sutherla@qtp.ufl.edu (scott sutherland) (09/28/89)
Okay. Due to popular demand, I am posting a summary of the article: From the Well: Insider's Report on the Amiga Developer's Conference '89 by Gail Wellington Commodore General Manager for Worldwide Software and Product Support This article appears in the October/November issue (Volume 1, Number 4) of Antic's Amiga + plus. I have summarized this article with the permission of Nat Friedland, Editor of the magazine. Permission was granted to reproduce the article verbatim, but after I had typed in the summary. Therefore I will let the summary stay as is. Scott Sutherland ********************************************************************* First, it is noted that Gail has attended all 6 DevCons, and is thus well suited for writing this review (MHO). The main topic of conversation was Version 1.4 of the OS. The direction Commodore is taking is toward a more professional, more standardized, and easier- to-use system. Dr. Henri Rubin, Chief Operating Officer and member of Commodore's Board of Directors, announced that ARexx will be a part of the OS. Also included will be built-in scalable fonts. All remaining traces of BCPL in the DOS commands will be removed (although Gail does not see what all the fuss over this was about). Individual sessions on how developer's can take advantage of these new features were presented by Commodore's actual systems software engineers from West Chester and Los Gatos. Also included were sessions on how to make compatible peripherals for Amiga systems. No new information was released on the Amiga 3000. Its status is the same as when Irving Gould, Commodore's Chariman of the Board and CEO announced in March, 1988, that it would have a 68030 on the motherboard and be compatible with current models. Workshops on advertising, legal protection, and import/export, among others, were offered as well. Harry Copperman, new president of Commodore's U.S. sales sub- sidiary, promised 5 objectives for his first year: 1) Focus on the Amiga. 2) Improve the Commodore image through advertising, being more professional and more focused. 3) Improve distribution (quality, not quantity) by product positioning and a VAR (??? S.S.) program. 4) Establish a plan and a team for going after sales to education and government. 5) Pay attention to after-sales support--i.e. service, training, and customer support. Extensive notes (two large binders) were distributed to all developers and should be available from CATS now. Price TBA. Putting all this into perspective, Gail points out what all this means to the average Amiga user. 1) Developer's will be able to offer increasingly powerful applications. Some of this is due to improvement in the OS, such as a) Access by the console device to the character map, which means it will be easier to implement cut-and- paste between applications. b) Record locking and notification so that a program can tell if a file has been modified. c) Links are added, which will allow a single directory entry to have two different names. 2) Some things will get faster: a) Floppy support for the FFS. b) Faster text display. c) Faster display of WB icons and opening of drawers. d) An icon can be selected before the entire drawer is displayed. 3) More standardization in the way things look: a) Standard file requester. b) Standard font requester. c) Improved icons. d) Icons can now be labelled with proportional fonts. 4) Changes to the user interface: a) Guru meditation numbers will be replaced by text and system messages. b) An optional full screen editor as part of the OS. c) Things that you want to have boot when you turn on your system can be installed by just dragging them into the Startup drawer. d) Select All and Drag Select will be standard methods for choosing icons. e) No more trashed icon names with Cleanup. SOME NOTES: Scalable fonts may NOT be ready for the first release of WB1.4, but it will soon follow. Scalable fonts mean: 1) Screen display of fonts in any size, and output to match. 2) Higher quality output than can be displayed on the screen. 3) A vast library of new fonts, including some well-known professional standards. Some other features may also not be in the initial release of WB1.4, but will follow soon after. All developer's went home with an Alpha version of the V1.4 software. ********************************************************************** Please note that I do not profess to understand all of what I have summarized here, nor its significance to the Amiga community at large. I leave that to each individual to decide. I hope this summary is of some use to the net. NO RELEASE DATE IS GIVEN FOR WB 1.4. Scott Sutherland sutherla@qtp.ufl.edu