AmigaOs4.1 manuals/howto

This thread is addressed to the admins of Amigans.

Amigans is a really great forum, but what I miss is being able to find quick guides, it is very inconvenient to have to search the whole forum for such information.

Can't we add a separate AmigaOs4.1-Howto section to the forum and keep everything organized there?

Maybe I just didn't find it and this section already exists, then I apologize and just ignore this post.

@Maijestro
Since it's maintained again I think https://intuitionbase.com/ may be a better place for such docs/manuals/howtos?

In this website we have the articles section at the left menu. There are some old articles there.

Unfortunately, adding new articles is not working right now, because the plugin is failing. To be honest, I didn't put to fix it in a high priority, because I want to switch everything to another plugin, and no one asked for it yet.

As joerg said, intuitionbase is maintained again, and a lot are changing there. If anyone would like to have access to upload articles, please contact me.

Also, plenty of people prefer to put their posts into their own blogs, which is also great but difficult to find them. For that, you can check amigablogs.net. A lot of these blogs are aggregated there, with links to the original website.

@walkero

It should be things that help the simple user like me e.g. how to set up YT.Rexx with Odyssey/ibrowse.

Or where to find Ogles Games.

How to do clean reinstalls under AmigaOs4.1 and and and ....

Basically all the stuff that could help the AmigaOs4.1 user to set up a nice system.

We already have some small guides that we could just add to this thread.

This is not about the developer stuff, because a normal user can't do anything with that.

But of course if this is not wanted, it's fine for me.

@Maijestro

Quote:

Who said that this is not wanted? That is one of the reasons I updated the IntuitionBase website, to be able to provide access to more people to write guides if they like.

If you check the news items at https://www.amigans.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3268 for this upgrade I did, at the section "How can you help?" the first bullet was exactly about this.

If you read again this news item, you will see that my goal is to help the users to make the best of their machines. That's one of the reasons I created the "Featured software" section, where people can find the recommended applications to use. There are more to be added there, though.

If you check my YT videos, you will see that I have hours of content how to use your AmigaOS 4 and applications on that. Of course, I didn't cover everything, as it is difficult to do so.

So, my way of thinking is exactly that. Let's create and gather guides for the AmigaOS 4 users and provide the necessary information.

Now, people who write those guides have any right to upload them wherever they want. I put significant effort to provide the platforms. Make use of it if you like.

If you would like something different from all these platforms, please let me know. If you would like to have them in here because you believe they should be in amigans.net, I have 2 solutions to propose:
1. Let's create a new forum section only for guides. This is fast and can be done easily
2. Please let me know that you guys need the articles section to work again, and I can put some work to make it happen. This will take more time, though.

@walkero

Quote:

Don't get me wrong, I know that you provide a lot of useful information for AmigaOs4.1 users. But as I already wrote I am mainly on Amigans and had already gotten a lot of help here. But I also noticed that I missed a lot and only found it by chance. One example is the Ogles summary, a list of 3D games that we can use with ogles/gles2. Here I first came across BillyFrontier/CroMagRally and other things and it was more by chance.

On Os4depot you can also find very little when I use search terms like “Warp3d/Ogles/gles2” and none of the games mentioned appear as search results.

So I am still in favor of option 1 and we can also link to articles on https://intuitionbase.com from Amigans. If there are already instructions there.

In addition, users could also post their tutorials in this new section here on Amigans. I would think that would be cool, it was just an idea to make it easier for people to find something useful and usable for the system.

As I mentioned before, I don't want to criticize anything, just discuss suggestions for improvement.

We could also put it to a vote and ask the users if they want it so we don't have to waste time on something nobody needs or wants

@Maijestro
No worries. I sincerely appreciate that everyone visit amigans for any information. I am not a fan of splitting things all around the internet, so I understand the need to have them here, as you described.

Let me have a discussion with the rest of the team on which solution we will follow to have articles and guides on the website, and I will get back to you.

@Walkero

What about a pinned thread here at Amigans named Guides ... or something.

If they link to intuitionbase... I am not sure it matters.

@rjd324
We are discussing for the best approach. I already did some investigation and work on a solution. I will let you guys know how we are going to address that.

Good example is MorphOSLibrary.
I know, most of articles are obsolete there, but for new user many tutorials are on one place.

We have great Wiki for developers, with examples, howtos, advices.
But in the user section ( although there are many good manuals ) there are very few howtos and tutorials.
If we can collect tutorials and advice to one place, it will be great. But it is a Sisyphus work.

Yesterday I started doing some work in Amigans.net bringing one plugin to replace the failing articles one. That's why you might see the "Publisher" section in your menu at the right. This is inaccessible for everyone for now. This requires some more work until it goes live. I hope to have it ready soon-ish.

With this, anyone will be able to upload guides/reviews/articles under some specific categories. Then we will see if we can promote them on the front page and how. Maybe a block with the latest articles will be enough. I am also considering having a specific menu for it.

Unfortunately, I had to deal with a lot of broken code in the plugin itself, which makes it harder to start using it. It's not just install and use it, like everything on the xoops platform.

@walkero

Quote:

That's really cool and maybe it will be ready soon. I would also share my user experiences there and upload or create instructions if the possibility exists.

Of course it's not comparable to “intuitionbase.com” where everything is kept pretty professional. But you can exchange user experiences here and how you set up a thing xyz under AmigaOs4.1 etc.

Most apps/programs from Os4Depot often come with their own installation instructions, but often these are very short and not everyone understands them.

It would be helpful for the basic user to be able to find something quickly and as mentioned before we could quickly refer to it if someone needs help rather than having to search the whole forum to find something that has already been discussed. You could also divide it into hardware/software for example.

Thank you for at least thinking about it.

A few minutes ago, I enabled the new articles section on the amigans.net website. Now the registered users can create new articles/guides/reviews.

Please have a look and let me know if you experience any issues.

McFly already created our first tutorial at https://www.amigans.net/modules/publisher/item.php?itemid=25

Thank you McFly... Great stuff.

@walkero

Quote:

I have also published an article and see that there are already a few entries, I'm sure it was a good idea.

@McFly thanks for the article

@Maijestro
Thank you so much for that. Why did you post it twice? I published the latest one. Please let me know if this was the right one

@walkero & Maijestro
thank you

I have another little tutorial on how to create a bootable CF using a system backup. Using a CF reader on the USB, you can boot the X5000 again using a previously saved system backup if something goes wrong ;)
I have also created illustrated PDFs of my two tutorials.
Would that be something for the OS4Depot or can the PDF be uploaded here too?

@McFly
I have seen your tutorial. It seems you uploaded some html code from a website. There are even the meta tags of the header.

This is unfortunately not quite supported. You need to use the articles editor and morph the text inside it. So, if you don't mind, create a new one.

Quote:
Unfortunately, you have to upload the file into any third-party website and link it in the article. That is because the file and images upload in xoops is badly implemented. I am looking for a better way, but so far, the platform doesn't help much.

@walkero

Quote:

Everything is fine. I was a bit confused because I couldn't find my item and recreated it. Later I realized that it would be checked and then activated.

It's great that you are making this available for this forum

@Maijestro
Quote:
As long as it is useful, I am more than glad to do such work.
Yesterday I updated the categories page and I hope that looks better now. I also fixed it to work well on NoCSS browsers.

@McFly
I published your new article. Thank you for that