Port MUI4 to AROS

[jens-maus]

@softwarefailure created the issue:

Checking out the weekly AROS progress reports it seems as if almost all resources are eaten up by maintaining Zune, e.g.

Week of September 7th:

• Zune test suite is now extended to support almost all List and Listview methods and attributes (neil)
• Problem with up/down arrows in List MUI class not working sometimes fixed (deadwood)
• Later setting a title in List MUI class no longer causes crash (neil)
• A crash in Pendisplay MUI class has been fixed (neil)
• Switching between pages or adding a page in Group MUI class no longer causes flickering (deadwood)
• Newly added tabs in Title MUI class are now rendered as inactive (deadwood)

Week of September 14th:

• Title MUI class now adds padding around inner objects which protects it from beeing damaged (deadwood)
• Changing active tab in the Group MUI class no longer causes flicker (deadwood)
• Context menu functions in sub classes of Listtree MUI class now work as expected (deadwood)

Week of September 21st:

• Handling of MUI_List_Visible attribute of List MUI class when list is hidden has been fixed (neil)
• MUIA_List_InsertPosition attribute of List MUI class now returns correct value (neil)

IMHO this a terrible waste of valuable programmer time. Instead, MUI4 should simply be ported to AROS instead of doing everything twice or even thrice (OS4, AROS, MorphOS).

If there are no legal barriers from Stefan Stuntz, there should be an official MUI 4 for AROS as a more complete alternative to Zune. This would also leave much more time for AROS programmers to focus on the things that are really important instead of struggling to fix Zune all the time.

[jens-maus]

@tboeckel changed priority from undecided to low

[jens-maus]

@tboeckel commented:

In fact Jens and me really already spend some thoughts on this topic. But I cannot tell how a closed source project like MUI will fit into the open source nature of AROS, especially since Zune is an integrat part of AROS. However, as far as I can see it should be possible to replace Zune by something like MUI/AROS without having to change any of the AROS intera (just a guess).

On the other hand none of the AROS developers ever dared to ask for an AROS port of MUI. I shared some code of the classes I implemented myself with them already, but apart from that the AROS team doesn't seem to want to get involved into MUI development directly.

Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't reject any offer of help from the AROS developers. It is just a matter of fact that we had lots of inconvenient discussions with certain individuals about who is the true owner of MUI. As such I cannot tell alone who we should share the source code with or whether it would be better to create an AROS port ourself. No matter what, if we should do such a port at all, it won't be finished any time soon. But the idea is tempting nevertheless...

[jens-maus]

@tboeckel changed type from enhancement to task

[jens-maus]

@tboeckel commented:

If this should happen at all it is more a task than just a simple "enhancement"...

[tboeckel]

Please discuss this topic with the gentle guys of the MorphOS team. These are the people who are not willed to give MUI away to the public.