Soap Box time

[Rob Healey]

	Time for me to drag out my soap box, (drag drag scrape drag thud),
	and sound off. I've been using AmigaDOS more than AMIX lately and
	I'd like that to change...

	Enter Soap Box Mode:

	Observation #1:

	The Amiga is a MULTIMEDIA machine! However, when I use AMIX my
	poor 3000 is given a frontal lobodemy and can only do medium rez
	B&W graphics. B^(. This is a BAD(tm) thing. While you can do graphics
	with a better X server this still leaves out ALOT of the endearing
	qualitys of the Amiga, like it being able to 

	SAY The competition suck rocks through a straw!

	and other useful audio things. Where are the sound and SPEECH librarys
	for AMIX? I can count the number of UNIX workstations that can
	tell the competition they suck rocks through a straw on none fingers.

	Having a SAY command under AMIX would be one HELL of a marketing bullet
	on the rag advertisements. Move over Mac and SPARC, here's a REAL
	MultiMedia machine!

	It would also be nice to create full color apps that use the Amiga
	graphics modes along with audio and mouse & joystick ports WITHOUT
	having the overhead of X. Maybe put the apps on a special real time
	scheduler, R4 has scheduling customization built in, lets use it
	to take advantage of the hardware if need be. Give me librarys for
	using the Amiga's native graphics, audio, speech, mouse and Joystick
	capability! If AMIX can't let me take advantage of the hardware
	in a resonable manner, what good is it?
	
	The characteristics that make the Amiga able to beat out it's RISC
	competition are the same characteristics being LEFT OUT of Amix,
	let's give Amix the same capability as it's AmigaDOS sibbling!

	Observation #2:

	Since the librarys will be LONG in the making, is there GOOD, DETAILED
	information on how I can access, program and use the Amiga hardware
	under Amix? I know I can use the IOCTL to map the chip memory into
	my user space and that I can use high rez color graphics and the mouse;
	the fractal program proves this. I can't find the detailed information
	I need. Do I have to by tons of AmigaDOS manuals and extrapolate
	to make things work under UNIX? I think some tech documents on how
	to access and use the hardware under Amix would be a GOOD idea.

	End Soap Box mode.

	I've raised my rabble for the month, I'll let someone else carry on.

		-Rob
-- 

Rob Healey                                          rhealey at digibd.com
Digi International (DigiBoard)
Eden Prairie, MN                                    (612) 943-9020