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The Haiku newsletter has arrived

  Submitted by jeanmarc Haiku 36 Comments

The latest Haiku newsletter has arrived, if it seems like it’s been forever since the last Haiku newsletter, that’s because it really has – this is the first newsletter to be put out since OpenBeOS officially became Haiku.

About The Author

Eugenia Loli

Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.

Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli

36 Comments

  1. 2005-01-30 11:05 pm
    Anonymous

    Unfortunately not with to much status information though =(

  2. 2005-01-30 11:48 pm
    Anonymous

    are trying to re-create some of the subtle little nuances of the BeOS,such as replicants,while i myself don’t have much practical use for them, they are of of the things that makes BeOS look so futuristic.

    let’s hope they keep the more useful futurisic features such as drag&drop Video ,Audio,and Text clippings,Stuff like that is why love to use BeOS as my main platform

  3. 2005-01-31 12:02 am
    Anonymous

    …such as replicants,while i myself don’t have much practical use for them

    Maybe that’s because there never was a big amount of useful replicants. But actually, replicants are excellent to do things like Apple’s Dashboard the “right way”.

    Think of, for example, an iTunes-esque audio player for BeOS, using BFS queries for playlists and library, with a control widget as a replicant.

  4. 2005-01-31 12:22 am
    Anonymous

    Soundplay. Be In Your Stereo plugin lets you do playlists based ont the BFS indices, Soundplay has a replicant.

    Soundplay may cost 10 bucks, but its a swiss army knife as audio players go.

  5. 2005-01-31 12:48 am
    Anonymous

    ”

    let’s hope they keep the more useful futurisic features such as drag&drop Video ,Audio,and Text clippings,Stuff like that is why love to use BeOS as my main platform

    ”

    What do these mean?

  6. 2005-01-31 1:45 am
    Anonymous

    If you drag a text selection etc. to a folder in BeOS it creates a new file to store it in.

  7. 2005-01-31 2:26 am
    Anonymous

    Replicates were definitely one of the more nifty Beos things, and something i don’t think anyone else has done. I liked them cause i often arranged my apps butted against one another filling the screen, like a wallpaper off apps.

    But i don’t think to many things took real advantage of this. I think the idea of Dashboard is kinda like that. It would be interesting to see if they would do something like this. I like simple mico apps (widgets) that do one thing and do it well. Having a layer of them in the background going would be nice.

  8. 2005-01-31 2:34 am
    Anonymous

    Does OpenBeOS have an official scripting language for joining together apps? Maybe I’m just looking for someone else to write my dream OS but I’m a strong believer in “lots of small apps with strong interconnection”. So solving a problem is something you do often (and not a major production that you change $10 for).

  9. 2005-01-31 3:23 am
    Anonymous

    You just described ARexx for AmigaOS.

  10. 2005-01-31 4:33 am
    Anonymous

    yes it’s called BMessage and you can publish those to other app using “suite” capability. And with stuff like Muscle, you can transparently send those message over network.

  11. 2005-01-31 6:06 am
    Anonymous

    There’s quite a bit to be found on the web regarding scripting under BeOS. Here are a few links:

    From the official Be Inc. archives:

    http://www.beatjapan.org/mirror/www.be.com/support/qandas/faqs/faq-…

    Scot Hacker’s BeView column on scripting:

    http://www.birdhouse.org/beos/byte/

    (See especially items 8 and 24)

    The Scripting topic at the BeOS Tip Server:

    http://www.betips.net/?cat=script

    Chris Herborth’s intro piece in the BeNews archives:

    http://www.benews.com/BeMag/?feature_id=57“ rel=”nofollow”>http://web.archive.org/web/20010708051314/

  • 2005-01-31 6:13 am
    Anonymous

    Sorry, one of my URLs got truncated. Try this. Go to the Wayback Machine here:

    http://www.archive.org/

    Enter this URL and click “Take Me Back”:

    http://www.benews.com/BeMag/?feature_id=57

    Click on the link bearing this date:

    Jul 08, 2001

    Presto.

  • 2005-01-31 8:03 am
    Anonymous

    It is generally accepted replicants are not much used, but this is not exactly true, because technically, popular Deskbar shelf items (or Tray icons in Windows speak) are kind of replicants too. Namely, You must do exact same steps to create a Deskbar item, except you _EXPORT instantiate_deskbar_item() and call BDeskbar.AddItem() to tell Deskbar to load your add-on. Although they different to the user it is the same technology.

  • 2005-01-31 8:11 am
    Anonymous

    I think Python should be adopted as the official scripting language, but that’s just me. ;)

    Case in point: there’s already a BeOS API binding for Python called Bethon (it’s on BeBits). With a bit of work, one could write a package that exported a simplified API that’d let you more easily create little widgets and whatnot displaying windows and so on.

  • 2005-01-31 9:57 am
    Anonymous

    The AGG article looks quite nice, and explains things pretty well, but seems to have some serious web formatting problems. =(

  • 2005-01-31 11:16 am
    Anonymous

    but IMNSHO An article is missing from that newsletter : it’s the switch to berlios.de and from cvs to svn. A lengthy article on svn should have been in that newsletter.

    Ludo

    —

    http://perso.hirlimann.net/~ludo/blog/

  • 2005-01-31 2:11 pm
    Anonymous

    For people “In the Know” and developing Haiku, this newsletter is doubtlessly VERY informative.

    I’d like to see a “State of Development” article each issue that just recaps the percentage complete of each kit, and summarizes the milestones since the last newsletter, and perhaps a screenshot or two of the notable things.

    Like most BeOS fans, I’m waiting to see Haiku boot to a desktop.

    I hope we’ll see that within the year, but I don’t remember when the Haiku team said they thought that would happen.

  • 2005-01-31 2:26 pm
    Anonymous

    Hopefully these (bits in the code examples) are fixed now. Sorry about that.

    Kev

  • 2005-01-31 2:54 pm
    Anonymous

    Where the heck can I download one of the BeOS’ ?

  • 2005-01-31 3:18 pm
    Anonymous

    http://bebits.com/app/2680 is Be’s orginal BeOS 5 Personal Edition from 2000. You can also find the updates and practically every BeOS app on bebits.com

    If you want a newer BeOS with unclear legal status (it’s generally considered abandonware, but was never officially released), google for PhOS or PhosphurOS.

    I wouldn’t recommend Zeta because in my opinion it clearly doesn’t keep up with the quality standards of Be’s releases and is overpriced for a alpha-to-beta release (and falsely dubbed “Release Candidate”).

    Some Haiku things (the translators, for example) are already nearly finished, you can install them over BeOS 5.

  • 2005-01-31 3:21 pm
    Anonymous

    And before anyone starts crying that PhOS is clearly illegal: That depends a lot on where you live. Jurisdiction is different between countries, you know.

  • 2005-01-31 5:12 pm
    Anonymous

    Agreed, an article on SVN before the switch would be nice, but I’m not sure if that article would be so lengthy. SVN has for most use cases pretty much the same syntax as CVS. If you were used to CVS before, going to SVN should be pretty straight forward. Of course, there is the possibility to track changes across file renames, splits or moves.

  • 2005-01-31 7:52 pm
    Anonymous

    If you want a newer BeOS with unclear legal status (it’s generally considered abandonware, but was never officially released)

    I never understood how abandonware should be any different from any other pirated software. It’s copyrighted, you didn’t obtain a license from the copyright owner – “how’s that not stealing?”

    Besides, Dano is hardly abandonware, considering that yT is selling and developing at least major parts of it.

  • 2005-01-31 8:31 pm
    Anonymous

    Proper abandonware is actaully released into the public domain by the company who owns the license. A good example si a lot of software for the NeXT platform. The companies that made it posted CD keys so that they could be used and gave permission for sites to mirror it for download.

  • 2005-01-31 8:33 pm
    Anonymous

    “I never understood how abandonware should be any different from any other pirated software. It’s copyrighted, you didn’t obtain a license from the copyright owner – “how’s that not stealing?”

    It’s sort of a grey area. Without a cease and desist from Palm who actually do own the rights to the code, there is no infraction. If Palm really wanted to stop it, they could at least be sending out letters or email to PhOS and BeosMax. If Palm isn’t concerned about it, then why should anybody else be? It’s not stealing if you’re letting people take it, and if you’re letting people take it, isn’t that the same as giving it away? Yes, it’s all about semantics, the very foundation of our legal system.

  • 2005-01-31 8:58 pm
    Anonymous

    To my knowledge, in most western countries their copyright laws states that by default, the author holds all rights to his work, including reproduction and distribution.

    Which means, in case that the license under which BeOS PE and Dano were released initally were not valid any more because PalmSource doesn’t enforce them (which is a very strange reasoning by itself), the default copyright would apply – not granting you any rights whatsoever.

  • 2005-01-31 9:09 pm
    Anonymous

    All that’s fine and dandy, but the legal code is based on all the things you can’t do. It doesn’t bother to state all the things you can do. Basically, you can do whatever you can get away with, right? Just ask Gates.

    Compare this situation to that of those guys who prematurely leaked information on Tiger on that Mac site. It took Apple almost no time at all to get a court order and to bust them. There’s no reason why Palm couldn’t do that, but they haven’t. Why? Probably because they don’t care. So absolutely, if they choose not to enforce it, then no crime is being committed. But even if they choose to enforce it, they still have to argue in court.

    It would be the same if a person is charged with a crime, but the victim refuses to press charges and the state doesn’t pick them up either. The defendant is free to go.

  • 2005-01-31 9:17 pm
    Anonymous

    Basically, you can do whatever you can get away with, right?

    If you are an egocentric with no moral values, yes.

    It would be the same if a person is charged with a crime, but the victim refuses to press charges and the state doesn’t pick them up either. The defendant is free to go.

    Which still doesn’t make that person any less of a criminal.

  • 2005-01-31 10:56 pm
    Anonymous

    So, this means if somebody flattens your cat, and you don’t know about it, no crime has been committed, even if they went out of their way to flatten your cat, since you didn’t know about it, right? After all, they “got away with it” since they weren’t caught by you.

    If a tree falls and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

    If a thief steals something and nobody is there to catch them, is it still a theft?

    The answer is the same for both of those questions.

  • 2005-01-31 11:45 pm
    Anonymous

    It would be the same if a person is charged with a crime, but the victim refuses to press charges and the state doesn’t pick them up either. The defendant is free to go.

    Which still doesn’t make that person any less of a criminal.

    No, morally it does. because you don’t harm anybody. PalmSource is not making any business with BeOS, so you’re not taking anything away from them.

    You do violent the license, however, so you’re not any less of a criminal by law.

    Realistically, the hardest thing that could happen to you in most European countries is that you’d have to delete Dano. You didn’t agree to the terms of the license, therefore you’re not allowed to have a copy on your hard drive. Theoretically, further charges would be possible, but it’s very unlikely.

  • 2005-02-01 6:10 am
    Anonymous

    No, morally it does. because you don’t harm anybody. PalmSource is not making any business with BeOS, so you’re not taking anything away from them.

    yT, TuneTrackerSystems or IsComputerOn are making business with BeOS. Those are the ones you harm.

  • 2005-02-01 6:13 am
    Anonymous

    They’re not a criminal unless they’re convicted of a crime.

    So whether something is right or wrong depends on whether I’m convicted, eh? So selling pirated copies of WinXP to my buddies is OK after all? Just like having the biggest moviez server in the nation, stealing cable TV and tax fraud?

  • 2005-02-01 9:52 am
    Anonymous

    anybody can explain me why the hell palm bought be inc if they are not interesting in BeOS.why they not continues developing the OS?.why they no release the source code as GPL? why they not sell BeOs to any other company interesting? hey i'm interesting in buy it, if only i will be rich ;)

  • 2005-02-01 12:55 pm
    Anonymous

    replicants are just a widget housed inside a foreign application.

    which X did 20 years or so ago

    which repeats the old cycle of BeOS, writing “all new” on some idea that you found at the back of a dusty cupboard and hoping anyone who might recognise it is dead.

    (and yes, this is also how the Freedesktop.org’s notification widgets live inside the desktop environment, and how Windows object embedding works too)

  • 2005-02-01 2:30 pm
    Anonymous

    * hire a team of skilled developers

    * make sure BeIA won’t become a competitor

    * maybe buy one or the other patent or concept

  • 2005-02-01 5:45 pm
    Anonymous

    every time beos gets mentioned the legal status of zeta/phos/dano derivatives gets argued over. Stop! it just clogs the comments up and is pointless bickering…