but there is no download link or link to HaikuDepot on ResidualVM anymore.
Now ScummVM going to include ResidualVM, but I am not sure if this is a good solution for Haiku. With this merger, ScummVM adds several games to our supported list: Grim Fandango , Escape from Monkey Island , Myst III - Exile , The Longest Journey and an unfinished engine for In Cold Blood , as well as Wintermute 3D engine.
3Deyes, Gerasim, ported the newest ResidualVM for Haiku but there is not link for it on the ResidualVM Website since months.
Maybe you can ask to get the permission from 3deyes to publish his port.
ResidualVM can still be installed with “pkgman” as well as with “HaikuDepot” app, the website for the depot is out of date, not all latest packages show up there
As for the merge between ScummVM and ResidualVM, it already was discussed on their mailing list a while back, not everyone was in favor also, but …
When I started the first port for ResidualVM someone in IRC mentioned something like “another useless download” or something (it’s been a while ago), the downloads for ScummVM have been shared between me and one of the lead developers so they can put them on the website, don’t think this was done for ResidualVM?
I think one can always ask those projects. Maybe there are interested. Just respect it if they are not. With listing a Haiku download on the official site the project takes up some responsibility. And most open source projects lack time and developers.
We have Haiku listed for MusicBrainz Picard on the official download page because I like Haiku a lot, and even if I cannot dedicate much time to it otherwise I want to support it by maintaining this port and promoting it. But the main focus clearly is to support the main platforms, hence the Haiku port is still more a personal side project of mine instead of a commitment by the team.
Porting from other operating systems can be automated with the WebAssembly bytecode supported by every major browser. Of course I’d recommend running it outside the browser using Wasmer which is also being looked into by some of the Haiku devs on GitHub. Not only will Wasmer bring ports from other platforms, but will also allow Haiku specific apps to become cross-architecture since WebAssembly is processor agnostic. It only requires some POSIX compliance in the OS and little-endian byte ordering and Haiku has both.
That’s a very good point, thanks for mentioning that! I think this is one of the points we can definitely use to persuade others to port their apps (or perhaps let the porting team do it) to Haiku.
Thanks! The Wasmer environment has one other requirement I forgot to mention. It’s written entirely in Rust so the Haiku port of the Rust environment needs to be maintained well. There’s talk of including GUI-related API wrappers in Wasmer so that it will be a true cross-platform bytecode. The only downside is that platform-specifics like tab-and-stack features of the Haiku GUI won’t be available on the other platforms. A little extra overhead on those platforms for incorporating multiple applications in a single window will be the result but no big loss on the general front.
Commits on ResidualVM’s github has been stopped a few months ago, I’m not sure about the changes made by @3dEyes are based on those (I guess), but the changes there should be available for the next ScummVM release
That program would require a complete rewrite to support Haiku, it would be easier then to write it from scratch independently.
Also it seems to be freeware, not open source.
Also most of its features provided by the Query/Find function and the BFS indexing in Haiku.
Why port something instead of extending the available native tools, where the source code is available?
Here my little list of Ideas to push haiku marketing:
If we have a port of an app or game, we should displayed as available port on there website, this makes haiku more visible (more people should see that haiku exists).
On the main website we should have a list of apps to show people that software is available as alternative app (example: gimp = wonderbrush, krila or ms office = libre office or caligra office)
Articles about haiku in magazines written of haiku enthusiasts without only highlightning, more realistic descriptions
Just an idea on this Marketing topic. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to create a “Marketing” category to group all things related to Marketing Haiku? There are many different Marketing topics that I presume would be better located inside a Marketing Category instead of letting the Marketing topic grow and grow… What do you think about it?
I have a task for the marketing team: please write a news article about that Haiku uses GCC8 and try to convince the main software-news sites to publish it. The best would be if the title of the article would contain that Haiku Project requested the publication. Consider to not mention GCC2 at all.
I am aware to the fact that somebody always comments the news that “Eh, they still use GCC2” or like in the case of the MESA news at phoronix: “They plan to switch to GCC8”.
This is misinformation and can harm the project seriously.
I know, nobody likes to read, but absolutely like to spread half-truths, so please try to make things as clear as possible to stop this.
However, we should be careful in making equivalents. LibreOffice is a very good alternative to MS Office, but from what I have seen, Wonderbrush is nowhere near the GIMP.
The danger lies in raising people’s expectations, only to have them dashed in reality. If we don’t have a good photo editor, we shouldn’t pretend that we do.
Exactly. GIMP is still missing WonderBrush’s vector capabilities.
I’d rather compare WonderBrush to Inkscape. For that comparison, you statement is probably true (I haven’t used Inkscape, though, as is true of most apps not available under Haiku).
Isn’t Krita a good photo editor available for Haiku? I admit, I haven’t used that either…
