other platform->Amiga porting project (Are you there Jim?)
Dennis Grant
guess that Jim's "Save the Amiga" project won't be needed. Still, I take my
hat off to the man, he at least _did_ something, and didn't just sit there
whining.
However, if my aging memory still serves, Jim was also planning on contacting
some other-platform big names, and trying to get some big name software ported
over. Jim, did this go anywhere? Anybody express any interest?
Not a flame of any sort, just curiosity.
Oh, "Yes I did, yes they did, no I can't tell you" is better than silence, as
is "No, I didn't get a chance". Understandable.
DG
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dennis Grant dgr...@peinet.pe.ca Charlottetown, PEI, Canada
Amiga 4000/030/4/120/40 MHz '882/IDEK 17" monitor
1977 Trans Am SE 6.6l Slalom swerver and dragstrip burner
There 'aint no replacement for cubic displacement.
Bruce E Durocher II
: Actually, I have my foot in the door at Adobe right now and things look
: VERY, VERY promising for an Amiga port.
I'd welcome that. Out of curiosity, have you contacted Pixar? At
one point just before they were sold to GVP, a programmer at Lake Forest
Logic had posted on FidoNet that he was working on a port of Renderman. I
understand that most of it is written in C--in fact, I know that the
surface modules are. Might be a relatively easy port, especially if the
folks doing 3-D transfer software for the Amiga include Renderman support...
Stefan Boberg
>Actually, I have my foot in the door at Adobe right now and things look
>VERY, VERY promising for an Amiga port.
And what would the arguments for an Amiga version of Adobe products be?
I think this whole thing is a bit quixotic.
>Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
--
Stefan Boberg, Amiga/CD32/Console Programmer - Team 17 Software/LhA Devel.
======== I may work for Team 17, but my opinions don't ==========
============== Can somebody tell me what I'm here for? ===== CURVE ===
Maxwell Daymon
: Actually, I have my foot in the door at Adobe right now and things look
: VERY, VERY promising for an Amiga port.
If you actually pull something off here, you may lose a few of your
hate-mongers.
(BTW: An Amiga port of WHAT? ATM? Illustrator? Photoshop?)
--
//
// Maxwell Daymon
\\ // mda...@rainbow.sosi.com
\X/
Paul V Puey
: jd...@cryo.cryogenic.com (Jim Drew) writes:
:
: >Actually, I have my foot in the door at Adobe right now and things look
: >VERY, VERY promising for an Amiga port.
: And what would the arguments for an Amiga version of Adobe products be?
: I think this whole thing is a bit quixotic.
How about a little or no cost port of their software by outside programmers
only asking a share of the profit from sales. Nothing to lose by Adobe and
only something to gain. I'm all for you Jim. Keep up the work. You may
have a lot of people that disagree with you, but at least your a strong
developer that's pushing even OTHER companies to keep the Amiga alive.
: >Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
: --
: Stefan Boberg, Amiga/CD32/Console Programmer - Team 17 Software/LhA Devel.
: ======== I may work for Team 17, but my opinions don't ==========
: ============== Can somebody tell me what I'm here for? ===== CURVE ===
Paul V Puey /\ _____ _ _____ _____ 4000/040
Electrical Engineering /__\(_ _ _\( \( ___)( __ \ Now THIS
and Computer Science / __ \\ \ \ \\ \\ \__ \\ __ \ is Power!
at UC Berkeley USA (_/ \_)\_\_\_)\_)\_____)\_\ \_)
pvp...@cory.EECS.berkeley.EDU pvp...@shell.portal.com
Email me with your name and postal address to get included in
the Save the Amiga petition.
Jim Drew
writes:
> It looks like Samsung came through. (Rumor though, can't confirm yet) so I
> guess that Jim's "Save the Amiga" project won't be needed. Still, I take my
> hat off to the man, he at least _did_ something, and didn't just sit there
> whining.
>
> However, if my aging memory still serves, Jim was also planning on
>contacting
> some other-platform big names, and trying to get some big name software
>ported
> over. Jim, did this go anywhere? Anybody express any interest?
>
> Not a flame of any sort, just curiosity.
>
> Oh, "Yes I did, yes they did, no I can't tell you" is better than silence,
>as
> is "No, I didn't get a chance". Understandable.
VERY, VERY promising for an Amiga port.
Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
790 N.Lake Havasu Ave #16 Lake Havasu City, AZ 86403
(602) 680-9004 Voice (602) 453-6407 FAX
72662,14 - CIS j.drew2 - GEnie
"Hell yes, it's possible! ...*if* you have an Amiga!"
Jim Drew
Boberg) writes:
> jd...@cryo.cryogenic.com (Jim Drew) writes:
>
> >Actually, I have my foot in the door at Adobe right now and things look
> >VERY, VERY promising for an Amiga port.
>
> And what would the arguments for an Amiga version of Adobe products be?
alone. Now, if a product cost you zilch to port and you sold thousands
of copies, I would say that it is more than enough incentive. But, as
you and I know, there *are* others that would love to purchase PhotoShop
for the Amiga if it exited.
Advantages galore! Ever run two programs on a MAC (if you run two copies
of PhotoShop on a MAC, about 30% of the CPU time goes to each copy). The
Amiga's multitasking is ideal for running 5-10 copies of PhotoShop (all
at the same time) doing things like Kai's Power Tools (which we would
also want to port) can take several minutes on a MAC... you can be more
productive.
SPEED!! I talked to Grant Boucher at Amblin Imaging (a division of
Amblin Entertainment), the people who do the magic for SeaQuest DSV and
other nifty things, and he was telling me a story about some benchmark
tests that he and Richard Lewis (executive producer at Amblin) ran with
EMPLANT's MAC emulation. *I* was shocked at their results... using DSP
specially compiled versions of various filters in PhotoShop (such as
Gaussian Blur) on an 660AV machine vs an A4000 EMPLANT, the EMPLANT
system (using the normal filters) actually beat the AV machine...by more
than 25%. As I stated, this surprized me.. but the same results were
found when testing PowerMACs running the NATIVE version of PhotoShop.
Hail the Amiga, EMPLANT is neat and all... but this magic is courtesy of
the Amiga. So, I ask you, what *could* PhotoShop do if it was ported to
the Amiga, and the port was done in assembly (not 'C')??
Time is money in the video industry, and if you can save even 10% in
time, people will want it.. no exceptions.
Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
Jim Drew
writes:
> Jim Drew (jd...@cryo.cryogenic.com) wrote:
> : Actually, I have my foot in the door at Adobe right now and things look
> : VERY, VERY promising for an Amiga port.
>
> If you actually pull something off here, you may lose a few of your
> hate-mongers.
>
> (BTW: An Amiga port of WHAT? ATM? Illustrator? Photoshop?)
Bob Henry
:
: PhotoShop... to start with..
Whee haw! If you can get Photoshop ported to the Amiga, I'll buy another
Emplant just for the hell of it!
Umm..Illustrator and Freehand would be nice too!
-henry
Maxwell Daymon
: In <2sph1d$q...@rainbow.sosi.com>, mda...@rainbow.sosi.com (Maxwell Daymon)
: writes:
: > Jim Drew (jd...@cryo.cryogenic.com) wrote:
: > : Actually, I have my foot in the door at Adobe right now and things look
: > : VERY, VERY promising for an Amiga port.
: >
: > If you actually pull something off here, you may lose a few of your
: > hate-mongers.
: >
: > (BTW: An Amiga port of WHAT? ATM? Illustrator? Photoshop?)
:
: PhotoShop... to start with..
That's great (if they do). I still want illustrator though. Without
ProDraw, and with Art Expression on a "when we get to it" update basis,
the Amiga has *NO* good structured drawing programs. It does have some
nice image processing programs though.
Ezra Story
>In mda...@rainbow.sosi.com (Maxwell Daymon)writes:
>> Jim Drew (jd...@cryo.cryogenic.com) wrote:
>> : Actually, I have my foot in the door at Adobe right now and things look
>> : VERY, VERY promising for an Amiga port.
>> If you actually pull something off here, you may lose a few of your
>> hate-mongers.
>> (BTW: An Amiga port of WHAT? ATM? Illustrator? Photoshop?)
>
>PhotoShop... to start with..
>
>Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
Oh give it a rest. Get real, just for once.
--
| Ezra Story | e...@panix.com | Ezy (IRC) | *********************** |
| Penguins! Get yer ice cold penguins here! Free alien monster |
| with every purchase! Money back guarantee! | +++++++++++++++++++ |
Zalman Stern
--
Zalman Stern zal...@adobe.com (415) 962 3824
Adobe Systems, 1585 Charleston Rd., POB 7900, Mountain View, CA 94039-7900
Never let a "final candidate" subscript get above the age of consent.
Maxwell Daymon
: Adobe has no plans for an Amiga port of Photoshop.
They should.
Marc N. Barrett
>Zalman Stern (zst...@adobe.com) wrote:
>: Adobe has no plans for an Amiga port of Photoshop.
>
>They should.
Why? Tell me honestly, how many people would buy it?
+++++++
++++ Marc Barrett -MB-
++ IRC nick: Cyclone | e-mail: bar...@iastate.edu
+
Jim Drew
writes:
> In article <2t40f6$e...@rainbow.sosi.com> mda...@rainbow.sosi.com (Maxwell
>Daymon) writes:
> >Zalman Stern (zst...@adobe.com) wrote:
> >: Adobe has no plans for an Amiga port of Photoshop.
> >
> >They should.
>
> Why? Tell me honestly, how many people would buy it?
important...
Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
Michael van Elst
> Why? Tell me honestly, how many people would buy it?
You would pirate it, right ?
Regards,
--
Michael van Elst
Internet: mle...@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de mle...@serpens.rhein.de
"A potential Snark may lurk in every tree."
Doc
>In article <2t40f6$e...@rainbow.sosi.com> mda...@rainbow.sosi.com (Maxwell Daymon) writes:
>>Zalman Stern (zst...@adobe.com) wrote:
>>: Adobe has no plans for an Amiga port of Photoshop.
>>
>>They should.
>
> Why? Tell me honestly, how many people would buy it?
I ask the same question also. If EMPLANT works like
it is adverted it would run Photoshop. why port
when you can buy an EMPLANT and supposedly run it
faster?
Just a few questions,
David
--------------------------------------------------------------------
David E. Stewart Slavic Language DTP
Mir DeskTop Publishing Documentation, Graphics, Flyers,
2647 Ellendale Pl Restaurant Menus, Letters
Los Angeles, CA 90007-2235 Newsletters, Manuals,
USA Business Cards
VOX/FAX 213 731 1775
email dest...@usc.edu
whavens on BIX
>In article <2t40i0$r...@news.iastate.edu> bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>>In article <2t40f6$e...@rainbow.sosi.com> mda...@rainbow.sosi.com (Maxwell Daymon) writes:
>>>Zalman Stern (zst...@adobe.com) wrote:
>>>: Adobe has no plans for an Amiga port of Photoshop.
>>>
>>>They should.
>>
>> Why? Tell me honestly, how many people would buy it?
> I ask the same question also. If EMPLANT works like
> it is adverted it would run Photoshop. why port
> when you can buy an EMPLANT and supposedly run it
> faster?
An Amiga version would be even faster still.
-Bill "All for one, and one for all"
Stefan Boberg
>In <1994Jun3.2...@ida.liu.se>, y91s...@odalix.ida.liu.se (Stefan
>Boberg) writes:
>> And what would the arguments for an Amiga version of Adobe products be?
> <...>
>
>SPEED!! I talked to Grant Boucher at Amblin Imaging (a division of
> <...>
>Hail the Amiga, EMPLANT is neat and all... but this magic is courtesy of
>the Amiga. So, I ask you, what *could* PhotoShop do if it was ported to
>the Amiga, and the port was done in assembly (not 'C')??
Whoah! Hold it right there. Did you suggest that you would port PhotoShop
to the Amiga, and do it in ASSEMBLY!? Right. That must be one of the more
clueless suggestions I've heard lately. Nobody does applications of that
size in assembly, and there's a good reason. Maintenance is a bitch.
The C compilers are so mature these days that it is simply stupid to write
large projects in anything else since the difference in efficiency is minimal,
and the additional time it takes to write assembly routines is just wasted.
Even in fields such as "action"-game programming where assembly was
previously a given, C has gained ground, since SAS/C now generates code which
is very close to what is optimal in most cases. In fact, most of our new
projects are written largely in C.
The only instance where assembly would give any kind of noticeable speed
increase is for sections of code that is run millions of times. Such as
the compression/decompression routines in LhA. Even in that case, the
speed of my prototype C-only implementation was quite close to that of the
assembly version.
In most cases, the time spent on optimizing in assembly would be better
spent on improving the algorithms themselves. As a real-life example you
can take LZ, which was written in "Highly Optimized Assembly". Still, my
prototype LhA V1 compression code written in C was much faster, simply
because it used an algorithm which was better suited for the job!
>Time is money in the video industry, and if you can save even 10% in
>time, people will want it.. no exceptions.
Yeah. That's why they use SGI machines for the real work, isn't it?
>Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
> 790 N.Lake Havasu Ave #16 Lake Havasu City, AZ 86403
--
Stefan Boberg, Amiga/CD32/Console Programmer - Team 17 Software/LhA Devel.
======== I may work for Team 17, but my opinions don't ==========
== Living in a satellite fantasy, wondering who's your friend == PSB =
Jan Holler
: In <1994Jun3.2...@ida.liu.se>, y91s...@odalix.ida.liu.se (Stefan
: Boberg) writes:
: > jd...@cryo.cryogenic.com (Jim Drew) writes:
: >
: > >Actually, I have my foot in the door at Adobe right now and things look
: > >VERY, VERY promising for an Amiga port.
: >
: > And what would the arguments for an Amiga version of Adobe products be?
: the Amiga. So, I ask you, what *could* PhotoShop do if it was ported to
: the Amiga, and the port was done in assembly (not 'C')??
Done in assembly?? Jeez! I want to know this guys who are jumping on that
one!
: Time is money in the video industry, and if you can save even 10% in
: time, people will want it.. no exceptions.
So let's see. If we take eg. a newer PowerMac which speed is 20% faster, don't
you think this one will make the race? No need to port sw to an Amiga which
is still running the good old '040. AND no time wasted to port sw to an
almost dead computer-line!
-jan
Jim Drew
> An Amiga version would be even faster still.
reduced to a crawl.... all while you are playing Workbench Lander. :-)
Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
790 N.Lake Havasu Ave #16 Lake Havasu City, AZ 86403
Jim Drew
Boberg) writes:
> Whoah! Hold it right there. Did you suggest that you would port PhotoShop
> to the Amiga, and do it in ASSEMBLY!? Right. That must be one of the more
> clueless suggestions I've heard lately. Nobody does applications of that
> size in assembly, and there's a good reason. Maintenance is a bitch.
than 1 meg of OBJECT code, with the source being more than 10 times that
size. It is ALL in 100% highly optimized (and obviously unrolled)
assembly.
If you want to have the best, you got to go with the best possible means.
For this reason, we are writing our own assembler package for the PowerPC
machine (for creation of the 486DX port).
I do not care about size, portability, or maintenance....and if a
business is out to be the best, they won't care either. It amazes me
that everyone even uses 'C' (except to be able to quickly move the code
to another platform), it will simply never compete with assembly-level
coding.
Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
790 N.Lake Havasu Ave #16 Lake Havasu City, AZ 86403
Bob Henry
: Done in assembly?? Jeez! I want to know this guys who are jumping on that
: one!
Writing applications in assembler is common on the Amiga. It is not
common on any other desktop platform. Everything from emulators to word
processors are writen this way, so it is hardly out of the ordinary.
: So let's see. If we take eg. a newer PowerMac which speed is 20% faster, don't
: you think this one will make the race? No need to port sw to an Amiga which
: is still running the good old '040. AND no time wasted to port sw to an
: almost dead computer-line!
You easily forget that the Amiga is widely used in video. If it is used
in video production, there is definately a market for video processing,
and it seems that products like Photoshop are exactly what the majority
of users desire.
As far as the Amiga being "an almost dead computer line," think again.
From the way it appears, the Amiga is probably in a better position now
than it has been in the past ten years. If the information regarding
Samsung is true, you can bet that the Amiga will be an even more powerful
platform in the future, and it will continue to garner even more support
as a multimedia and video tool.
-henry
Ed Brown
> Why? Tell me honestly, how many people would buy it?
I would think that *lots* of video, animation, and graphics artists who
use the Amiga as a Toaster and/or rendering station would jump at the
chance to have Photoshop on their platform of choice. These people make
money from their Amigas and aren't afraid of high prices on the tools
that the *need*. People just playing with their Amigas probably would
not be interested but those *working* with theirs very well will be
interested.
--
---
pacifier.com - Vancouver's Public access Internet (206) 693-0325
telnet or dial the above and type "new" at the prompt to register
Joerg von Frantzius
JD> Actually, I have my foot in the door at Adobe right now and things look
JD> VERY, VERY promising for an Amiga port.
An Amiga port of what?
_____________________________________________________________________
Joerg von Frantzius nov...@darkness.gun.de
Maxwell Daymon
: So let's see. If we take eg. a newer PowerMac which speed is 20% faster, don't
: you think this one will make the race? No need to port sw to an Amiga which
: is still running the good old '040. AND no time wasted to port sw to an
: almost dead computer-line!
Maybe it wouldn't be as dead if it had decent software! (Not to discount
the already good programs out there, but it's not like we've got a lot of
choices).
At least the good old '040 based Amiga multitasks properly. Apple is
projecting late 1996, possibly mid-1997 for pre-emptive multitasking.
Nothing like an OS that doesn't treat you like a 5 year old. I can see it
now "My First PowerMac (TM)" Not ALL professionals like to be talked down
to you know.
Maxwell Daymon
: In <2t40i0$r...@news.iastate.edu>, bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett)
: writes:
: > In article <2t40f6$e...@rainbow.sosi.com> mda...@rainbow.sosi.com (Maxwell
: >Daymon) writes:
: > >Zalman Stern (zst...@adobe.com) wrote:
: > >: Adobe has no plans for an Amiga port of Photoshop.
: > >
: > >They should.
: >
: > Why? Tell me honestly, how many people would buy it?
That same question was asked about the Macintosh versions of software.
Your attitude is retrogressive. To ask that is to accept complacency with
what is out now.
I don't expect we WILL see Adobe Photoshop for the Amiga. Companies that
write software for the Macintosh generally share the snobbery of
Macintosh. Asking Adobe to port Photoshop is like asking a 5 year old
spoiled brat to share his cupcake - it won't happen.
Photoshop is a nice package, but I'd rather have a competitive product
from a mature company. Adobe isn't one of those companies.
Stefan Gimeson
>In <1994Jun8.2...@ida.liu.se>, y91s...@odalix.ida.liu.se (Stefan
>Boberg) writes:
>> Whoah! Hold it right there. Did you suggest that you would port PhotoShop
>> to the Amiga, and do it in ASSEMBLY!? Right. That must be one of the more
>> clueless suggestions I've heard lately. Nobody does applications of that
>> size in assembly, and there's a good reason. Maintenance is a bitch.
>
>You have to 'pay to play'. Our 486DX emulation module is currently more
>than 1 meg of OBJECT code, with the source being more than 10 times that
>size. It is ALL in 100% highly optimized (and obviously unrolled)
>assembly.
Sure, and my Cray-III emulation module (will be out RSN!) is more than 10 meg
of code :-)
(this IS a way of asking WHEN will the 486-emul be out ?)
/stefan
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Stefan Gimeson UNet: e9...@efd.lth.se | Let's build a nightmare-nation
Tunavagen 39 B660 dr_d...@df.lth.se | learn and work as never yet !
S-223 63 Lund Voice:(0)46-394280 | L I F E
Sweden (XTCIZNRG4U) EC in '94 ! Vote YES!! | *the ultimate VR experience*
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Trent Gray-Donald
Jim Drew <jd...@cryo.cryogenic.com> wrote:
>If you want to have the best, you got to go with the best possible means.
>For this reason, we are writing our own assembler package for the PowerPC
>machine (for creation of the 486DX port).
How many programmers does UU have at present?
>I do not care about size, portability, or maintenance....and if a
>business is out to be the best, they won't care either. It amazes me
>that everyone even uses 'C' (except to be able to quickly move the code
>to another platform), it will simply never compete with assembly-level
>coding.
Depends what you are doing, right? There's little to no point of going "down"
to the assembler level to do UI stuff, seeing as very little of your time
will actually be spent in "your" code. Thus why bother with the extra hastle
of going to assembler? You would reply: "it's not an extra hastle". But
when looking at code, most people would find that C is far more readable,
esp. those who didn't write the code and have to take over maintenance of it.
Have you ever taken over development of code from someone else? I've found
that C is far easier to walk through that assembler, even though I am quite
comforable with both.
But of course, you never write UIs, just hard core "speed crucial" code.
WRT your conversion of photoshop or whatever... What happens when Adobe
releases a new version for the Mac? I assume that you fish through their
code for a couple of man-months and find what they changed, instead of doing
things the easy way: splitting the code BEFORE your port into platform
specific and non-specific stuff, allowing changes to the non-specific to
automagically become a part of your product. Of course, if you don't "do"
C or whatever slightly more portable language they use, you're up s**t creek.
Enjoy the port.
Trent
--
Trent Gray-Donald 4A Math/CS
University of Waterloo
Sean Moniz
I am having problems running Xaos Tool's Paint Alchemy on my Emplant.
Everytime I try to access it from Photoshop or Painter I gets as far as
drawing the interface window up and then gives a bus error. I also
have an AMAX in my machine and I dont get the error when running Alchemy
under AMAX. My configuration is listed below:
Amiga 4000/040, Excalibur, 18MB RAM
I have tried it on a friend's 040 without the Excalibur with similar
results. I would appreciate it if you or anyone else reading can help
me with this problem. I am being forced to use AMAX for the time being
and the display is approx 3 times slower than the emplant (256 colour
Super 72).
SM
Marc N. Barrett
>Jim Drew (jd...@cryo.cryogenic.com) wrote:
>: In <2t40i0$r...@news.iastate.edu>, bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett)
>: writes:
>: > In article <2t40f6$e...@rainbow.sosi.com> mda...@rainbow.sosi.com (Maxwell
>: >Daymon) writes:
>: > >Zalman Stern (zst...@adobe.com) wrote:
>: > >: Adobe has no plans for an Amiga port of Photoshop.
>: > >
>: > >They should.
>: >
>: > Why? Tell me honestly, how many people would buy it?
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>That same question was asked about the Macintosh versions of software.
>Your attitude is retrogressive. To ask that is to accept complacency with
>what is out now.
>
>I don't expect we WILL see Adobe Photoshop for the Amiga. Companies that
>write software for the Macintosh generally share the snobbery of
>Macintosh. Asking Adobe to port Photoshop is like asking a 5 year old
>spoiled brat to share his cupcake - it won't happen.
If you seriously believe that, you are an idiot. You have *NO*
understanding at all of how profitable businesses operate.
If Adobe does not port PhotoShop to the Amiga, it is not because of
"snobbery" or some anti-Amiga conspiracy, it would simply be because
they would deem porting PhotoShop to the Amiga to be too expensive with
a much too little likelihood opf return.
Remember that the whole of the Amiga market is VERY small, and 90% of
the very small Amiga market is games systems. So Adobe would be spending
money trying to develop and sell a product to a tiny portion of a very
small market.
I sometimes think that Amiga owners have MUCH in common with socialists
and communists. Both types have a TOTALLY skiewed understanding of
capitalist economics.
Marc N. Barrett
several months to finish a crude port of PhotoShop to an Amiga. Adobe
has said that they will be porting PhotoShop to native PowerPC code.
(They have already released PhotoShop modules that support the AT&T 3210
DSP in AV Macs, so a version of PhotoShop in native PPC code is not
an unlikely occurrence) Further, PowerMacs using screaming PowerPC 604
-- which starts at 100Mhz, and which at 66Mhz outperforms the 100Mhz
Pentium P54C -- should be out in a few months.
Let's put this another way. By time Jim Drew could finish his port
of PhotoShop to the Amiga, a version of PhotoShop should be available
which runs natively on 100Mhz PPC604-based PowerMacs. And what kind
of systems would his Amiga PhotoShop run on? 25Mhz 68040-based Amigas.
Jim Drew: dream on.
+++++++
++++ Marc Barrett -MB-
++ IRC nick: Cyclone | e-mail: bar...@iastate.edu
+ "It amazes me that anyone even uses 'C'". -- Jim Drew
John D Harris
>large projects in anything else since the difference in efficiency is minimal,
>and the additional time it takes to write assembly routines is just wasted.
It's a shame so many people seem to think this way, but I surely have never
seen any evidence of this. I have never seen an application programmed in
C, that I considered extremely fast and impressive. For fairly straight-
forward applications, of which compression/decompression would qualify, C
might get to 1/2 the speed of assembly, and within 3-4 times the file size.
That's not minimal IMO.
What you are saying, is that a computer program is capable of optimizing
code as good as a human programmer, and I won't believe that for a long
time to come. The brain is an incredible device, countless orders of
magnitude better than today's computers at solving abstract situations.
Sometimes, you only need to write some of the key low level stuff in
assembly, to get really close to optimal. That doesn't hurt the
maintenence too bad either, since that stuff doesn't always need to be
changed.
> In most cases, the time spent on optimizing in assembly would be better
>spent on improving the algorithms themselves.
This is absolutely true however. There's rarely enough time to do
everything possible, in today's world. Algorithms are certainly the
highest importance.
John Harris - jha...@cup.portal.com
Jim Drew
writes:
> Let's look at a few things here. It would likely take Jim Drew
> several months to finish a crude port of PhotoShop to an Amiga. Adobe
> has said that they will be porting PhotoShop to native PowerPC code.
> (They have already released PhotoShop modules that support the AT&T 3210
> DSP in AV Macs, so a version of PhotoShop in native PPC code is not
> an unlikely occurrence) Further, PowerMacs using screaming PowerPC 604
> -- which starts at 100Mhz, and which at 66Mhz outperforms the 100Mhz
> Pentium P54C -- should be out in a few months.
>
> Let's put this another way. By time Jim Drew could finish his port
> of PhotoShop to the Amiga, a version of PhotoShop should be available
> which runs natively on 100Mhz PPC604-based PowerMacs. And what kind
> of systems would his Amiga PhotoShop run on? 25Mhz 68040-based Amigas.
Secondly, if you talk to Amblin Entertainment, you will find that the
EMPLANT systems that they are using are beating not only their PowerMACs,
but any and ALL DSP compiled plug-in filters *today*... and not just by a
little, but by 25%. I got this information from Grant Boucher at Amblin
Imaging, who saw the results ran by executive Richard Lewis.
Now tell me... if an emulation can run PhotoShop faster than any
available MAC, what could it do if the Amiga was running it directly??
Jim Drew
>
> WRT your conversion of photoshop or whatever... What happens when Adobe
> releases a new version for the Mac? I assume that you fish through their
> code for a couple of man-months and find what they changed, instead of doing
> things the easy way: splitting the code BEFORE your port into platform
> specific and non-specific stuff, allowing changes to the non-specific to
> automagically become a part of your product. Of course, if you don't "do"
> C or whatever slightly more portable language they use, you're up s**t
>creek.
and then you write them in assembly. Looking at a 'C' program and
converting to assembly can be done in your head quite easily, but I would
much rather not look at someone elses code because my idea just might be
better.
As far as do 'everything' in assembly... why not? I find it much easier
to read and understand assembly code (reguardless of the processor) than
any other language. I don't have time to wade through '{' characters.
Jim Drew
writes:
> >I don't expect we WILL see Adobe Photoshop for the Amiga. Companies that
> >write software for the Macintosh generally share the snobbery of
> >Macintosh. Asking Adobe to port Photoshop is like asking a 5 year old
> >spoiled brat to share his cupcake - it won't happen.
>
> If you seriously believe that, you are an idiot. You have *NO*
> understanding at all of how profitable businesses operate.
>
> If Adobe does not port PhotoShop to the Amiga, it is not because of
> "snobbery" or some anti-Amiga conspiracy, it would simply be because
> they would deem porting PhotoShop to the Amiga to be too expensive with
> a much too little likelihood opf return.
product on the Amiga. The only cost they would have is printing a new
label that said 'Amiga Version Inside!'. Technical support,
documentation, etc. would be the same.
Jim Drew
writes:
> Jim,
>
> I am having problems running Xaos Tool's Paint Alchemy on my Emplant.
> Everytime I try to access it from Photoshop or Painter I gets as far as
> drawing the interface window up and then gives a bus error. I also
> have an AMAX in my machine and I dont get the error when running Alchemy
> under AMAX. My configuration is listed below:
is. Some people can run it just fine (I have heard)... I hate those
kinds of problems.
Michael van Elst
>C, that I considered extremely fast and impressive. For fairly straight-
>forward applications, of which compression/decompression would qualify, C
>might get to 1/2 the speed of assembly, and within 3-4 times the file size.
Well, lets say the code is 2 times the size and it becomes more accurate.
However, compression/decompression is NOT something straightforward as it
mostly requires you to handle bitstreams which can be done more efficiently
in assembly as there isn't really any support in C.
>What you are saying, is that a computer program is capable of optimizing
>code as good as a human programmer, and I won't believe that for a long
>time to come. The brain is an incredible device, countless orders of
>magnitude better than today's computers at solving abstract situations.
Obviously, but optimizing code is, most of the time, not an abstract
operation. It is something where algorithms are known that work _perfect_.
So, even if you have programs that do benefit from a human optimizer
you may want a computer program that does nearly as good as this
reduces the chance of errors in the code.
>Sometimes, you only need to write some of the key low level stuff in
>assembly, to get really close to optimal. That doesn't hurt the
>maintenence too bad either, since that stuff doesn't always need to be
>changed.
Agreed. But usually you also want _portable_ stuff which means you need
the code in a higher level language. Handcoded assembly is then just
a final touch to the program.
>This is absolutely true however. There's rarely enough time to do
>everything possible, in today's world. Algorithms are certainly the
>highest importance.
Correct. :)
Nightblade
> it is adverted it would run Photoshop. why port
> when you can buy an EMPLANT and supposedly run it
> faster?
Because it would be faster yet if written for the Amiga and in
Mac mode you are also stuck with the Mac OS and poor multitasking....
Gary Rients
dar...@sage.cc.purdue.edu
Ronald A. MacCracken
:
: Now tell me... if an emulation can run PhotoShop faster than any
: available MAC, what could it do if the Amiga was running it directly??
And with an '060 board - right Jim!
Ron
Scott Ashdown
In a previous article, bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) says:
> Let's look at a few things here. It would likely take Jim Drew
>several months to finish a crude port of PhotoShop to an Amiga. Adobe
>has said that they will be porting PhotoShop to native PowerPC code.
>(They have already released PhotoShop modules that support the AT&T 3210
>DSP in AV Macs, so a version of PhotoShop in native PPC code is not
>an unlikely occurrence) Further, PowerMacs using screaming PowerPC 604
Code for the 3210 is for the image processing stuff. Everything else
has nothing to do with the DSP.I'm not saying the Adobe isn't working
on (or almost finished) a PPC port, but you're logic's flawed. Support
for the DSP has nothing to do with support for the PPC as far as the
bulk of the application's concerned.
>-- which starts at 100Mhz, and which at 66Mhz outperforms the 100Mhz
>Pentium P54C -- should be out in a few months.
>
> Let's put this another way. By time Jim Drew could finish his port
>of PhotoShop to the Amiga, a version of PhotoShop should be available
>which runs natively on 100Mhz PPC604-based PowerMacs. And what kind
>of systems would his Amiga PhotoShop run on? 25Mhz 68040-based Amigas.
...or 66Mhz 060s. But then again, who cares? The software will be
available, and the hardware will catch up. If it doesn't the point is
moot anyway
--
Scott Ashdown | MPR Teltech Ltd.
Engineer | ash...@mprgate.mpr.ca
| ac...@freenet.carleton.ca
Zalman Stern
> First of all, there already is a version of Photoshop of the PPC.
Its Photoshop (no capital 's'). The current Power Macintosh product is an
accelerator that works with the emulated 68K application. It provides a
speedup of two to five times for the operations it accelerates. That
includes almost all the built-in filtering operations, but none of the
plug-in filters. Painting performance is much better than fully emulated,
but probably not as good as the faster Quadras. (I'm the engineer who wrote
this accelerator for those who question what I do at Adobe.)
> Secondly, if you talk to Amblin Entertainment, you will find that the
> EMPLANT systems that they are using are beating not only their PowerMACs,
> but any and ALL DSP compiled plug-in filters *today*... and not just by a
> little, but by 25%. I got this information from Grant Boucher at Amblin
> Imaging, who saw the results ran by executive Richard Lewis.
Jim Drew has already said a number of things which are untrue as I can
collaborate them against my own knowledge. (E.g. nobody in the Photoshop
area of Adobe has heard anything about an Amiga port of Photoshop or of
Emplant demos.) This man's overall credibility is close to zero in my
opinion. However many of the things he says are just barely within the realm
of possibility, especially if you carefully evaluate them as half-truths.
The current Power Macintosh Photoshop accelerator does not speed up plug-in
filters. They are emulated. Obviously if you compare performance for these
against a machine with a fast 68K processor, they will run faster on the
native hardware than on Apple's emulator. So you get a bimodal performance
distribution and for certain applications, a real 68K Macintosh (or 68K
based Macintosh emulator perhaps) is better. This anomaly will disappear
when we ship the full native Photoshop with native plug-in filters. (And of
course there are lots of third party plug-ins which will run emulated until
the vendors ship new versions.)
Likewise, the AV DSP accelerator does not accelerate plug-in filters, only
the built-in ones. This is unlikely to ever change as Apple's DSP
architecture is already on the wane.
No how does this indicate that a hypothetical Amiga port of Photoshop would
be faster than the Power Macintosh version. (And the idea of getting a speed
increase from running multiple copies of a CPU/memory bandwidth limited
application such as Photoshop on a uniprocessor machine is pure fantasy.)
Another example of Jim's half-truth is that the PowerPC has special opcodes
for emulating the Intel x86 architecture. PowerPC does have a set of byte
reversing loads and stores which help the performance of emulating a
little-endian architecture. PowerPC also supports running in little-endian
mode for OSes like WindowsNT. These are certainly useful things to have if
running x86 software is a goal. However, these instructions are not going to
magically manifest Pentium class emulation performance on PowerPC hardware
that will be available in the next year.
--
Zalman Stern zal...@adobe.com (415) 962 3824
Adobe Systems, 1585 Charleston Rd., POB 7900, Mountain View, CA 94039-7900
Never let a "final candidate" subscript get above the age of consent.
Trent Gray-Donald
Jim Drew <jd...@cryo.cryogenic.com> wrote:
>In <Cr580...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>,
>>
>> releases a new version for the Mac? I assume that you fish through their
>> code for a couple of man-months and find what they changed, instead of doing
>Wrong approach. You look at what it takes to do what changes were done
>and then you write them in assembly.
Isn't that what I just said? But I assume that you meant that you would
look at the changed functionality and change that. And how might you go
about doing that? Rely on the fact that they document their code changes
at a "higher level" and pray that they care about maintenance, unlike
yourself (as you said in another post).
>converting to assembly can be done in your head quite easily, but I would
>much rather not look at someone elses code because my idea just might be
>better.
So I assume you'll just figure out what each and every button does, then
duplicate this functionality? Between that, EMPLANT MAC, EMPLANT 80x86 for
3 platforms, and all the other toys that you're writing, I suppose you
find time to breathe? (you still haven't told me how many programmers you
have working for you.) And dare I ask how many programmers Aldus has working
on Photoshop (or had, when releasing the most recent version)?
>As far as do 'everything' in assembly... why not? I find it much easier
>to read and understand assembly code (reguardless of the processor) than
>any other language. I don't have time to wade through '{' characters.
Sure, reading assembler is clear, especially for complicated conditions
and such, right? The whole screenful of assembler instructions is much
clearer than that one or 2 lines of C. And WRT {, I quite like it, so
it helps define flow of execution more clearly (and easy to bracket match
in the text editor.) But to each their own, I must concede. Language
wars seldom have "winners" and "losers".
Jim Drew
> Another example of Jim's half-truth is that the PowerPC has special opcodes
>
> for emulating the Intel x86 architecture. PowerPC does have a set of byte
> reversing loads and stores which help the performance of emulating a
> little-endian architecture. PowerPC also supports running in little-endian
> mode for OSes like WindowsNT. These are certainly useful things to have if
> running x86 software is a goal. However, these instructions are not going
>to
> magically manifest Pentium class emulation performance on PowerPC hardware
> that will be available in the next year.
Adobe, and who (if any) your supervisor is. If in fact you are in a high
enough position, would you be willing to be corporation for corporation
on your statement above? I am.
Maxwell Daymon
: In article <2t6gnf$s...@rainbow.sosi.com> mda...@rainbow.sosi.com (Maxwell Daymon) writes:
: >Jim Drew (jd...@cryo.cryogenic.com) wrote:
: >: In <2t40i0$r...@news.iastate.edu>, bar...@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett)
: >: writes:
: >: > In article <2t40f6$e...@rainbow.sosi.com> mda...@rainbow.sosi.com (Maxwell
: >: >Daymon) writes:
: >: > >Zalman Stern (zst...@adobe.com) wrote:
: >: > >: Adobe has no plans for an Amiga port of Photoshop.
: >: > >
: >: > >They should.
: >: >
: >: > Why? Tell me honestly, how many people would buy it?
: > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
: >
: >That same question was asked about the Macintosh versions of software.
: >Your attitude is retrogressive. To ask that is to accept complacency with
: >what is out now.
: >
: >I don't expect we WILL see Adobe Photoshop for the Amiga. Companies that
: >write software for the Macintosh generally share the snobbery of
: >Macintosh. Asking Adobe to port Photoshop is like asking a 5 year old
: >spoiled brat to share his cupcake - it won't happen.
: If you seriously believe that, you are an idiot. You have *NO*
: understanding at all of how profitable businesses operate.
Ever heard of a pot and a kettle, both black? If Adobe was completely
profit oriented, they wouldn't piddle around with a toy Macintosh. They'd
do Windows like every other capitalist profit-oriented company. There's
something more to them.
: If Adobe does not port PhotoShop to the Amiga, it is not because of
: "snobbery" or some anti-Amiga conspiracy, it would simply be because
: they would deem porting PhotoShop to the Amiga to be too expensive with
: a much too little likelihood opf return.
For accuracy, it's Photoshop (no capital "S") Somone from Adobe felt that
was an important thing to know, and stated this a few messages back.
: Remember that the whole of the Amiga market is VERY small, and 90% of
: the very small Amiga market is games systems. So Adobe would be spending
: money trying to develop and sell a product to a tiny portion of a very
: small market.
Like I said, you have no vision. Of COURSE that's the current Amiga
market because that's what is available on the Amiga! If things like
Photoshop were available on the Amiga, the Amiga market wouldn't look
that way. You seem to always be predicting Commodore's future, yet you
act like you can't see five minutes in front of you! The software companies
make the markets. Microsoft is so powerful, it can create and control
just about whatever market it wants to. Smaller companies have the same
type of control in a smaller way. Hardware manufacturers are sweating
blood and tears to support Microsoft's bloated GUI. The software is the
important factor - not the hardware. When Microsoft (who stated that the
"DTP" market was too small to consider) decides that they want it, they
will purchase what they want from Adobe and step on the rest. It's
happening right now. A few large companies (including Microsoft) are
simply absorbing other companies. Adobe is one of the larger now, but it
will only take a few more years (maybe less) before Microsoft decides to
take Adobe. You thought AT&T was bad?
: I sometimes think that Amiga owners have MUCH in common with socialists
: and communists. Both types have a TOTALLY skiewed understanding of
: capitalist economics.
And you don't? The applications make the computer, and the computer makes
the applications. The only view you seem to have is the one directly in
front of you whichever way you are facing. You act as if you have tunnel
vision.
Stefan Boberg
>In <1994Jun8.2...@ida.liu.se>, y91s...@odalix.ida.liu.se (Stefan
>Boberg) writes:
>> Whoah! Hold it right there. Did you suggest that you would port PhotoShop
>> to the Amiga, and do it in ASSEMBLY!? Right. That must be one of the more
>> clueless suggestions I've heard lately. Nobody does applications of that
>> size in assembly, and there's a good reason. Maintenance is a bitch.
>
>You have to 'pay to play'. Our 486DX emulation module is currently more
>than 1 meg of OBJECT code, with the source being more than 10 times that
>size. It is ALL in 100% highly optimized (and obviously unrolled)
>assembly.
Yeah. But that's a low-level hack, and not an application. I never suggested
writing a CPU emulator entirely in C.
>If you want to have the best, you got to go with the best possible means.
>For this reason, we are writing our own assembler package for the PowerPC
>machine (for creation of the 486DX port).
Eh? What difference does the assembler itself make?
>I do not care about size, portability, or maintenance....and if a
>business is out to be the best, they won't care either. It amazes me
>that everyone even uses 'C' (except to be able to quickly move the code
>to another platform), it will simply never compete with assembly-level
>coding.
No. Given a long period of time to do the work, a good assembly programmer
won't lose against C-compiler generated code. But in most real-life situations
it's not worth the few percent in additional performance, since twiddling
around with assembly takes about three times longer. And in many cases,
assembly programmers don't quite know what they're doing anyway, so a C
compiler will likely win anyhow.
But if you think you know something the rest of the software developing
world doesn't, keep on writing everything in assembly. I don't care as long
as I don't have to put up with the bugs. But give this a thought: why was
high-level languages developed if assembly is the perfect language?
>Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
--
Stefan Boberg, Amiga/CD32/Console Programmer - Team 17 Software/LhA Devel.
======== I may work for Team 17, but my opinions don't ==========
== Living in a satellite fantasy, wondering who's your friend == PSB =
Stefan Boberg
>> WRT your conversion of photoshop or whatever... What happens when Adobe
>> releases a new version for the Mac? I assume that you fish through their
>> code for a couple of man-months and find what they changed, instead of doing
>> things the easy way: splitting the code BEFORE your port into platform
>> specific and non-specific stuff, allowing changes to the non-specific to
>> automagically become a part of your product. Of course, if you don't "do"
>> C or whatever slightly more portable language they use, you're up s**t
>> creek.
>
>Wrong approach. You look at what it takes to do what changes were done
>and then you write them in assembly. Looking at a 'C' program and
>converting to assembly can be done in your head quite easily, but I would
>much rather not look at someone elses code because my idea just might be
>better.
God. Why don't you write the whole application from scratch then, and call
it something else then? If you're not going to use source from the program,
how the hell can you call it a port?
>As far as do 'everything' in assembly... why not? I find it much easier
>to read and understand assembly code (reguardless of the processor) than
>any other language. I don't have time to wade through '{' characters.
That's because you don't really know C isn't it? If you had, you'd
appreciate what these exotic `{' characters do to help you writing and
reading the code. You'd also know how much faster it is.
>Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
--
Jan Holler
: Jan Holler (hol...@holli.augs1.adsp.sub.org) wrote:
: : So let's see. If we take eg. a newer PowerMac which speed is 20% faster, don't
: : you think this one will make the race? No need to port sw to an Amiga which
: Maybe it wouldn't be as dead if it had decent software! (Not to discount
: the already good programs out there, but it's not like we've got a lot of
: choices).
I agree. But the time IS over. New platforms appear. New technologies are
built. New concepts arise. The niche-market for the Amiga is gone too. Why
should one invest in a computer line which could not make it to the
professional market in over 7 years?
: now "My First PowerMac (TM)" Not ALL professionals like to be talked down
: to you know.
?? I don't understand these words. What do you mean?
Emulation of other platforms is a paradoxon. No one would do it or need it
if there were a substantial software-base for the original one.
-jan
Jan Holler
: : Done in assembly?? Jeez! I want to know this guys who are jumping on that
: : one!
: Writing applications in assembler is common on the Amiga. It is not
I doubt that. There are of course reasons to implement routines in
assembly. The more complex sw gets nowadays the less is assebler used.
: common on any other desktop platform. Everything from emulators to word
: processors are writen this way, so it is hardly out of the ordinary.
It is. Tell us one big newer application that is written in assembly.
: You easily forget that the Amiga is widely used in video. If it is used
: in video production, there is definately a market for video processing,
: and it seems that products like Photoshop are exactly what the majority
: of users desire.
I agree in this point. I'd rather prefer just ONE good wordprocessor for
the Amiga and ONE good spreadsheet. I could not find one yet.
: than it has been in the past ten years. If the information regarding
: Samsung is true, you can bet that the Amiga will be an even more powerful
: platform in the future, and it will continue to garner even more support
: as a multimedia and video tool.
"If" is a condition which causes dreams. I would like to see it this way
too. But I would never recommend an Amiga to any business. The risk is too
high.
-jan
Maxwell Daymon
: Maxwell Daymon (mda...@rainbow.sosi.com) wrote:
: : Jan Holler (hol...@holli.augs1.adsp.sub.org) wrote:
: : : So let's see. If we take eg. a newer PowerMac which speed is 20% faster, don't
: : : you think this one will make the race? No need to port sw to an Amiga which
: : Maybe it wouldn't be as dead if it had decent software! (Not to discount
: : the already good programs out there, but it's not like we've got a lot of
: : choices).
: I agree. But the time IS over. New platforms appear. New technologies are
: built. New concepts arise. The niche-market for the Amiga is gone too. Why
: should one invest in a computer line which could not make it to the
: professional market in over 7 years?
However, the AAA chipset (in its current stage) can be picked up by
someone like Amiga, Inc. was purchased by Commodore. It can be a start to
a new platform based on a 275MHz DEC Alpha if that's what the company
wants. The Amiga still has unique concepts that lend itself well to
higher powered machines.
: : now "My First PowerMac (TM)" Not ALL professionals like to be talked down
: : to you know.
: ?? I don't understand these words. What do you mean?
In the US (I don't know if Sony has taken it to other countries) there is
a product line called "My First ..." They have "My First Radio" and "My
First Phone" and such things. If you can imagine what Barney the dinosaur
would have as a phone or tape player, this is it. The Macintosh (until
System 7, at least) has been a very insipid platform seemingly deisigned
for people that don't have a clue and have no way to get one. A Macintosh
treats you as if it's "You First Computer" Hence, the joke.
: Emulation of other platforms is a paradoxon. No one would do it or need it
: if there were a substantial software-base for the original one.
That's not entirely true. I see emulation as a means to get data between
platforms without having to "guess" that it will work out. I also have a
few companies that demand a SPECIFIC program from a SPECIFIC platform -
and I have to oblige or lose the job. I'm perfectly satisfied to use my
Amiga though. Eventually, I'd like to see distinct operating systems that
interchange data seamlessly. That's where things really fall apart - data
exchange.
Bob Henry
: : Writing applications in assembler is common on the Amiga. It is not
: I doubt that. There are of course reasons to implement routines in
: assembly. The more complex sw gets nowadays the less is assebler used.
Wrong. Ask anyone who owns an Amiga. Assembly is very common on the
machine (it is not on any other, thank you).
: : common on any other desktop platform. Everything from emulators to word
: : processors are writen this way, so it is hardly out of the ordinary.
: It is. Tell us one big newer application that is written in assembly.
How about Lightwave, Emplant, Real 3D, and many others? Does this bother
you, or are you simply trying to be difficult?
: : You easily forget that the Amiga is widely used in video. If it is used
: : in video production, there is definately a market for video processing,
: : and it seems that products like Photoshop are exactly what the majority
: : of users desire.
: I agree in this point. I'd rather prefer just ONE good wordprocessor for
: the Amiga and ONE good spreadsheet. I could not find one yet.
FinalCopy is a great word processor. I use it all the time, and I can
certainly hold my own when it comes to writing a college paper. As I have
no need for a spreadsheet, I couldn't really tell you how good Amiga
spreadsheets are. :-)
: : than it has been in the past ten years. If the information regarding
: : Samsung is true, you can bet that the Amiga will be an even more powerful
: : platform in the future, and it will continue to garner even more support
: : as a multimedia and video tool.
: "If" is a condition which causes dreams. I would like to see it this way
: too. But I would never recommend an Amiga to any business. The risk is too
: high.
multimedia. If you are interested in maintaining the status quo, you
should sell nothing more than Windows machines.
Maxwell Daymon
: Jan Holler (hol...@holli.augs1.adsp.sub.org) wrote:
: : the Amiga and ONE good spreadsheet. I could not find one yet.
: FinalCopy is a great word processor. I use it all the time, and I can
: certainly hold my own when it comes to writing a college paper. As I have
: no need for a spreadsheet, I couldn't really tell you how good Amiga
: spreadsheets are. :-)
FinalCopy is a *good* word processor. Not a *great* word processor. It
doesn't even have an "insert text" function. Word Perfect for Windows
6.0, and Microsoft Word - THOSE are *great* word processors. I understand
that Final Copy works "for you" but it is obviously lacking features that
other platforms have coming out their collective ears.
A spreadsheet is needed too.
: : : than it has been in the past ten years. If the information regarding
: : : Samsung is true, you can bet that the Amiga will be an even more powerful
: : : platform in the future, and it will continue to garner even more support
: : : as a multimedia and video tool.
: : "If" is a condition which causes dreams. I would like to see it this way
: : too. But I would never recommend an Amiga to any business. The risk is too
: : high.
: multimedia. If you are interested in maintaining the status quo, you
: should sell nothing more than Windows machines.
Give me three major, reliable sources for parts that won't cost me my
first born child and it might become easier to recommend an Amiga. Right
now I have a broken A3000T (needs a new PAL, if nothing else) and the
cheapest I can repair it for is $400 - motherboard swap. I could get a
brand new 25MHz 386DX motherboard for under $80!! (and keep mine). That
is a very large factor in this whole mess.
The problem has never been "Commodore's dead, my machine doesn't work
anymore" the issue is "Commodore's dead, WHEN my machine breaks, will
there be parts available for it? If I CAN'T repair it, the clones won't be
able to read my Amiga disks, so even if I switch to a clone - I'll lose
ALL my data. I guess I'd better switch now while I still have access to
my data."
Sorry, but being a business owner, I cannot survive without my work - and
if I have to get a clone to do that... Well, many people would switch to
a clone. I think I'd just close my business and go to work for a
furniture store of something.
Eyal Teler
|> If you seriously believe that, you are an idiot. You have *NO*
This statement always makes me laugh. I'm sorry, but I just can't help it.
And MB keeps writing it. I just love the Guy!
|> understanding at all of how profitable businesses operate.
|>
|> If Adobe does not port PhotoShop to the Amiga, it is not because of
|> "snobbery" or some anti-Amiga conspiracy, it would simply be because
|> they would deem porting PhotoShop to the Amiga to be too expensive with
|> a much too little likelihood opf return.
Jim Drew answered this.
|> Remember that the whole of the Amiga market is VERY small, and 90% of
|> the very small Amiga market is games systems. So Adobe would be spending
|> money trying to develop and sell a product to a tiny portion of a very
|> small market.
MB is not unique in having this point of view. But people holding it should
consider that of the high end Amiga sold, many are used for graphics. Macs
may not be sold for games, but many (say 99.9%) are used for business, and
not graphics. The Amiga graphics market itself is not necessarily smaller
than the Mac one (and indeed it wasn't smaller as of late last year).
|> I sometimes think that Amiga owners have MUCH in common with socialists
|> and communists. Both types have a TOTALLY skiewed understanding of
|> capitalist economics.
Actually many people who have a good grasp of capitalist economics don't
have any grasp of how businesses work. Just look at all those capitalistic
unsound decisions businesses make to see that what you know about economy
isn't necessarily the way things work in reality.
(And I wouldn't give Jim Drew as an example, because he's an Amiga lover,
and therefore doesn't count.)
Alan Wen (409)696-8909
>(And I wouldn't give Jim Drew as an example, because he's an Amiga lover,
>and therefore doesn't count.)
>
I guess I wouldn't count Jim Drew either. It's been proven that
amiga-fantatics are prone to making poor business decisions.
alan
John D Harris
>>forward applications, of which compression/decompression would qualify, C
>>might get to 1/2 the speed of assembly, and within 3-4 times the file size.
>
>Well, lets say the code is 2 times the size and it becomes more accurate.
Note to C programmers before reading the next paragraph: Obviously there
are exceptions to any generalization, and it is not my intent to flame all
C programmers. I'm just considering the average size and speed of all of
the application programs I have seen over the years. Don't assume my use
of the word 'typical' refers to you personally.
In the real world, this is probably a hard comparison to make. The type of
programmer that writes high level languages, typically isn't as concerned
about code size and speed, and wouldn't spend as much time optimizing code.
In comparisons using real products, even the 3-4 times larger estimate
would be too low, but that isn't a fair assessment of the language itself.
On the other hand, someone who has really detailed knowledge about how the
compiler generates code, may be able to get closer to that 2-1 figure. But
I haven't seen it in commercial software.
>...but optimizing code is, most of the time, not an abstract
>operation. It is something where algorithms are known that work _perfect_.
It is for me. There are so many different ways a program can be written,
and ways structures and routines can be shared between different sections.
I consider it a very complex, and very abstract process. I know that some
of the neat hacks I have done over the years could not have been done in C.
Although, I still write a lot of code for 8 bit machines, where I don't
have any choice but to write code to the absolute extremes of my ability.
>But usually you also want _portable_ stuff which means you need
>the code in a higher level language. Handcoded assembly is then just
>a final touch to the program.
Making code more portable, IMO, is the only justifiable reason for writing
in a high level language. And it's a valid reason that I don't have any
problems with. Too many programmers try further justification, saying that
the cost of C programming is minimal. That's the part I don't agree with.
I don't agree with the maintenence argument either. People that are more
comfortable with C will naturally find C easier to maintain. Excellent
assembly programmers shouldn't have problems with code maintenence. I have
never had a major problem going back to code I wrote 10 years ago, or even
other people's code. I've done a lot of it, including raw object code
stuff without source. And no, I don't crack programs, but I do a lot of
improvements to other people's code for programs I use all the time.
John Harris - jha...@cup.portal.com
Jim Drew
Boberg) writes:
> >If you want to have the best, you got to go with the best possible means.
> >For this reason, we are writing our own assembler package for the PowerPC
> >machine (for creation of the 486DX port).
>
> Eh? What difference does the assembler itself make?
I have talked to Apple about this (imagine me talking to Apple..hehe) and
they are looking into it. Our emulation could save them a substantial
chunk (hundreds of millions according to Apple's director of their
educational division) of the market. I hope that we really don't have to
write the package, but assembly is the only way you can take advantage of
the PPC's special emulation opcodes.
> No. Given a long period of time to do the work, a good assembly programmer
> won't lose against C-compiler generated code. But in most real-life
>situations
> it's not worth the few percent in additional performance, since twiddling
> around with assembly takes about three times longer. And in many cases,
> assembly programmers don't quite know what they're doing anyway, so a C
> compiler will likely win anyhow.
There is no way I would write something in 'C' or any other language, not
even to open a window and print 'hi'. I have a very MACROized system
with hundreds of highly tuned (not generic) MACROs for such things as
opening windows, screens, gadget control, etc.
Did you write LHA in 'C'?
Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
Jim Drew
> appreciate what these exotic `{' characters do to help you writing and
> reading the code. You'd also know how much faster it is.
learned in the last 18 years of programming (while collecting several
college degrees on the topic)...
Programming in 'C' is not faster _for me_ than assembly... no exceptions,
and as far as the squiggles go.. I can't stand the '{' chars cluttering
my screen... or the time wasted using CED (or whatever you might use) to
check and see if two squiggles are aligned... no thanks. 'C' was fun on
the C64 as a toy, but I dabbled a bit on the Amiga just to see (being the
opened minded-want-to-be-better person I am).... I am still preaching
assembly...
Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
790 N.Lake Havasu Ave #16 Lake Havasu City, AZ 86403
(602) 680-9004 Voice (602) 453-6407 FAX
72662,14 - CIS j.drew2 - GEnie
"Just breaking the laws of physics, courtesy of the Amiga..."
Bob Henry
: >(And I wouldn't give Jim Drew as an example, because he's an Amiga lover,
: >and therefore doesn't count.)
: >
: I guess I wouldn't count Jim Drew either. It's been proven that
: amiga-fantatics are prone to making poor business decisions.
yes, I suppose you are right. Afterall, in the rather small confines of
your mind _anyone_ who strays from the well-trodden path of Microsoft and
Apple _must_ be mentally ill. Well now, isn't that a real boon for the
rational mind?
perhaps you should take the time to tell us _exactly_ how Amiga users are:
1) All obviously so irrational as to be "fanatics."
2) How this fits in with the idea that Amiga users -by the sheer fact
that they use Amigas- are "prone to making poor business decisions."
As usual, your ad hominem arguments stand up about as well as your
intellect does.
-henry
Jim Drew
writes:
>
> (And I wouldn't give Jim Drew as an example, because he's an Amiga lover,
> and therefore doesn't count.)
Alan Wen (409)696-8909
>perhaps you should take the time to tell us _exactly_ how Amiga users are:
alright. I'll do just that.
>1) All obviously so irrational as to be "fanatics."
Remember the numerous posts in this and other newsgroups of people having
"save the amiga" campaigns by having each amiga owner donate a small sum of
money? Remember the drools of cattle that said that they'd rather not use
computers at all unless it was an amiga? Quoting from someone
else..."Companies I support has to make their own profits."
>2) How this fits in with the idea that Amiga users -by the sheer fact
>that they use Amigas- are "prone to making poor business decisions."
I could write an essay on this one. What if your computer breaks down with
all of your prudent data with no way to find inexpensive repair parts?
What if by sheer luck that your business succeeds and you need to buy a
load of new amigas?
>As usual, your ad hominem arguments stand up about as well as your
>intellect does.
Listen you indiana yahoo. :-) Lets see who has to pay the most to
upgrade/repair his computer in a year.
>-henry
alan
Todd Masco
>check and see if two squiggles are aligned... no thanks. 'C' was fun on
>the C64 as a toy, but I dabbled a bit on the Amiga just to see (being the
>opened minded-want-to-be-better person I am).... I am still preaching
>assembly...
>
>Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
Yikes. The upshot of all this is that, should the Amiga ever go to a non-
68000 family processor, we're going to be stuck in 680x0 emulation modes
until you can port *all* of your assembly -- where in C, you'd just
recompile and relink.
It seems to me that having C code around, even for just prototyping, is
worth the effort.
[Hey, waitaminute -- you're telling us then that you're writing seperate
bodies of code for the PPC 486DX emulator and the Amiga one? Then why
did you say that completing the Amiga version is necessary for the completion
of the PPC one? I had assuemed that you'd be using the same code, but
from the above that seems to have been a misconception. Sounds really
hairy...]
By the way, towards your goal of increasing Amiga support: I'm involved in
a startup business, assembling computer-readable books. So far, we're
supporting Voyager on the Mac (it generrates hypercard stacks), ASCII,
RTF, and Microsoft's Multimedia viewer on the PCs. I very much want to
support the Amiga, but don't have any ideas as to a good format (preferably
that is trivial) to convert from RTF -- we're talking over a thousand books,
as of this writing.
Any suggestions?
--
Todd Masco | Bibliobytes books on computer: available through
cac...@bronze.lcs.mit.edu | any unix host with email.
Nightblade
> a startup business, assembling computer-readable books. So far, we're
> supporting Voyager on the Mac (it generrates hypercard stacks), ASCII,
> RTF, and Microsoft's Multimedia viewer on the PCs. I very much want to
> support the Amiga, but don't have any ideas as to a good format (preferably
> that is trivial) to convert from RTF -- we're talking over a thousand books,
> as of this writing.
>
>Any suggestions?
AmigaGuide format would be _very_ nice!!
Gary Rients
dar...@sage.cc.purdue.edu
Nightblade
>
>Remember the numerous posts in this and other newsgroups of people having
>"save the amiga" campaigns by having each amiga owner donate a small sum of
>money? Remember the drools of cattle that said that they'd rather not use
>computers at all unless it was an amiga? Quoting from someone
>else..."Companies I support has to make their own profits."
A few examples do not in any way imply that all Amiga users are
the same. An analogous situation would be to see a pack of rabid
dogs and conclude that all dogs are rabid and travel in packs.
Maybe you should take a course in logic (or at least try using
some common sense).
>>2) How this fits in with the idea that Amiga users -by the sheer fact
>>that they use Amigas- are "prone to making poor business decisions."
>
>I could write an essay on this one. What if your computer breaks down with
>all of your prudent data with no way to find inexpensive repair parts?
>What if by sheer luck that your business succeeds and you need to buy a
>load of new amigas?
First of all, not all Amiga users use their Amiga(s) in a business.
That aside though, none of my Amigas have ever broken down, so the
average yearly repair cost does not seem to be very high. You are
also assuming that people who do use Amigas in their business bought
those computers with the knowledge that Commodore was in trouble.
Assumption (especially when the assumption is critical to your point)
is not an advisable tactic...
>>As usual, your ad hominem arguments stand up about as well as your
>>intellect does.
>
>Listen you indiana yahoo. :-) Lets see who has to pay the most to
>upgrade/repair his computer in a year.
Yes, lets!!
>>-henry
>
>alan
Gary Rients
dar...@sage.cc.purdue.edu
Bob Henry
: Remember the numerous posts in this and other newsgroups of people having
: "save the amiga" campaigns by having each amiga owner donate a small sum of
: money?
Well, yes... I never took it seriously. Did you? :-)
Remember the drools of cattle that said that they'd rather not use
: computers at all unless it was an amiga?
No. I don't remember any "cattle." I do not usually refer to people as
"cattle," thank you. you remind me of some maligned dictator with
rhetoric like that. Sorry.
: I could write an essay on this one. What if your computer breaks down with
: all of your prudent data with no way to find inexpensive repair parts?
Parts are not a problem. Who said they were?
: What if by sheer luck that your business succeeds and you need to buy a
: load of new amigas?
Yes... I suppose that I will simply _buy_ them (if that's what needs to
be done).
: Listen you indiana yahoo. :-) Lets see who has to pay the most to
: upgrade/repair his computer in a year.
I may be a yahoo, but I can safely be assured of a good resale value on
my kooky Amiga.
Wasn't that nice? :_)
Maxwell Daymon
: >1) All obviously so irrational as to be "fanatics."
: Remember the numerous posts in this and other newsgroups of people having
: "save the amiga" campaigns by having each amiga owner donate a small sum of
: money? Remember the drools of cattle that said that they'd rather not use
: computers at all unless it was an amiga? Quoting from someone
: else..."Companies I support has to make their own profits."
A few loud Amiga fanatics and you make a sweeping generalization about
the entire market. And you call _US_ irrational?
: >2) How this fits in with the idea that Amiga users -by the sheer fact
: >that they use Amigas- are "prone to making poor business decisions."
: I could write an essay on this one. What if your computer breaks down with
: all of your prudent data with no way to find inexpensive repair parts?
: What if by sheer luck that your business succeeds and you need to buy a
: load of new amigas?
: >As usual, your ad hominem arguments stand up about as well as your
: >intellect does.
: Listen you indiana yahoo. :-) Lets see who has to pay the most to
: upgrade/repair his computer in a year.
Let's see whose computer can do the job at all! When the clones catch up
to the Video Toaster and related products, buying an Amiga might be a bad
decision. Until then, for some, it's the only decision.
Jim Drew
(and has ALWAYS shown a profit since its existance), I don't mind these
'poor' business decisions...
Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
Andre Yew
>Currently, there are NO assemblers (of any type) available for the PPC.
This is false. There is at least one assembler commercially
available for the PowerPC. It even supports Ford Motor Company's
version of the PPC.
--Andre
--
PGP public key available
Jim Drew
writes:
>
> Yikes. The upshot of all this is that, should the Amiga ever go to a non-
> 68000 family processor, we're going to be stuck in 680x0 emulation modes
> until you can port *all* of your assembly -- where in C, you'd just
> recompile and relink.
processor type to another is very simple... granted not as quick as C in
terms of just recompiling and presto, instant version... but, you would
be surprised just how fast code can be moved from processor to processor
at the assembly code level...
> [Hey, waitaminute -- you're telling us then that you're writing seperate
> bodies of code for the PPC 486DX emulator and the Amiga one? Then why
> did you say that completing the Amiga version is necessary for the
>completion
> of the PPC one? I had assuemed that you'd be using the same code, but
> from the above that seems to have been a misconception. Sounds really
> hairy...]
version completed.. the MMU stuff of the 486DX is the worst of all things
to emulate... what is printed in books, and what is real, does not match.
Nobody needs to really know the internal workings of the MMU page
descriptors (the internal states left when page faults are generated,
etc).. because these are internal to the processor, and are never seen
outside. Once the 'engine' is fully working, then porting is possible.
There are still some issues with the MMU that are not completely
resolved, and the only method we have reliably found to help us
understand what is going on inside the 486DX is deliberately cause
faults, record their results and compare them to our i486 books and work
up accuracy tables (truth tables).
So, as I have stated to everyone (including Apple), there will be
absolutely no work on the PPC version until the Amiga version is out, and
then only when the assembler is either made available (if one exists
somewhere unknown to us) or we write one. We have done enough tinkering
(using the Amiga to generate code... dc.w xxxx is not a fun way to code!)
with the PPC to know exactly what can be done, and how fast it will be.
>
> By the way, towards your goal of increasing Amiga support: I'm involved in
> a startup business, assembling computer-readable books. So far, we're
> supporting Voyager on the Mac (it generrates hypercard stacks), ASCII,
> RTF, and Microsoft's Multimedia viewer on the PCs. I very much want to
> support the Amiga, but don't have any ideas as to a good format (preferably
> that is trivial) to convert from RTF -- we're talking over a thousand
>books,
> as of this writing.
know of any other way around it.
Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
eri...@yvax.byu.edu
> So, as I have stated to everyone (including Apple), there will be
> absolutely no work on the PPC version until the Amiga version is out, and
> then only when the assembler is either made available (if one exists
> somewhere unknown to us) or we write one.
So Jim, how did you get quoted all over MacWeek and PC Week saying that a PPC
version would be released by late summer?
------
Eric Carter
Scott_Edwar...@cup.portal.com
>
>I am having problems running Xaos Tool's Paint Alchemy on my Emplant.
>Everytime I try to access it from Photoshop or Painter I gets as far as
>drawing the interface window up and then gives a bus error. I also
>have an AMAX in my machine and I dont get the error when running Alchemy
>under AMAX. My configuration is listed below:
>
>Amiga 4000/040, Excalibur, 18MB RAM
>
>I have tried it on a friend's 040 without the Excalibur with similar
>results. I would appreciate it if you or anyone else reading can help
>me with this problem. I am being forced to use AMAX for the time being
>and the display is approx 3 times slower than the emplant (256 colour
>Super 72).
>
I have the same problem.
Alan Wen (409)696-8909
>So Jim, how did you get quoted all over MacWeek and PC Week saying that a PPC
>version would be released by late summer?
Simple. Jim simply made a mistake....again.
>Eric Carter
alan
Steven Cobb
>Well, then it gets ported... but in assembly. Moving code from one
>processor type to another is very simple... granted not as quick as C in
>terms of just recompiling and presto, instant version... but, you would
>be surprised just how fast code can be moved from processor to processor
>at the assembly code level...
Ok, my turn to jump in all of this :-)
Jim, I applaud your zeal to jump in and assemblyize Photoshop but
I just don't see that it can be worth it (to you or the Amiga
community). Just recompiling Photoshop 'C' and writing the
system/graphics glue routines in assembly seems to make so much more
sense time wise. It'll get out faster, will be as reliable as
the Mac version (FWIW) and will be infinitly easir to follow
the upgrade path. Indeed optimizing a few itensive routines might
be worthwile. It also seems like it (re-compiling) will be seen
as a more credible enterprize to Adobe than 'rewriting' Photoshop
in assembly.
Regarding PPC assemblers: There is a good reason that most RISC
machines don't have assemblers. It's a real pain to look at
reams and reams of simple instructions. The 68000 family CISC
instructions were beautiful and as close to a HLL as you'll get.
This is not true for RISC. Granted, you'll be able to _write_
macros, but if you are _reading_ dissassembled code it is a sea
of simple operations. Just look at how much larger RISC executebles
are in comparison to CISC.
Besides, we need the 060 boards, the multiOS file system, a working
native Photoshop -- not just an infinitly tweaked version of Photoshop.
Regards,
--
\________/\ ______________________ ______________________
Steven Cobb \ / sc...@ucsd.edu \__/ I've got Babylon 4.
\ / BIX: steve_cobb Accepting
P11 UCSD \/ ision Lab reasonable offers.
Manuel Lemos
Jim Drew (jd...@cryo.cryogenic.com) wrote:
: I do not care about size, portability, or maintenance....and if a
: business is out to be the best, they won't care either. It amazes me
: that everyone even uses 'C' (except to be able to quickly move the code
: to another platform), it will simply never compete with assembly-level
: coding.
Depends on who's coding. Experienced programmers only do in assembly
the time critical parts of the code. It's highly convinient to do the
remaining parts of the code in an higher level language than assembly (C
for instance).
In fact, using assembly for non time (and maybe non space) critical code
just for pure obcession is quite imature. I know it because I've that
much obcessed as you are now to assembly in the past.
Don't worry time will be a good master to you as well. Regardless of
how much gifted you might be now, sometime you'll be brought to reason
and you'll discover that you don't know it all. You'll realize how
stupid it was to bash everybody that used to fight your opinions.
Keep up the good work,
Manuel Lemos
Nightblade
>the time critical parts of the code. It's highly convinient to do the
>remaining parts of the code in an higher level language than assembly (C
>for instance).
If the programmer has a large stock of macros it's much the same
as using a high level language, anyway. A big advantage is that
the macros have been specifically written to suit the programmer's
particular style. A disadvantage is that it can make it more of
a pain to port....
Gary Rients
dar...@sage.cc.purdue.edu
Jim Drew
> In article <19940613.8...@cryo.cryogenic.com>,
> So Jim, how did you get quoted all over MacWeek and PC Week saying that a
>PPC
> version would be released by late summer?
I was told today by Apple that there is in fact an assembler for the PPC
included with PPC MPW. Funny, apparently not everyone at Apple is aware
of this.
Jim Drew
start work on this project so I can be left free for other Amiga stuff.
Jim Drew
> Don't worry time will be a good master to you as well. Regardless of
> how much gifted you might be now, sometime you'll be brought to reason
> and you'll discover that you don't know it all. You'll realize how
> stupid it was to bash everybody that used to fight your opinions.
unlikely that I will switch into slow mode and adopt any other language...
Scott Moseler
|> Well, then it gets ported... but in assembly. Moving code from one
|> processor type to another is very simple... granted not as quick as C in
|> terms of just recompiling and presto, instant version... but, you would
|> be surprised just how fast code can be moved from processor to processor
|> at the assembly code level...
Jim, I don't want to slam your efforts because anything is possible but some
of the statements you make seem a bit far fetched.
Are you telling us in your assembly language code you use no subroutines and
no stack? If you do use the stack tell me how it is very simple to move
the 68K code to the PPC without a significant rewrite. Of course you can write macros to emulate the 68K instruction in the PPC but this would certainly be inefficient code. How about giving us some insight on how you would convert code for the 68K to the PPC.
Also, what are these special emulation opcodes you keep talking about? How about giving some examples.
|>
|> So, as I have stated to everyone (including Apple), there will be
|> absolutely no work on the PPC version until the Amiga version is out, and
|> then only when the assembler is either made available (if one exists
|> somewhere unknown to us) or we write one. We have done enough tinkering
|> (using the Amiga to generate code... dc.w xxxx is not a fun way to code!)
|> with the PPC to know exactly what can be done, and how fast it will be.
How hard have you tried to get an assembler? What do you call the software
that comes with the YARC PPC board.
Scott
Hans Guijt
>By the way, towards your goal of increasing Amiga support: I'm involved in
> a startup business, assembling computer-readable books. So far, we're
> supporting Voyager on the Mac (it generrates hypercard stacks), ASCII,
> RTF, and Microsoft's Multimedia viewer on the PCs. I very much want to
> support the Amiga, but don't have any ideas as to a good format (preferably
> that is trivial) to convert from RTF -- we're talking over a thousand books,
> as of this writing.
>
>Any suggestions?
Try AmigaGuide, a hypertext format. It is well-supported on amiga.
Hans
Trent Gray-Donald
Jim Drew <jd...@cryo.cryogenic.com> wrote:
>
>haha... yeah, right. Actually, I am hiring more programmers right now to
>start work on this project so I can be left free for other Amiga stuff.
I ask again: how many programmers do you have working for you?
And you are hiring people NOW for a major project that you claimed would
be done by end of summer? They'd better be wizards... not to mention totally
insane (not a compliment.)
Trent
--
Trent Gray-Donald 4A Math/CS
University of Waterloo
Jan Holler
: Jan Holler (hol...@holli.augs1.adsp.sub.org) wrote:
: : : Writing applications in assembler is common on the Amiga. It is not
: : I doubt that. There are of course reasons to implement routines in
: : assembly. The more complex sw gets nowadays the less is assebler used.
: Wrong. Ask anyone who owns an Amiga. Assembly is very common on the
: machine (it is not on any other, thank you).
Well. I own Amigas almost since they exist. I know some people using only
assembler but they never came up with something larger. I know a lot of
people which use higher languages on the Amiga. They almost never use
assembler. I study computer-science. Our tools are highly developed
environments eg SPECS. This is the exact contrary of using assembly.
There is no reason to make your life harder than it is. Design of software
is important, testing it is important, maintenance is important.
Implemtenting it is just the necessary work one has to do. Never forget
that the step of designing > implementing > testing > maintaining is not
that much hardware-bound. But if you involve assembler in this chain it is.
It makes the whole concept almost impossible. Software-engineers dream of a
hardware-independant project. Assembler does not help to get there.
Let's take eg Emplant. Why are there zillions of updates? Either the design
of it's software was not done very well or the testing/maintaining is very
hard. It IS obviously a result of choosing the wrong tool.
: : It is. Tell us one big newer application that is written in assembly.
: How about Lightwave, Emplant, Real 3D, and many others? Does this bother
: you, or are you simply trying to be difficult?
No this does not bother me. But I don't think you are correct. You were
talking of a 100%-implementing in assembly, don't forget.
: : "If" is a condition which causes dreams. I would like to see it this way
: : too. But I would never recommend an Amiga to any business. The risk is too
: : high.
: multimedia. If you are interested in maintaining the status quo, you
: should sell nothing more than Windows machines.
Why for Christ's sake is any critisism regarding the Amiga seen as a
personal attac?
-jan
Jan Holler
: Jan Holler (hol...@holli.augs1.adsp.sub.org) wrote:
: However, the AAA chipset (in its current stage) can be picked up by
: someone like Amiga, Inc. was purchased by Commodore. It can be a start to
: a new platform based on a 275MHz DEC Alpha if that's what the company
: wants. The Amiga still has unique concepts that lend itself well to
: higher powered machines.
Nowadays I consider the hardware as the less important subject compared to
software. The Amiga-OS makes the Amiga unique. A computer is a black-box.
Users generally don't care what's inside this box as long as the
performance is ok and the system runs fine. If the MAC could/would run
Amiga-OS from the beginning we'd all had Macs I think.
: : Emulation of other platforms is a paradoxon. No one would do it or need it
: : if there were a substantial software-base for the original one.
: That's not entirely true. I see emulation as a means to get data between
: platforms without having to "guess" that it will work out. I also have a
[...]
: interchange data seamlessly. That's where things really fall apart - data
: exchange.
Correct. That's why I can't understand at all why eg FinalWriter cannot
import/export Word-files.
-jan
Bob Henry
: Well. I own Amigas almost since they exist. I know some people using only
: assembler but they never came up with something larger. I know a lot of
: people which use higher languages on the Amiga. They almost never use
: assembler. I study computer-science. Our tools are highly developed
: environments eg SPECS. This is the exact contrary of using assembly.
Look. First you argue that assembler programming is not "common" on the
Amiga. I showed you that it is. then you argue that it is impossible to
do large applications in assembly. I showed you that there are _many_
applications on the Amiga which are certainly high-powered and are
written in assembly. Then you say that this simply isn't true (again).
It would certainly concede that writing applications is easier in some
ways using "C" but this does not detract from the truth of my statement.
: There is no reason to make your life harder than it is. Design of software
: is important, testing it is important, maintenance is important.
Yes..
: Let's take eg Emplant. Why are there zillions of updates? Either the design
: of it's software was not done very well or the testing/maintaining is very
: hard. It IS obviously a result of choosing the wrong tool.
I don't think so. The emulator itself -written in assembly- is perhaps
150K in size! It also works very well (I have only found a _single_
application that doesn't run). Is that choosing the wrong tool?
: Why for Christ's sake is any critisism regarding the Amiga seen as a
: personal attac?
I didn;t mean to make it sound as though it was a personal attack. I am
simply saying that the Amiga is an excellent tool for certain things. To
say that it isn't is just plain short sighted.
-henry
Stefan Boberg
> Did you write LHA in 'C'?
The majority of the program is written in C and Objective-C. The C source
is about 1.2Meg, and the assembly source is about 150K. Object-code-wise,
the assembly stuff takes up approx. 6% of the program. If would not want
to write LhA in assembly only, that I can tell you.
> Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
--
Stefan Boberg, Amiga/Console programmer - Team 17 Software / LhA Developm.
EMail: bob...@team17.adsp.sub.org Fido: 2:204/404.7
======= Disclaimer: I only speak for myself, not Team 17. ===========
Stefan Boberg
> Jan Holler (hol...@holli.augs1.adsp.sub.org) wrote:
> : : Writing applications in assembler is common on the Amiga. It is not
>
> : I doubt that. There are of course reasons to implement routines in
> : assembly. The more complex sw gets nowadays the less is assebler used.
>
> Wrong. Ask anyone who owns an Amiga. Assembly is very common on the
> machine (it is not on any other, thank you).
For demos and games, yeah. For anything larger and more complex the
majority of people use high-level languages.
> : : common on any other desktop platform. Everything from emulators to word
> : : processors are writen this way, so it is hardly out of the ordinary.
>
> : It is. Tell us one big newer application that is written in assembly.
>
> How about Lightwave, Emplant, Real 3D, and many others? Does this bother
> you, or are you simply trying to be difficult?
Real 3D? Not written in assembly.
Lightwave? I doubt it.
Emplant? Application? A Hack.
Jay Goodwin
Jay Goodwin
fal...@ksuvm.ksu.edu
Paul van der Heu
: I agree in this point. I'd rather prefer just ONE good wordprocessor for
: the Amiga and ONE good spreadsheet. I could not find one yet.
How do you define good ?? If you define good as either word or excel get a
clone, otherwise get FinalWord and Procalc or MaxiPlan
: "If" is a condition which causes dreams. I would like to see it this way
: too. But I would never recommend an Amiga to any business. The risk is too
: high.
That depends entirely on the type of business
--
Paul 'Starchild' van der Heu, The MotherShip Connection
pv...@motship.hacktic.nl
You cannot do a multitasking operating system in less than 4MB
- Bill Gates
Paul van der Heu
: How about Lightwave, Emplant, Real 3D, and many others? Does this bother
I doubt lightwave is done in in Assembler, Jim claims Emplant is and I know
Real3D V.2 is not ..
Alan Wen (409)696-8909
>clone, otherwise get FinalWord and Procalc or MaxiPlan
^^^^^^^^
You've got to be kidding. I've used Procalc and Maxiplan on my amiga.
Procalc is at best useable. Maxiplan is the worse piece of crap ever to
have graced my eyes. Maxiplan is only what a good shareware package
aspires to be. How dare you compare Maxiplan to Excel.
> Paul 'Starchild' van der Heu, The MotherShip Connection
alan
Gregg Le Blanc
>Bob Henry (he...@silver.ucs.indiana.edu) wrote:
> : How about Lightwave, Emplant, Real 3D, and many others? Does this bother
>I doubt lightwave is done in in Assembler, Jim claims Emplant is and I know
>Real3D V.2 is not ..
huh huh...Better see Mr. Goodwin's post... He might know... huh huh...
TTFN
Gregg
__
/// Gregg Le Blanc : uleb...@mcl.mcl.ucsb.edu Santa Barbara
__/// Learning conservation of charge! | emb...@castle.ed.ac.uk Endinburgh
\\X/ No electrons were created or destroyed in the making of this message.
Doug Dyer
> : assembler but they never came up with something larger. I know a lot of
> : people which use higher languages on the Amiga. They almost never use
> : assembler. I study computer-science. Our tools are highly developed
> : environments eg SPECS. This is the exact contrary of using assembly.
>
> Look. First you argue that assembler programming is not "common" on the
> Amiga. I showed you that it is. then you argue that it is impossible to
> do large applications in assembly. I showed you that there are _many_
> applications on the Amiga which are certainly high-powered and are
> written in assembly. Then you say that this simply isn't true (again).
> It would certainly concede that writing applications is easier in some
> ways using "C" but this does not detract from the truth of my statement.
>
Lets settle this. Assembly sucks.
Ive written huge chunks of MIPS assembly and it isn't fun. Nothing like
forgetting a branch/load delay slot in a noreorder, or forgetting to
USE a noreorder to prevent instruction movement... Neat pipeline stuff but
too dangerous for the bulk of things.
Some compilers, aka MIPS C, are so advanced it pays to use them.
Use the profiler if you want to know what routines should be in assembly.
All it takes in most cases are a few common routines, and the rest remaining
in C has no noticable performance disadvantage at all.
to each his own, I guess...
--
Doug Dyer - dy...@alx.sticomet.com | Real-time systems . * //[]//
Software Technology, Inc. (STI) | Space flight/ground software ^^ .
DC office: 703-329-9707 | vxWorks MIPS development & support
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rob Patrick Martin
>Bob Henry (he...@silver.ucs.indiana.edu) wrote:
>: Jan Holler (hol...@holli.augs1.adsp.sub.org) wrote:
>: : : Writing applications in assembler is common on the Amiga. It is not
>
>: : I doubt that. There are of course reasons to implement routines in
>: : assembly. The more complex sw gets nowadays the less is assebler used.
>
>: Wrong. Ask anyone who owns an Amiga. Assembly is very common on the
>: machine (it is not on any other, thank you).
>
>: How about Lightwave, Emplant, Real 3D, and many others? Does this bother
>: you, or are you simply trying to be difficult?
>
>No this does not bother me. But I don't think you are correct. You were
>talking of a 100%-implementing in assembly, don't forget.
I do believe that Pagestream is also suppose to be 100%
assembler. (But I have been wrong before ;)
>
>: : "If" is a condition which causes dreams. I would like to see it this way
>: : too. But I would never recommend an Amiga to any business. The risk is too
>: : high.
>
>: multimedia. If you are interested in maintaining the status quo, you
>: should sell nothing more than Windows machines.
>
>Why for Christ's sake is any critisism regarding the Amiga seen as a
>personal attac?
>
> -jan
Rob
--
Rob P. Martin | "Too many people with too little to
rpma...@acs.ucalgary.ca | do, too much to say, and not enough
--------------------------| brains to handle both at the same
This space for rent. | time."
John D Harris
>just for pure obcession is quite imature. I know it because I've that
>much obcessed as you are now to assembly in the past.
ALL code is space critical in a multitasking environment. There's always
something better I can use memory for, than having it wasted on inefficient
programming. Of course, I don't have that choice, because today's
programming practices just tell us it's ok to have to go out and buy more
RAM.
>Don't worry time will be a good master to you as well. Regardless of
>how much gifted you might be now, sometime you'll be brought to reason
>and you'll discover that you don't know it all. You'll realize how
>stupid it was to bash everybody that used to fight your opinions.
Not a chance. Heck, I *like* programming assembly. It feels more
comfortable to me than any thing else I've tried, which makes it easier and
faster -for me- to write code in. If I had a Cray, I'd still program in
assembly.
Do whatever you feel comfortable with, but don't assume other people will
feel the same way. You can pry my assembler from my cold, dead, fingers.
John Harris - jha...@cup.portal.com
Jim Drew
>
> Are you telling us in your assembly language code you use no subroutines
>and
> no stack? If you do use the stack tell me how it is very simple to move
> the 68K code to the PPC without a significant rewrite. Of course you can
>write macros to emulate the 68K instruction in the PPC but this would
>certainly be inefficient code. How about giving us some insight on how you
>would convert code for the 68K t> o the PPC.
the entry registers. I am not a fan of stack usage. I suppose some
might view the port as a complete re-write... for us, it's just moving
code while modifying it for a new processor...
> Also, what are these special emulation opcodes you keep talking about? How
>about giving some examples.
swapping, etc... things that are necessary for the 486DX (or any Intel
processor) to be emulated.
I talked to Apple and they have tracked down several 'decent' PPC
assemblers for us, and we listed with APDA.
Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
Jim Drew
Boberg) writes:
> In article <19940612.8...@cryo.cryogenic.com>
>jd...@cryo.cryogenic.com (Jim Drew) writes:
>
> > Did you write LHA in 'C'?
>
> The majority of the program is written in C and Objective-C. The C source
> is about 1.2Meg, and the assembly source is about 150K. Object-code-wise,
> the assembly stuff takes up approx. 6% of the program. If would not want
> to write LhA in assembly only, that I can tell you.
that you are losing a tremendous amount of speed if the actual
compression/decompression routines (all of it) is not written in
assembly... I can't imagine that your compression table and lookup would
be done in 'C'.
Jim Drew - CEO, Utilities Unlimited International, Inc.
Jan Holler
: Jan Holler (hol...@holli.augs1.adsp.sub.org) wrote:
: : I agree in this point. I'd rather prefer just ONE good wordprocessor for
: : the Amiga and ONE good spreadsheet. I could not find one yet.
: How do you define good ?? If you define good as either word or excel get a
: clone, otherwise get FinalWord and Procalc or MaxiPlan
Yes, you are correct here. I'd say you can't compare Excel and Word. Excel
ist a very powerful spreadsheet-application, Word a huge overloaded thing,
but at least it supports footnotes.
But what I want to say is, that it's a pity that such applications do not
exists for the Amiga (in spite of my dislike of MS).
What do people Emplant or Amax need for? What Software are they running
through it? I dare say just to fill a gap in the Amigas software-base and
not to have a better Mac than a Mac with the Apple-Logo.
-jan
Jan Holler
: Look. First you argue that assembler programming is not "common" on the
I have either the time nor the will to argue with you. Believe what you
think is correct, I don't care. I just wanted to point out that you might
be wrong (in my eyes) and if there is some innocent newcomer to the Amiga,
that he is not afraid to take the jump into programming it later.
: do large applications in assembly. I showed you that there are _many_
: applications on the Amiga which are certainly high-powered and are
: written in assembly.
Which obviously is plain wrong. I can write down several names too and say
the opposite.
: : Let's take eg Emplant. Why are there zillions of updates? Either the design
: : of it's software was not done very well or the testing/maintaining is very
: : hard. It IS obviously a result of choosing the wrong tool.
[paraphrase not erased to give J.Drew a chance to respond :-)]
: I don't think so. The emulator itself -written in assembly- is perhaps
: 150K in size! It also works very well (I have only found a _single_
: application that doesn't run). Is that choosing the wrong tool?
You don't have the understanding of software-developement. It's not a trial
and error thing. (Some may say it is :-) )
: I am simply saying that the Amiga is an excellent tool for certain things. To
: say that it isn't is just plain short sighted.
Who said that? Certainly not me.
-jan
Eyal Teler
|> Let's take eg Emplant. Why are there zillions of updates? Either the design
|> of it's software was not done very well or the testing/maintaining is very
|> hard. It IS obviously a result of choosing the wrong tool.
Not even remotely. As someone who has worked on a large project for specific
clients, I know that how many changes a user can request. You have to
constantly modify the program, and therefore produce updates. Usually you
only produce an updated version once in a long time, but that's just because
it's not easy doing the version updating itself.
The frequent updates of Emplant mean for me that Jim is listening to his
clients, and has a good mean of distributing the updates.
As for writing applications in assembly, I would agree that it's not the
most convenient thing to do. Still, the 680x0 assembly language is perhaps
the easiest to use, having the advantage of complex CISC instructions, a
relatively small instruction set, and a reasonably large number of general
purpose registers.
And I haven't seen any indication that assembly programs tend to be more
buggy than those written in high level languages.
ET
Andy Makely
>Jim Drew (jd...@cryo.cryogenic.com) wrote:
>:
>: Now tell me... if an emulation can run PhotoShop faster than any
>: available MAC, what could it do if the Amiga was running it directly??
>And with an '060 board - right Jim!
>Ron
Being an Amiga junkie, i had never worked with Photoshop until we bought
it at work last week. I will put myself in the face of flame by saying
that i have never seen ANYTHING on the Amiga with the power and
flexibility of Photoshop. Don't get me wrong, i love my Amiga like
everyone else, i just wish someone would write an airbrush tool that
actually looked like one, and not something that came out of an almost
empty, spattering Krylon spray paint can.
My point is, if there WAS (will be) a Photoshop port, people like me
would buy it in a heartbeat. No question.
While you're at it, can you port Fractal Painter? Please?
--
the rendermouse...
mak...@netcom.com
Nicholas A Duddy
> Being an Amiga junkie, i had never worked with Photoshop until we bought
> it at work last week. I will put myself in the face of flame by saying
> that i have never seen ANYTHING on the Amiga with the power and
> flexibility of Photoshop. Don't get me wrong, i love my Amiga like
> everyone else, i just wish someone would write an airbrush tool that
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> actually looked like one, and not something that came out of an almost
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> empty, spattering Krylon spray paint can.
> My point is, if there WAS (will be) a Photoshop port, people like me
> would buy it in a heartbeat. No question.
>
> While you're at it, can you port Fractal Painter? Please?
You mustn`t have TV-Paint then. I load it up just to play with the air
brush. I only have TV-Paint Jnr, so i can`t do much else :-)
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\ Nick Duddy C= VIC-20 3.5K 176*184 16 Color /
/ cee...@cee.hw.ac.uk DATACASSETTE + JOYSTICK! SPEED!!!! \
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