DarkWyrm literally wrote the manuals on how to program for Haiku. There is no getting around the fact that there ARE and WILL be ports of programs from another operating system and modified enough to run on Haiku but the program is not “Haiku aware”.
How about having DarkWyrm write a guide on the top 10 things (or 20 or 50) things that would make programs better by being Haiku aware. As in making the apps feel more “native” and less (a lot less) like a port.
Maybe something like this exists already but I couldn’t find it on the Development | Haiku Project page. People have made comments about how ported apps don’t work or feel the same as native Haiku apps. If there was a book that showed people how to make changes to a ported app to be Haiku aware so they don’t have to search “all over” to find the things that would have the most impact to a ported app, I think then more programmers that are porting apps would include those things in the apps.
Just a suggestion - Note that I am having increasing memory problems with caused me to have to retire after 40 years as a programmer/systems analyst. I have loved BeOS since the late ‘90s and now that I’m retired I am no longer forced to use Windows or think about it at all. Also Apple is going away from everything that Steve Jobs believed in as far as design in really, really bad ways. So I am moving from Apple (personal computers) and Windows (work only) to hopefully have two computers, one with Haiku and one with OS/2 (https://www.arcanoae.com/) which I hope to create some personal programs that I will share if the quality is there and maybe help with things that need help. But only if my code stays good enough.
One simple trick any app can use even if it’s not made for Haiku specifically is to keep its preferences, cache and so on in the right system directories. See this discussion from earlier this year: [Solved] Haiku equivalents for XDG base directories
I don’t believe DarkWyrm is active anymore. For details, this interview is useful.
Still, yes, Haiku could use better documentation and more tutorials. It seems not many people are interested in writing them. I too have written code for Haiku but virtually no documentation.
I kind of wish that the community would work together and made their own documentation that newcomers could use based off of their experiences or even have recorded sessions of them visually giving you examples of how haiku is supposed to work and how are you supposed to set it up cause haiku is a genuine Good OS to work with, and I would recommend to anybody who is trying to get away from bloat and everything
And as far from DarkWyrm it’s some of the best work I have ever seen an overall it really did help me a lot when I first started out and learn haiku recently, but I don’t think he’s here no more to actually give documentation so it would be great if the community gave auditory or visualization of how you supposed to code in haiku to make it easier for people to port for those who don’t know how to port or test applications on haiku
There are applications that are meant to blend in as much as possible. Qt applications for example have a native Haiku widget style. You could go a step further and make sure that they use Haiku’s file picker and Haiku’s config directories properly.
Another annoyance is that some ported applications don’t display Haiku’s disks and directory structure correctly. Instead, it will look like the user is on Linux.
Another thing to note, is that “native” isn’t always desirable. Applications like MilkyTracker and LibreSprite are clearly meant to have a unique look and it wouldn’t make sense to try to change that.
How far you want to go in assimilating an application really depends on the application and what you’re trying to do. If you need absolute minimal audio latency for a DAW, you may need to rip out SDL and write a native audio driver. For VLC, this is less of a concern.
That is a good point as if you look at WinAMP variants as well this GUI “look and feel” went into many Amiga applications and even before that era like XCopy and GEOSWorks EnSemble for Commodore 64…
Lots of GUI carryovers from the UNIX variants (OPEN LOOK (OpenWindows), CDE, etc…)
I’m sure the guy is a great guy, and this has nothing to do with his age because I’m 66 years old and I’m not agist (which wasn’t a word when I was growing up or at least nobody used it) but the videos could use more polish with him following a written script where he isn’t reading it but he knows it well enough that he only uses it for reminders.
He’s not alone. There are a lot of sites like this that have a lot of good information. I just find myself setting the playback speed at 2 times actual speed to keep the speed up and keep interested. But then I usually set most YouTube videos to 1.5 times actual speed. So not a BIG change vs other sites.
But if the videos were polished more … but I HAVE learned quite a few things about Haiku and I’ve known about and played with BeOS starting right before BeOS. 5.0 came out. I bought 4.5 and then like a week later 5.0 was out and I bought that and Be Productive. Both were ahead of their time and I wish the creators of Be Productive had kept their code for the BeOS version. They did what I’ve done with 99% of my code over my 40+ year career as as programmer thinking I would never want or need that code again and lost track of the hard drives or the hard drives died on me without me having a second backup.
And yes! DarkWyrm and all the major contributors to Haiku are freaking amazing and I’m very grateful for all of their hard work and wisdom that they have passed on.
I don’t believe in too much preparation and editing. If I make a mistake somewhere along the line, you will see me do it. I think the audience can identify with that, just one Haiku fanboy talking to other fanboys (and girls, of course). So you will see me peering at the screen a lot, mumbling “what is going on here?” If an app is not working properly because I hit a wrong key, then we shouldn’t hide that, perhaps the maintainer can think about making the correct keystroke a bit more obvious.
I see a lot of Youtube channels that consist of scripted text fed to a text-to-speech app, with visuals that may or may not connect to the audio. I’d rather go to the other extreme, and display a bit of messy humanity. I don’t care about monetization, I don’t look for sponsorships. I do what I do, and if people look at it and like it, that’s great. If not, well, OK.
YMMV and if anyone wants to make a different kind of video, the channel is available for collaboration, in fact I’ve been looking for someone to do game reviews for me since day one.
You’ve already surprised me. Keep in mind that I’ve watched YEARS of your videos so you are doing what keeps me watching more videos. I’ve known about Be inc since I bought BeOS 4.5 and then version 5 came out shortly after that and I have BeProductive. I was hoping that Be would slay the dragon (Microsoft) but Goliath killed David this time which caused the federal lawsuit against Microsoft and I thought, Okay now the dragon is going to be slayed but the only thing that happened was Bill Gates stepping down as CEO.
I’ve been following Haiku for years but was kept so busy with work and home stuff that I never got around to installing Haiku. I just retired so that is what I’m working on doing now except my wife and I had to move out of our house because it is being worked on and I don’t have access to a network jack which I need to update the BIOS and firmware on the PC I bought …
In the meantime I found your videos and started watching them so that I would learn about everything only someone that is using Haiku would know including a lot of apps that are made for or have been ported to run on Haiku.
Anyway, thank you for being you and creating those videos because I have learned a lot.
With @Sabon and @michel that’s already three passed the big 6 in years and retired, maybe we should come up with a club-name for us old geezers, the Haiclassics?
