amiga-news.de - Fortnightly Q&A's with Fleecy Moss

01.Sep.2003
AmigaWorld (ANF) Fortnightly Q&A's with Fleecy Moss - round 18
The English online magazine AmigaWorld has published episode 18 of the regular questions and answers session with Fleecy Moss, CTO at AMIGA, Inc. (Update 2012-03-15, cg: as the original document is no longer available, the following content was moved into our database):

1) Asemoon: A poll here at AmigaWorld shows that most people seem to prefer to have "A" keys for their "Amiga" keys on their keyboards. Are there any plans to create such alternative keycaps to stick on Logitech or other keyboards? (like Computer City's Boingball keycaps for their general PC keyboards?)

Fleecy: No. This is a third party opportunity. We do have companies and vendors coming to us to create such officially licenced products but there are no details to release as of yet.

2) Crumb: Do you plan to integrate a X-Windows system with the new 4.1 desktop to allow developers to port easily apps? I mean something like Apple does with OS-X... I think it's called rootless server, it wouldn't harm the platform, but would help a lot to bring us new apps.

Fleecy: It is something we are considering but as with most graphics issues, they will not be implemented unless there is a very good reason until we have implemented the new Amiga Generation 2 (AG2) visual services set. This is slated for AmigaOS4.1.

3) Crumb: When will we have an IDE like a basic Delphi/visual/C Builder? Creating GUIs for our apps takes too much time. I have to say that I like Reaction, but some official C++ classes would be welcome.

Fleecy: Having a proper IDE and more importantly a GUI builder is high up on our list. As with the above though, we really want to get the AG2 visual services done first, then we can implement the new interactive environment, which will have a visual object system and a designer/builder for it. We may do a reaction based tool in the meantime but it isn't something high up our agenda at the present time.

4) Crumb: Will you add more examples to the autodocs? The information is quite good but an example of each function would be wellcome, at least one example of each library showing the most important functions.

Fleecy: The entire documentation and help system will get an overhaul, making use of the AmigaOS4.1 html/xml rendering services to provide a fully integrated solution for users and developers. The AmigaOS4.0 documentation will then be updated to support this. I should say that at this moment in time, all the new and rewritten elements of AmigaOS4.0 are getting updated documentation. One way to ensure you have a say is to sign on as a beta tester and let the developers know what you want in those docs as they are developed. Ultimately, a full time documentation resource will be assigned, attached to Developer Support, thus taking the chore away from the developers themselves.

5) utri007: Will there be tcp/ip printing?

Fleecy: Support for TCP/IP printing via the LPR protocol was included with the 3.9 update. Since this is a bare-bones protocol, it proved more to be much more troublesome than helpful (it basically has no error reporting capabilities, which makes it next to impossible to figure out what went wrong if something went wrong). This needs more work.

Since printing is integrally bound up with the visual services, the foundation for pDP (Digital->Physical) emission of content, with the emission/output device being anything from a TV to a monitor to a projector to a printer to potentially anything else capable of manifesting a physical visual image is being built into the AG2 visual services. Once this is done then it will be relatively simple to make it network aware.

6) Asemoon: Within what timeframe do you expect the Amiga platform to move towards 64-bit technology?

Fleecy: For the general AmigaOS4.n path, we need to enhance functionality, specifically through the AG2 programme and, for the moment that will concentrate on 32 bit technology but, as resources permit, we will create a transitionary version that can run on a 64 bit processor, albeit in 32 bit mode. In parallel, a separate project that is building the foundation for AmigaOS5.n will create a solution equally at home on both. I can't give a timeframe per se, just the steps towards it. It won't be in the next year though but as there is little advantage to it over 32 bit in the near and even medium term then it is not a high priority. It is what your computer can do that counts, not the size of its buses.

7) Asemoon: Can you tell us how you got introduced to Amiga computers and how you got involved in the Amiga community prior to Amiga Inc and Gateway?

Fleecy: I was just a user who worked on corporate systems during the day and on my Amiga 1200 at night. My first Amiga moment was walking past a Curry's in Crewe and seeing an amazing FMV of a space pilot getting into a fighter and launcing out from the belly of a giant star destroyer - a demo running on a CDTV. It blew me away. Then my wife's little brother got an A600 and we used to spend all day playing Captain Planet, Bart Simpson and a few others - Walker, Cool Spot etc. I had to wait a year or so more before I could afford my own A1200.

When first Commdore and then Escom went bankrupt, many users and developers got together online to try to work out what we could do. There were several attempts, some still on going. I was part of the ICOA (Industry Council Open Amiga) which formed just before Gateway bought Amiga. We sent off a proposal to Gateway on how we could help them and how Amiga could be developed and amazingly, they phoned us back and invited a few of us out there - Dean Brown, Andy Finkel, Alain Penders, Jesse McClusky and myself. We meet Jeff Schindler and the rest, as they say, is history.

8) alx: When do you see yourself showing AmigaOS/AmigaONE at a major mainstream computing show?

Fleecy: We intend to show at a major mainstream show early in the new year, hopefully after we have launched AmigaOS4.0 to the Amiga community.

9) reflect: Since many users now have been using Debian and its excellent package system, I was wondering if there are any plans to incorporate a framework for packages in AOS?

Fleecy: Yes. A content management service is being considered that provides similar services to both third parties and for the operating system itself.

10) Eric_Z: Considering the recent release of the OpenGl 1.5 and to a lesser extent the 2.0 specifications/suggestions, I'm wondering if AOS4s WARP-3D NOVA will use these new specifications. Or if the implementation of these are planned for future releases and if so which?

Fleecy: The OpenGL 2.0 specifications are all but finalized, and it will still take some time for the specifications to be adopted. OS 4 will have its own OpenGL support via Mesa, in whatever incarnation that is available at the time of release, and will see continous updates.

As far as I know (cannot verify since www.opengl.org seems to be down) at this point in time not even 1.5 is official, and 1.4 is still the most current version (1.5 being a draft). It's imminent, though.

Nova is something different. This is currently just an API specification/outline that has nothing to do with OpenGL 1.5 or 2.0 in the first place, except that we might opt to use their (OpenGL 2.0's) shader language specification. The idea behind NOVA is its independence from any committee or ARB that, by definition, has difficulties adapting itself to the speed at which graphics card hardware evolves, a fact that becomes quite apparent with recent OpenGL history where Vertex/Pixel shading is still an option supported through extensions. The trouble with these extensions is that they are sometimes burdened by licence or IP issues (NV_vertex_program being a prominent example) that makes it impossible to implement them in a general framework.

(Copyright © 2003 Amigaworld.net. All rights reserved.
Originally available at http://amigaworld.net/modules/fleecymoss/index.php?cat_id=19
You may freely redistribute this article, providing that a URL is provided to the original source,
and the copyright notices remain intact) (nba) (Translation: sk)

[News message: 01. Sep. 2003, 20:42] [Comments: 0]
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