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Archive 09/2017


10.Sep.2017
Carsten Siegner (ANF)


MorphOS: MUI class Epub.mcc 0.3
Carsten Siegner's Epub.mcc is a MUI class vor viewing ebooks of the EPUB format. The archive also includes two demo programs for viewing ebooks and svg files. In version 0.3 support for CSS was added which illustrates the following screenshot comparing Epub.mcc and OWB:

Screenshot

The CSS parser currently only interprets text styles, picture styles still are not implemented. According to Siegner pages which have been completely written SVG can be viewed without any problems.

Direct download: Epub_mcc.0.3.lha (160 KB) (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 10. Sep. 2017, 16:48] [Comments: 0]
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10.Sep.2017
Andreas Falkenhahn (ANF)


SDL support for Hollywood: RebelSDL 1.0
Press release: Summer's over and Airsoft Softwair, the hardest working men in code business, are back on your screen with a brand-new plugin for Hollywood: RebelSDL. RebelSDL is a plugin for Hollywood that allows you to use SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) from Hollywood. This makes it possible to write scripts that utilize the host system's graphics hardware to create high-performance, butter-smooth 2D animation that is produced completely in hardware by the GPU of your graphics board. This leads to a huge performance boost over the classic Hollywood graphics API which is mostly implemented in software for maximum portability and compatibility. Especially systems with slower CPUs (like the Raspberry Pi) will benefit greatly from hardware-accelerated drawing, scaling, and transformation offered by SDL.

RebelSDL-Logo

RebelSDL transparently replaces Hollywood's inbuilt display handler with its own display handler managed by SDL. Whenever RebelSDL is activated, Hollywood displays are automatically mapped to SDL windows and hardware brushes are mapped directly to SDL textures so that they can be drawn, scaled, and transformed in an extremely quick way on all supported systems. This is especially useful on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux because Hollywood doesn't support hardware double buffers and hardware brushes on these platforms by default. With RebelSDL, however, hardware double buffers and hardware brushes can be used on these platforms now too. So RebelSDL can also act as a helper plugin here which adds this functionality to Hollywood without having you write a single line of SDL code to utilize it!

On top of that, RebelSDL offers wrapper functions for some useful commands of the SDL API, for example RebelSDL allows you to call SDL's joystick and game controller functions which are much more flexible than Hollywood's inbuilt joystick library. RebelSDL also allows you to access Hollywood hardware brushes as SDL textures and modify their properties via some dedicated SDL calls exposed by RebelSDL.

Finally, RebelSDL also replaces Hollywood's inbuilt audio driver with the audio driver offered by SDL. In contrast to the graphics driver SDL's audio driver probably doesn't have any advantage over Hollywood's inbuilt audio driver but by using it RebelSDL will turn your program into a complete SDL application which doesn't only use SDL for graphics output but also for audio output.

RebelSDL utilizes the new display adapter plugin interface introduced with Hollywood 6.0. It was actually written as a test case 3 years ago when Hollywood 6.0's display and audio adapter plugin interfaces were designed. Because RebelSDL uses these new Hollywood 6 plugin interfaces it will not work with any older versions of Hollywood. It requires at least Hollywood 6.0. Whenever RebelSDL is activated, all graphics and audio output will automatically be routed through SDL. To benefit from hardware-accelered drawing, however, Hollywood scripts have to follow some rules as described in the manual.

RebelSDL comes with extensive documentation in various formats like PDF, HTML, AmigaGuide, and CHM that contains information about how to use this plugin. The manual is also available online for quick access. On top of that, many example scripts are included in the distribution archive to get you started really quickly.

All of this makes RebelSDL the ultimate scripting experience for all you SDL rebels by combining the best of both worlds into one powerful plugin: Hollywood's extensive and convenient multimedia function set and SDL's raw graphics power!

Amiga users please note that currently only MorphOS is supported. There are no SDL2 ports for OS3 and AROS and the OS4 version of RebelSDL is currently on hold due to technical difficulties. The MorphOS version is also rather unstable but this is because MorphOS' SDL2 port seems to be in alpha state. (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 10. Sep. 2017, 16:37] [Comments: 0]
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10.Sep.2017



Aminet-Uploads until 09.09.2017
The following archives have been added to the Aminet until September 9th, 2017:
irssi.lha                comm/irc   2.3M  MOS Terminal based IRC client
w3s_10sharp.lha          comm/www   23K       Small Webserver in ARexx
w3s228.lha               comm/www   20K       Small Webserver in ARexx
Freditor.zip             dev/misc   262K  68k A graphics editor for game co...
Empty_ADF_files.lha      disk/misc  11K       Six empty ADF image files
amigaos40features.pdf    docs/anno  498K      AmigaOS 4.0 Feature List from...
GBAPIIplusplusDriver.zip driver/vid 8K    68k Driver/installer f. 2MB-GBAPI...
Freddy_Fish.zip          game/actio 409K  68k Kids game: The Adventures Of ...
Magnatron.zip            game/actio 345K  68k Unique physics based action game
Weasel_on_the_Go.zip     game/actio 184K  68k 1989 clone of Monty on the Run!
Africa.lha               game/board 290K  68k Conversion of 3W board game
AfricaMOS.lha            game/board 334K  MOS Conversion of 3W board game
Africa-OS4.lha           game/board 338K  OS4 Conversion of 3W board game
Fortress.zip             game/shoot 762K  68k Unfinished Fort Apocalypse clone
RNOComics.lha            gfx/show   2.4M  MOS Comic book reader
RNOComics_OS4.lha        gfx/show   2.8M  OS4 Comic book reader
CoolNESs_src.lha         misc/emu   44K       ASM sources for the Cool-NES-...
CoolNESs78.lha           misc/emu   46K   68k Update to the Cool-NES-emulator
PeriodicTable.lha        misc/sci   445K      Periodic table (PageStream fo...
AMIcast_Player.lha       mus/play   5.7M  MOS AMIcast Player
GrabKickDisk.lha         util/misc  44K   68k Disk for grabbing & savin...
(snx) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 10. Sep. 2017, 07:31] [Comments: 0]
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10.Sep.2017



OS4Depot-Uploads until 09.09.2017
The following archives have been added to the OS4Depot until September 9th, 2017:
arabic_console_device... dri/inp 4Mb   4.1 An arabic console device, line &...
africa.lha               gam/boa 338kb 4.0 Conversion of 3W board game
rnocomics.lha            gra/vie 3Mb   4.0 Comic book reader
metadatalib.lha          lib/mis 43kb  4.0 Read some meta data information ...
(snx) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 10. Sep. 2017, 07:31] [Comments: 0]
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10.Sep.2017



AROS-Archives-Uploads until 09.09.2017
The following archives have been added to the AROS-Archives until September 9th, 2017:
formido.i386-aros.zip        gam/act 9Mb   Topdown bug shooter.
zelda3t.i386-aros.zip        gam/adv 5Mb   Part of an independant SDL Zelda...
(snx) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 10. Sep. 2017, 07:31] [Comments: 0]
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10.Sep.2017



WHDLoad: New installers until 09.09.2017
Using WHDLoad, you can install games, scene demos and intros from cracking groups to your harddisk that were only working from floppy disks previously. The following installer has been added until September 9th, 2017: (snx) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 10. Sep. 2017, 07:31] [Comments: 0]
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10.Sep.2017
Amiga Future (Webseite)


Image editor: Pintor Web 2.20
Juan Carlos Herran Martin (Morgue Soft) has released version 2.20 of Pintor Web which provides minor improvements and bug fixes. Pintor Web is a little Hollywood program providing simple picture editing functions like rotating, mirroring, inverting, sharpening or adding watermarks. (snx) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 10. Sep. 2017, 07:31] [Comments: 0]
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09.Sep.2017



Amiga disks on PC: ADF-Drive supports Amiga filesystems
ADF-Copy is an USB adapter which, connected to a ordinary PC disk drive, can read and write Amiga disks - provided that the disks are not copy-protected. The floppy port is connected to a Teensy 3.2 micro controller by using some jumpers controlled by the firmware of the micro controller.

The latest beta version of the firmware now also supports Amiga filesystems, that means, single files can be read and written. As usual a disks is provided to the Host-PC via Media Transfer Protocol. If the disks has been formated by the Amiga filesystem, additional to the disk drive DF0: - for formating or reading/writing of ADF-Images - another drive is registered with the name of the disk:


So far the following features are offered:
  • Reading and writing files
  • Creating directories and deleting empty ones
  • Formating DF0:
  • HD Disks should work, but they are very fragile, writes might fail
Not (yet) working:
  • Deleting full directories
  • Renaming files and directories
  • Time and date of files
  • Many operations do not work under Windows XP, it simply is too old. But the separate application ADF-Copy works fine under XP
  • When writing an adf image with drag and drop on DF0: the Name of the filesystem drive isnt updating correctly
The author points out, that this software is a beta version. He recommends to enable write protection of the disks or zu work with test disks. And he wrote:"After a write access wait for the drive light to go off and the motor stop before removing the disk, due to avoid excessive disk access i use some methods to cache the track and write modified track only on track change or shortly before stopping the motor." (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 09. Sep. 2017, 18:04] [Comments: 0]
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09.Sep.2017
(ANF)


Trademark disputes: yet another party wants to own "Amiga" (Update)
In the US and Germany, the registration for the "Amiga" trademark already expired. It's still a registered mark in the EU until May next year, but nobody really expects the current owner to ever do something with that registration again. As a result, Hyperion Entertainment (AmigaOS 4) and Cloanto (Amiga Forever) started fighting for various Amiga marks earlier this year.

Apparently, another competitor has entered the ring now: on August 30, somebody named Heinz-Alexander Drews applied to have the "Amiga" mark registered in his name at the German patent and trademark office. On the same day, using the same law firm, somebody -the applicant's personal details are not public yet - also filed an application for the same mark with the European Intellectual Property Office.

It's important to note that both the German and the European mark would collide with Amiga, Inc.'s existing EU trademark. In contrast to Cloanto - who only started the process to register the US "Amiga" mark in its name the day after Amiga Inc.'s original registration expired - Drews seems to count on the current owner of the mark not defending his IP - which gives him a head start, compared to other parties interested in inheriting the mark.

It's currently not clear if Heinz-Alexander Drews is connected to any companies or individuals in the Amiga market.

Update: (10.09.2017, 17:40, cg)

Another attempt at gaining control over some Amiga mark has been discovered: Back in march, Amikit-Developer Ján Zahurančík applied to have "Amiga" registered in his name in his home country Slovakia. The new application was published - i.e. approved - in early August. (cg) (Translation: cg)

[News message: 09. Sep. 2017, 00:04] [Comments: 4 - 15. Sep. 2017, 12:21]
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09.Sep.2017



Nintendo emulator A/NES Pro 1.19
Version 1.19 of the Nintendo emulator A/NES Pro has been released. The ECS or AGA chipset and a 68020 processor is required but a faster processor is recommended. Changes:
  • Screenmoderequester no longer causes a guru when aborted.
  • Switched to AsmOne, Asm-Pro was causing issues with previous version.
  • Bugfixed a previous optimization that caused problems (TLOZ)
  • Minor cleanup
(cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 09. Sep. 2017, 00:00] [Comments: 0]
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08.Sep.2017
amiga.org (Webseite)


Workbench history: Why was "Disk doctor" so spectacularly bad at its job?
In an article at auf amiga.org, Olaf 'Olsen' Barthel has explained, why "DiskDoctor" - known from the first generation of the Workbench - worked so bad and could not successfully repair disks. Since the middle of the 90ies Barthel has been working with the source codes of AmigaOS and was involved developing AmigaOS 3.5, 3.9 4.0 and 4.1. (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 08. Sep. 2017, 23:51] [Comments: 0]
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08.Sep.2017



Status update: Web browser Netsurf under AGA (update)
In May it turned out that the current version of Artur Jarosik's SDL-based port of Netsurf could only be used with a graphics board. Daniel Reimann, an editor of amiga-news.de, has contacted Jarosik to find out how the development status is regarding a version supporting AGA - and received a current, AGA-compatible version of the browser.

In this version, which now also is available on the website of the author, about 70% of the starts of the program works fine and Netsurf can be used without any problems. The other 30% percent Netsurf can happen to start extremely slow or the screen stays black sometimes flickering blue and the lamp of the harddrive lights up continuously.

The following pictures show Netsurf with an AGA-scale of 71% (instead of the given 75%). Using this figure, most of the texts can be read without being cut. The third picture shows the MUI-based preferences which currently do not completely work: The options set in the "General" tab are not saved.


This version does not seem to be significantly faster but it is fun to look at the appearance and the typeface of Netsurf. Towards amiga-news.de Jarosik explained, that recently he has focused porting games but obviously also Netsurf is developed further occasionally. The AGA-version includes the same changes which are listed on the website of the author for the RTG-version.

Update: (21.09.2017, 06:20, dr)

Meanwhile Artur Jarosik has released two other beta versions of Netsurf 3.7 which fixes the auto-update bug under AGA as well as the problem that some options of the general preferences have not been saved. All those features now work fine. (cg) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 08. Sep. 2017, 21:19] [Comments: 0]
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