OS flow + Pre-OS + Something Else

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Srtest
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OS flow + Pre-OS + Something Else

Post by Srtest »

I use my X1000 with AOS and Lubuntu daily. I always start on amiga then boot to Lubuntu. When I boot-up I usually do some Amiga-related and bookmarks browsing with NetSurf (which is finally stable and blazing fast albeit its known shortcomings). The moment I switch to Lubuntu is the moment I need to download something on P2P. Lately it has been when I needed to design an ad for work on Libreoffice. Until I recently discovered Gimp for cygnix it was also about that, and this is the point: I never was able to edit pics because of my technical limitations until I discovered Gimp on Linux also quite recently. What I'm trying to say is that from time to time a need comes by which takes me out of the amiga exprience thatI had known for 20 years and recently gotten back. This is something I feel that at the absence of 3rd party the 1st party needs to step-up and provide stand-in features where the common software is not there. P2Ping, extensive multilanguage support for browsing and mailing, easy-to-use gui & novice-inclined word processing and multimedia editing. All of the above is what I call OS-flow because it is stuff you used to do or discover you can do that I see no reason that it can't be done on an X1000 with OS4.1. When I needed to convert my vob files to wav initially I was frustrated and then discovered the awesome and easy to use (easy for me, maybe, as a veteran user) ffmpeg utility which isn't graphic intensive or hardware dependent or anything, It was the only time that that happened and wish every old or newly discovered need would be adhered to in this way. I don't even mention viewing AC3 or DTS related content as I can see why support for it would be difficult to get, although being able to use the s/pdif output in iteslf would be cool.

I also thought about somehing that comes to me before I want to use the X1000 extensively as sometimes all I want to use is a certain element like an old Amiga game or emulation or simply view my files and that's all. Could a console-style/old amiga-style pre-os phase be implemented for limited usage? something maybe like the DuneHD line of video streamers enabling functions I you are familiar with it.

The last thing is that I want to share an exprience I had since I got my X1000 a few months ago. I always liked the Amiga way of handling icons and list view and of course the highly organised menus. As you know I have options to organise the icons in different ways. It is just that after I felt there wasn't a particular method of organising I wanted to use on ANY drawer or list of files, I came to the conclusion that this is preciselly the way I wanted to use it, to not snapshot anything and use it in an unorganised "raw" form which fits many potential needs and uses in an ad-hoc way. this of course makes life somewhat less easy as less organised means more actions are required to get to what you need. I want to connect this to the experience of using the old Amiga classic top menu via WB3.1 emulation. It had lot less options than the new one on OS4.1, It just that it fitted perfectly the layout that was available back then in a "less-is-more" attitude. Even on the limited layout of drawers you clould do instantly what limited stuff you wanted to do. I would like to continue not snapshoting the drawers and I wondered if a bare-boned menu option for drawers-options can be achieved in the same way that different drawers layouts than the basic WB3.1 were achieved, as eventually I would have to snapshot the drawers layouts because more and more files are added and also their diversity becomes greater.

Sorry about the "story"... :-)
Last edited by Srtest on Thu Nov 06, 2014 1:07 am, edited 6 times in total.
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tonyw
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Re: OS flow + Pre-OS + Something Else

Post by tonyw »

I think you'll find that AmigaOS is very like *nix in that you have to find the applications you need, and install them - then you can use the Amiga for more things that you previously used *nix for.

For instance, there is SketchBlock that is better than Gimp - it was written by one of our developers (Andy Broad) who deserves praise and payment for it.
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Re: OS flow + Pre-OS + Something Else

Post by nbache »

Srtest wrote:extensive multilanguage support for browsing and mailing,
I would think that is already available in programs such as Odyssey or NetSurf for browsing, and YAM for mail. YAM at least has many translations, while Odyssey is maybe lacking some for now. But you can always volunteer to make the one you need ;-) (which language do you miss, BTW?).

Best regards,

Niels
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Srtest
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Re: OS flow + Pre-OS + Something Else

Post by Srtest »

tonyw wrote:I think you'll find that AmigaOS is very like *nix in that you have to find the applications you need, and install them - then you can use the Amiga for more things that you previously used *nix for.

For instance, there is SketchBlock that is better than Gimp - it was written by one of our developers (Andy Broad) who deserves praise and payment for it.
Hello tonyw, nbache

Every field I mentiond was after trying various alternatives and not being satisfied for all kinds of reasons or maybe being extremelly satisfied with alternatives found on nix. I realy like Gimp as it allowed me to overcome technical difficulties and do simple stuff that I wanted to do like cutting in precision a figure from a foreground for instance. It does not mean other software can't do the same. It is just that this one did. I tried right now Sketchblock and it looks cool. I can't say much more as I'm not an exprienced user. I still like Gimp though. Taking torrent programs for example. Transmission from 2008 crashed my file and made it unrecoverable and I couldn't get Ctorrent to work. It is really not one-directional at all, as for example. running emulated amiga and Dosbox games on AOS has proven to be much more fun and easier for me than previously on another computer which I won't name :-)

I'm a Mozilla fan so naturally it was very comfortable for me to use Thunderbird on Lubuntu to view rss feeds combined with mail. That is how I do most of my reading-centered browsing nowdays. I even don't do it on handhelds and smart phones because there isn't a version that combines rss with mail in one program like thunderbird. The language I write about is Hebrew which of course I don't expect it to be supported just for one user or maybe two. The fact is that on Lubuntu it is just there. I still use a lot of Odyssey and NetSurf (writing this very comment) and even facebooking with a virtual keyboard because in Odyssey you can read Hebrew just not write. By the way, Mozilla related known software feels really heavy on Linux for some reason so not all is great about the Linux option.
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Re: OS flow + Pre-OS + Something Else

Post by chris »

Srtest wrote:The language I write about is Hebrew which of course I don't expect it to be supported just for one user or maybe two. The fact is that on Lubuntu it is just there. I still use a lot of Odyssey and NetSurf (writing this very comment) and even facebooking with a virtual keyboard because in Odyssey you can read Hebrew just not write.
It appears that the inability to write Hebrew is most likely down to the lack of a Hebrew keymap. This can be easily solved by somebody with the knowledge and an appropriate keyboard (unless it needs special handling, in which case Belxjander's project might be required).

I'm aware that right-to-left languages aren't supported in NetSurf. There's a bug raised for this: http://bugs.netsurf-browser.org/mantis/view.php?id=427 (it may even have been you who alerted me to it, can't remember)
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Re: OS flow + Pre-OS + Something Else

Post by Belxjander »

Srtest wrote:
tonyw wrote:I think you'll find that AmigaOS is very like *nix in that you have to find the applications you need, and install them - then you can use the Amiga for more things that you previously used *nix for.

For instance, there is SketchBlock that is better than Gimp - it was written by one of our developers (Andy Broad) who deserves praise and payment for it.
Hello tonyw, nbache

Every field I mentiond was after trying various alternatives and not being satisfied for all kinds of reasons or maybe being extremelly satisfied with alternatives found on nix. I realy like Gimp as it allowed me to overcome technical difficulties and do simple stuff that I wanted to do like cutting in precision a figure from a foreground for instance. It does not mean other software can't do the same. It is just that this one did. I tried right now Sketchblock and it looks cool. I can't say much more as I'm not an exprienced user. I still like Gimp though. Taking torrent programs for example. Transmission from 2008 crashed my file and made it unrecoverable and I couldn't get Ctorrent to work. It is really not one-directional at all, as for example. running emulated amiga and Dosbox games on AOS has proven to be much more fun and easier for me than previously on another computer which I won't name :-)

I'm a Mozilla fan so naturally it was very comfortable for me to use Thunderbird on Lubuntu to view rss feeds combined with mail. That is how I do most of my reading-centered browsing nowdays. I even don't do it on handhelds and smart phones because there isn't a version that combines rss with mail in one program like thunderbird. The language I write about is Hebrew which of course I don't expect it to be supported just for one user or maybe two. The fact is that on Lubuntu it is just there. I still use a lot of Odyssey and NetSurf (writing this very comment) and even facebooking with a virtual keyboard because in Odyssey you can read Hebrew just not write. By the way, Mozilla related known software feels really heavy on Linux for some reason so not all is great about the Linux option.
I'm currently in the middle of writing Japanese support however I have done it in such a way where "Hebrew" is a candidate language for "extended" locale support as well...

If you can make a list of key chord to character mappings I can look at adding Hebrew in addition to Chinese, Korean and Japanese support where what character glyphs are present within Unicode.

Would this help resolve some of the flow issues you have?

I've been working up Perception-IME specifically for language support where multiple keys are typed for any Ideograph or Glyph to be selected/created from the Unicode CodePoint charts materials.
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Srtest
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Re: OS flow + Pre-OS + Something Else

Post by Srtest »

I'm adding pics of three keyboards I'm using - two physical and one virtual, the Logitech K400 (unified receiver) and the virtual one have hebrew mapping.

Other than that you would find programmers talk ("key chord to character mappings") is lost on me. Tell me what you need me to do if it is something I can help get accomplished. I have come across two hebrew fonts/charsets: a very old one from a hebrew supported word processor called Rashumon - http://os4.aminet.net/package/text/font/HebrewArabic, and one from a bible translation (...) - http://os4.aminet.net/package/docs/misc/HBible which I wasn't able to use.

In os flow I mean imap and proper rss and don't tell me to use the reader on os4depot.

Chris: I didn't made that report I don't speak the language :-)

Another thing that comes to mind is that on Lubuntu 13.10 they didn't have multilanguage "out of the box" and now they do so maybe we can learn from what they did.
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Re: OS flow + Pre-OS + Something Else

Post by Belxjander »

Srtest wrote:I'm adding pics of three keyboards I'm using - two physical and one virtual, the Logitech K400 (unified receiver) and the virtual one have hebrew mapping.

Other than that you would find programmers talk ("key chord to character mappings") is lost on me. Tell me what you need me to do if it is something I can help get accomplished. I have come across two hebrew fonts/charsets: a very old one from a hebrew supported word processor called Rashumon - http://os4.aminet.net/package/text/font/HebrewArabic, and one from a bible translation (...) - http://os4.aminet.net/package/docs/misc/HBible which I wasn't able to use.

In os flow I mean imap and proper rss and don't tell me to use the reader on os4depot.

Chris: I didn't made that report I don't speak the language :-)

Another thing that comes to mind is that on Lubuntu 13.10 they didn't have multilanguage "out of the box" and now they do so maybe we can learn from what they did.
By "Key Chord" I mean any group of keys pressed in a set order... hrmm
in Japanese I would type "ha" to select a single syllable character selection from a popup listing of Kanji. "ka"/"nn"/"ji" would be the chords to type for typing Kanji in Japanese and selecting which of the 14 options to keep.

It is similar to a Keyboard combination but typing each key in turn and not holding any of them while typing the next key.
That is how to use "chord" input. Chinese, Japanese and Korean use a form of that for Ideograph selection (and there is upwards of 3000 "daily use" Ideographs and an average of 7000 Known usages based on single Ideographs and combinations for the dictionary).
Is there any equivalent for "something"="symbol" listings or is a simple configuration for each Key to have a Hebrew symbol mapped to it enough for typing Hebrew?

Hopefully this is a lot clearer for you?
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Srtest
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Re: OS flow + Pre-OS + Something Else

Post by Srtest »

No it's not like east Asian at all. It is much more like English with 2 major differences - The basic Hebrew is with punctuation marks acompanying each letter - what we call Niqqud. In the bible everything is with niqqud and this is the way you grow up learning the language, so for a full translation you also need the mechanizm which you can find in hebrew supported word processors that when the caps key is locked you use Shift + Numerical line key to produce such niqqud beneath the letter you want to use, as in very rare situations a word can appear which means 2 different things and is written/typed the very same way. This leads me to the second difference that we use vowels in a different way than in English. Take my name for instance - in English I need to write Shy so the pronounciation would be correct where in Hebrew you only need 2 letters - Shin + Yud with no vowels and everyone who speaks the language will know how to pronounce it, except as I said, in rare occasions so there is a need in word processing to support it. Otherwise it is a letter-per-letter concept. I guess that concludes the Japanese/Hebrew lesson :-)
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