Hi there!

I thought it would be more catchy this way :)

Here's the quote from Krille from another thread:

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I kinda love this program and I think there's much more to add to it, so it would be really great if it becomes possible!

Fred

Hello,

Let me add my opinion on this. I think that the idea with DOpus Magellan II is nice but the approach is wrong. We should clearly look and think carefully before we continue hyping it.

We need to look into the future with MorphOS and I think that Magellan doesn't fit there in the way it is right now. And I would like to explain in short sentences why I think we should be careful.

The sources might be available but how much of it is in C and how much of it is in ASM ? Are the sources good enough to work on or will there be immense changes needed to adopt it to nowadays needs ?

Look at the tool itself it's an entire Workbench replacement and I don't think it's philosophy fits into the Ambient design goal. Do we want to replace the Desktop again with a different application that doesn't even use MUI as the prefered Toolkit ? Do we want to "hack" and "patchwork" around as we did in former times or are we trying to go ahead with a Modern Desktop solution and have the Desktop itself do all the job for us ?

I think that the aim from the MorphOS Developers are to go into the future with the OS and the Desktop itself, that we all agree into moving forward with MUI as the prefered Toolkit and that we get some easy and good functionality inside it.

The ideas with the Filelisters is nice and I think that the idea might be implemented inside Ambient itself rather than going out collecting a ####load of money and pay the cat in the sack.

Maybe there are even more modern and more common ways for better Filemanaging on Amiga like Konqueror for KDE for example.

The idea from Magellan might be a nice one but that's basicly all what remains from that Tool.

greetings

oGALAXYo

Magellan on Amiga as workbench replacement wasn't a bad idea, as official Workbench development was stopped.

MorphOS (and Ambient) however are under active development, and I'd say it's better idea to add desired functionality to Ambient itself.

With Workbench that couldn't be done, with Ambient it can.

I respectfully disagree. I believe that anything resembling a selection of user-interfaces is a good thing. However, I think with a commercial product, like Magellen-II, dollars say more than words. These are the kinds of products that demand user action. I wouldn't even bother about asking for a native version first, but, rather, a version that addresses the bugs rendering the WB replacement package nearly useless.

How much are you willing to pay for a small update to fix certain problems? I bet Dr. Perry would love to know. If it is worth his time, he may just do something about it. If 1,000 of us stepped up with $10, a MorphOS compatable patch-upgrade might just make some waves on the Australian coastline!

What is it in the DOpus Magellan package everyone like? Is it the file manager part? If so you can get Dopus 4 sources free and port that to MorphOS. Its all open now. If its other stuff let me know. I was never into it since dopus 4 did all I ever wanted.

If you want to collect money, then do it for a modern and stable browser, because we need that much more than Magellan.

I happen to LOVE Magellan and I've used it for years, not only on my real AMiga 2000, but my emulation and my peg.

what I LOVE about it is what it can let me do. I can click anywhere on the screen and get a lister! let the MOS developers do that!

I can have as many listers as I want and multitask between them all.

I can lha and unlha with a click or move of a mouse!

I can rename a whole dir of files very easily - with one GUI command!

I can (or could on my real amiga) hear any sound and see any image.

I can start any program.

etc.
make ambiant like that and I will love it like I love Magellan.

@Targhan

Thanks for your input, this is almost how I see the possible DOpus Mag "return" and I would certainly pay for this application to be MOS native. Its emulation is really fast, so the native port would be a bomb! Most important would be to fix some bugs, like the filesize calulation and stuff like that (or maybe this is still a bug with somekind of dos.library stuff?).


@oGALAXYo

Personnaly, I never used DOpus as a Workbench replacement, but as an additionnal tool, which I run in multitask on another screen.

Even if you add a bunch (or even millions of tools!) internally in Ambient, it'll never become Opus Mag and, anyway, it's not the goal.

The thing is that I love and I'm used to Opus Mag, as it has a bit of it's own philosophy, without putting AmigaOS nor MorphOS away at all.

I don't see that wonderful application as a replacement to an OS, but as an addition to it.

Thanks

Fred

I love Magellan, no question about it. But I see there is very little point in acquiring and fixing it to 2004. I know I suggested it when it was announced that the sources are for sale.. but for gawds sake I was only kidding

What I would like to see, is some of Magellan approach in Ambient. For example having a filelister opened on Ambient which would have filetypes management. It would be such nice to drag'n'drop .lha file from lister into RAM DISK: icon and see it dearchive. Same for unzipping, unlzx etc.

Actually, I'd love to see Magellan for MorphOS.

Used it all the time as a Workbench replacement, sorry but Ambient cannot compete in no way at the moment in terms of power. Would buy a MorphOS version right on day one of release.

The other question is, will it ever be as powerful as Opus - or is it even desireable/planned to make it as powerful? I'd consider it a perfect addition - not a "stop Ambient and go Opus" - for those who want it - a simple, clean and easy to use Ambient for the average user and Opus as a (commercial) option for power users.

On my Mac, pretty much first thing I did was fleeing from Apple's Finder to PathFinder. Many people hate it, others just love it. The terminal drawer in the lister alone has saved my day countless times. I'd agree the official Finder for the average user wouldn't need this.

Ambient sadly currently suffers from slow development, which is understandable given the huge task of building an OS with so little resources. That doesn't make it easier to work without text listers, though (can't remember the last time I used icon views, no matter on which system). Some unique convenience features (e.g. the middle click on file name in lister to edit it directly and then mass-rename files in one go with cursor up/down keys is something I miss on all the other filemanagers quite often) are also absent.

I'm very happy with Ambient and DOpus 4.x together, so why aren't you?

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This should be easy to find out by asking GP Soft. Perhaps they would even give a hint how much we had to collect.

Besides the normal changes for MorphOS there would probably be some extra work if the source needs to be adapted to build with gcc instead of SAS/C.

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Why not? It's always nice to have a choice. Use the solution you like best.

That DOpus doesn't use MUI isn't a disadvantage. It would be if it were Reaction... I also like MUI and it would be nice to have a consistent look, but I think this is much less important than the quality of the useful functions of a program. In the case of DOpus, most of the time, the visual difference between DOpus as it is and a version using MUI would be minimal. The Listers are so compact so that the difference would only show in the config windows.

Since the OS is actively developed now a WB replacement also doesn't necessarily have to be "hack & patch". If some feature would be necessary it could be discussed with the MOS developers and be implemented cleanly for both sides.

Finally I'm not sure if the "modern desktop" you describe wouldn't get to large and bloated. We certainly don't want everything integrated into one piece like Windows. Also desktops like KDE are far too big for my taste. There's lots of stuff you don't need, but some things you need aren't there.

We want a slim but powerful system. If some decide that DOpus gives them that power that's fine. Others are free to use something else.

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On the Amiga I always run DOpus in replacement mode. I once had this on Pegasos too. But I found it too annoying that DOpus can't display PNG icons with the real image, so that all icons look the same... I also didn't want to replace all icons with old ones, so I also have it on an own screen now. Besides some problems with the "Start Menu" and button banks this is the main problem to fix.

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This is exactly the point.

And, as you said, the resources of the MOS developers are limited, it would take very long time to get Ambient into a state where a comparison with DOpus would become possible. Time, that is probably better spent in other areas of MorphOS.

Nope...porting DOpus to MOS in 2004 makes no sense at all. It has very few features that make it worthwhile at all (in 2004). I ran it in WBR mode for sometime between OS3.5 and 3.9. Once I found out how much slower it was than workbench I relegated it to a second screen...where I largely used it just for the lister functionality. the only thing that was truly superior. OS3.9 plus deficons, FTPmount, toolmanager etc. beat DOpus on speed and equalled it in features (apart from the listers.)

DOpus *did* a lot of things that the native workbench and operating system components did not do well - speed wise and feature wise. Many of these have since been surpassed or external tools of equal features are available.

Conclusion - add OO filetype recognition, some more context menus and listers to Ambient plus some native support for mounting remote servers/file systems makes Magellan completely redundant. Top this off with a decent set of REXX commands and we're golden.

All of that would probably take less time than converting the DOpus sources to gcc, fixing all the 'old world system bugs' - icon support, 4GB filesystem limits, converting to MUI etc.

I suggest anyone viewing DOpus as the ultimate in system workflow has a flawed view based on a historical gem. Mixed blessings at best.

since we're on the subject of user-interface , I thought I would provide this interesting link

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1603495,00.asp

much longer version....

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=Apple.AS.&OS=AN/Apple&RS=AN/Apple

or put this in google
United States patent application 20040098406

@DethKnight

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Perhaps, this has become a broken link?

Fred