@wawa

Quote:


Well .. you're are right .. of cause the AOS4 version is more important as the 68K version. But it is the same thing .. people noticed the wrong colors .. which where the same in the 68K and aos4 version. So i fixed them .. people noticed it was slow on 68K .. so i optimized it .. which made the AOS4 version also twice as fast.
It just happend to be that people asked questions about 68K.
They could have asked questions about the AOS4 version.
All things discussed have an impact on 68K and AOS4.
We just started the discussion here, to be a bit lowkey as the software isnt ready yet but still give the community a change for discussion.

The browser IS being developed mainly for AOS4 .. but i guess speed/memory isn't as big an issue as on 68K .. so obviously people are going to talk about what doesnt work well .. which is speed on 68k.
Yes the browser runs on Mac .. but thats just because it is so much easier to develop on mac which available development tools.

@wawa

>with ONOWNSCREEN in screenp96.cfg enabled i get:

>OpenMonScreenA pos 30, 50 size 928,568 .. open = 1
>Crystal: Can't open an P96 screen with type 0
>Couldnt get an P96 screen pointer.

>this due ppossibly to use bestmodeid method in order to recognize >resolution, right?

This could very well be, i have to check it, it has been a while
since the wrote P96 code .. but it rings a bell.

>when i set pubscreen to worbench then it starts allright
>on ma4k/mediator/voodoo system (under os3.9) i have problems with >all apps that use bestmode, but anyhow since its possible to manage cfg >file its not that big deal.

Ah right .. perhaps i should configure pubscreen default to workbench, and if opening the screen failed use the pubscreen.

>i would advice to put smaller links.html into the archive. the current >loads aeons on classic. this might make impression browser isnt working >at all.

Ah .. that's good advice, the silly thing is that i use a smaller one on my A4k but the big one on the other machines. And that the big one is in the distribution archive. So i guess i include a small one and a big one .. and by default use the smaller one on slower machines.
I did post a quicker executble.

>it is also still needed to set stack manually.

Woops .. i just optimized it a little so it should use less stack, but i do need to figure out how much stack is exactly needed. The trouble is stack use goes up with complex sites.

>i couldnt test extensively for now, but i think it is still too early yet. >keep up the work anyway. i enjoy this.

Ok thanks ! :)

@Mrodfr

Quote:


Well ... i have put a new archive (v0.03) also online.
But it is a tiny tiny minor upgrade.
I has a faster 68k (and mac) version.
The Classic Amiga version is probably twice as fast.
The GUI colors in 24b are fixed, the clock was fixed.
There was an issue that bigger CSS files where skipped.
Cache files are not compressed.
But it still has some color issues.

Also note that with sites getting bigger and complexer it gets
harder to load them on a 68K.
There are some sites my powermac has trouble with.

http://home.kpn.nl/spijk336/browser/home.html

@Mrodfr

>Thanks for answering. Some users would like to show you interest for >merlin and It's verry great because thats give you a goal for developping >more merlin also for the amiga platform

No problem, i will try to answer all questions .. but because of all the interest it became priority to fix the problems mentioned instead of working on the engine.

>BTW, I think, as you have stated before on this thread to not do lots of >reports, I will stop to report and let you programmed merlin more

Well .. the problem is that someone posted a link to what was supposed to be a test version. A version to test the engine. So right now i am working on a version that is more workable on amiga. So if that is available i think it would be more practical to bring reports.

>At least, you have some feedback about what look like and work the >GUI on 68k amigas and also great you have your a4000 for testing....

Well i would like some feedback on how people think the interface should work, as most of the work was done on the "engine" lately.

>You convert all gfx to iff before rendering the page (seemed to see that on the grabs on the site) ???

Well, that was an experiment .. JPEGs take a long time to decode on an amiga. As do IFFs as they are stored as bitplanes. What i was doing is to convert the IFF to an FCT .. which is an IFF format i came up with that is chuncky and has adaptive compression that can be decoded very fast.
So if you start the browser again, and the picture was "cached" as FCT it would load a lot faster as an JPEG would, and still be a lot smaller as an IFF. So the 2nd time a picture is needed it will be loaded and rendered with internal code.

>Instead, try to use the datatypes available for rendering the gfx (even if >the best is to use internal rendering GFX like Ibrowse) but not >transforming them to IFF.

Well .. indeed .. i will try to fix it.

@wawa
>actually the layout suits me well. loox somhow special, like these weird >ancient apps of amiga, that didnt fit the style sheet: tvpaint, lightwave, >imagemaster r/t, whatstheirname. otherwise lets make it skinable, but >working in the first place.


Right now the GUI definition of the head of the window looks something like this:

HGROUP ;aleft
VGROUP bcolor white ;triangle " "
VGROUP bcolor dgrey ;triangle " "
HGROUP textfont pattern 6 aleft ; atop
TEXT "Url:" textfont size 6 expandx
STRINGGADGET size 50 ID 1 expandx
LINE vertical
BUTTON "Bookmark" size 10 ID 15 textfont expandx
ANIM ID 16 expandx
CLOCK ID 17 backup expandx
ENDGROUP
HGROUP textfont pattern 6 ;aright ; aleft
BUTTON " Quit " size 9 ID 63999 afont textfont expandx
BUTTON " Forward " size 9 ID 10 afont textfont expandx
BUTTON " Back " size 9 ID 11 afont textfont expandx
LINE vertical
BUTTON " Reload " size 9 ID 12 afont textfont expandx
BUTTON " Home " size 6 ID 13 afont textfont expandx
BUTTON " Bookmarks " size 12 ID 14 afont textfont expandx
LINE vertical
ENDGROUP
ENDGROUP ;V
LINE HORIZONTAL
VOID solid width 4 height 4 pixels
ENDGROUP ;V

A lot of the look can be changed, with custom patterns, pictures etc.
Buttons can be moved, added or deleted. etc.

@Mrodfr

>Yes, I'm using a 16 bits WB and without the screenp96.cfg, I can't try >with merlin on his own 24 bit P96 screen.

>Test with the file:

>- opened fine with 24 bits and colors OK. just url line and horizontal >gadget under are only black.

Well .. there were a couple of slight problems, i tried to make
the amiga version faster by using a native amiga function to
"print to file" instead of using a standard C sprintf function,
and then call a file write function. However .. the amiga versions
didnt quiet function as expected. So drawing pens where
written as value zero ... hence black.

>- no hits but allways 80% CPU used. Fast decreased bite per bite ???

The next version is significant faster, as in a number of times.
The version that people encountered was used to test some concepts,
like "caching" JPEG/PNG pictures in a format that could be loaded
faster. However .. in that version a compression algoritm was used
that took time to compress .. but was very fast to uncompress.
Also that version translated the HTML in a language the GUI engine could understand .. in the language names of pictures and fonts etc where placed.
It took the GUI decoder some time to figure out what type exactly that name was representing
, because the HTML interpreter didnt put the type in front of it .. which wasnt that important on a fast machine.
Also the next version does less memory allocations which makes
it faster .. etc..

@wawa

>@Cmdr_data: figures, but then it only concerns the gui colors, i see, >these were on my system correct from the beginning i suppose.

I just saw some screengrabs on another site where the colors where
right. That is probably because that system uses 24 bit colors.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?threadid=43738

>@mrodfr: u are using 16bit screen depth, right?

I will look into the color issue tomorrow, might be that it is
an issue in the P96 code but not in the Cybergraphix code.

>well, long story short, as a rule the browser returns complete mess on >most sites or fails. only sometimes basic structure or some elements are >loaded correctly. i could send you the logs if you need it. do you still >have a 68k machine yourself?

Well .. please wait for the next release before you send anything.
Work has been done to improve speed and stability, note
that there is a lot of overhead because of internal debug code.

Also the problem that a lot of sites are a mess is because they
use style sheets, which is a work in progress. This test version
only shows outlines of stylesheets.
Some sites barely show up when you only interprete HTML
but not the stylesheets, as the make up information is in
the stylesheets.

Also a problem is that a majority of sites contain errors,
they contain FI open tags, but there is no matching closing tag.
This is being remedied.

I do have an A4000/040/p96 beside the AmigaOne.

@wawa

didn't think about that, just create a screenp96.cfg or screenp96.doc or screenp96.txt file and put something like this in it:
(and the same goes for screencyb.doc, the file for aga however is a little more complex)

ONOWNSCREEN ;; open windows on own screen
;PUBSCREEN "Screen" ;; try opening on this screen

SCREEN WIDTH 1024 ; 320 640 800 1024 1120 1152 1280
SCREEN HEIGHT 768 ; 240 480 600 768 832 900 1024
SCREEN DEPTH 24 ; 1 4 8 15 16 24

;;; COLOR number red green blue

COLOR 0 160 160 160 ;; Mid Grey
COLOR 1 0 0 0 ;; Black
COLOR 2 255 255 255 ;; White
COLOR 3 96 128 176 ;; Blue

COLOR 4 144 144 144 ;; Dark Grey
COLOR 5 176 176 176 ;; Light Grey
COLOR 6 144 192 160 ;; Beige
COLOR 7 144 160 192 ;; Light Blue

COLOR 8 208 224 64 ;; Geel
COLOR 9 240 0 0 ;; Rood
COLOR 10 0 224 0 ;; LGroen
COLOR 11 0 144 0 ;; DGroen

COLOR 12 240 128 0 ;; Oranje
COLOR 13 0 240 240 ;; Cyaan
COLOR 14 160 96 0 ;; Bruin
COLOR 15 208 208 160 ;; Beige

@Mrodfr

>Thanks a lot for being here, for your first post you code a browser, thats verry impressive !!!!

Heh .. well i have been around in the amiga world since 1987, the browser code has been in development for many years .. but it only recently discovered it was a browser ;) .. a long story for a new message.

>On AOS3.x, the colors aren't good because maybe no magicWB used on merlin browser.

Sorry about that ... this version wasn't really ment as a widespread public release .. but somehow word spread. Colors used to be correct .. but it is probably an error in the GUI engine that was made on another platform .. i have 2 ideas what the trouble might be. I will check it out.

>Please introduce yourself on this site, if possible, thats will be great also to know you and what you have planned to do with the amiga (as a programmer).

Well .. my name is Arend-Paul Spijkerman .. i have been in amiga development for a long time. Some stuff from my hand is the Trion BBS system .. and for instance the Fireworks plugin in ImageFX.
I'll save some more for new msgs :)

>- You should provide the good AGA and P96 and CyberGFx files for the settings.

Right .. sorry about that .. those files used to be necessary .. now they are optional .. so they weren't in this minimal alpha archive.
But they can hold information on custom screens and color depths. So i guess they will make a reappearance.

@Chris

The looks are completely configurable .. however that is not provided in this version, as this first version was more about the browser engine.
The software can render simple buttons, or use system buttons
or even use pictures or render scripts for buttons.
So a next version can have a couple of text files which define "the look",
where one file can have nice graphics effects and rendered buttons while another can use normal amiga buttons.
So if you dont like those looks you can change it, yourself ..
a bit like a "skin".

Merlin Browser Development.