OS 4.1 Bug Report

Hi
Now this should finally be the right place to post by bug report for OS 4.1. It's been quite a way, as there's no contact form on Hyperions website, I started off at amigafuture.de, got pointed to amigaworld.org where I finally got the info to post here. Please, Hyperion, just add a link on your website to this forum, it would have saved me quite a bit of effort.

But still, many thanks to Hyperion for their effort put in OS 4.1 and keeping things going. Thanks also for the latest Update 2 (and especially for fixing the nasty ScreenMode "interruptS" bug). Btw. all the issues reported have could be reproduced using OS 4.1 Update 2. My machine is Sam440Flex 800 Mhz, 1 GB Ram, Radeon 9250 128 MB.


WB-Windows:
After dragging the slider, the size of the slider is not being recalculated. The recalculation only happens when resizing the window or pressing a slider-arrow.
To reproduce do the following:
- First, have a workbench window with all icons arranged in the visible space
- Now, click 'arrow left' a few times to move the content to the right. You'll now have a horizontal slider indicating that there are icons outside the visible area on the right
- Drag the slider to the right, until all the icons are visible again
- When releasing the slider, it now indicates icons to be outside the visible are on the left. At this point with OS3.9, the slider was being recalculated and filling up.
- But now, only when you know click an arrow or resize the window, the sliders is recalculated.

Reaction-Windows:
Resizing a window is (un)pretty slow. Resizing any other type of window (WB, MUI or GadTools) is fast but flickering.

Prefs/Locale:
Land: Thai-Fonts seem not to be present (shows squares in column "Local name")

Prefs/Pointer:
When using a 16:9 resolution (but still square pixels), the color chooser is not drawn as a proper circle. It looks fine using a 4:3 resolution.

Prefs/WBPattern:
using the layout "Scale" or "Scale well" in OS3.9, an image would always keep its proportions. Now the image is streched to fit the screen. It would be best to have both options: "Stretch" and "Scale" (to keep proportions). The layout "Scale [not well]" could even be dropped, imho.
I noticed that this has been reported already, but still...

Prefs/Palette:
Not really a bug, but compared to OS3.9 this is missing a color chooser control.

IconEdit:
- This seems to be outdated, it's not possible to create or edit OS4 icons, only OS3.9 icons (and older) are supported.
- When using a 16:9 resolution, the color chooser is not drawn as a proper circle.

DepthToFront:
When using Styles in the GUI preferences, the sensitive area to open the dropdown menu does not fit with the style used.


Ideas for improvements:

- Prefs/GUI: A test-button would be great.

- Improvement of the Shell: Should just be like KingCON, because there's not a lot to improve anymore when having that one installed (but I think there's no OS4 native version, unfortunately).

- It would be great to have the possibility to show window contents as previews (thumbnails of images, etc., like Stephan Rupprechts excellent 'Eastern' does). This should be built-in in a modern OS, imho.

- Currently, it seems that buttons in requesters cannot be chosen by keyboard, only by mouse. It would be nice to be able to 'jump' from one button to the next using tab key (like in ReqAttack).


New since Update 1
Kickstart 53.12
Workbench 53.2

Prefs/Pointer:
The new default 32bit mouse pointer is very nice, but it's very confusing, that this (means: the existence of def_pointer.info in ENVARC:Sys/) overrides the settings of the Pointer prefs. 'Pointer' should be updated to be able to handle / edit the new 32bit pointers.


So, hopefully some of these issues will be addressed in the next update.
Keep the good work going, guys...
Greetz
Mike

----------------------------------------------------
Check out TAWS - The Amiga Workbench Simulation for Firefox and Internet Explorer!

@mrupp

Prefs/Fonts
In the preview-picture of the workbench is the workbench icon displayed in a wrong size if you using the icon downscaling-function.

In my case i have big source icons with 256x256 pixel diemensions beeing resized by workbench to 80x80 pixel. Font-Prefs show the Preview-Picture of the Workbench-Icon in 256x256pixels!

Oh, just found another one:

AsyncWB:
Having the history enabled (= disabling the NOHISTORY tooltype), a history file is being written: ENVARC:Sys/AsyncWB.history
Filesize is 5130 bytes. It does contain the history (3 entries in my case) but fills its size up with... well, probably just anything that was in the memory, is my guess... Here's an example:

screenmode
pointer
notepad
***END***
>
<!DOCTYPE pobjects PUBLIC "-//Amiga Inc.//DTD POBJECTS 1.0//EN" "http://www.amiga.com/DTDs/PrefsObjects-1.0.dtd">
<pobjects version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>LastUsedApplications</key>
<array>
<dict>
<key>openDate</key>
<date>2010-04-30, 16:10:16</date>
<key>appIdentifier</key>
<string>RINGHIO.soft3dev.net</string>
<key>appName</key>
<string>RINGHIO</string>
</dict>
<dict>
<key>openDate</key>
<date>2010-04-16, 15:18:55</date>
<key>appIdentifier</key>
<string>DvPlayer</string>
<key>appName</key>
<string>DvPlayer</string>
</dict>
(...)

@mrupp

Hi,

I'm one of the betatesters and I just took a stroll through your
reports.. I could replicate a few and checked them against the
OS4 Bugs list...

Quote:

I replicated it and filed your report.

Quote:

Don't really know what to do with this. I run non-composited and
all the windows (of same size) seem to be the same for me.

Quote:

Sorry, I'm spoiled. I run the built-in language... All the ASCII
letters of US-English appear as expected. Maybe one of the other
testers can provide a more informed insight?

Quote:

Already filed.

Quote:

I wasn't able to track down exactly what should be happening here.
Maybe this opens an enhancement request for a better way of handling
images.

Quote:

Not really sure what to tell you here... I don't have an OS3.9
system running anywhere to compare.

Quote:

Yes, its ancient and in need of a total replacement.

Quote:

Don't know what to say, I'm running a pretty vanilla system. Anyone
else?

Quote:

Yes, it would be nicer... But at least Amiga have always had the
"Use" button paradigm. Imagine how you could be suffering on lesser platforms.

Quote:

It's been (briefly) shown last Fall and it continues to be worked
on. There are a lot of things to re-invent, fix and implement.
Keep watching for more OS4 updates.

Quote:

It's being worked on.

Quote:

Can't that be done by some keyboard equivalent? hmmmm....

On the other hand, it is something in total control of the apps
that call the requesters. You can even do it yourself with
"RequestChoice". Maybe this is something to harass App Devs
about?

Quote:

Like IconEdit. this is another area where a wholesale replacement
would be nice. AFAIK, the OS4 dev team is always open to new
developers. Wanna jump in?

Thanks,

PJS

@fingus

Quote:

I checked and confirmed this one too... It's been
reported.

Thanks,

PJS

If you want a new community driven built in icon editor you could either:

Join in on the 32bit icon editor project on openamiga

or

Simply donate to the same project via AmigaBounty .

@pjs

Quote:
Yes, this actually seems to have been improved in Update 2. It's not that grave anymore with, say, the prefs tools. But take MultiView as an example, showing some text and resize it. It's definitly slower than a WB window. But then, this could be an issue with MultiView and not Reaction, maybe...

Quote:
Alright, let's try this:
- Open Locale and change to the 'Country' tab.
- Scroll down to 'Thailand'
- On my system, the column 'Local name' shows squares instead of thai characters. What about yours?

Quote:
That's ok, I don't really want Palette to look like OS3.9. I only wanted to suggest to have a color chooser gadget present, as I find that a handy one.

Quote:
Er... as english is not my native language... 'vanilla' means smooth? I was talking about the following:
If in 'GUI / Style / Bitmap set', there's no bitmap set selected, DepthToFront is sensitive to the Front/Back gadget of a window to show the context menu perfectly. But if you're using a Bitmap set (try SYS:Prefs/Presets/Default/Common/Bitmaps/Curvy), the sensitive area of the gadget doesn't fit the gadgets graphic anymore. It does work like expected on the right half of it, but not on the left half (more or less the half, I think it's still measured as having no bitmap set).

Hope these comments help.

@mrupp

Quote:
You need to have a TTF font installed which contains those characters. I "borrowed" a copy of the Arial Unicode MS font from my wife's old Windows PC (she is not using the old one any more, so I guess it's not a breach of copyright). There is also a freely available font out there which should do the trick, I don't recall the name, but it is mentioned in OWB's documentation. Remember to use Typemanager to install it properly, and then activate the following tooltype in the Prefs/Locale icon:

FONTNAME="Arial Unicode MS"

(or corresponding if you use the other font).

Quote:
"Vanilla" is slang for "normal", "unchanged", "basic", "virgin".

Best regards,

Niels

@mrupp

Quote:

Hi,

I just happened to be searching around for something else and I stumbled on
this page:

http://www.lyndonhill.com/Projects/thaionamiga.html

I didn't try to figure it all out, but it does seem to get into a bunch of
stuff you were trying to do, had a bunch of link and guidance which might
get things rolling for yoiu... in Thai.

Good luck,

PJS

@mrupp

Quote:

Also after clicking "clear languages" the same effect can be seen on the language tab next to Thai.

On the country tab the right-to-left languages are justified incorrectly so the window needs to be expanded to be able to read them.

@nbache

Bitstream Cyberbit. There is also Code2000, which I prefer (but is shareware).

Chris

Q. How many active developers are intricately involved with the development of AmigaOS 4.x and beyond? Anyone able to place a figure on it?

@pjs

Quote:
I've always thought they had enough already or that they're not looking for more.

@TSK

Quote:

Can there ever be enough developers?



Seriously, I'd imagine they're always interested in seeing
more qualified people who want to put in the work. Of
course, this is for one of the devs to jump in and
describe.

That doesn't even touch on the development of apps that
are in demand.

PJS

@djrikki Quote:
This has already been answered semi-officially in an interview, sadly I can't remember who with, nor when (except it was in the last few months). I seem to recall "low/high teens" might have been mentioned, although whether that was the lower or upper limit, I can't recall.

If anyone out there wants to join the existing OS4 developers, just contact HJF, TF or any of us, we will give you contact details.

Bear in mind that as an OS4 dev, you would have to sign an NDA, etc, which some people might find restrictive. Anything you write with special knowledge is "tainted" by that special knowledge and might clash with the GPL. It's easy to avoid, many of us write GPL stuff as well, but there is the risk...

Some might prefer to remain "outside" of the inner circle, where they can freely release source code and always ask for help if they need it. There is another internal mailing list for "invitees", where any dev can join and ask for help, but it is not under NDA AFAIK.