Software Survey

Hey good evening all,

Along with DAX's help I would like to invite everyone to take part in my little short survey about Amiga software. Please attempt to answer every question accurately and honestly.

For each question feel free to elaborate as much as you want, foreinstance you could tell us all i) where each piece of software can be downloaded from, ii) who develops/developed it, iii) what year it was released, iv) latest version number if you know it and v) why it belongs in your top 3.

By Amiga* I mean AmigaOS 4 and Classic.

Here are the questions, please provide 3 answers where applicable.

1) Which 3 Image Editing applications do you consider to be the best?

2) Which 3 Animation Editing applications do you consider to be the best?

3) Which 3 Presentation/Slideshow Editing applications do you consider to be the best?

4) Which 3 Word Processing applications do you consider to be the best?

5) Which 3 Spreadsheet applications do you consider to be the best?

6) Which Desktop Publishing applications do you consider to be the best?

7) Which 3 Audio Editing applications do you consider to be the best?

9) Which 3 Audio Playback applications do you consider to be the best?

10) Which 3 Internet applications could you not live without? eg. FTP, Chat, WWW, Torrent, FireShare, News...

11) Which are your 3 favourite development tools for Amiga? Please state what category of development it falls under eg. GuiBuilder, IDE..

12) Which 3 3D applications do you consider to be the best?

13) Which are your 3 favourite games on the Amiga that have been released/ported post-2000?

14) Which 3 Network applications do you consider to be the best? eg. Samba, Remote Control another Computer.

15) Which 3 database applications do you consider to be the best?

16) What do you spend MOST of your time doing on your Amiga? Select ONE answer only.

a) Making software, coding or porting
b) Playing games
c) Browsing the internet and/or downloading software
d) Reading and writing emails
e) Creating art or 3D
f) Listening to or creating music
g) Building websites
h) Other, please state

@djrikki

1. Photogenics, that's about the only one I use these days. PPaint is the other. LodePaint I keep meaning to try but haven't got round to it (keep downloading each new version and forgetting to install)

2. We have animation editors? I used to use MainActor.. I think, long time ago now. More recently I used a bit of scripting and one of the AnimGIF command line creation tools.

3. Again, I'm not aware of any beyond Hollywood (which looks great but I've not used) and Scala, and I think both of those are a bit grander than "slideshow editor".

4. Wordworth (I use v6). Fantastic little WP and highly recommended.

5. TurboCalc (I use v4). Very capable little spreadsheet program, macros are pretty easy to create and it does everything any sane person would want to use a spreadsheet for (although doesn't have any of the more advanced features of Excel, v5 might have some of those). Before that I used ProCalc (v2?) which was pretty similar, but then all spreadsheet packages look the same after a while.

6. Pagestream. No competition here, would like to see a final stable v5PPC though! The old OS4 beta works better than the newer 68k betas in my experience.

7. SoundFX. Again, it's the only one I use.

8. There is no question 8.

9. TuneNet, you don't need anything else.

10. Blimey, this is a bit wide-ranging given the previous questions. The three Internet apps I use most frequently are YAM, Microdot-II and NetSurf I would like to stick an honourable mention to FTPMount in here as I use that loads too.

11. GCC, NotePad , SVN

12. Don't use any bar Pixel3D occasionally (but not for a long long time) as it is excellent at doing quick previews of 3D objects.

13. Freespace, Payback, and the top-down fantasy strategy one (which I've completely forgotten the name of)

14. I used the remote desktop one for ages, to contact to Firefox on my laptop from the Amiga, before we got some decent web browsers. And Samba (or rather smbfs) I got a lot of use out of in the past.

15. Datastore. Actually there are certainly much better ones but I started using it and haven't bothered investigating alternatives.

16. Probably (c). People think it's (a) but actually (c) often distracts from (a). I could argue that (c) falls into the remit of (a) as I have to test NetSurf thoroughly

@djrikki

1) ImageFX

3) Now it's Hollywood. A long time ago, there was Amigavision

9) EaglePlayer on Classic. Tunenet on OS4.

10) Yam, OWB, AmitradeCenter

11) ECX

12) Lightwave

14) Rdesktop
http://www.hd-zone.com/rdesktop/index.html

15) MySQL, MUIbase

16) d) Reading and writing emails

@djrikki
1) Which 3 Image Editing applications do you consider to be the best?
Art Effects 3 or 4 (almost perfect, bar a few small limitations) (commercial)
ImageStudio (great image processor/converter - not editor) (commercial, often bundled with DrawStudio)
Photogenics v1.2a (no doubt newer versions are even better) (commercial although I got it off a cover disk)

4) Which 3 Word Processing applications do you consider to be the best?
AbiWord
Google Docs (!)
Wordworth 6 or 7

7) Which 3 Audio Editing applications do you consider to be the best?
SoundBox v2.5 (from aminet I guess)
SampleManager v2 (from aminet I guess)
MP3TagEditor (from aminet I guess)

9) Which 3 Audio Playback applications do you consider to be the best?
TuneNet
TuneNet
TuneNet

10) Which 3 Internet applications could you not live without? eg. FTP, Chat, WWW, Torrent, FireShare, News...
OWB
SimpleMail
WookieChat

11) Which are your 3 favourite development tools for Amiga? Please state what category of development it falls under eg. GuiBuilder, IDE..
Am I allowed to mention PortablE?
EDIT: CygnusEd 5 (commercial text editor, everything else sucks)
The RKM Autodocs in AmigaGuide format (from the SDK CD for AmigaOS 2.x & 3.x)
(And if I'm allowed a 4th item, then the SDK Browser (from aminet/os4depot I guess))

13) Which are your 3 favourite games on the Amiga that have been released/ported post-2000?
Abuse
Cadog Adventures
PrBoom
(but only listing 3 is rather unfair & misleading IMHO, and I feel quite guilty about leaving Payback out, and CrossFire2 will likely be very good once I get around to playing it)

14) Which 3 Network applications do you consider to be the best? eg. Samba, Remote Control another Computer.
FTP Mount (from os4depot)
HTTP Resume (from aminet)

16) What do you spend MOST of your time doing on your Amiga? Select ONE answer only.

I can't choose only one answer, since it varies greatly, sorry.

@djrikki

1) If paint programs are allowed, I currently use PPaint and TVPaint the most.
3) From days gone by ... Amiga Vision. Sadly it does not work very well with OS4.
4) Final Writer 97 is still my favorite. Honorable mention = CinnamonWriter
5) Maxiplan ....
9) AmigaAMP and TuneNet
10) www ... I use OWB, NetSurf, TimberWolf, IBrowse and AWeb.
11) NotePad and ARexx
14) AmigaExplorer and the old version of FTPMount (haven't tried the new one yet).
15) From days gone by ... MicroFiche Filer. (requires Classic or E-UAE)

16) c) Browsing the internet.



5) ... just joking. It ran on my Classic system and E-UAE but I have never used it for any real work.

@djrikki

1). From time to time i use PPaint and Photogenics (from time to time mean 2-3 times in last year:) ).

2). About 10 years ago i use "Scala" a bit for animation, and graphics editor called "Brilliance" have also ability to create simply animation. Both 68k of course, and imho will not works on os4.

3). Hollywood for now imho only.

4). Golded in the past. For now called CubicIDE and notepad.

5). dunno

6). dunno

7). HD-Rec.

8). ---

9). Tunenet

10). OWB, Wokiechat, PFTP and amiFTP.

11). Notepad , shell and GCC stuff

12). Dunno, but imho only Blender today.

13). Games are very many, and it unpossible to choice only 3. 30 from os4, and 30 from classic - then it possible.

14). tcpdump, ping, telnet (all unix kind-ports).

15). dunno, but imho that one which do AfxGroup for working with SQL bases and alt.

16). Can't choice only one, but can choice that:

a) Making software, coding or porting
c) Browsing the internet and/or downloading software

That is in reality for what i use aos4 mostly for now.

@djrikki

Quote:

Sorry, but only giving 3 examples/question is a little to short :)

Nic

@djrikki
Great thread
Photogenic used to be an award winning program till it was developed:

http://www.idruna.com/products_features.html


@All
Does anyone use Photogenics 4.2 on AmigaOS 4.1Update 2?

Can you post a screen shot while running with modern/current window borders?

@DAX
I have only version 5.x , imho a bit better than 4.2 should be. So, there is 2 shots from my os4.1/update2:

screen1
screen2

Really good app, sadly that 68k .. and have some bugs (dsi and alt).

@kas1e
Thanks!
I didn't even know there was a 5.0 version
How often you get DSI? Are they ignorable? (Broadblues uses ImageFX 4.5 and says he seldom get ignorable DSI).

Is it still available?

@DAX

Sometime no DSI at all, sometime they are coming, and after one ingore, give you second one, which cause a freeze (for example, when you change screenmode preferences from new-screen on placed-on-wb-screen, then heavy DSI is coming). But it works anyway, and can be used (still, for me, even primitive MSPAINT from win32 are better, sadly to say).

@kas1e
MSpaint? Why? (it has only a few drawing tools even Degas Elite on the AtariST is better!)

@DAX

A bit offtopic already, but, MSPAint its minimalictic, simple and very light version of graphics editor, which allow you to do many important functions like: cropping, resizing, cut+pasting, text typing and all. That is more than enough for everyone who just want to do some basic stuff with images/pictures/texutres/etc. Of course when need to do something more or less "heavy" i use Photoshop :) I hope personally, that LodePaint someday will be almost Photoshop. But .. It will be never native, and all that boring problems with our slow opengl relisation, cant give users to use it in full and normally.

Btw, On Morphos some kind of simply gfx-editor tool are present, and called "Scetch". The same basic, simply and good. And even maybe better than MSPaint.

AOS4 should have in end something like that (and its not because win32 have it, its just good to have by default in OS something usable, without bugs, without deep understanting of tons of options and alt).

@DAX

Photogenics AmigaOS

Sometimes it is very unstable, other times it works perfectly, it's rather hit-and-miss. good idea to save often

@djrikki

1) i don't use any
2) &3) ?? i bought Hollywood to amuse my granddaughter never used anything before
4) Wordworth (i use V7, V6 was OK too, i don't noted a difference in pracical use)
5) 6) 7) no experience
9) seems Tunenet is one, only one i have experience with
10) Mail, WWW, FTP
11) 1. Gui4Cli (GUI for CLI) powerfull event driven script language- compare to javascript, )
essential downloads see http://users.online.be/AD/
2. CygnusEd with added GUI for Gui4Cli development
3. vbcc, although i use gcc now for Gui4Cli source compiling
12) no idea
13) no idea, Space Invaders was the last one i ever played
14) YAM, OWB ( i regret it does not have IBrowse's arexx port), FTPMount (very recent enthousiast user)
15) I played with MUiBase a time ago, liked its Lisp language, suggested much more system interaction to the author, have not followed it since some time.
16) h) human interaction: reading, writing, organising my thoughts & discussing (but for this i do build my own tools in Gui4Cli, somewhat in a 50/50 % race for priority)

Great question (not your first one). Quite interesting answers

@kas1e
I love weird image editors instead

Anyway keep up the good work with LodePaint, it might be a premiere App on newer HW!

@Chris
Thanks for the link I bookmarked it (you'll never know )


@ALL
Does anybody knows what Happened to Luna Paint? It looked very promising (tryed on icaros) but it has been quite a while since the last update (previously updates were more frequent).
I have an (old)issue of Amiga Future here with an interview to its creator, the guy said it was going to become commercial and that an OS4 version was also coming!

@DAX
Quote:
Before m00nshine (if i remember right nickname) works on it, but for now, in last times few updates was done by Mazze. I also porting it to AOS4 2 weeks ago, we replace AROS_Hooks, on SDI ones (crossplatform), do some changes (in main lunapaint three), but even with that, MUI code of LunaPaint are strange and bad. I hope soon to fix all of this, and release it. For now check that screenshot.

@kas1e
If you need paint apps on OS4 just ask kas1e
You're the man! (hope you get to squash the bugs and release it soon!)

Thanks for the submissions so far. What is DSI?

@djrikki

That is type of crash: DSI (Data Storage Interrupt) exception. Can be ignored and program 50/50 will works fine nextly. Other 50/50 that it can cause new heavy error, which after ignore will freeze the whole os, and only reboot can help.

For example easy errors and mistake (which will shows as DSI errors), can be ignored fine (like DSI on exit, when coder forget to close/free something). And you still can use OS with no problems.

But for example heavy errors like reffering to some library function, which do something wrong from/to memory which not present, or present but can't be written cause a lockup.

It's for now one of the problematic part of AOS4: any app can freeze the whole os. Good for us, that for now, some of every-day for usage programs are very stable (like OWB, Dopus4, Filer and alt), and visually it can make feel, that OS are stable. But you just need run any bad program, and freeze/lockup/reboot.