sutherla@qtp.ufl.edu (scott sutherland) (03/24/90)
Someone posted about the Computer Chronicles on DTP which included the Amiga (yeah!!), Mac, and IBM. I happened to catch it last night on the local PBS station. Well, I was impressed. Unfortunately, I did not have a pen and pencil with me, so I couldn't write the specifics down, but the guy showing the Amiga was using a NEW DESKTOP PRESENTATION software package in which scripts could be created very easily with icons. It could also control a videodisk player and show videodisk stuff with Amiga graphics. The guy showing the Amiga was ALSO from COMMODORE, but I do not recall his name, NOR do I recall the name of the package he was showing. However, ONE thing I DO recall was that he said that this new Desktop Presentation software was going to be, get this, ***BUNDLED WITH ALL NEW A2000 AND UP CPU's***. Does anyone know if this has happened yet? Anyone have details on the product? It looks really slik and could help to remove some of the "C-64" GAME MACHINE image of the Amy. Please email to me. However, others might like to know this stuff as well, so you might consider posting to the net. Scott Sutherland sutherla@qtp.ufl.edu
ruslan@uncecs.edu (Robin C. LaPasha) (03/26/90)
In article <954@orange9.qtp.ufl.edu>, sutherla@qtp.ufl.edu (scott sutherland) writes: > > Does anyone know if this has happened yet? Anyone have details on the product? > It looks really slik and could help to remove some of the "C-64" GAME MACHINE > image of the Amy. > > Please email to me. However, others might like to know this stuff as well, so you > might consider posting to the net. > LONG "review" of AmigaVision, derived from demos, ahead... ^L AmigaVision - the Commodore authoring system for the Amiga - was publicly shown for the first time Sunday, 3/18, at AmiEXPO's multimedia panel. [First, a minor digression - Gail Wellington said on Saturday morning that it wasn't named AmigaVision because they couldn't THINK of anything better, but only because they couldn't AGREE on anything better ;^)] Before Roy Strauss (spelling not guaranteed) of CBM began his presentation, he loaded up his ANIMs, ILBMs, SMUS and 8SVX files with a critter labelled as "Application Mover." I guess it hints that you won't NEED to be moving so many things with the CLI. As AmigaVision came up on the screen, a square workspace/file window appeared on the left side, while AV's main menu was across the bottom of the screen (a la DigiPaint, if you want to think of it that way.) From left to right, the Master Icons were labelled: Control - Interrupt - Data - Wait - AV - Module. Then he began to create a flowchart of events/objects with the menus. He clicked the icon for "AV". (Exceedingly crude pics supplied here.) _________ |/\/ | -- | As he clicked, the bottom panel changed from that of the |---- ----| Master menu to that of the AV menu. Icons for "Gfx" (i.e. |_________| still images, I think,) Anims, Brushes, Screen, Video (i.e. videodisk input,) Text, Sound, Speech, and Music were displayed (along with one in the right corner to get back to the Master Menu.) [Screen - Sound - Speak - Music - Gfx - Brush - Video - Anim - Text - Master] To "launch a video segment" as the guy on Computer Chronicles said, you first define your particulars via the video requester. Video requester - name: memo: unit: pause (button) video (file requester) audio 1: audio 2: index: command: (starting and ending frame nos.) Controller (button) He clicked and dragged on the Screen icon, and popped it into the flowchart. Then he clicked on it (I think) to 'open it up', and a requester for screen res, colors, etc. appeared. Screen Definition requester - name: memo: directory (button) file: screen definition high (button) interlace (check button) depth 4 (button) overscan (check button) default (button) cursor (check button) palette: initialize (button) edit (button) left (button) top (button) transition: (Thus, it seems that every time you plop one of these suckers down, you can redefine the screen and palette, so you're not stuck with one set for the whole...flowchart-critter.) ____ / _ \ As the rep went back to the Main menu and clicked on the Wait / / | \ icon (all right, it's an upraised hand in a stop sign,) the | | |/| | menu items changed to Condition, Mouse, Keyboard, Touch, and | | / | Delay. He grabbed the Mouse icon, and dragged it up to the \ \ | / flowchart, which was starting to look like a flowchart now. \____/ The window devoted to this flowchart had a grid on it for slapping down the icons with what could be called indented style, and there were text "comments" of a sort farther to the right. So, of course you could choose what sort of mouse click you were Wait-ing for to trigger the next thing, via an entire requester for selecting the desired mouse events. Wait Mouse requester - name: memo: timeout (seconds) any click (button) editor (button) exclusive (button) auto remove (button) OK (button) help (button) reset (button) cancel (button) ________ \ / Besides Wait, there's also Interrupt, which _apparently_ \ ! / generates an interrupt based on input from the Keyboard or \ / Mouse. (Why something called Remove was there and what it \/ did, I'm not really sure.) These various program-type triggers can be utilized by Control, which is ___ the equivalent of the heart of everybody else's scripting | | languages. Control's menu items include Call, Conditional ___| | GoTo, GoTo Procedure, Absolute GoTo (i.e. go to this place,) |___ | as well as Loop, EndLoop, If-Then, etc. Though I expect | | there's an Else along with the If-Then, I _don't_ know |___| if there's an equivalent of Pascal's CASE or C's SWITCH statements, which would let you have (more than two) branching conditions without mucking around in nested loops of if-thens. ____ |__| Data's file cabinet icon has been long awaited. In fact, |\__\ one of the speakers mentioned that although he'd been \|___| creating interactive presentations with Deluxe Video and Director, he was waiting for the Data functions to revamp some of his image databases into a new presentation. The Data functions let you use Dbase3 compatible databases, and can use info squirted in from SuperBase as well. (I didn't check, but I gather this means that they can be _created_ as well as used in AmigaVision. It was an assumption...) Selections in Data's menu include Select, R/W, Delete, Variables, Form, and Output. The Module menu helps manage all the mess. Its icons get you to a ------------- Subroutine, end the flowchart with Quit, allow a Return | O ___ O | from a branch point, let you use a Timer in your flowchart, | / \ | help economize by preloading files with Resource, or Execute | ( ) | a command (well, maybe a "program" or "script",) either | \___/ | WorkBench, CLI, or ARexx. You could think of it as the | O O | other end of the equivalents to scripting languages. ------------- (The "module" icon as seen on Computer Chronicles looked different than the one at AmiEXPO, which is probably a more recent version.) Since the Untitled flowchart started out with a "Module" icon in the upper left corner of the screen, I'd imagine that means that your flowchart is building a Module, which can be combined and coordinated with other Modules. You can have a lot of modules. You can have modules inside of each other. When you can't stand to look at ALL THE PIECES of the module anymore, you can click on a major 'less-indented' icon, pull down the Edit menu from the top, and select Telescope. Then all the icons (that represent what you want to happen when a condition is met, say) that were indented from the original one you clicked on suddenly disappear and become subsumed under the one icon. Want 'em back to look at? Do it again and they come back. Sort of like an outline processor. Edit menu items - Collect Copy Info Preview Telescope Print Search Some of the icons on the flowchart had little triangles in the lower right hand corner. The triangle indicates that the icon can have "children" (i.e. other icons) associated with it. If the triangle is solid/filled, that means it DOES have children associated with it. It is apparently a marker to what CAN BE and HAS BEEN telescoped into it. Getting lost? You can Preview what you've got for modules at any time. You can also preview files (like the AV icon files) in the requesters, before selecting them. Want to give out your masterpiece? You can create and install runtime modules. (Steve Gillmore, the panel moderator, suggested that one of AmigaVision's first "products" to be released will be a tutorial for 1.4.) The requester for hit areas had some other goodies that I caught, some more completely than others - you could choose Rectangular, Polygon, Circle, Oval, Freehand, and among the 16 or so types there was apparently the intriguing "Text Variable". It flashed by quickly... An "Expression Editor" for branching likewise went by so fast I couldn't see the details. It's apparently for fine tuning, or maybe just specifying, the Conditional functions. AmigaVision is very object-oriented, all modules and whatnot. In fact, it's so modular and "good-programming" styled that some folks wondered if users could be misled into jumping into a project that they don't know how to design properly. (It depends on whether you think folks can do good programming design if they can't or won't do coding. I say it's two different skills.) It's also VERY SLICK. Gave me the kind of gasp I had in the first few minutes of seeing the NeXT screen and programming interface, y'know. Obviously very powerful, though the rep only had time for a wee taste of a demo. (Most of the presenters were on for only 5-8 minutes apiece.) The Don'ts and Unknowns: When I buttonholed Roy Strauss after the talk, I asked: My pet peeve - Does it do multiple fonts in a single text object/module? He said no. He was surprised by the question, so I explained what a big deal that is if you're trying to do language education. Anyone who IS concerned, please let C-A know that if it can't go into the initial release (see below,) it'd be appreciated for 1.1. (He suggested John Campbell of CATS as the recipient of such suggestions.) When? Soon. "A couple of months. It's just about to be christened gamma." Gail Wellington also hinted at soon. Like, within 4 months or so. Price? "Priced like other Amiga products in the field." Okay, maybe that means $50-$200. Rather a range. Bundling with new systems and/or 1.4? Well, if a runtime module was to be distributed as a tutorial with 1.4 they wouldn't HAVE to bundle it. But, "we're considering bundling it." Completely forgot to ask - How big do those module critters get, especially when you've made them into a runtime package? How much memory will you need for AmigaVision? Are the text/anim/sound/etc. files stored separately? PostScript 3/24/90: Computer Chronicles just showed the AmigaVision system [local station broadcast was WUNC, channel 4, on 3/23/90] in addition to the AmiEXPO presentation (in a Computer Chronicles show devoted to desktop video.) The presenter there noted that the AV system requires 512K "to run," that it would be for sale in the next couple of months, and bundling with the 2000 series "and up" (!) was being considered apart from a "standalone price." (The information in this text is just what I recall from viewing the demonstration and show, I haven't had first-hand use of the product and haven't seen the specs.) > Scott Sutherland > sutherla@qtp.ufl.edu -- Robin LaPasha |Keeper of the Amiga ruslan@ecsvax.uncecs.edu |Hypermedia Mailing List
msiskin@shogun.us.cc.umich.edu (Marc Siskin) (03/26/90)
In article <954@orange9.qtp.ufl.edu> sutherla@qtp.ufl.edu (scott sutherland) writes: > > Someone posted about the Computer Chronicles on DTP which included >the Amiga (yeah!!), Mac, and IBM. I happened to catch it last night on the .... >It could also >control a videodisk player and show videodisk stuff with Amiga graphics. >The guy showing the Amiga was ALSO from COMMODORE, but I do not recall his >name, NOR do I recall the name of the package he was showing. However, ONE >thing I DO recall was that he said that this new Desktop Presentation software >was going to be, get this, ***BUNDLED WITH ALL NEW A2000 AND UP CPU's***. >Does anyone know if this has happened yet? Anyone have details on the product? > >Scott Sutherland >sutherla@qtp.ufl.edu Scott, what you just posted matched what the Commodore Presentor at the CALICO conference (the COmputer Assisted Language Instruction COnsortium) said to one of the people watching the demo (I didn't hear it but was asked about it later). He said that AmigaVision the new authoring package would be included with the machine soon. I thought that this might be only for educational packages, but if they said it on Computer Chronicles, then it may be CBM's answer to Hypercard being bundled with the MAC . AmigaVision is still in Beta Testing and therefore not yet available. When it is available I am sure that an announcement will be made here (if I have to do it myself :-) ) Marc Siskin, Media Production Assistant Langauge Lab Univ of Michigan. Msiskin@shogun.us.cc.umich.edu userHEBE@umichub DISCLAIMER: I am not a beta tester for AmigaVision. All impressions and comments are based on about 5 hours use over the past week while preparing a demonstration for one of the beta testers who just received a new copy of the program.