If you look at this news item: GAIM IM CLIENT is now working on that X11 stuff OS4 does. I would like to learn more about how to do this on MorphOS. This is one application I could use a lot. I use it all the time on Linux.

I would prefer a native port otherwise I think its easier to boot just Linux.

For me Gaim is not important enough application to pollute Morphos
with X11. To be more precise, there is no application worth doing
that. But I could stand even such a quick (X11) port of AbiWord.
Moreover, I would be really appreciate for it. But only as a temporary
solution. Because we've already had many communicators (for example
excellent AmiGG - unfortunately mainly useful only for polish users)
and we still suffer from lack of any GOOD word processor.

So, people, please don't be so enthusiastic about X11. It kills amiga
feeling on MorphOS.

Is there really such a big difference between an app that uses ixemul.library and some "X11" type app ? X11 is just one more layer on ixemul.

For stuff that isn't processor intensive, I don't see how an app like this is worth booting to linux for.

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The lack of such apps kills amiga.

i'm not a X11-on-amiga fan though.

I totally agree with you. X11 is something which comes from Linux, so why using it if we have excellent MUI. Come on, let's not change our Morphos machines and systems into Linux boxes ;)

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It may not be a clean, pure MOS application, but using X11 on MorphOS can be an important step in the porting of an application. I draw on the example of OpenOffice.org on the Mac, which was built against X11.

Each porting phase takes one more feature out of the X11 interface and implements it in Cocoa, meaning it's not a straight drop-and-port project where you cannot see the progress of your work as you go along.

X11 would be useful as a stepping stone in these situations. And would give the power of X11 applications running across a network.

Porting most of these applications is just a straight configure/make with ixemul. And in no case it can be considered as a first porting phase. All the work resides in switching from to X11/ixemul to intuition-mui/libnix.

Of course its easier than booting linux. You X11 apps run on just another intuition screen. You can have, for example, AbiWord, Gaim and The GIMP running on the X11 screen, while at the same time have AmiNetRadio, AmIRC and CubicIDE running on the Ambient screen.

That has got to be *much* easier than quitting all your apps, rebooting into linux, loading the linux apps you want to use, saving to a shared partition and rebooting back into MorphOS.

Also, it *does* aid porting. Lets say you port AbiWord to X11. You can immediately test the port to make sure it works. Then you can start to gradually move the interface to a native MUI one. Start with the easy things like file and font requesters, then dialog boxes, then configuration stuff, and finally the main UI.

Without the X11 stuff, you have to do a *LOT* more work before you can even test if it works!

[ Edited by xeron on 2007/5/3 14:42 ]

[ Edited by xeron on 2007/5/3 15:01 ]

if you lot truly are interested in getting X11 apps to morphos
I suggest you start working on updating libx11 from aminet
to recent X11 standards and stop muckinh around with rubbish
like this.

libx11 is probably 5000 times better as a solution to porting X11 apps than this...
backwards... old... crappy solution.
libx11 will give faster apps, better gui (MUI) etc. etc. etc.

when talking about gaim issues... why the StrICQ doesn't work? jabberwocky is a solution... but it's really not nice and simple... imo, x11 for gaim would be just the base for many other x11 applications... if you think, that x11 would kill amiga/pegasos, don't you think, it's already dead? x11 could bring new applications to it...

bye, MarK.

I think it is better that we don't have such an app at all, than
having some crappy X11 half-port. Because if we had that, it might
dissuade someone from doing a real app, 'because we already have
something'. Just look at any linux distribution, it's full of old crud
that isn't compatible with the standard window manager, often very
simple tools, just because 'it works' and nobody bothered to do it
right for 10 years.

I can understand the argument for AbiWord though, because sometimes
you really need to decrypt such documents. But isn't there some
command line tool somewhere to convert .doc to something readable,
that could be ported instead?

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media-convert.com

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Nonsense, you've got it completely backwards, fudging around with a semi-X11/semi-native port will slow down the port, not speed it up, and that's the best-case scenario for an app with a well abstracted UI (and I can't even tell what you're trying to say with the "test if it works" comment .. why wouldn't it work (and even if it didn't it'd be likely to be because you screwed up some X11-dependent component you won't be needing anyway)?)...

Nothing stops you from starting a port by disabling the stuff you won't need, and gradually replace those bits .. it's even quite a bit more efficient as it's likely everything relies on the core UI engine anyway (almost always the case with X11 stuff). The lack of an initial UI is no showblocker, and any arbitrary problems you might stumble across on the way will either be directly related to what you've already done (thus have intimate knowledge of), or an inherent problem in the app (endianness or whatever)...

By porting from the ground up instead of top-to-bottom you get to know the internal workings of the app from the beginning instead of drudging towards the bottom only to find out you completely fubared everything due to not fully understanding how something worked, and have to redesign/code stuff all over again (granted, it's possible to do this either way, but less likely when you start from the inside).

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There's Antiword ofcourse (it's even already ported and available on the homepage)...


- CISC

I agree with xeron. Also in MorphOS you initially used 68k AOS components before reimplementing them with native PPC ones. In AROS where this was mostly not the case or not possible (once just about everyone used x86) a few stupid things happened which would not have happened otherwise/would have been noticed earlier.

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But that's completely different, those are mostly completely self-contained independent modules (yes, they rely on others, and others rely on them, but it's a totally different kind of interaction than say the UI of an app, which you will replace completely, and most likely the replacement will work in a vastly different way than the original, therefore it doesn't make sense to leave any of the old stuff in there as they will only complicate the process).

It just simply does not work mixing two radically different approaches in a halfbreed product if your aim is to make something sane and functional (and/or leave your mind as such) at the end.


- CISC

There are 2 application to instant message protocol still under
develop. gadami (support gg protocol only) (webpage in Polish only)
http://meecash.republika.pl/gadami/
amigg (support gg, tlen) (webpage in Polish only, but program use
locale) http://amigg.integradesign.org/index.php?k=gl If You support
developers, maybe they add other protocols.

Yes yes. And Jabber is on the way, btw.

jabber works and micq works too... but... it's not comfortable to use them. and afair, jabber doesn't support central europian charsets... it would be great, if someone would extract and expand the icq support from jabber. dunno, but imo, the icq is the best messaging protocol available...

bye, MarK.

You know - I'm from Poland, and for me support for central european charset(s) is an essenctial thing. ;)
That's why my opinion about Jabberwoocky is... not so... khm... sophisticated. ;)
And ICQ... well. Protocol like protocol. Its not strike me down personally. ;)

Hehe. There IS a jabber for MOS supporting any charsets you want. All you need is just an ASCII file with charset conversion table. The one going with ttf manager could be taken.
http://amirus.org.ru/files.html

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X11 makes it faster to do 1/8-assed recompiles instead of proper ports. In some way it also discourages anyone from doing a proper port, just "becouse it already works somehow"

@Jupp3

I don't think so. Seeing that a program like Mozilla *can* run will probably increase interest in making a native GUI.

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/sarcastic mode on

Nahhhhh
if it somehow work, why bother ??
too much work to redesign/port to the amiga gui

/sarcastic mode off

:D

[ Edited by raistlin77it on 2007/5/8 21:29 ]

yes...

why to make it native? i still use lots of 68k applications, because i like them... and i don't need them native. it would be nice, if they would be native, but else i don't care... just make them natively executable (through some automatic launcher?) and i will be happy...

like dosbox and it's rundos...

bye, MarK.