NetSurf Development (results of the poll and a bit of a waffle)
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
And the winner is…. I’m partly posting this because I want to update everyone who voted in my super-scientific and well thought out poll but mostly because it will bring me to a round 400 posts on the forum! :—) Also I have a spare moment while a colleague is configuring a Windows computer so I can train my replacement and what better way to spend the time than to reflect… Who would have thought that trying RISC OS a few years ago out of frustration mostly because I was after something that booted up and ran more quickly than Raspbian—and was getting a bit fed up with Debian in general (partly because it all just works now and that’s boring!)—would lead to so much of my time and interest devoted to the OS. Also its brought a sense of fun back into computing that I haven’t felt for ages, and playing old computer games made me realize what I most enjoyed about gaming (we’ve got a PS4 but its hardly been used because modern games aren’t as much fun!). I’m looking forward to getting some things from AMCOG Games at some point soon because they look like just the sort of fun that I like too! I don’t know if its my weird personality or outlook or if there is something fundamentally wrong in my head (vs. the “rest of society” who think Computer == Windows) but I have found using the OS to be the most intuitive and rewarding experience I have ever had when it comes to graphical user interfaces. I use Debian a lot and still am most at home on the command line there, and I am using MacOS increasingly which is very good, looks pretty and does some things that RISC OS can’t (like find the USB drive shared by our router and automatically have it available in the Finder…that’s a nice touch). All of these things could and would have been done in RISC OS if they had as much resources available as Apple though so I don’t begrudge the lack of the little tweaks. Overall if I was pressed into a corner and given a free choice of systems to work with I would still choose RISC OS, and I’m not a die-hard old Acorn user, I only started using it around 2015! Like I say, maybe I’m weird, but there is definitely something about it that has gotten under my skin. All that being said there are two things that make me go to other operating systems, one is if I need to open an RTF/DOC/ODT file and I hope to get a copy of TechWriter soon which will fix that issue. The other issue is if I need to browse the web with any degree of sanity…now I can’t buy a solution to that but maybe I can help make it a reality. I know that I’m waffling on and probably saying things that don’t need to be said but essentially what I’m getting at is this: I have decided to devote all my spare programming time to improving NetSurf on RISC OS. There I said it. Its even in bold! Now, before you get excited, remember I’m easily distracted by Lemmings and I don’t have a lot of time (maybe a couple of hours a week at the moment) but as I get into it I’m sure I will be able to make a small contribution or two. I should also add that I plan on building and developing from within RISC OS. I know that this will probably be super-slow even if I bring out the Pi3 but I like tea and it gives me time to meditate while its building. If it all goes pear shaped I have two Debian servers that are only a !NettleSSH away and I can readily share files between them and RISC OS so I might switch to cross-platform development if I get really stuck but I think its important to start out with the intention of developing on the platform that I will be using. This will validate the build toolchain that I will be using and also with the ever increasing number of fast RISC OS capable processors and ports coming along it is something that will only get better with time. Also it gives me an excuse to save up and buy one of the fancy new boards! I’m fairly certain that I’m still on the NetSurf development mailing list so will give them a nudge and let them know I’m here but other than that I suspect it will all go quiet for a bit until I have something useful to contribute. In the mean-time I’d like to say a big thanks to all the folks here (especially Rick and Andy who have helped enormously with software and hardware since I got started) and a wider thanks to whom-ever cares for RISC OS and the fact it has enriched my computing life and made it fun again! |
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
I have a vague notion of keeping this post as a means of updating everyone here as to my progress but we’ll see how long that lasts! So far I have:
Building the cross-compiling toolchain actually took all day and the browser itself took about 20 minutes. My Debian machine is only a 1.1GHz dual core (or thereabouts) though as the big beefy one died so I’ve replaced it with something I had lying around. This “new” one while being slow is a lot quieter though! I have settled on building it and cross-compiling it using a samba-shared folder and NettleSSH to control the Debian machine (which is mostly headless…unless its decoding and displaying something from Freesat). Ultimately I do want to get a build to work natively on RISC OS but after discussion with the NetSurf developers I recognize that it might be a wee while before that is possible…one can but dream. What is next:
As ever I’ll keep you posted! |
Peter Scheele (2290) 172 posts |
Took a long time seeing the length of your story :-) And a good story it is, I like your enthusiasm! |
Glen Walker (2585) 469 posts |
Well its been a couple of weeks and I have in the true spirit of any good development project done lots of other non-related things instead of working on what I intended on doing! I have gone as far as building NetSurf on my cross-compiling server and testing it, then have identified a bug I am hoping to tackle, have created a branch to put the work in and started digging around in the source code. I can understand why the bug is occuring but have not come up with an ideal solution yet. Instead I have created a WebJames server, played around installing some games on my RISC OS computer (after fixing the graphics), almost fried it by soldering a PSU into the GPIO directly and done a lot of other things which were not at all related to programming! Hopefully next week I’ll make a good stab at fixing it and then upload my work to the branch I created—from there it will be merged into a release at some point in the future after some of the other developers have had a chance to check it over I guess. Slow progress is better than no progress! |
patric aristide (434) 418 posts |
Not sure why that’s an issue? Ok RISC OS won’t auto-detect your network drive but I use this method all the time to share files with my iPad. On my ancient A4000 I have to resort to FTP (in theory Omni should work but not for me) but LanMan98 (samba client) on my BBxM works flawlessly with router attached pen drives. File type extensions can be problematic though if you don’t zip data. The secret to enjoying RISC OS is to not try forcing it to do certain things. Like say Youtube. Sure you can use Murnong and whatever software to download and convert YT videos to mpeg files but IMHO that’s just painful. |