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Workbench (AmigaOS)
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the Amiga computer, the name Workbench refers to the native graphical interface file manager and application launcher of the Amiga Operating System typically presented to users upon booting the Amiga. The Workbench was not required to boot the Amiga or run other applications, but was a standalone application listed in the startup-sequence script.
The Amiga Workbench used the metaphor of a workbench rather than the now standard desktop for exposing file management and application launching functionality.
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Workbench Overview [Classic Amiga]
With the Amiga computer, the name Workbench refers to the native graphical interface file manager and application launcher of the Amiga Operating System typically presented to users upon booting the Amiga. The Workbench was not required to boot the Amiga or run other applications, but was a standalone application listed in the startup-sequence script.
The Amiga Workbench used the metaphor of a workbench rather than the now standard desktop for exposing file management and application launching functionality. The Workbench application appeared similar to other consumer Operating Systems of the era by utilising a trash can, menu bar, and icons to represent files, folder and volumes (filesystem devices). The underlying AmigaOS was much more advanced allowing the Workbench to launch multiple applications that could execute at the same time and communicate with each other. The Amiga used a two button mouse for left click and right menu.
The Amiga did not use file extensions to normally distinguish file types. Instead the Workbench used a separate file of the same name but followed by .info. That was the only file extension Workbench recognized. This file supplied information such as the icon graphic to display, the application to launch with, etc. Similar in many ways to a Windows .pif file. Most files were human recognized by name (32 cased characters) or associated icon, or by applications using embedded metadata. The common format containing open metadata was the Interchange File Format which allowed applications to access the known parts of even a completely foreign IFF format file.
The Workbench utilized the underlying AmigaOS API to provide the GUI interface. Much in the same manner that Windows did prior to the NT Kernel (Windows NT, Windows 95) with MS-DOS. The actual Workbench in its executable format (loadWB AmigaDOS command + Workbench.library) was quite small only taking a fraction of an Amiga 880k 3.5 inch floppy disc or other medium. Workbench.library in its first versions even occupied no space on system floppy discs, because it was part of the system ROM. Starting from 2.0 it became a shared library in Libs: and could be replaced by third-party GUIs.
The AmigaOS library API's required by WorkBench were stored in ROM, or (on the earliest Amigas) loaded into WCS/WOM (Lockable/Write Once Memory) by the Kickstart system. Applications launched from either the CLI or Workbench executed equivalently, with both having full GUI functionality. Workbench launched applications were meant to report their successful launch back the Workbench, but this was not a requirement and few actually did. The CLI was entirely graphically based; the Amiga did not support character mapped displays.
Underlying the Workbench is the Intuition.library windowing system. This library controlled the logistics of clipping, rendering and preserving overlapping screens, windows and gadgets (graphical elements; equivalent to widgets.) The graphics.library provided software as well as hardware rendering. The exec.library handled low-level functions such as input from the keyboard and mouse, passing messages to programs, allocating memory and task switching.
The Workbench name can also refer to the main OS floppy disk for AmigaOS versions 1.1 to 1.3 (the "Workbench disk"). This was due to an error of Commodore marketing. This fact led some Amiga users to believe that all of the AmigaOS was named "Workbench".
Paradigm
The Amiga workbench follows the interface paradigm of a standard workbench of manual labour. The desktop itself is called Work-bench, the programs are called tools, program attributes (options) are called tooltypes, directories are called drawers (and there is a closet drawer icon representing directories on the screen of Workbench), data files are considered projects, etcetera. This could be considered somewhat confusing or even odd for a nowadays user, but in the early age of computer desktop GUIs, was clear enough to users who approached a computer for the first time, and were generally unacculturated of computer usage and computing science but were born and raised in a pre-computer era.
The only labour term of Amiga Workbench that was used also in another operating systems with more or less the same meaning, is Utilities, that indicates in Amiga the service utilities programs to enhance computer experience and usability. for example the Calculator tool/program in Amiga is stored into Utility drawer/directory.
Characteristics and main features
When Mac OS first interface was only black and white in 512x342 fixed resolution and Atari TOS first color interface presented fixed aspect icons, the AmigaOS Workbench was certainly ahead of its time.
It featured as default 4 colors blue desktop screen with color icons at 640x200 NTSC American standard or 640x256 on European PAL television sets.
It was deeply customizable interface. Users could choose their own color aspect preferences and combinations, change resolution from 512x342, 640x200 NTSC, 640x256 PAL, 640x400 NTSC up to 640x512 PAL, the TV or TV-monitor overscan could be adjusted, and could change the aspect of program icons replacing it with newer ones with different color combinations. Users could also take a "snapshot" of icons and windows so the icons will remain on the desktop at coordinates chosen by user and windows will open at desired size. The ease of use of this feature (just simply invoked by desktop main menus) is still unsurpassed even on other modern systems.
This freedom of choice and the vaste difference of desktop colors and aspects chosen by any single user was seen as some sort of chaotic interface by people who never experienced Amiga and its interface, because it could present icons of unusual size, and quite different from he original system ones, depending only from the personal choices and taste of any user and with no obliged guideline regarding fixed menu options for any single programs (user must learn again in any program where are menus presenting the basic command options Load, Save, Open, Close, Quit, etc.), and this fact was more than once argued as a diminishing feature of Amiga by its detractors. Still today some historical GUI sites like presented Amiga Workbench as: "Unique (if slightly chaotic) GUI for Amiga machines".
Main features
WB 1.0/1.1/1.2/1.3
- Integrated into system ROMs
- Color Desktop 4 colors out a palette of 4096
- Maximum resolution available on normal TV screens was 720x576 overscan interlaced (considered quite a high resolution in 1985-1990)
- Interlaced or non-interlaced screens (depending on TV resolution characteristics)
- Fully customizable aspect of icons and their position on screen
- Gauge meter to show free space of removable devices
- Two states icons with images to represent quiet and activated state creating a pseudo-animation effect when clicked on
- Two button mouse with double functions. On icons: left mouse click activates icons, right mousebutton activates .info metadata. On desktop: right mousebutton activates Menus
- User choices made in menu options could be fixed with checkmarks permanent buttons
- Mouse pointer changes aspect when different operations are made (for example sleeping buzzing mouse pointer with a comics ballon saying: "Zzz..." was active during loading/writing disk activities)
- Asynchronous Desktop (could perform operations while system was busy with other operations) for zero wait user experience
- Intelligent behaviour of desktop (Thanks to "Intuition" engine underneath Wokbench could predict chooses of users and anticipate its future moves like sprite collision, activation of icons, closing or dragging of windows (contributing to zero wait user experience)
- Intelligent desktop screen redraw. Thanks to Intuition the system knows what part of background windows are visible, and what are hidden by foreground windows, and draws only those part of screen that require to be refreshed. This is made because Intuition made large use of Copper and Blitter Amiga original hardware unique circuitry. (also contributes to zero wait user experience)
- Windows resizing and dragging capable, either possible with border or borderless, with or without resizing, closing and depth gadgets, and with logarythmic slide bars to explore the hidden contents of resized windows
- Mouse could be moved with keyboard keys combinations
- Multiple Screens: Any single program can have its own graphical "screen", a desktop of its own with its own memory stack, various color depth bitplanes, and its own graphical resolution. Any Screen could be draggable to show other programs running underneath and mouse options and keyboard commands are present to show it forward or backward other screens
Workbench 2.0 user interface improvements
Until AmigaOS 2.0 with its GUI Workbench 2.0, there was no unified look and feel design standard - application developers had to write their own widgets (both buttons and menus) if they want to enhance standard basic widgets, with Intuition providing minimal support. With Workbench 2.0 it was created gadtools.library, which provided standard widget sets, the Amiga User Interface Style Guide, which explained how applications should be laid out for consistency. Intuition was improved with BOOPSI (Basic Object Oriented Programming system for Intuition) which enhanced the system with an object oriented interface with a system of classes in which every class individuate a single widget or describes an interface event. It can be used to program Object Oriented interfaces into Amiga at any level.
The BOOPSI system led an evolution in which third parties developers realized each own his personal system of classes. So there were born MUI (Magic User Interface) and ClassAct which then evolved into ReAction. MUI became the standard GUI engine for AROS and MorphOS. ReAction is now the GUI engine of AmigaOS 4.0. There are also modern interfaces based on XML, like .
Workbench 2.0 also added support for public screens. Instead of the Workbench screen being the only shareable screen, applications could create their own named screens to share with other applications.
Workbench 2.0 introduced AmigaGuide, a simple text-only hypertext markup scheme and browser, for providing online help inside applications. It also introduced Installer, a standard software installation program, driven by a LISP-like scripting language.
Finally, Workbench 2.0 rectified the problem of developers hooking directly into the input-events stream to capture keyboard and mouse movements, often locking up the whole system. Workbench 2.0 provided Commodities, a standard interface for modifying or scanning input events. This included a standard method for specifying global "hotkey" key-sequences, and a Commodities Exchange registry for the user to see what commodities were running.
Workbench 3.0, 3.1
Originally shipped with the A4000 and A1200 AGA machines.
OS3.1 would ship later, adding improvements, and with a new V40 ROM, supported the A2000, A3000, and A500 machines.
Introduced Datatypes. This was a mechanism that allowed any datatype aware application to add new features by simply installing a datatype. The datatype is a library that can be called by an application as needed.
Through this mechanism, Amiga web browsers that supported datatypes were the first to support PNG. The programmer didn't have to concern himself with supporting multiple image formats. By simply employing datatypes, the application could add new image types as the datatype became available.
One application of note was Multiview. Its capabilities were directly related to the datatypes installed in Devs:Datatypes.
Workbench 3.5
This workbench version was part of AmigaOS 3.5 release made by German firm "Haage&Partner" in 1997.
Workbench changed completely look and feel of its interface. A new blue desktop, resembling the first Amiga Workbench 1.0, was now available to users, but with many improvements than first AmigaOS desktop release, presenting 2D icons that looks isometric 3D, with a high range of color schemes ready to use. It replaced the all metal gray 4/8 colors interface that was common in Amiga from OS 2.0 up to OS 3.1 whit its embossed 3D icons that looked very professional but was also generally perceived as cold and with very few appeal for low end users.
NewIcons and various other third party GUI hacks to improve elder Amiga interfaces were made obsolete and deprecated and new internal GUI engine ReAction, based on late ClassAct took place and replaced standard Commodore ASL. In OS was added support for 4Gb+ hard drives and NSD devices, and it was necessary Motorola 68020 processor as minimum required hardware.
Workbench 3.5 could support 4/8 and 16 color standard desktop and has RTG graphics support, so it could be extended also in 256 and up to 16 million colors, and it was also included support for 31kHz VGA displays.
Workbench 3.9
This version of Workbench was again created by German Amiga software manufacturer and reseller Haage&Partner and was announced in 2000. Copyright date is 2000.
The main features in this Workbench version was the introduction of AmiDOCK a new and standard program start bar, automatic datatype recognition, new picture datatype (PPC-optimized), new preference tools (ASLPrefs, Info requester, desktop watch clock, new color wheel gadget for choosing colors, etc.), it was introduced also support for 1:1 aspect ratio window borders for any screen resolutions.
Workbench 4.0
This new Workbench, called Workbench 4.0 has been completely rewritten to became fully PPC compatible. It was part of AmigaOS 4.0, and released in 2006. This new Amiga operating System was based upon AmigaOS 3.1 by Belgian firm Hyperion VOF under license by Amiga Inc. No parts of AmigaOS and Workbench 3.5/3.9 were included into this new OS release as they begun to Haage&Partner, and Amiga inc. did not acquire any license of it.
There are new features since previous versions: PPC native RTG system based on Picasso96 libraries version 3 were now standard in the system, and layers.library were now arithmetically optimized for PPC processors. It was included also 3D system with Warp3D libraries and compatibilityh with OpenGL 1.3 thanks to the support of Amiga Mesa libraries.
Since AmigaOS version 4 a new technique is adopted and the screens are draggable in any direction. Drag and drop between different screens is possible too.
Also in WB 4.0 were PPC native version of Amidock, PPC native datatypes, support for TrueType/OpenType fonts, MUI PPC to improve legacy with elder but still useful Amiga 68000 applications, PPC native movieplayer named "Action" with DivX and MPEG4 support.
Workbench 4.1
New release of desktop interface Workbench distributed with AmigaOS 4.1 introduced very modern 3D features as are nowadays common in modern Operating Systems: the new workbench is based on Cairo 2D vector based interface integrated with 3D hardware accelerated Porter-Duff image composition engine.
Workbench icons
The icons that Workbench uses to represent the files in a volume or a drawer are stored in special .info files, with the name of the .info file matching the name of the file it represents. For example, the icon for NotePad, a text editor, is found in the file NotePad.info.
The .info file includes the graphical representation of the icon and its position in the volume or drawer window. The icon also specifies the type of the file, as used by Workbench. Workbench recognises five different file types:
- Tool: An executable program.
- Project: A data file of an executable program. The program which created the file is named in the icon file, double-clicking on the icon loads the program that created it.
- Drawer: A directory containing files, and other drawers.
- Volume: A physical disk or a RAM disk.
- Garbage: The Trashcan - a deleted file backup, which works in a similar way to the 'Recycle bin' in Microsoft Windows.
An additional three file types are available and are intended for future expansion:
- Device: designed for displaying information about attached devices
- Kick: The icon of a bootable disk
- App Icon: An icon which will be used as (part of) the GUI for an application
Of these three file types, only "App Icons" currently are used by any part of Workbench/AmigaOS.
Tool files can include "tool types" in the .info file. These are used as configuration options for the program. Each tool type is a single line of text, which can optionally include parameters, written after an = sign. Tool types can be commented out by writing them in parentheses. For example, the tooltype "CX_POPKEY=ctrl alt f1" says that the application (a Commodity) will pop up the user interface in response to the key sequence Ctrl-Alt-F1.
The colours used in the icon are normally only stored as indices to the Amiga Workbench screen's current palette. Because of this, the icons' colour scheme is inherently tied to the chosen hues in the screen's palette, and choosing non-standard colours can give the icons an ugly appearance. This problem was party solved by a third-party system called NewIcons, which adds additional features to the standard .info files. Unlike normal Workbench icons, NewIcons include actual RGB colour information, and the system tries its best to match the icons' colour hues to those in the screen palette.
Since AmigaOS 3.5, Workbench supports icons with up to 256 colors. This release of AmigaOS features the Glowicons icon set by Matt Chaput. With AmigaOS 3.5, a screen-palette-independent system is used. The 4.0 icons, designed by Martin Merz, can use a palette of 32 bit each.
External links
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- explained on AmigaHistory site
- at Codewiz.org
- at The Flux Research Group, University of Utah.
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