New GUI for the Atari 8-bit

[pixelmischief]

Do we have an official name and branding for this yet? If not, does the honor belong to anyone in particular? Perhaps we could hold a community contest for branding and label design?

[+MrFish]

Do we have an official name and branding for this yet? If not, does the honor belong to anyone in particular? Perhaps we could hold a community contest for branding and label design?

 

Jon and I have a long list of names from which we've narrowed it down to about 10 or 12 that we like best. We've just been lax to single one out yet. People are still welcome to make suggestions though.

 

Not having singled out a name yet means no exact direction for building the logo as well, which is my job. I'll be doing the logo/label design with suggestions/approvals coming from Jon.

[Faicuai]

Jon and I have a long list of names (...)

 

Jon (and Fish):

 

Just had a blast with the tiny-demo.. The drop-down re-draws are so clean, so smooth, I swear I am back at my University's Apple Mac lab, in 86+... just to sudden realize that I am even further BACK in time, and on a 1.7+ Mhz Atari 8bit, that simply REFUSES to die!

 

if you ask me, I would simply call it Inspire. It's not just a remarkable product (on its own set of challenges), but also a reference and motivation to keep pushing the limits and opening a small (but magic) word of possibilites for future generations to re-discover and ultimately enjoy.

 

Of course, donation is already sent. Well deserved.

 

THANKS for making this a reality!

[Mr.Amiga500]

if you ask me, I would simply call it Inspire.

 

"Inspire" has been used many times before - often on crappy computing products or programs. I'd like to see a name that is unique and easily searchable. How about something simple: since this is "a new gui for Atari", maybe it could be called "Anewgui" (Atari new gui - pronounced "anoogie")

 

(The name has the added benefit that if somebody asks for it, you can say "Oh, you want a noogie? OK!" - and then you grab them and give them a "noogie" .)

Edited October 9, 2012 by Mr.Amiga500

[atarixle]

I'm bad with names. One of my earlier projects I called JIL ... these letters look like an Atari Logo. You could use this as name.

[Faicuai]

"Anewgui" (Atari new gui - pronounced "anoogie")

 

(The name has the added benefit that if somebody asks for it, you can say "Oh, you want a noogie? OK!" - and then you grab them and give them a "noogie" .)

 

...Nah... It sounds frankensteinish (hodge-podge of parts), like a novice kids' first attempt at building a lego-car...

 

In any case, let the authors choose from their 10-12 already-pruned list. We may be better off donating, so this (genuine) project gets completed, and finds its way into the future.

[Mr.Amiga500]

Thanks Ray. That royally f**ks things up, no doubt about it. I didn't envisage windows being dragged entirely off the screen (of course this is all part of field testing!), so it's unsurprising that such circumstances create problems. This is similar to the bug w1k reported, so I'll look into it. There's a lot of clipping going on, and it's easy to end up with impossible conditions (this one probably being one clipping region being entirely outside of another, and the condition not being picked up).

 

If dragging windows off screen is a big problem, you could do it the Amiga way and prevent any parts of windows from moving off screen. Although people accustomed to modern GUIs might dislike this, I've always thought this was better: you can just quickly slide windows to any side of the screen without having to carefully position them to make sure they're not partly off screen, with gadgets or icons inaccessable.

[flashjazzcat]

If dragging windows off screen is a big problem, you could do it the Amiga way and prevent any parts of windows from moving off screen. Although people accustomed to modern GUIs might dislike this, I've always thought this was better: you can just quickly slide windows to any side of the screen without having to carefully position them to make sure they're not partly off screen, with gadgets or icons inaccessable.

 

It ain't a problem. I spent many, many hours getting off-screen clipping to work because I think off-screen windows are a really useful feature. The problem Ray discovered is down to the "imperfect" nature of the clipping: i.e. there are a couple of extreme conditions which may bypass the sense-checks. This is to be expected at this stage, I think.

 

I never liked not being able to move the windows off the screen, and I think that capability becomes even more valuable when the desktop is tiny, as on the A8. I really miss the off-screen windows on - say - Diamond now that I'm so used to using them in our GUI.

 

OK - so I'm typing this on the new PC, for which I have to re-thank everyone who donated... seems twice as fast as what I was using before but I still have a day or so of work ahead to get all the software sorted out and migrate my (ridiculously eclectic and hoarder-like) collection of data. A good opportunity for some serious pruning, and it'll take ages.

 

I'm also struggling to keep my lunch down looking at the HDMI output on this M227WD monitor. Its only fault is some heavy processing on both HDMI channels, and this motherboard lacks a DVI out (I used to use DVI). The result is overblown colours, bleed and... artifacts, for want of a better word. Apparently (according to YouTube) it's a recognized issue with this set, so I'm desperate to pick up an HDMI-DVI converter.

 

Now, despite the fact eBay has HDMI to DVI cables for a couple of quid, if I couldn't wait a few days, I'd be obliged to pay £19.99 (!) for an HDMI-DVI cable from Argos or Maplin. Unbelievable. I always thought that high-street vendors were running an extortion racket with "gold-plated" or "high-fidelity" HDMI cables and other such bullshit, but this confirms it. Daylight robbery.

Edited October 9, 2012 by flashjazzcat

[jmetal88]

It ain't a problem. I spent many, many hours getting off-screen clipping to work because I think off-screen windows are a really useful feature. The problem Ray discovered is down to the "imperfect" nature of the clipping: i.e. there are a couple of extreme conditions which may bypass the sense-checks. This is to be expected at this stage, I think.

 

I never liked not being able to move the windows off the screen, and I think that capability becomes even more valuable when the desktop is tiny, as on the A8. I really miss the off-screen windows on - say - Diamond now that I'm so used to using them in our GUI.

 

I think my preferred behavior would just be to never allow the mouse pointer off the screen. I realize you'd have to do some more advanced checking than just that for the menu bar issue and such, but if the mouse pointer can't be dragged off the sides or bottom of the screen, neither can the windows. Of course, you've probably already thought of this, and there's just something deeper going on that I'm not realizing.

[flashjazzcat]

I think my preferred behavior would just be to never allow the mouse pointer off the screen. I realize you'd have to do some more advanced checking than just that for the menu bar issue and such, but if the mouse pointer can't be dragged off the sides or bottom of the screen, neither can the windows. Of course, you've probably already thought of this, and there's just something deeper going on that I'm not realizing.

 

Well, the mouse pointer isn't allowed off the screen per se. Depending on the shape of the mouse and where its "hot spot" is, obviously parts of the pointer have to go off the end of the screen, but the hot-spot is always 0-319 by 0-199. If the pointer is a cross-hair, parts of it will disappear of all four edges of the screen depending on the mouse coordinates. Conversely, the normal arrow shape only ever has the right / bottom cut off.

 

Following this logic, if you grab the extreme upper-right hand pixel of a window's drag bar, it should never be possible to drag the window entirely off-screen (since the top-right pixel of the drag bar will always be visible). However, windows snap to byte boundaries on the x-coordinate plane, and it's likely this that caused Ray's window to jump clean off the left edge of the screen. It'll be a simple enough fix, so it's no big deal. The reason it caused choas is that I (rightly) hadn't accounted for a window mask being completely off-screen. So it's more than likely that after the front window was drawn, the masking routine (which creates the bitmasks for the back window redraws) went haywire, trying to create out-of-bounds RLE mask records.

[jmetal88]

Alright, I just wired up my bus mouse (in ST mode). I had to swap the XA and XB wires, as well as the YA and YB, in comparison to the pinouts I found online in order to get it to work properly as an ST mouse. I can confirm that windows can be dragged off the left-hand side of the screen, and while I can't drag them completely off the bottom, some funky stuff happens when I try (or at least when I try and there's another window already dragged off the left-hand side). I couldn't get anything to drag off the right-hand side of the screen, or above the menu bar.

[jmetal88]

Wait a minute, do you dim the whites after a few minutes of inactivity, or did I just discover a new feature of my TV?

 

EDIT: OK, I tried waiting again and it started changing colors just like the regular basic screen. So I don't know, maybe my TV dimmed, or maybe the Atari cycled in grey instead of white.

Edited October 9, 2012 by jmetal88

[jacobus]

...a day or so of work ahead to get all the software sorted out and migrate my (ridiculously eclectic and hoarder-like) collection of data. A good opportunity for some serious pruning, and it'll take ages.

 

Have you tried www.ninite.com ? Fantastic tool for loading all your generic Windows software with only a few clicks!

[+Gemintronic]

Will there be a scripting language to build GUI applications?

[flashjazzcat]

Alright, I just wired up my bus mouse (in ST mode). I had to swap the XA and XB wires, as well as the YA and YB, in comparison to the pinouts I found online in order to get it to work properly as an ST mouse. I can confirm that windows can be dragged off the left-hand side of the screen, and while I can't drag them completely off the bottom, some funky stuff happens when I try (or at least when I try and there's another window already dragged off the left-hand side). I couldn't get anything to drag off the right-hand side of the screen, or above the menu bar.

 

I probably won't get everything set up till this evening, but I'll have a look into this. Got a couple of hardware jobs to do first, though, which have been delayed for some time owing to the PC failure.

 

Wait a minute, do you dim the whites after a few minutes of inactivity, or did I just discover a new feature of my TV?

 

EDIT: OK, I tried waiting again and it started changing colors just like the regular basic screen. So I don't know, maybe my TV dimmed, or maybe the Atari cycled in grey instead of white.

 

You'll notice mouse movement brings the machine out of colour cycling mode now. This wasn't the case with the previous demo.

 

Have you tried www.ninite.com ? Fantastic tool for loading all your generic Windows software with only a few clicks!

 

 

Didn't know about it, but thanks.

 

Will there be a scripting language to build GUI applications?

 

This would be ideal: in-place development on the A8. Of course this would require writing a compiler and editor, etc. Meanwhile, if I can get my Java-learning back on track, I'd like to code up some resource management tools at the very least for the PC. This would interface nicely with WUDSN, for example: you'd design your resources using visual tools then import the data into your MADS or C project. Mind you: assembler and C look like the only viable language choices at the moment, unless someone writes a "GUI BASIC" compiler with UI-specific keywords and functions. Making development attractive and accessible will be a key challenge: all I can envisage right now is a good CC65 library and a lot of MADS macros.

[TheNameOfTheGame]

Donated some monies . Really excited to see this develop. Thanks to all who are working on this.

[flashjazzcat]

Many thanks! I just hope I don't get run out of town when I have to spend 2-3 months doing the cartridge conversion, which will be a largely demo-free exercise.

[Kylev]

flashjazzcat,

 

Not a chance of that! Your progress to date has been nothing short of miraculous. I am sure everyone will give you all the time you need to produce this GUI.

Keep up the good work. Looking forward to seeing the next stage.

[Heaven/TQA]

 

 

There are also other possibilities in Mads:

 

create_window(window_title_flag, #88, #70, #144, #60)
create_button(client_handle, #16, #20, #48, button1_text)

 

Is that pretty?

 

And where your libraries are something like

create_window  .proc (.byte object_flags .byte cx .byte cy .byte width, .byte height) .var
...
  rts
  .endp

create_button .proc(.byte parent, .byte cx, .byte cy, .byte width, .word ax) .var
...
  rts
  .endp

 

The generated code is the same. No overhead.

And there is more: You can change the program directly via parameter without an extra location by defining the destination of the parameter as location in the executing code (eg.in "MYLABEL AND #00" destination is the 00 as MYLABEL+1)

 

Maybe you can use it. Anyway: Mads is very cool!

 

And good job! I like that planning of a long life product is top priority (and not only a "demo"). I like to watch the project here and I CAN WAIT for a final result, knowing it gets better because of that.

 

That is cool. Always new stuff to discover.

[ToddUGA]

My vote still goes to ANTIC-OS.

[flashjazzcat]

My vote still goes to ANTIC-OS.

 

More like Antique-OS!

[+DarkLord]

Been waiting for someone to say that any GUI for the 8bit line would have to be Antic-8-ted...

[flashjazzcat]

Been waiting for someone to say that any GUI for the 8bit line would have to be Antic-8-ted...

 

Just as long as it's not universally 8-ted.

[+Spancho]

Donated some money. It's not a pre-payment!

[flashjazzcat]

Donated some money. It's not a pre-payment!

 

Too kind, and greatly appreciated. Many thanks indeed.

 

The genuine support I've received - especially over the past few weeks, but also right from the outset - is completely humbling, as well as inspirational, and I take this as a clear message that not only do people really want to see this finished, but that they are prepared to demonstrate their support in tangible ways. Of course now I feel - more strongly than ever - an enthusiastic obligation to honour that support and enthusiasm with a product which lives up to expectations.

 

In any case, I circumstantially became involved in a side-line project this week, but my since my contribution was most definitely not appreciated and I am now back from The Twilight Zone, I'm now able to return abruptly to business as usual, which is perhaps where I'm best suited. Three patient souls are waiting for their Atari computers, and other priority A8 software projects are approaching some kind of finishing post. So I will recommence work on the cart build of the GUI as soon as possible.

 

Sorry to be so wordy, but I'm truly impressed by the great bunch of people who frequent this forum.

Edited October 25, 2012 by flashjazzcat