52 (update)
By releasing version 1.2 (2019), at the end of the last year Alain Fontanin has resumed the development of his "Amiga Source Editor" (ASE) which originally started in 1989.
The author constantly develops his text editor further and now has released version 1.51 with the following changes:
- Compiled with SAS/C 6.58
- Use of the locale library for language-specific and country-specific properties (date and time) and catalogs for the localized version (english in the code, french and german as catalogs). The source file to generate the catalogs (ASE2019.cs with SimpleCat) is in the release
- Use of the gadtools library for menus and gadgets
- Reentrance mechanism, based on Arexx script to avoid having multiple instances of ASE2019 in memory
- Replacement of obsolete functions
- Ability to handle differents 'EOL' characters
- Significant improvement in the reading speed of a document
- Ability to create and manage document backups
- Improve configuration of ASE2019
- Improve tabs management : tab size from 1 to 10 and hard tabs
- Improve speed cancellation changes
- Integration of the Amiga clipboard
- First version (limited) of document comparison function
- Correction of the 'Delete content of the current line' function
- Correction of the 'Delete characters after cursor' function
- Correction of the 'Delete characters before cursor' function
- New functions 'Delete word before/after cursor'
- New configuration of the 'DEL' & 'BACKSPACE' keys;refer to 'Shortcuts' section, of the documentation for more information
- Removal of the 'Lorem Ipsum' function
- Correct version of the 'ASE2019.cs' localization file
Meanwhile version 1.52 is available which fixes a bug in the English menu.
Download: ASE2019_1.52.lha (134 KB) (dr)
[News message: 01. Aug. 2021, 07:33] [Comments: 1 - 03. Aug. 2021, 07:39]
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01.Aug.2021
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Aminet uploads until 31.07.2021
The following files have been added until 31.07.2021 to Aminet:
Healthcare_1.0.lha biz/misc 240K MOS Displays data from Garmin dev...
dsp3210.lha driver/oth 305K 68k DSP 3210 drivers and tools
F1GP2021Carset.lha game/data 13K 2021 Carset for F1GP
MCE.lha game/edit 3.2M 68k Multi-game Character Editor
MCE-MOS.lha game/edit 3.5M MOS Multi-game Character Editor
MCE-OS4.lha game/edit 3.8M OS4 Multi-game Character Editor
BOOM_AGA.lha game/shoot 2.8M 68k Amiga port of BOOM (DOOM)
BOOM_RTG.lha game/shoot 2.8M 68k Amiga port of BOOM (DOOM)
giocodel15.lha game/wb 158K 68k classic, some 50 year old puz...
AmiArcadia.lha misc/emu 4.3M 68k Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiArcadiaMOS.lha misc/emu 4.7M MOS Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiArcadia-OS4.lha misc/emu 4.8M OS4 Signetics-based machines emul...
AmiVms.lha misc/emu 3.2M 68k Simulates OpenVMS commands
BetterPerson.lha mods/8voic 3.8M Better Person 7ch Slow Latin ...
amiditools.lha mus/midi 82K 68k Tools for MIDI processing
ToolsMenu_FR.lha util/cdity 6K French catalog for ToolsMenu ...
Iconverter_mos.lha util/conv 52K MOS Convert WB 1.x/MagicWB icons ...
ADiffView.lha util/misc 160K 68k graphical ASCII file compare/...
(snx)
[News message: 01. Aug. 2021, 06:35] [Comments: 0]
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01.Aug.2021
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OS4Depot uploads until 31.07.2021
The following files have been added until 31.07.2021 to OS4Depot:
arabic_console_device... dri/inp 3Mb 4.1 An arabic console device, line &...
mce.lha gam/uti 4Mb 4.0 Multi-game Character Editor
cookiemaster.lha net/bro 2Mb 4.1 Web browser (currently Odyssey) ...
(snx)
[News message: 01. Aug. 2021, 06:35] [Comments: 0]
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01.Aug.2021
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AROS Archives uploads until 31.07.2021
The following files have been added until 31.07.2021 to AROS Archives:
68k_datatypes.zip aud 24kb new datatype for aros m68k
arlan.lha net/mis 223kb Simple "self-made" Gop...
(snx)
[News message: 01. Aug. 2021, 06:35] [Comments: 0]
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01.Aug.2021
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MorphOS-Storage uploads until 31.07.2021
The following files have been added until 31.07.2021 to MorphOS-Storage:
AmiArcadia_27.72.lha Emulation A Signetics-based machi...
ReportPlus_8.22.lha Misc A Multipurpose utility ...
Healthcare_1.0.lha Misc Displays data from Garm...
ADiffView_2.0.lha Text/Compare A graphical file compar...
(snx)
[News message: 01. Aug. 2021, 06:35] [Comments: 0]
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01.Aug.2021
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WHDLoad: New installers until 31.07.2021
Using WHDLoad, games, scene demos and intros by cracking groups, which were originally designed to run only from floppy disks, can be installed on harddisk. The following installers have been added until 31.07.2021:
- 2021-07-31 improved: Ports Of Call (International Software Development) protection removed, reduced memory usage (Info)
- 2021-07-31 new: Mutant League Hockey (Ocean) done by JOTD (Info)
- 2021-07-31 improved: Center Court 2 (G. Fritsch) run with any diskfont.library, fixed typos (Info)
- 2021-07-29 improved: Superfrog (Team 17) added 3-button joystick support (Info)
- 2021-07-26 updated: Crystal Kingdom Dizzy (Code Masters) install script corrected (Info)
- 2021-07-25 improved: Ports Of Call (International Software Development) german version supported (Info)
- 2021-07-25 improved: Crystal Kingdom Dizzy (Code Masters) 2nd version supported, reduced chip mem to 512k, 68000 quitkey, 2nd button jump, faster loading, trainers added, sound effects and blitwaits fixed, RawDIC imager (Info)
- 2021-07-25 new: Center Court 2 (G. Fritsch) done by JOTD (Info)
(snx)
[News message: 01. Aug. 2021, 06:35] [Comments: 0]
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31.Jul.2021
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Commercial action game: Turbo Tomato Deluxe Collectors Edition
Today Bitmap Soft has released the commercial action game 'Turbo Tomato – Deluxe Collectors Edition' in which you have to try to remove mutated vegetables from the playground using bombs.
The Deluxe collector edition is available for about 29 Euro (plus shipping) and contains the following items:
- Glossy Big Box
- Turbo Tomato game on 3.5″ floppy diskette
- Full-Colour Instruction booklet
- Turbo Tomato Fridge Magnet
- Selection of Stickers
- Glossy A4 single-sided poster
- Digital download included
Features of the game:
- Fast one or two player co-op action
- 35+ levels across four distinct worlds
- 40+ enemy types and 4 bosses to battle
- Online global high score table
- Level code system
The game runs on any Amiga equipped with 1MB Chip RAM and Kickstart 2.0+ and supports harddrive and CD32 installation.
The game also is available for about 12 Euro as digital download. (dr)
[News message: 31. Jul. 2021, 12:52] [Comments: 0]
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31.Jul.2021
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7-bit: Software update for 508i-Wicher cards
7-bit has released a software update to version 2.8b3 for its Wicher 508i cards which fixes a bug in AmigaOS3.2. (dr)
[News message: 31. Jul. 2021, 09:50] [Comments: 0]
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31.Jul.2021
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Print-/PDF Magazine: Amiga Addict, Issue 7
Seventh issue of British magazine "Amiga Addict" is available for pre-ordering. The lead article is about Psygnosis, but there are also articles about the Vampire, a review of Turbo Tomato and a look at how comic books helped sell the Amiga back in the day. This issue has 60 pages and includes an exclusive demo. (dr)
[News message: 31. Jul. 2021, 08:59] [Comments: 0]
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31.Jul.2021
Dante
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Top-Down-View-Shooter: New Preview video for 'AlarCity'
Already at the end of 2017 the developers of Pixelglass Games had announced the Top-Down-View-Shooter 'AlarCity'. John Tsakiris now has published a YouTube video "showcasing the transition from the original old 1.0 demo to the new design and direction." The game is being developed using the Scorpion Engine. (dr)
[News message: 31. Jul. 2021, 07:32] [Comments: 0]
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31.Jul.2021
Amitopia
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MorphOS: Reading data of Garmin devices
Carsten Siegners Healthcare "reads data from Garmin devices (smart watches,
portable GPS devices and bicycle computers. This data are displayed in a diagram." The first public version 1.0 can read cardiogram (data of the heart), sport, user profile and device info from the hardware. The latest MorphOS-Version 3.15 is required. (dr)
[News message: 31. Jul. 2021, 07:12] [Comments: 0]
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30.Jul.2021
Andre Ravalico (ANF)
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Videos: New channel CommoGuru (german)
At the title link, Andre 'Wollny' Ravalico has started a german YouTube channel called "CommoGuru". His aim are more in-depth reports compared to other videos about Commodore.
For now there are two videos of almost 45 minutes each about the Amiga CD³² and the Amiga 1200. Depending on reception, more will follow. (snx)
[News message: 30. Jul. 2021, 15:25] [Comments: 0]
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30.Jul.2021
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ACube Systems: New online shop / Sam460cr boards still not available
Press release, 29. July 2021:
"ACube Systems it’s pleased to announce the opening of its new online store.
In the new store customers will find the current lineup of ACube hardware ranging from barebones motherboards to accessories. Everything you’ll need to enjoy your AmigaOS / MorphOS experience with the usual quality and reliability you expect from several years of experience.
Please note:
Registered users of the old shop have been automatically imported, but we highly recommend all users to check their accounts, especially the shipping address, and correct any errors they should see."
The new batch of Sam460cr boards, announced at the end of March, still are not available.
But at least all three motherboards listed in the section Sam motherboards have price labels:
All price quotations are inclusive AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition. As far as there are new information regarding the availability of the boards, we of course will inform our readers. (dr)
[News message: 30. Jul. 2021, 07:35] [Comments: 0]
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29.Jul.2021
Patrick Nevian
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Tales of Gorluth III: Development status and survey
In January 2019 the third part of Tales of Gorluth Saga was announced. In April of the last year the developer Patrick Nevian (AMIworx) informed that the third part is being ported to the Scorpion Engine.
Now Nevian has asked all users who have pre-ordered the game how to proceed. The developer kindly allowed us to publish this mail:
"Dear Gorluth fans!
It´s been a while since my last update email. I told you about TOGIII being converted to the Scorpion Engine.
The advantages are obvious: 50 fps, better graphics, etc.
My Backbone version of TOGIII has been finished for a while now. Erik keeps improving Scorpion and the features are impressive. The implementation process will take some time, as Erik is working on more than one project.
Now my question to you: Do you still want to wait for the greatly improved Scorpion version, or do you want the unoptimized Backbone version?
I will discuss a deadline with Erik soon so that the Gorluth series can be completed one way or another. I´m looking forward to your feedback!"
He also invites all other users and potential purchasers of the game to give feedback. (dr)
[News message: 29. Jul. 2021, 11:51] [Comments: 0]
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29.Jul.2021
Amigaworld.net (forum)
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Emulator: QEMU 6.1 emulates Pegasos II
Two days ago, release candidate 1 of version 6.1 of the emulator QEMU has been published, including now the possibility to also emulate bplan's PowerPC mainboard Pegasos II.
Besides the AmigaOne X5000 and the already emulated mainboard Sam460ex, Pegasos II is the only further platform running MorphOS as well as AmigaOS 4.1, barring original Amiga computers with corresponding accelerator boards, which, despite internal maintenance, are not officially supported anymore since MorphOS 1.4.5. (snx)
[News message: 29. Jul. 2021, 11:40] [Comments: 0]
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29.Jul.2021
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Lawsuit: Hyperion's response to Evert Carton's testimony
On June 25, 2021 Hyperion's co-founder and sole managing director during the settlement negotiations with Amiga Inc. in 2009, Evert Carton, was deposed by both parties' lawyers in the lawsuit of the plaintiffs Cloanto and the so-called Amiga parties vs. Hyperion Entertainment as defendant. On July 14, 2021 plaintiffs submitted a motion for leave to file regarding this deposition (amiga-news.de reported).
On July 28, 2021, Hyperion Entertainment submitted their response to the court, requesting that plaintiffs’ motion should be denied (PDF file). Besides lack of diligence - because plaintiffs failed to depose Evert Carton before filing their motion for summary judgement - and increased harm for Hyperion with regard to their business relationships if the summary judgement would be delayed by admission of the deposition, the application is also substantiated by Evert Carton's minor relationship to the Amiga market.
Evert Carton's deposition confirmed the well-known fact within the Amiga community that there had been no relation of Evert Carton to the Amiga market prior to his involvement in Hyperion Entertainment and that this company was originally founded by Ben Hermans and himself as a vehicle for each of them to pursue their own goals (page 80 of the PDF file of the deposition). Lack of knowledge regarding AmigaOS 3.x due to this could be found in the testimony when Evert Carton was asked regarding specific products by Commodore underlying disputed trademarks such as "Workbench" (p. 54), while nevertheless he was aware of other details, for example the programming languages used in the source code of the original operating system which had to be adapted for creating AmigaOS 4 (p. 82).
Thus Hyperion's lawyer emphasizes that - as admitted by Evert Carton - Ben Hermans was the drving force during negotiations with Amiga Inc. in 2009 (p. 153, p. 25) and that Evert Carton could not force himself to become interested in Amiga, despite trying (p. 133). Furthermore it is pointed out that he lost faith in the new project regarding the AmigaOne X5000 (p. 91/92) and started a business of his own in November 2009, i.e. just one month after signing the settlement agreement, to avoid his revenue being continuously consumed by Hyperion's Amiga activities anymore (p. 262).
Regarding the fact that, due to Ben Hermans' main occupation, Evert Carton was the sole director and owner of 97 % of Hyperion's shares during the time frame of the negotiations with Amiga Inc. taking place, the lawyer is bringing forward the argument that by the time the settlement agreement had actually been executed, the distribution of shares would already have been changed during alteration of the legal form of the company - resulting in him owning "the minority as the only shareholder who lacked knowledge or understanding of Amiga" (49 % vs. 48 % by Ben Hermans and 3 % by Timothy de Groote), and that he would have just signed the settlement agreement in 2009 for Hyperion "because he lived within 50 meters of a notary" (p. 132). Back then Hyperion's company address was at Evert Carton's place of residence (p. 145).
Since thus Hyperion's intentions in negotiations with Amiga Inc. in 2009 would have been basically identic to Ben Hermans' intentions - which would be also visible in lacking memory on which party had added certain phrases (p. 100) or why the term "software" was defined differently compared to the original contract from 2001 (p. 112), or in the fact that Evert Carton didn't read all pages of the book "Amiga DOS Manual" (p. 118) - admission of his testimony is considered futile in a situation of his word against that one of his former managing partner, so that the application for admission should be denied, also due to lack of diligence. (snx)
[News message: 29. Jul. 2021, 10:54] [Comments: 0]
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28.Jul.2021
AmigaLove
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Iconverter: Old icons with a new look / Basics about AmigaOS icons
With 'Iconverter' (currently version 0.95) you can convert old icons as if they were created for today's more recent versions of AmigaOS. Iconverter converts AmigaOS 1.x and MagicWB icons into the format of NewIcons, using the color scale for which these icons were created. Theoretically this would also work for icons created under AmigaOS 2.0 to 3.1, but they are usually displayed correctly without conversion.
To get the converted icons displayed correctly, the NewIcons extension is needed under AmigaOS 3.0 and 3.1 or the new IconLib_46 created by Peter Keunecke. AmigaOS 3.1.4 and 3.2 do not need these extensions.
Iconverter is a shell or command line program written in Standard-C. Thus it should compile for all other systems that have a C compiler. About the background of the program the author Iljitsch van Beijnum writes:
"Workbench 1.0 to Workbench 1.3 used a four-color screen with the colors blue / white / black / orange. With the introduction of Workbench 2.0 this was changed to gray / black / white / blue-gray. This means that the WB 1.x icons look like a negative version of themselves. Also, the WB 1.x icons were designed for "640x200" or "640x256" screen resolutions. WB 2.0 and later icons were designed for higher screen resolutions (640x400 or 640x512), which means that WB 1.x icons look stretched on most newer systems."
In addition to adapting the icons to high-resolution screens, WB 2.0 also adds a 3D effect frame around each icon. From WB 2.0 it is also possible to change the number of colors on the Workbench screen, especially on AGA Amigas. There are about six generations of icons on the Amiga:
- 1. workbench 1.x icons created for medium resolutions (640x200 or 640x256) with a four-color blue/white/black/orange palette.
- Workbench 2.0 - 3.1 Icons created for higher resolutions (640x400 or 640x512) with a four-color gray/black/white/blue-gray palette. The system now draws a 3D frame around the icons.
- MagicWB icons. These can use eight colors and require a specific eight-color palette.
- NewIcons icons. NewIcons is an extension of the original icon file format and allows icons with up to 256 colors. The palette used by the icon is included and the system adjusts the colors of the icon to best display on any Workbench screen. NewIcons are limited to 93x93 pixels.
- 5. workbench 3.5 ColorIcons. These icons are encoded in an IFF format and are an extension of the original icon format. Like NewIcons, they can use up to 256 colors, but can be larger, 256x256 pixels maximum. (Sometimes they are also called "GlowIcons", since the GlowIcon style became popular with Workbench 3.5).
- 6. PNG-Icons.
NewIcons are supported by the NewIcons system, AmigaOS 3.1.4 and IconLib_46. AmigaOS 3.1.4 and IconLib_46 also support Workbench 3.5.
ColorIcons and IconLib_46 supports PNG icons.
Workbench 1.x icons look completely different on newer systems because a different palette is used and because they were designed for a different screen resolution. MagicWB icons only look correct if the MagicWB palette is used consistently. On an AmigaOS system version 3.0 or later with a workbench with more than eight colors, MagicWB symbols will tend to look strange and inconsistent because the system reassigns colors 4 - 7 as needed.
It is of course possible to use a tool (or under 3.1.4 a setting) to fix the colors 0 - 7 in the MagicWB palette. However, MagicWB colors 0 and 3 are somewhat darker than WB 2.0+ colors. Long story short, even with additional effort, it is not possible to get the three early generations of icons to look right on the same system at the same time. Iconverter solves this problem by converting these three types of icons into a NewIcon with the correct palette. The resulting icon files retain the original icon, so they look the same on systems that do not support the NewIcon extension.
There are two different versions of the iconverter: The version iconverter.ixemul requires the ixemul.library (version 48 or higher) and has the advantage that you can use the icon files with placeholders like #?.info. The regular version does not require the ixemul.library but does not recognize placeholders." (dr) (Translation: bb)
[News message: 28. Jul. 2021, 07:09] [Comments: 0]
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