Discussion point: what is AmigaOS missing? in 1995?

@NinjaCyborg
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In AOS4 - updates of outstanding bugs that have not been fixed since AOS4 FE U2.
Either in the form of small updates or AOS4 FE U3.
Update Enhanced Software.
Then you can think about 2025,2026,2027....

@smarkusg

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Totally agree with you and one of the worst bugs for me at the moment is ContextMenu version 54.25 which has broken over time and on some systems. Here you no longer have the option to copy and paste from the menu which is really annoying.

@NinjaCyborg

- UTF-8 (system-wide. the filesystem, for those of us not using only ASCII characters for file names or when receiving files from other users outside of our bubble)

- proper keyboard navigation in the UI. ASL, RAWBinfo etcetera, most keyboard shortcuts do not work, or can not be activated when a textfield gadget is active (and the textfield gadget can not be quit without pressing "enter" which might close the whole requester.

- Updated Style-Guide and e.g. consistent keyboard shortcuts. The very same functions have different keyboard shortcuts in ASL, Workbench and Apps. That is so annoying!
And there is more: Some functions/entries in e.g. requesters have a "RightAmiga+xy" keyboard shortcut and at the same time in the same requester, a different shortcut without the "RightAmiga key" using a totally different letter "z". Why?!?!
All of the above mainly on OS3, since OS4 has had some good rework, but still; and in some areas OS3 (TextEdit) has received some great improvements which would be great to have in OS4!
It is annoying when 3rd party developers do not follow the style guidelines and the same function has a different keyboard shortcut (undo / redo comes to mind), But at least everything in the core OS should behave the same!!

- A menubar plug-in system and formatting capabilities to be able to display the added widgets, no let's call them "menugets" on the far right side of the menu.
Have these menugets be able to jump from one screen to another. I really would like a clock to be visible on each screen.

- context menus or at least magic menu functionality (available in os4)

- An updated Workbench (and AmiDock). The scattered icons thing can be annoying.

- right-mouse button menu for the Depth Gadgets (i.a. "DepthToFront" and "ScreentoFront" on the Depth and Screen gadgets)

- some basic window-management: right-mouse button menu for the minimise/change window size button to be able to tile the window to the left/right half of the screen, upper/bottom half of the screen. Quarter size.

- An updated Print-system. Maybe integration with CUPS or GutenPrint?

- A stable USB3 stack

- A way to communicate with the outside world.
- an enhanced TCP/IP stack
- a browser. (Why? Because the bare os needs so many enhancements, like the TCP-IP stack to be able to access Aminet and download what is needed).

- A WBStartup Preferences GUI, like the one on OS4, but enhanced: the ability to sort the list by name, by priority, by path. Select entries and Activate/disactivate more items at the same time. Change the priority in the list, rather than having to open RAWBinfo to change it.

Ok, I have plenty more things that come to mind, but same as some of the above, not all are "core" OS enhancements, they are more like "polishing the surface".

- but let me add one more, an option, maybe in input preferences, to be able to swap RightAmiga and LeftAmiga. (I got used to the way it always was, but it would be handy nevertheless. Maybe a very good brainstorming session would be needed to overhaul the whole concept of shortcuts).

To be very sincere, what I would like the CORE OS to provide, would be to be stable, very stable. Resource-tracking, memory protection or whatever makes it magically un-crashable. I know it is not possible to add in OS3x, very sad.

@NinjaCyborg
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Roadshow needs quite a few modern improvements.

1. IPv6 support
This is a big one. How has this not happened yet?* We were supposed to have run out of IPv4 addresses by now!

2. DNS over TLS/HTTPS support
I was playing with a little DoT library to see if I could do this, but it was failing TLS sometime after all the TLS setup, so I was confused and gave up.

3. Override DHCP DNS addresses
For some reason this isn't possible, if you add manual addresses they aren't even prioritised before the DHCP ones, so you can't specify your own DHCP servers without using static addressing.


* I know why it hasn't happened - it requires a complete new port of a newer BSD stack, which is obviously a lot of work.

Things in OS3.2 which should be in OS4.1:
Updated AmigaGuide
ADF mounting
TextEdit
Maybe the NumPad commodity (I don't think this is in OS4, I have a full size keyboard I use currently so I've not looked for it)

Things in OS4.1 which should be in OS3.2:
Tab close gadgets (in clicktab.gadget)
MenuClass (easier menus)
Arguably UnArc and XAD, as a way to extract archives from the base OS is very useful (insert plug for Avalanche here)
Roadshow or some other TCP/IP stack (this shouldn't be a paid extra - even a very limited one would do, and let people upgrade if they want to)
edit Context Menus. Reaction popupmenu class and ContextMenus program.

@Tuvok

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Don’t agree. TAB’s are replaced with spaces, this means it’s useless for makefiles (completely breaks makefiles actually), TextEdit does not have Goto line short cut, that makes it useless so you can't jump to line that has a bug.

OS3 TextEdit can’t be used for software development, Notepad in AmigaOS4, can.

@LiveForIt

That's a bug and a feature request, which should probably be posted here: https://forum.hyperion-entertainment.com/viewforum.php?f=62

@Chris thanks for the OS3/4 discrepancy list! Is that complete as far as you know (not counting new subsystems that don't exist at all like application.library)

@LiveForIt tell Camilla, she's open to feedback, or write a plugin https://gitlab.com/boemann/texteditfiletypeplugins - i think the plugins only do syntax highlighting now, but perhaps you could suggest how she can extend it also for indentation, which would be relevant for Python also. If it's not a problem in her view for TextEdit, surely it would be for her IDE project. I'm sure she'd also be interested in discussing how UTF8 could be supported and your expertise on that topic.

@Chris again. I'd argue RoadShow doesn't need any of those things, as when will you ever not be using an Amiga on a LAN behind a router which in turn is behind a NAT. I doubt an Amiga will ever be used in a configuration that needs IPv6 directly And it's a huge effort - did you know Microsoft bought their IPv6 stack from Lancaster University because they'd waited too long to write their own? Or that Symbian OS's was written entirely by Nokia taking about 1200 man years?

@Tuvok Unfortunately adding utf8 support is not simple. When Symbian switched from single byte characters to double and variable byte characters, they completely broke backwards compatibility, only source compatibility was retained. @LiveForIt can explain it better than I can I'm sure, he's a subject matter expert. I think the best we could hope for would be a hack like the old FAT long file names - using the Comment parameter or a TOOLTYPE to store a utf8 name, which would then only be shown cosmetically in apps that supported it, Workbench or ASL. The true file name would still be used for everything else. And even then you won't get CJK, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Devanagari, Emoji etc.

Love hearing all the ideas and wishlists ! Keep going!

@NinjaCyborg

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Not complete, just off the top of my head.

Something else menu-wise that OS3.2 has but OS4.1 doesn't, is depiction of the Shift key in menu shortcuts.

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Yes, I acknowledged it was a lot of work. Although an updated port shouldn't be anywhere near as much as writing one from scratch.

Roadshow does need IPv6. Even behind a NAT router, you still need to resolve hostnames and be able to connect to them. If there isn't an IPv4 address assigned (only IPv6) then you can't connect. It will eventually get to the point where servers have to be assigned IPv6 addresses only, at which point we're slightly screwed.

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For that we need scalable Colour fonts (I did start looking into this but it's another project I stalled on and gave up with), and an Emoji picker. Also you need to be running UTF-8 across the board otherwise you can't print them.

@LiveForIt

I didn't cross path with that yet, so I was not aware of the Tab issue. Maybe Camila is willing to address that?

Do you want to post somewhere she reads it? I can too.

@NinjaCyborgQuote:

I did not clarify it, UTF-8 support was intended as a suggestion for OS4. On OS3 it does not make much sense, you are right. Unless I misunderstood, that idea with the name in tooltypes doesn't make any sense to me, it would be even more confusing, when a file or drawer has "two different names". One for Workbench and ASL and the real name for CLI etc..

Even if it breaks compatibility. Sooner or later a decision has to be taken about where to head with os4: stuck in the past or embrace all the efforts that are presently being made to better and enhance it, with the purpose of coming to the present and going to the future.

I didn't know you worked for Nokia, cool stuff!

@ChrisQuote:

I love that new feature a lot too! It is so much more intuitive!

And as we are at it, to me (and hopefully not only to me) it would help recognisability if either all the letters of the shortcuts were written in lowercase (I know, many may say it looks ugly) or to make sure, that a font is used, that visually distinguishes between I and l and 1 and also between 0 and O.

@Tuvok Well even on OS4 the challenge is the same. If you want multibyte characters everywhere, you're going to break everything. If you want UTF8 just in filenames and your text editor and the font engine (and your browser, which tend to handle text and fonts independently anyway), there are ways to do it that feel kludgy but will work for the most important use cases. And those ways are to do what Windows 95 had to do with 8.3 names.

It was Symbian not Nokia but same difference