Scalos discussion

[AMIGASYSTEM]

In your video the icons were stored, this speeds up a lot, as mentioned copy a hundred icons "without storing the location" and then open the folder.

Also as PeterK pointed out, if you try to move a number of icons everything will be slower, besides the RAM you will lose on the way.

Of course everything can be improved, even Wanderer can be improved, I am talking about the problems now with the available versions of Magellan and Scalos, not future ones.

[OlafS3]

In your video the icons were stored, this speeds up a lot, as mentioned copy a hundred icons "without storing the location" and then open the folder.

Also as PeterK pointed out, if you try to move a number of icons everything will be slower, besides the RAM you will lose on the way.

Of course everything can be improved, even Wanderer can be improved, I am talking about the problems now with the available versions of Magellan and Scalos, not future ones.

PeteK BTW talked about Magellan running on AmigaOS with P96 and CybergraphX where obviously is a problem with P96. The posting is not related to Aros

I have dragged icons without having any problem. I will certainly not convince you to use magellan or scalos. Both are a waste if you not use them. Then better stay with wanderer. Magellan and Scalos only make sense if you really invest time in them. Just launching makes zero sense. You then use them zero. But that is certainly known to you.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

As said I have nothing against Magellan and Scalos, but at the moment I prefer Wanderer for my Distributions because of its simplicity of use, which is very important for first time users on AROS.

Already an experienced Amiga user has a hard time configuring Magellan, let alone a user unfamiliar with Amiga.

Wandere with its "separate" System Apps is much easier to understand and configure, if you then add descriptors and associations you can do the same things as magellan and even more since you can add something of your own.

[OlafS3]

As said I have nothing against Magellan and Scalos, but at the moment I prefer Wanderer for my Distributions because of its simplicity of use, which is very important for first time users on AROS.

Already an experienced Amiga user has a hard time configuring Magellan, let alone a user unfamiliar with Amiga.

Wandere with its "separate" System Apps is much easier to understand and configure, if you then add descriptors and associations you can do the same things as magellan and even more since you can add something of your own.

there is no problem with that if you prefer wanderer and are more familiar with it. Nevertheless magellan is more powerful than what you can do with wanderer (similar would be scalos). You will have problems to convince me of the opposite ... for example how do you define filetype specific context menu on wanderer? Possible on both magellan and scalos.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

A few more functions are there on magellan, but many can be created onWanderer as well, can you give me some examples of things you can't do on Wanderer ?

The file type on Wanderer is the same as Workbench OS 3.9, just install/create a descriptor and all files can be recognized, practically nothing changes from magellan

[OlafS3]

A few more functions are there on magellan, but many can be created onWanderer as well, can you give me some examples of things you can't do on Wanderer ?

The file type on Wanderer is the same as Workbench OS 3.9, just create a descriptor and all files can be recognized, practically nothing changes from magellan

what I wrote is a key element of both modern desktops... that you can define filetypes (I use endings to identify file format) and then define specific context menu if a user rightclick on it. Doubleclick can be defined too, on scalos in def icon and in Magellan in the environment. In Magellan you can also define what happens f.e. if a file is drag and dropped or similar what I never used on aros and also not tested it.

As a simple example, I have predefined converting options for many image and sound files. You can convert koala to iff by rightclicking on file and selecting a option. Most of the work went in that.

On AmigaOS you can only define what happens when you doubleclick on a file (f.e. show a picture with datatype). That is lightyears away from what you can do on scalos or magellan (of course you have to invest time in it).

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Again for the sake of simplicity, having a single file type manager in my opinion is less functional, if this application fails for some reason, no file type will be recognized, and it will also be difficult to identify who caused the problem.

With descriptors this cannot happen, when a file is not recognized, it will only be a descriptor or datatype that will be the culprit and then based on the extension you will understand where to intervene.

The conversion of music files, archives, images, I did it on Dopus4, but the same procedure can be done on Wanderer, just use a menu manager like "UserMenus"

[OlafS3]

as I understand it you can only define one menu but not individual menues dependent on file formats

[miker1264]

In your video the icons were stored, this speeds up a lot, as mentioned copy a hundred icons "without storing the location" and then open the folder.

Also as PeterK pointed out, if you try to move a number of icons everything will be slower, besides the RAM you will lose on the way.

Of course everything can be improved, even Wanderer can be improved, I am talking about the problems now with the available versions of Magellan and Scalos, not future ones.

PeteK BTW talked about Magellan running on AmigaOS with P96 and CybergraphX where obviously is a problem with P96. The posting is not related to Aros

I have dragged icons without having any problem. I will certainly not convince you to use magellan or scalos. Both are a waste if you not use them. Then better stay with wanderer. Magellan and Scalos only make sense if you really invest time in them. Just launching makes zero sense. You then use them zero. But that is certainly known to you.

This is how I see the situation with the workbench replacements: Wanderer, Magellan & Scalos. Wanderer is relatively fast at what it does but it doesn't do much. The development of Wanderer isn't finished. Icon View Mode is more mature. Name View Mode works but it doesn't do anything useful and it looks very primitive and incomplete.

But there are a few features I like about Wanderer. Any drawer location can be the start location to open a new shell. Use Wanderer to navigate to a location then open a shell at that location without a bunch of typing. Also the automatic cleanup of icons and the immediate redraw when icons change is a nice feature. But Wanderer needs work.

Magellan and Scalos have many more advanced features and both can be configured to be be very useful but that requires skill and some effort. The problem is that both Magellan and Scalos weren't developed originally for use with AROS. Because of that there some problems (both known and yet to be discovered) and incompatibilities that need to be addressed to make Magellan and Scalos more useful and efficient. No one wants a system freeze or crash.

I especially like the full features of Name View for Magellan. I have enjoyed using it many, many times with no complaints. But the icons at the top of the listers could be improved. I also remember using Scalos on AIAB (Amiga in a Box). I recall that it seemed very easy and fun to use it.

With more development all these workbench replacements could be greatly improved making them more stable and more useful and user friendly. But that takes a lot of work.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

If you are referring to Descriptors, these allow by extension, or by internal file acronym to recognize a file, to this descriptor you associate a Def_icon with the tool you want to use.

Magellan does the same thing, it uses an application similar to OS 3.9's "DeIcon Preferences" (see screenshot), which is basically a kind of set of Descriptors, even more comprehensive than Magellan's, again you can associate by file extension or by acronym.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

But there are a few features I like about Wanderer. Any drawer location can be the start location to open a new shell. Use Wanderer to navigate to a location then open a shell at that location without a bunch of typing. Also the automatic cleanup of icons and the immediate redraw when icons change is a nice feature. But Wanderer needs work.

Yes there are also other simple things with wanderer such as automatic icon arrangement, the ability to choose to move or copy an icon, and many other things

Magellan and Scalos have many more advanced features and both can be configured to be be very useful but that requires skill and some effort. The problem is that both Magellan and Scalos weren't developed originally for use with AROS. Because of that there some problems (both known and yet to be discovered) and incompatibilities that need to be addressed to make Magellan and Scalos more useful and efficient. No one wants a system freeze or crash.

And this is what I have written several times, one of the reasons for the conflicts and gurus is that Scalos or Magellan have their own libraries and PlugIns, while OS3/AROS Apps at many cases will look for the libraries by Wanderer.

[miker1264]

Again for the sake of simplicity, having a single file type manager in my opinion is less functional, if this application fails for some reason, no file type will be recognized, and it will also be difficult to identify who caused the problem.

With descriptors this cannot happen, when a file is not recognized, it will only be a descriptor or datatype that will be the culprit and then based on the extension you will understand where to intervene.

The conversion of music files, archives, images, I did it on Dopus4, but the same procedure can be done on Wanderer, just use a menu manager like "UserMenus"

While it's true that using filetype descriptors is independent of the workbench replacement being used we are actually looking at two ways of doing the same thing - classic vs modern. File descriptors and especially datatype descriptors are the classic way of doing file associations. The icon attributes (deftools) are used to associate a file with a specific application.

For Magellan and perhaps Scalos file associations are done more directly in a dedicated prefs application which has its advantages. We can do everything at once without fiddling with dozens of separate file descriptors. Then that same centralized file associations system can be used for "Open With" much like the icon deftools. It's a modern approach.

However it would be beneficial to have a similar application that uses the Magellan method to easily create the file descriptors including datatype descriptors. At the moment we have to manually edit these descriptors or edit a descriptor source file and use specialized tools to create the descriptors. Having a file descriptor editor would be nice. It would make things much more user friendly.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

You would just bring to AROS "Deficon Preferences," what I showed in the screenshot, we are talking about a tool that also uses OS 4.1.

While instead Magellan is similar to Ambient on MOS, which then Ambient is nothing but a kind of modern version of magellan.

[cdimauro]

In your video the icons were stored, this speeds up a lot, as mentioned copy a hundred icons "without storing the location" and then open the folder.

Also as PeterK pointed out, if you try to move a number of icons everything will be slower, besides the RAM you will lose on the way.

Why do you spread false information?

From the first link:
"That's your opinion, but I still prefer to use DOpus 4.17pre21 on WB 3.9. Ok, it don't has all of the features of DOpus5, but more important, it has non of the bugs of DOpus5. And 5.9x is even worse than 5.82! No thanks.

From the second:
"Retrofan, I hope that you know that the "Custom dragging routines" of DOpus 5.82 always had a huge memory leak. You can lose some MB if you select a couple of icons and just drag them around. Your free memory can disappear rapidly and completely in a few seconds. This did only happen with P96, not with CGX.

But I've fixed that bug in the DOpus5 dragging routines and put my DOpus 5.83 into the bonus drawer of my Aminet package. Reading my IconLib.guide can be useful sometimes.

I've no idea how good or bad DOpus5 works on an OS 3.2 system. I would not expect or rely on that the 3.2 developers even tried to care about DOpus5 at all."

He never talked about slowness!

He only talked about bugs and a memory leak which he already fixed.

Of course everything can be improved, even Wanderer can be improved, I am talking about the problems now with the available versions of Magellan and Scalos, not future ones.

Those problems can be solved, as I've already explained on the other thread: either being bugs or missing features.

Whereas Wanderer lacks TONs of features and for some of them you need to use external applications to try to mitigate the situation.

Scalos and DOpus/Magellan, on the other hand, already offer TONs of features out-of-the-box...

[cdimauro]

This is how I see the situation with the workbench replacements: Wanderer, Magellan & Scalos. Wanderer is relatively fast at what it does but it doesn't do much. The development of Wanderer isn't finished. Icon View Mode is more mature. Name View Mode works but it doesn't do anything useful and it looks very primitive and incomplete.

But there are a few features I like about Wanderer. Any drawer location can be the start location to open a new shell. Use Wanderer to navigate to a location then open a shell at that location without a bunch of typing. Also the automatic cleanup of icons and the immediate redraw when icons change is a nice feature. But Wanderer needs work.

Magellan and Scalos have many more advanced features and both can be configured to be be very useful but that requires skill and some effort. The problem is that both Magellan and Scalos weren't developed originally for use with AROS. Because of that there some problems (both known and yet to be discovered) and incompatibilities that need to be addressed to make Magellan and Scalos more useful and efficient. No one wants a system freeze or crash.

I especially like the full features of Name View for Magellan. I have enjoyed using it many, many times with no complaints. But the icons at the top of the listers could be improved. I also remember using Scalos on AIAB (Amiga in a Box). I recall that it seemed very easy and fun to use it.

With more development all these workbench replacements could be greatly improved making them more stable and more useful and user friendly. But that takes a lot of work.

From a developer PoV, do you prefer to add the few missing features from Wanderer to Scalos/Magellan, or the viceversa (the massive missing features from them to Wanderer)?

From a user PoV, do you prefer the limited experience of Wanderer or the better one offered by Scalos/Magellan? Considered that the system was already fully pre-configured, of course.

To me those are rhetorical questions: IMO doesn't make sense to invest on Wanderer on 2023, since a better user experience could be given to the users and we aren't limited anymore with the available CPUs and/or memory.

If users prefer the "classic" experience this can also be configured.

But if they want to use the old machines, well, then just use the original o.s.: modernity isn't something which is appealing to them...