Amos Discussion List Digest

This page will list all the important announcements made on the Amos Discussion List regarding the future of Amos.

Please keep in mind that all information regarding addresses, phonenumbers, prices, etc., may have changed long since. I try to keep some addresses 'fresh' on the links page that goes with my Future of Amos homepage. Take a look there if you want to contact some of the people mentioned on these pages.

1993

Thu, 22 Apr 1993, Michael Cox <mcox@access.digex.com>

Apparently, there will be an Amos AGA version included with the to be released Amos Pro Compiler. It will come with a small manual. It will cost about US$9. It will enable the use of AGA screen modes.

Mon, 13 Sep 1993, Dave 'DOPEX' Vissers <s92406161@hsepm1.hse.nl>

Dave went to the OZ meeting in Gent, Belgium, which was held at 11 & 12 September. There he met with Francois Lionet and Aaron Fothergill.
Francois told him that he wanted to start programming the AGA version of Amos in January. He wasn't sure yet that there would a PCOS, but if he was going to make one, it would not be before he had done Amos AGA. Also, a PCOS would not effect the development of Amos. Francois received several faxes of list subscribers, but during the time he was working on the compiler he ignored everything, including the faxes.
Aaron Fothergill was thinking of joining the Amos list.

Fri, 01 Oct 1993, Seumas McNally <sfmcnally@BIX.com>

Seumas talked to Aaron Fothergill of Shadow Software/The Amos Club who told him some interesting things.
Francois Lionet has been looking for a programmer to do Amos AGA, but noone wants to do it because there's no money in it for them. So it sounds like Francois won't do Amos AGA.
However, the AGA extension for AMOS Creator should be done by Christmas, and there should be a demo of it on the Net soon!
The AGA extension will allow an unlimited number of screens, HAM8, 256 colours and an almost unlimited number of 256 colour sprites.

1994

There's a gap of a few months in the AmosList archives.

Fri, 24 Jun 1994, Ryan Scott <rscott@gate.net>

In a message on this date, Ryan answers a question to an announcement he made earlier. Apperently he said in this earlier message that Francois Lionet was bugfixing Amos Pro and/or Amos Pro Compiler and that the source code to Amos Pro would become PD after a while.
Ryan also mentioned in a later message that already some people have the source code, although he wouldn't mention who.

Sat, 16 Jul 1994, M D Cox <mcox@access.digex.net>

Michael mentions that Francois Lionet is making Klik N Play (later affectionately known as Klik N Pray) for MS Windows (still not affectionately known). KNP is apparently an Amos like language for Windows, but all mouse driven and object oriented.

Wed, 20 Jul 1994, Neil Miller <neil@triode.apana.org.au>

Neil spoke to Francois a week earlier. AMOS Pro will be coverdisk material around Xmas.
At this stage, there will never be any updates to Pro, AMOS or the compilers.
If Europress agree to it, the Pro source code will be released into the PD.

Sun, 24 Jul 1994, Andy Church <achurch@goober.mbhs.edu>

Andy wants to start a team to coordinate bugfixing and expanding AMOS once it becomes PD. He is asking for team members, bug reports, and suggestions for improvements.

Fri, 5 Aug 94, Dominic Ramsey <dom@dynamo.demon.co.uk>

In the same thread still, Dom says he has received a letter from Europress:

Dear Dominic

Re: AMOS Professional

Thank you for your letter with reference to the above software.

Further to your query, we advise you that the AMOS Professional source
code will not become Public Domain.

Should you have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Yours sincerely,

Stuart Cartwright
Technical Services.

Tue, 9 Aug 1994, Ryan Scott <rscott@gate.net>

Ryan announces that Playfield and Andy Church are going to work together, so that using Andy's Intuition Extension and Playfield's Turbo Extension together will give you AGA. Apparently some previously planned AGA extension has been cancelled.

Wed, 5 Oct 1994, Andy Church <achurch@goober.mbhs.edu>

Andy asked Europress if the Amos Development Team (as proposed by him) could take over the development of AMOS. Today their answer came:

FACSIMILE MESSAGE

To: Andrew Church
Company: 0101 301 794 2280
From: Lee Cocker
Date: 3 October 1994


Re: AMOS Professional

Dear Andrew

We are sorry to confirm that Francois Lionet is no longer developing
AMOS due to commitments on other projects.

At Europress, we are concentrating on developing software for the PC
and can only offer support on the existing range of Amiga programs.

It is nice to learn of the existence of your group and your interest
in continuing with AMOS. We have no objection to any developments/
updates that you may wish to make to AMOS. However with our
commitment to PC software we regret that we would not be able to
offer any support.

Yours sincerely

(signed)

Lee Cocker
Assistant Customer Services Manager

Tue, 11 Oct 1994, Andy Church <achurch@goober.mbhs.edu>

He may have done this earlier, but today Andy announced the members of the Amos Development Team (ADT): Andy Church (initiator), Paul Reece, Paul Hickman, Mike Sikorsky, and Ryan Scott. Andy hopes to get Manuel Andre involved too.
In a later message, Andy mentions that the email-address for the ADT is <adt@clare.tased.edu.au>.

Wed, 16 Nov 1994, Jurgen Valks <J.VALKS@hsbos.nl>

Jurgen mentions he has just seen Klik 'n Play in action, but he omits to give an account as to what it is like.

Mon, 21 Nov 1994, Mike Sikorsky <sikorsky@ee.ualberta.ca>

Mike announces Mike's Amos Replacement Project (MARP). The goal of this project is to transfer AMOS functionality to C by making a C-function that is an exact replica (in functionality) of each and every AMOS command or function.
So for example Screen Open 0,320,200,16,Lowres would become M_OpenScreen(0,320,200,NCOLS_16,LOWRES,"Screen 1",NULL).
An added option would be to make an Amos-to-C compiler based on MARP.

1995

Tue, 31 Jan 1995, Andy <naimoli@cli.di.unipi.it>

Andy from Italy announces he has begun to upgrade AMOS by de-assembling (is this the right term) the binary and then reprograming it.

Tue, 31 Jan 95, Paul Reece <p.reece@trumpet.com.au>

Paul - as spokesman of the ADT - has the following news:
"The idea of bugfixing/developing Amos has been dropped."
"We have been unable to gather source-code, reverse-engineering is not only difficult but is also illegal and the current structure of AMOS makes if EXTREMELY hard to build upon - François was a very lazy programmer."
"We have however decided to begin work on our own language, featuring most of the facilities that are provided by AMOS, but hopefully much better and bugfree (well, eventually)."

Thu, 2 Feb 95, Gareth Edwards <config@ultim.demon.co.uk>

Ryan Scott seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Gareth Edwards steps forwardd and announces that he will take over as web master for the unofficial AMOS web site.
Meanwhile, extension coders complain that Ryan still owes them money and the ADT is down to four members.

Mon, 27 Feb 1995, Jan Pettersson <pumm10@skelleftea.se>

A rumour about a possible AGA-extension is quickly quenched when Jan mentions that this is the Stars-pro extension, available from Aminet. Apparently, this extension will better your rainbows, but no more than that.

Tue, 16 May 95, Chris Hodges <chris@sixpack.pfalz.org>

Chris Hodges of AMCAF fame formally introduces himself. Why is this so important, I hear you cry? Well, he was involved with the development of AMOS:
"January 1994. I buy my modem and a whole new world is open to me. Coding on AMCAF is running at high speed... 'Mr. Software Society' surprised me, when he told me, that I'll be going to France to meet F. Lionet to get all the essential informations etc. for an *AGA* *UPDATE* of AMOS... you can imagine how happy I've been."
"Then 25.03.1994: Europress is not interested in an AGA update and I don't go to France... :-{{{{ I said to myself, that I will give up AMOS after AMCAF has been completed..."
"Again, some time passes... September 1994... I acquired the job to translate the whole Klik'n'Play (Klik'n'Play is a kind of Gamemaker for Wintendo, but no commands are used, as all is done by dragin' and droppin'. Guess, who has coded this stupid thing?) manual within a month (they delivered it nearly a month later than planned). I were under real pressure (don't forget, that I'm a schoolboy ;-)) and the translation went somewhat badly... Europress were really annoyed about the poor translation bla bla but this is another story ;-)"

Sun, 20 Aug 1995, Marco Smetz <wraith@WOM.gun.de>

Marco gets to explain what this AMIPS extension is all about. Well, it's an Intuition extension providing buttons, sliders, windows, cgadgets. Quite pricey at 150 DM.
Later on in the thread Chris Hodges provides us with the address and phone number of the coder:

Thomas Nölker
Gärtnerreihstraße 7
D-67657 Kaiserslautern
Germany

Phone: +49-631/470274

Wed, 18 Aug 93, Ben Wyatt <bwyatt@paston.co.uk>

Ben has talked to Amiganuts about their AGA extension. The price is 10 UKP. It cannot do AGA bobs or sprites. IFFs (in AGA colours) cannot be loaded directly, although a utility will help.
Ben mentions later that their email address is: <amiganuts@aladdin.co.uk>, and their phone number is: UK 01703 348943.

Sun, 5 Nov 1995, Michele Berionne <M.Berionne@agora.stm.it>

Michele responds to a mail about Escom, the then owner of Amiga, planning to use PowerPC in the next generation Amigas. The person who mails this mentions that AMOS will not be able to run on such a system, at least not natively.

Thu, Nov 09 1995, Andy Church <achurch@dragon.res.cmu.edu>

Andy responds to a thread discussing a wishlist for commands in extensions. Apparently people have started asking the impossible. Even simple things may not be possible to implement in an extension, but may a require a complete rewrite of the language.
Andy: "Now, I personally think a rewrite of AMOS would be an excellent idea... but I don't have the time to spend on it. Sigh."

Thu, 9 Nov 1995, Gareth Edwards <config@ultim.demon.co.uk>

The news section of Amiga Shopper has an article concerning the revival of AMOS. It hasn't been on sale for a long time, but now Ultimate Software have gained the rights to distribute it.

Tue, 5 Dec 1995, Steve Bye <Steve@dcandy.demon.co.uk>

Steve, owner of F1 Licenceware, has several interesting things to say on joining the Amos Discussion List:
1: The AGA extension will not be sold by Amiganuts, but by F1 Licenceware. According to Steve, the AGA extension does not support Bobs, and "is basically for novelty value at the moment." The author, Nigel Critten, may be persuaded however to further develop this extension, if he receives enough money for the current version.
2: The AMOS Pro compiler will be sold for a limited time through F1 Licenceware. Ian McFegan, head of EuroPress (Software division?) has told Steve that the Ultimate Software claim of releasing the five Amos packages is not true.

Thu, 7 Dec 1995, Steve Bye <Steve@dcandy.demon.co.uk>

Steve has more tell. Rumour has it that Francois Lionet is willing to sell the source to AMOS. Which, according to Steve, is why Europress may be so reluctant to negotiate with others about further developing AMOS.

Wed, 13 Dec 1995, Branko Collin <Branko.Collin@mpi.nl>

Branko has put a demo of the OS Dev Kit for downloading on his FTP site (awaiting permission to ul' it to Aminet). The Dev Kit is special in that it allows a lot of graphics operations on the Workbench and also can use Bobs on standard Amiga screens (rather than the custom AMOS ones).

...

Next: 1996 and 1997. If and when I get around doing them.