PheonixOS
Mike Atkinson
possible resurrection), I have been working on a Java based RiscOS
like GUI.
Given a project of this magnitude it is not surprising that I have
not finished it yet :-) however I have got as far as an early alpha
version.
There are bits of programs from Javalobby integrated into it, but
they don't work well yet.
Full source is included in the downloads and you are free to root
around in it, please send any bugs you find to me.
It requires Java 1.2beta4 (I'm downloading release rc1 now, should
know if it works tomorrow). At present it will probably only work
on Windows 95/98/NT and Sun Solaris, when Acorn release JRE 1.2
for Risc OS it should work without modification.
For those of you without Java there are a couple of screen shots
(Java's Metal look and feel).
http://www.ladyshot.demon.co.uk/PhoenixOS.html
I expect to be updating the site about once a week.
--
Mike Atkinson mi...@ladyshot.demon.co.uk
Sten Hougaard
Well done! Though I don't quit follow your "lowlevel" talks :-)
I think that the general idea is very nice... I collegue of mine here
at my side - who is studing "Cand. Phil in datatechnology" here
in Odense, Denmark - is also very impressed: "That's very nice!
An OS in an OS! (running in a virtuel OS):-) PhonixOS in JVM
(Java Virtual Mashine) in an OS..".
Will Acorn JVM run in PhonixOS? :-) Perhaps you should implement
RiscOS for PhonixOS ;-) Now THAT would be nice!!!
--
Sten Hougaard, Projektmedarbejder hos
Erhvervsskolernes Forlag og Servicecenter
http://home1.inet.tele.dk/netsi/
mailto:st...@es-c.dk
D.Rob...@pmail.net
did write:
<SNIP>
|> An OS in an OS! (running in a virtuel OS):-) PhonixOS in JVM
|> (Java Virtual Mashine) in an OS..".
|>
|> Will Acorn JVM run in PhonixOS? :-) Perhaps you should implement
|> RiscOS for PhonixOS ;-) Now THAT would be nice!!!
|>
|>
|> Mike Atkinson wrote:
|>
|> > Since I first heard the sad news of the demise of Phoebe (and its
|> > possible resurrection), I have been working on a Java based RiscOS
|> > like GUI.
|> >
|> > Given a project of this magnitude it is not surprising that I have
|> > not finished it yet :-) however I have got as far as an early alpha
|> > version.
I've been a fan of Acorn Computer systems for some 10 years or so, and was
sad to see the workstation division go, but with projects like this acorn
computer systems / RiscOS will continue well into the future. Currently i
have two obsolete machines (the Acorn and the Amiga) but love them very much
Iprogram and use the Sun / Solaris machines at uni and detest WIN in any
form. Hopefuly users will see the light and take your OS up. My consern is
that Java is notoriously slow (I should know, I've been using it for over a
year!) yes the JIT helps but there is no getting away from the fact it cannt
compete with C/C++ for speed and optimisability. There have been OS's before
that can execute themselves VMS i believe is one of them. Good luck with the
project, If you want any help/assistance ive always wanted to work on an os!
(I'm currently trying to port Amiga WB to the Acorn, and write a totaly new
os as it is!) I use unix mostly, and would be willing to work on it from
this end (in my spare time of course, I am a 'CompSci and Astrophysics'
student you know :)
Majestic / Jive (aka Darren Robinson)
- D.Rob...@pmail.net -
--
'To aire is human, to completely fuck-up takes MicroSoft' - anon
*** GeekCode 3.12 ************************************ D. Robinson 1998 ***
GCS/GS d-(+) s:- a? c++ US+>++ P>+ L-(+) E---- W+ N++ !o !w--- !O M !v- PS+
PE Y PGP- t++>+++ 5++ X+>++ R tv b>+ D+ G e>BSc h
Mike Atkinson
> Well done! Though I don't quit follow your "lowlevel" talks :-)
> I think that the general idea is very nice... I collegue of mine here
> at my side - who is studing "Cand. Phil in datatechnology" here
> in Odense, Denmark - is also very impressed: "That's very nice!
> An OS in an OS! (running in a virtuel OS):-) PhonixOS in JVM
> (Java Virtual Mashine) in an OS..".
It more than PhoenixOS is a OS (or at least a framework) running on
top of an OS.
> Will Acorn JVM run in PhonixOS? :-) Perhaps you should implement
> RiscOS for PhonixOS ;-) Now THAT would be nice!!!
Its the oposite way round PhoenixOS will hopefully run in the Acorn
JVM, it is 100% pure Java (although not officially as I haven't gone
through the certification program) so should run in any conforming
JVM. Thats the whole point of "Write once, run anywhere".
Implementing RiscOS for PhoenixOS is basically what I am doing, the
aim is to preserve the good points of RiscOS look and feel, while
making it cross platform and having the best of modern GUI features.
I am especially trying to make it easy to use, consistent user
interface and facilities used by every application are important.
Using the MVP design pattern it is possible to separate the
underlying data, the selection of part of the data, commands, view
displayed to the user, user/view interaction and overall program
structure.
e.g. for a graph drawing program.
The data might be "1,6,3,5,9,3"
A selection of the data might be elements 1 to 3 (i.e. "1,6,3")
Commands might be "addToSelection", "Clear", "Save", etc.
The view displayed to the user might be a pie chart, bar graph,
the numbers spoken out.
The user/view interaction might be selection of an element by a
right mouse click, where upon the element is highlighted.
The overall program structure ties together menus, mouse clicks
commands, etc.
Where possible applications will be expandable by adding new
modules, much in the way that !Zap is. Unlike !Zap I hope to
make the process very easy. The TextEdit application is going
to be may attempt at that (because text, rtf, java & html modes
are easy to write or provided in the java class libraries).
The filer is being written to be similar to the RiscOS filer,
but will have several levels of undo. I hope to implement in
place editing of file names, a quick view window, some form of
directory tree viewer and a method of quickly navigating the
directory tree.
--
Mike Atkinson mi...@ladyshot.demon.co.uk
Mike Atkinson
> I've been a fan of Acorn Computer systems for some 10 years or so, and was
> sad to see the workstation division go, but with projects like this acorn
> computer systems / RiscOS will continue well into the future. Currently i
> have two obsolete machines (the Acorn and the Amiga) but love them very much
> Iprogram and use the Sun / Solaris machines at uni and detest WIN in any
> form. Hopefuly users will see the light and take your OS up. My consern is
> that Java is notoriously slow (I should know, I've been using it for over a
> year!) yes the JIT helps but there is no getting away from the fact it cannt
> compete with C/C++ for speed and optimisability. There have been OS's before
> that can execute themselves VMS i believe is one of them. Good luck with the
> project, If you want any help/assistance ive always wanted to work on an os!
> (I'm currently trying to port Amiga WB to the Acorn, and write a totaly new
> os as it is!) I use unix mostly, and would be willing to work on it from
> this end (in my spare time of course, I am a 'CompSci and Astrophysics'
> student you know :)
Java seems to be getting faster all the time, I'm now using JDK1.2 rc1
on a
350MHz PC with a medium speed graphics card. Some things seem really
fast,
while others chug. I am more concerned with stability than speed, you
can
almost always improve your algorithms. IBM say that productivity on
their
SanFransisco project (320,000 line of code) was 300% of that of a
typical
C/C++ project.
If you want to work on PhoenixOS, I recommend that you download it, look
at
the source code and see what you think of it. Then contact me again, I
won't
be doing anything on it for a few days. Just making sure it runs on
sun/solaris would be a help to me.
--
Mike Atkinson mi...@ladyshot.demon.co.uk