Overview
With the
AmigaThe Amiga was a family of personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner as the principal hardware designer. Commodore International bought Amiga Corporation and introduced the machine to the market in 1985...
computerA computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a set of instructions.Although mechanical examples of computers have existed through much of recorded human history, the first electronic computers were developed in the mid-20th century . These were the size of a large room, consuming as...
, the name
Workbench refers to the native
graphical interfaceGui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
file manager and application launcher of the
Amiga Operating SystemAmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...
typically presented to users upon booting the
AmigaThe Amiga was a family of personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner as the principal hardware designer. Commodore International bought Amiga Corporation and introduced the machine to the market in 1985...
. The Workbench was not required to boot the
AmigaThe Amiga was a family of personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation. Development on the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner as the principal hardware designer. Commodore International bought Amiga Corporation and introduced the machine to the market in 1985...
or run other applications, but was a standalone application listed in the
startup-sequence script.
The Amiga Workbench used the
metaphorA metaphor is a figure of speech concisely comparing two things, saying that one is the other. The English metaphor derives from the 16th c...
of a
workbenchA workbench is sturdy table at which manual work is done. They range from simple flat surfaces to very complex designs that may be considered tools in themselves. Workbenches vary in size from tiny jewelers benches to the huge benches used by staircase makers...
rather than the now standard
desktopThe desktop metaphor is an interface metaphor which is a set of unifying concepts used by graphical user interfaces to help users more easily interact with the computer. The desktop metaphor treats the monitor of a computer as if it is the user's desktop, upon which objects such as documents and...
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 filename 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 FormatInterchange File Format , is a generic file format originally introduced by the Electronic Arts company in 1985 in order to ease transfer of data between software produced by different companies....
which allowed applications to access the known parts of even a completely foreign IFF format file.
The Workbench utilized the underlying
AmigaOSAmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...
API to provide the GUI interface. 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
ROMRead-only memory is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. Because data stored in ROM cannot be modified , it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM...
, or (on the earliest Amigas) loaded into WCS/WOM (Lockable/Write Once Memory) by the
KickstartKickstart is a commonly used term for the bootstrap firmware of the Amiga computers developed by Commodore.The Kickstart was created in many incarnations: floppy based, ROM based, and finally ROM-file based....
system. Applications launched from either the
CLIA command-line interface is a mechanism for interacting with a computer operating system or software by typing commands to perform specific tasks...
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.libraryThe Amiga computer was launched by Commodore in 1985 with a GUI called Workbench based on an internal engine which drives all the input events called Intuition, and developed almost entirely by RJ Mical. Users may remember the initial releases for their garish blue/orange/white/black palettes,...
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
OSAn operating system is an interface between hardware and user which is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer that acts as a host for computing applications run on the machine. As a host, one of the purposes of an operating...
floppy disk for
AmigaOSAmigaOS is the default native operating system of the Amiga personal computer. It was developed first by Commodore International, and initially introduced in 1985 with the Amiga 1000...
versions 1.1 to 1.3 (the "Workbench disk"). This was due to an error of
CommodoreCommodore, the commonly used name for Commodore International, was a US electronics company based in West Chester, Pennsylvania which played a vital role in the development of the home/personal computer industry in the 1980s. The company is also known under the name of its R&D operation, 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
In comparison to the competing
Mac OSMac OS is the trademarked name for a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...
and
AtariAtari is a corporate and brand name owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by Atari Interactive, a wholly owned subsidiary of the French publisher Infogrames Entertainment SA ....
, the AmigaOS Workbench featured, as the default, a 4 color blue desktop screen with color icons at 640x200
NTSCNTSC, named for the National Television System Committee is the analog television system used in most of the Americas, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Burma, and some Pacific island nations and territories . is also the name of the U.S. standardization body that developed the broadcast standard...
American standard or 640x256 on European
PALPAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television encoding system used in broadcast television systems in large parts of the world. Other common analogue television systems are SECAM and NTSC. This page primarily discusses the colour encoding system...
television sets. This is in contrast to the 512x342 black and white interface presented by the Mac, and the fixed aspect icons presented by Atari.
It was a 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 the desired size.
This freedom of choice and the waste of different 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. It could present icons of unusual size, and quite different from the original system ones, depending only on personal choice and the taste of the user. There were also no obliged
user interface design guidelinesUser interface design or user interface engineering is the design of computers, appliances, machines, mobile communication devices, software applications, and websites with the focus on the user's experience and interaction...
regarding fixed menu options for software in general (i.e. the user must learn the various orderings of basic commands like
Load,
Save,
Open,
Close,
Quit, etc.). This fact was more than once argued as a diminishing feature of Amiga by its detractors. Still today some historical GUI sites like guidebook gallery 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 behavior 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 logarithmic 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 feelLook and feel is a term used in descriptions of products and fields such as product design, marketing, branding and trademarking, to describe the main features of its appearance....
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
gadtools.library was created, 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
BOOPSIBOOPSI is an object-oriented system for AmigaOS. It extends the AmigaOS windowing environment with an object-oriented subsystem allowing a hierarchy of object classes in which every class defines a single GUI widget or interface event.BOOPSI made it easier for developers to create...
(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
MUIThe Magic User Interface is an object-oriented system by Stefan Stuntz to generate and maintain graphical user interfaces. With the aid of a preferences program, the user of an application has the ability to customize the outfit according to personal taste....
(Magic User Interface) and ClassAct which then evolved into
ReActionReAction GUI it is the name of the widget toolkit engine that is used in AmigaOS 4.0.It is an evolution of ClassACT, which is an object oriented system of classes that enhanced the aspect of the Workbench 2.0 GUI of AmigaOS.- History :...
. MUI became the standard GUI engine for
AROSAros may refer to:Aros-Eros-Cupid-AmorIt is believed that the origins above led Saint Valentines enthusiasts to appoint the Roman god Cupid as the patron of Valentine's day -- that is the story of Lupercalia and the love and romance associatied with the St. Valentine's legends.Cupid is also known...
and
MorphOSMorphOS is a computer operating system . It is a mixed proprietary and open source OS produced for the Pegasos PowerPC -processor-based computer, most models of PPC-accelerator-equipped Amiga computers, and a series of Freescale development boards that use the Genesi Firmware, including the EFIKA...
. ReAction is now the GUI engine of AmigaOS 4.0. There are also modern interfaces based on
XMLXML is a set of rules for encoding documents electronically. It is defined in the produced by the W3C and several other related specifications; all are fee-free open standards....
, like
Feelin.
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
AmigaGuideAmigaguide is a hypertext document file format similar to Texinfo designed for the Amiga, files are stored in ASCII so it is possible to read and edit a file without the need for special software....
, a simple text-only
hypertextHypertext is text, displayed on a computer, with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices...
markup scheme and browser, for providing online help inside applications. It also introduced
Installer, a standard software installation program, driven by a
LISPA lisp is a speech impediment, historically also known as sigmatism. Stereotypically, people with a lisp are unable to pronounce sibilants , and replace them with interdentals , though there are actually several kinds of lisps...
-like scripting language.
Finally, Workbench 2.0 rectified the problem of developers
hookingIn computer programming, the term hooking covers a range of techniques used to alter or augment the behavior of an operating system, of applications, or of other software components by intercepting function calls or messages or events passed between software components...
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 the complete
look and feelLook and feel is a term used in descriptions of products and fields such as product design, marketing, branding and trademarking, to describe the main features of its appearance....
of its interface. A new blue
desktopIn graphical computing, a desktop environment commonly refers to a style of graphical user interface that is based on the desktop metaphor which can be seen on most modern personal computers today...
, resembling the first Amiga Workbench 1.0 was now available to users, but with many improvements over to the first AmigaOS desktop release, like presenting 2D icons that look
isometricThe term isometric comes from the Greek for "having equal measurement".isometric may mean:* Isometric projection , a method for the visual representation of three-dimensional objects in two dimensions; a form of orthographic projection, or more specifically, an axonometric projection.* Isometry and...
3D, with a high range of color schemes ready to use. It replaced the all-metal gray 4/8 colors interface that was common on Amiga from OS 2.0 up to OS 3.1 with its embossed 3D icons that looked very professional but was also generally perceived as cold and with very little appeal for low end users.
NewIconsNewIcons is a third-party extension to the icon handling system of AmigaOS, the native operating system of the Amiga. NewIcons was first invented and developed by the Italian programmer Nicola Salmoria. Subsequent development was done by Eric Sauvageau....
and various other third party GUI hacks to improve elder Amiga interfaces were made obsolete and deprecated as the new internal GUI engine
ReActionReAction GUI it is the name of the widget toolkit engine that is used in AmigaOS 4.0.It is an evolution of ClassACT, which is an object oriented system of classes that enhanced the aspect of the Workbench 2.0 GUI of AmigaOS.- History :...
, based on late ClassAct took place and replaced standard Commodore ASL. The OS core acquired support for 4GB+ hard drives and NSD devices, and it also required at least a
MotorolaMotorola, Inc. is an American, multinational, Fortune 100, telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It is a manufacturer of wireless telephone handsets, and also designs and sells wireless network infrastructure equipment such as cellular transmission base stations and signal...
68020 processor to run.
Workbench 3.5 could support a 4/8 or 16 color standard desktop, but thanks to its RTG graphics support, it could also be extended to 256 or even up to 16 million colors, and it also supported 31kHz VGA displays.
Workbench 3.9
The 3.9 version of Workbench was again created by the German Amiga software manufacturer and reseller Haage&Partner and was announced in 2000.
Use of O.O. graphic engines (
ReActionReAction GUI it is the name of the widget toolkit engine that is used in AmigaOS 4.0.It is an evolution of ClassACT, which is an object oriented system of classes that enhanced the aspect of the Workbench 2.0 GUI of AmigaOS.- History :...
) dramatically changed the
Look and FeelLook and feel is a term used in descriptions of products and fields such as product design, marketing, branding and trademarking, to describe the main features of its appearance....
of the GUI to match the actual styleguides.
The main features in this Workbench version was the introduction of the AmiDOCK, a new and standard program start bar.
More implemented features was 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.) and 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
PPCPPC may stand for:In communications and computers:* Pay per click, a method of charging for advertising on the Internet* PearPC, a PowerPC platform emulator...
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. Some parts of AmigaOS and Workbench 3.5/3.9 could not be included into this new OS release as they belonged 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 compatibility with
OpenGLOpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
1.3 thanks to the support of Amiga
MesaA mesa is an elevated area of land with a flat top and sides that are usually steep cliffs. It takes its name from its characteristic table-top shape. It is a characteristic landform of arid environments, particularly the southwestern United States...
libraries.
Since the fourth Developer Pre-Release Update 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
TrueTypeTrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript....
/
OpenTypeOpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior....
fonts, MUI PPC to improve legacy with elder but still useful Amiga 68000 applications, PPC native movieplayer named "Action" with
DivXDivX is a brand name of products created by DivX, Inc. , including the DivX Codec which has become popular due to its ability to compress lengthy video segments into small sizes while maintaining relatively high visual quality.The DivX codec uses lossy MPEG-4 Part 2 compression, where quality is...
and MPEG4 support.
Workbench 4.1
The Workbench desktop interface distributed with AmigaOS 4.1 introduced very modern 3D features common to modern Operating Systems. The new Workbench uses a
CairoCairo is a software library used to provide a vector graphics-based, device-independent API for software developers. It is designed to provide primitives for 2-dimensional drawing across a number of different backends...
2D vector based interface, integrated with a 3D hardware accelerated
Porter-DuffIn computer graphics, alpha compositing is the process of combining an image with a background to create the appearance of partial transparency. It is often useful to render image elements in separate passes, and then combine the resulting multiple 2D images into a single, final image in a process...
image composition engine.
Workbench icons
The
iconsOn computer displays, a computer icon is a small pictogram. Icons have been used to supplement the normal alphanumerics of the computer...
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 editorA text editor is a type of program used for editing plain text files.Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code....
, 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
A RAM disk is a block of RAM that a computer's software is treating as if the memory were a disk drive...
.
- Garbage: The Trashcan - a deleted file backup, which works in a similar way to the 'Recycle bin
In computing, a recycle bin, or trash, is temporary storage for files that have been deleted in a file manager by the user, but not yet permanently erased from the physical media...
' in Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces...
.
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
parenthesesBrackets are punctuation marks used in pairs to set apart or interject text within other text. In the United States, "bracket" sometimes refers specifically to the square or box type.There are four main types of brackets:...
. 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
NewIconsNewIcons is a third-party extension to the icon handling system of AmigaOS, the native operating system of the Amiga. NewIcons was first invented and developed by the Italian programmer Nicola Salmoria. Subsequent development was done by Eric Sauvageau....
, 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
GlowiconsThe Glowicons format, based on NewIcons file format, is the icon format used in AmigaOS 3.5, 3.9 and 4.0 and MorphOS by Matt Chaput. The standard icon size is 46×46 pixels with maximum 256 colors and two image states . The second image state uses a glow effect to indicate that the icon is pressed....
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