Fresh Fish 8/FreshFishVol8-CD1.bin/useful/reviews/software/graphics/magicwb2

Internet Message Format | 1994-08-22 | 21.7 KB

Path: news.uh.edu!barrett
From: [e-mail] (Nick Ridley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Magic Workbench version 2.0
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Date: 22 Aug 1994 14:41:52 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
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Sender: [e-mail] (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
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Reply-To: [e-mail] (Nick Ridley)
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Keywords: Workbench, icons, background patterns, graphics, shareware
Originator: [e-mail]


PRODUCT NAME

    Magic Workbench version 2.0 ("MagicWB")


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

    Magic Workbench is a package consisting of carefully drawn icons
which directly replace all those supplied with the original Workbench
package, and many more for other programs are included too.  There are a
large number of backgrounds suitable for using in windows or on the main
Workbench screen, as well as dock icons for use in conjunction with a
program such as Tool Manager by Stefan Becker.  New with version 2.0 are
several other things such as 'image-drawers' and a few support programs:
MagicWB-Demon and Magic Copper (for AGA users).


AUTHOR

    Name:        Martin Hottenloher
    Address:    Am HochstraB 4
            89081 Ulm
            Germany
    E-mail:        [e-mail]


LIST PRICE

    Dependent on the terms of the SASG (Standardised Amiga Shareware
Group).  At time of writing this was:

    US$20,-        DM30,-     UK15,-      FF120,-        SFr30,-

    There are local registration sites available outside Germany in Great
Britain, the US and Australia.

    I ordered my copy directly from the author.


SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

    HARDWARE

        300K disk space required on your SYS: partition.

        In theory, no other special hardware is needed in order to
        use this package, though in practice some things are a good
        idea:

        a) A hard disk is recommended.  The enclosed Installer script
        expects you to have a hard drive with Workbench on it.  For
        floppy systems with at least 1.5 MB RAM, it is certainly
        possible to unarchive MagicWB to RAM: and then copy by hand
        to a floppy, but I don't recommend it.  Practically speaking,
        I suspect that people who want to run a high resolution
        Workbench will have hard disks.

        b) 1MB+ of CHIP RAM is recommended, though by no means
        necessary.  I imagine that an Amiga with only 0.5MB of Chip
        RAM would be seriously limited if MagicWB was installed.  An
        8 colour Workbench plus a higher resolution screen-mode uses
        several hundred kilobytes of Chip RAM, and that doesn't
        count the RAM usage of detailed icons.

        c) A monitor capable of displaying the required screen modes
        without flicker will make life more pleasant, but is again
        not required.  I have been running an interlaced MagicWB on
        my Philips CM8833 monitor for 8 months now, and I have
        survived the flicker. :)


    SOFTWARE

        Version 2.0 or higher of AmigaDOS is required.

        A proportional screenmode with at least 8 colours should be
        used in order for MagicWB to look right.  Of course you can
        use neither of these, but then you will be wasting your time
        with MagicWB. :)

        A proportional screenmode is one where the pixels are
        square.  The most obvious example of such a screenmode is
        Hi-Res Interlace.


COPY PROTECTION

     There is no visible copy protection, though the author maintains
that every copy of MagicWB is personalised, and thus pirated copies would be
immediately traceable.


MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

    Amiga 1200 2MB CHIP RAM with Kickstart 3.0 (v39.106)
                 and Workbench 3.0 (v39.29)
    GVP A1230 Series II 50Mhz 68030 plus 4MB FAST RAM
    GVP A1291 SCSI2 interface
    Quantum Pro 410MB SCSI2 Hard Disk Drive in external case


BASIC INSTALLATION

    MagicWB 2.0 arrives archived on a single floppy disk.  There is a
personalised message warning you not to distribute MagicWB and a
self-extracting archive which prompts you for a destination directory,
reminding you that you will need 1.5MB of disk space.  Resist the temptation
to unpack this to RAM: as you will need access to all these files in the
future.

    From these files, you can run the real installation program, but
since this is in essence what MagicWB is all about, I shall discuss this in
the review proper.


INTRODUCTION

        When Edge Magazine published two pictures comparing the Amiga
Workbench to the Apple Mac Desktop it made me feel quite ill.  Why was that?
The Amiga shot they showed was a beautiful black and white picture of the
default Workbench being run on a high-resolution screen, and so it looked
horrible.  Many Amiga owners know that they do not have to put up with an
environment like that since MagicWB has been available for quite some time.
It has steadily become accepted throughout the Amiga community, it seems, as
THE replacement icon scheme, as more and more shareware and Public Domain
software comes with MagicWB style icons.  Those not in the know may well
have wondered what those strange colourful icons were all about.  Read on.

    MagicWB2 is not strictly shareware, as it is only available if
ordered from the author or a SASG registration site.  A demo consisting of
example screenshots is available (e.g. on Aminet - MagicWB20d.lha in
biz/demo).  The previous archive, version 1.2, was available in the past, and
registered users had access to version 1.5.  Due to the availability of this
demonstration archive, I have not produced any example screenshots to
accompany this review, so I advise that you download the archive.


DETAILED INSTALLATION

    One of the first things that strikes you about the MagicWB2
package is the standard of presentation.  The disk icon for the install
floppy is very striking and introduces the MagicWB logo.  Having unarchived
the disk, you should have a directory on your hard disk which contains the
package.  On opening this drawer you will immediately notice how carefully
all the icons and windows have been arranged - real care has been taken here.

    The real test of the package is how well the install routine
works, though.  Previous versions had an odd quirk or two, though it is no
wonder - no two people have their Workbench partitions set up identically,
so any install program has to be moderately intelligent.  It is on this
point that I can forgive the author for not using the Commodore Installer
utility, as perhaps it was not flexible enough for his purposes.  I still
would have preferred to see Installer used though, simply for the sake of
standardisation.

    The installer program does its job very well, and I uncovered no
problems at all.  In theory, I was updating my installation from version 1.2,
but I cannot see that there would be any problems.  Those curious to know
precisely what the program is doing can find rough details of what is going
on in the documentation.

    If you have an AGA machine the installer asks you if you would
like to install the special 'Magic Copper' program and its associated
backdrops.  More of this later.  A subtly different palette is used if you
have an AGA machine.

    The final thing the installer suggests you do is to change the
default Workbench screenmode.  As mentioned before, at the very least this
should be HiRes interlaced.  8 colours are needed too; though if you have an
AGA machine and intend to use Magic Copper, you will need 16 colours.
Running a high resolution screenmode with 8 or more colours will slow your
machine's ability to open windows, etc.  The author claims that MagicWB2 runs
'2-3 [times] faster and needs 67% less chip-memory' than previous versions,
and that even on a standard 68000-based machine, operation is still fairly
speedy.  I was unable to test this, though.

    Once the installer has changed all the icons in your Workbench
partition, you are free to update the icons elsewhere on your hard disk
yourself.  A couple of utilities are available to aid you in this venture.
The first is 'update drawers' which changes all the drawer icons to the new
MagicWB2 style icon, and the second is 'IconUpdate' which is a very simple
utility for changing single program/drawer icons.  I did have a problem with
the 'update drawers' utility, in that it did not deal with one of my
partitions (a large, 100MB one) very well.  After consuming 4MB of memory it
broke down - presumably it needed more, due to an excessive amount of drawers
on my partition perhaps.  I was surprised though, as the author claimed that
300 bytes would be needed for each directory.  By my calculations this means
that I had roughly more than 13,000 directories!  It seems most probable
that this quirk was caused by a conflict with Disk Expander which I use on
this partition and none of the others (all of which worked fine).  However,
specifying smaller groups of directories for updating caused no problems.  A
bit of a mystery all in all.

    IconUpdate on the other hand worked very well, and is by far the
most intuitive utility of its kind that I have seen. A single small window
appears on the screen and the user simply drags the source icon and then the
destination icon onto it. Multiple destination icons are permitted.


THE PALETTE

    Previous users of MagicWB may well be aware that the new palette for
version 2 is slightly darker than before; specifically, on AGA machines
where the palette can be controlled more precisely.  There is also a new
program called MagicWB-Demon that is run in the startup-sequence and
makes sure that whatever screenmode is opened, the last eight colours remain
set to those necessary to display the MagicWB icons, docks and backdrops
correctly.  The installer puts this program in both the startup-sequence and
the user-startup file.  The documentation says that the inclusion in
user-startup is so that in the eventuality of your startup-sequence getting
deleted you will have a copy of the command.  Even if MagicWB-Demon can only
be run once, I would still have preferred it if the second entry was
commented out.

    Should you be using a 24bit graphics card, the author includes in the
documentation suggestions for further palette adjustments.


THE BACKGROUNDS

    After the icons, the second most important part of MagicWB is the
use of background patterns for both the Workbench screen and the drawer
windows opened on it.  Workbench 3 has direct support for this, and for 2.x
users a program, NickPrefs, is included.

    Over 53 patterns are included, 4 of which are specific to the use of
Magic Copper on an AGA machine, and a further 8 of which are new to
MagicWB2.0.  The standard of these patterns is exceptional, and it is hard to
do justice to how beautiful they look.  They are of course suitable for other
applications -- for example, Magic User Interface (MUI) -- though they rely
on the MagicWB palette.

    Magic Copper is a shareware commodity which is similar in operation
to the previously available program, WBVerlauf (both written by Christian A.
Weber).  It produces graduated backdrops using the Amiga's copper custom
processor.  These have been seen before in many an Amiga game, but rarely so
beautifully done as with this program.  The commodity is placed in the
WBStartup drawer and has an interface which can be popped up with a hotkey.
Two colours need to be selected using standard RGB sliders - one for the top
of the screen (a starting colour, in effect) and one for the bottom.  The
program then produces a background which fills in between the two colours
chosen.  Two 'Random' buttons make selecting colours easy, and the results
are displayed instantaneously.  Thus great fun can be had just generating
random backgrounds until something suitable is come up with.

    A background picture or pattern can be used in conjunction with
Magic Copper - the graduated background simply shows through wherever a shade
of dark blue is used.  There are four such patterns included, one of them the
now infamous 'Intel Outside' logo!  As mentioned before the only real trade
off for this fabulous 'workstation' style look is that you need to use a 16
colour Workbench.  I also came up against a few bugs (mentioned later).


THE FONTS

    MagicWB comes with 3 carefully designed fonts, all available in 3
sizes (not all of them the same).  Different from the previous MagicWB 1.5
release is that the XEN 13 font has been replaced with a more usable XEN 11.
These MagicWB fonts are extremely useful, as it is always difficult tracking
down legible, small-sized fonts suitable for high resolution screenmodes.
XHelvetica 9 is perfect for icon text, and XEN 8 and 9 are ideal for shells,
list views, text readers and even buttons in Directory Opus.  In many ways,
these fonts are well worth the money alone (though almost all of them have
been available for some time now in previous MagicWB releases).


THE ICONS

    Almost forgot :)  There are about 100 standard icons, and about 50
'image drawers', which are new to MagicWB2.  There are also around 50 dock
icons suitable for using with Tool Manager by Stefan Becker.  For those who
have never seen MagicWB-style icons, they are designed with graduated grey
backgrounds so that they have a 3D look to them, and all have a 'selected
image' which simulates the icon being pressed (some of them have different
designs too).  The improvement over the original Commodore icons is enormous!
There are only a few brand new icons included in this package that were not
available in MagicWB1.5, though all of them have been tweaked in that the
background template that all of them are based around has changed subtly.
There are a few new dock icons, though in my opinion they still feel a little
large, and personally I prefer the style used by Osma Ahvenlampi in his
TauIcons set (available from Aminet).  Perhaps they work better with higher
screen resolutions such as Super72 and Productivity - I was not able to try
this out.

    The image drawers are perhaps the single biggest change in this
release of MagicWB. There is a new default drawer icon, and if the user so
wishes he can choose instead to use a drawer which includes a picture on the
front suggesting what the directory contains. These alone completely change
the look of your Workbench, and as with all the other types of icon,
templates are included for you to help you design your own, though the
author has covered most general eventualities with the ones he includes.


SUMMARY

    MagicWB2 is very much a major upgrade to previous releases, and the
list of changes in the documentation makes interesting reading - many things
have been adjusted, and it is by no means just a case of a few newly
designed icons being added here and there.


DOCUMENTATION

    The included documentation comes in AmigaGuide format and is clearly
laid out with the use of bold typeface to highlight important words.
Generally everything you would want to know is here, though personally I had
a few misgivings.  Firstly, as the product is in effect a registered version,
I would have felt happier if all references to registering the product were
deleted - this would free up a little disk space for a few more patterns or
icons.  The author's email address was also available only from within the
registration program.  Secondly, I would like to have had more precise
details included about what the MagicWB-Demon program did.  It is possible
to piece together what it does from references here and there, but I like to
know exactly what any patch I run from my startup-sequences does, so that I
can assess what may clash with other programs.

    On a more positive note, don't be put off by the author's remarks
about a 'surprise' in MagicWB2 either - it is very good!


LIKES

    Magic Workbench is beautiful - it will transform your Workbench
environment totally.  For those who concentrate more on working from within
shells, it is probably a waste of disk space, but for anyone who takes pride
in snapshotting their windows neatly, this is an essential purchase.

    Perhaps the most exciting thing about MagicWB is that it has already
been accepted as a standard, and so there are loads of MagicWB style icon and
background sets available in the Public Domain.  A quick count on Aminet
shows, at the time of writing. over 20 available sets of icons and
backgrounds put together by other Amiga users, and more appear on a regular
basis.  You should be able to hunt down an icon for most major packages, and
if not, with the aid of a Icon utility (I recommend the shareware Iconian by
Chad Randall) and the templates provided with MagicWB2, it is simple to put
something half decent together.


DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS

    Well, I have very few that have not already been mentioned.
Obviously, using detailed icons mean that Chip RAM and hard disk space are
eaten up - for example, the new default drawer icon is at 1233 bytes almost
twice the size of the usual Workbench drawer, but then it does have twice as
many pixels!  This will not cause you any major problems, and the author
states that the icons take up over 50% less disk space than they did in
previous versions.  Perhaps if you have only a 20MB hard disk, using
MagicWB would not be a good idea, but then it is probably time you got a
larger drive anyway!

    In terms of Chip memory, I find that once my setup is loaded (with
ToolManager docks and an 8 colour Workbench), I have used up roughly 0.23MB
of Chip RAM.  Thus, when I need to run programs which require nearer the full
2MB of Chip RAM, I run them before the Workbench gets opened using a popup
startup-sequence menu ("Slect" by Asher Feldman).

    The previous MagicWB seemed a bit bright, but the new improved
palette is much better.  After a while you may get sick of everything looking
a bit grey and wish that you could change it all.  Magic Copper is ideal in
these circumstances (if you're running an AGA machine of course) as it puts
all the colour back into the screen.  It is still a lot more interesting than
the default Workbench screen, though!


COMPARISON TO SIMILAR PRODUCTS

    There are other icon collections available for Workbench, though
none of them are to my knowledge as comprehensive or as good-looking as
MagicWB.  If you are looking for a way to standardise the entire look of all
your icons, MagicWB is the perfect option.  Other collections include icons
for the Workbench partition and little else.  Due to the way MagicWB has
been accepted, the right icon for your program is never too far away.  Some
other collections ask for 16 colour screens, but these may be preferable if
you desire a more Windows-like colourful look.  I have no doubt though that
soon the MagicWB look will be synonymous with the Amiga Workbench.


BUGS

    A collection of icons is harmless enough in itself, so it is the
support programs (new to this release) which perhaps will cause problems for
the user.  Most specifically I have my suspicions about a major problem
that I have come up against since installing Magic Copper.

    I suddenly started noticing glitches with my custom hires pointer.
The problem stopped when Magic Copper was disabled, so it seems likely that
it is responsible.  Generally, my pointer sometimes changed unexpectedly from
hires to lores and then to the default pointer, and back again.  This would
happen at unexpected moments, but often when switching from one screen to
another in order for a window to be opened, and also when clicking on file
requesters put up by the Commodore Installer program.  I have mailed the
author, Christian Weber, with reference to this, but I have not had a
response yet.  It is of course possible that the problem lies somewhere else
entirely.


VENDOR SUPPORT

    Martin Hottenloher responded quickly and professionally to all of my
enquiries about Magic Workbench (email used).  He is dedicated to supporting
and developing MagicWB further, and will gladly help design the odd icon for
spurious programs.  If MagicWB2 sells well he promises to look into
extending MagicWB from 8 to 16 colours (only required at present by Magic
Copper).


WARRANTY

    None.


CONCLUSIONS

    For anyone who uses the Amiga Workbench seriously, a decent icon
collection is going to be an important purchase.  They do not come any better
than this one, and the only real tradeoff is that you need to run a high
resolution screenmode.  This could dissuade many people who do not own
Multisync/VGA monitors, but my advice is (unless you are epileptic!) give it
a try anyway, as you may find that you get used to the flicker.  I know I
have.  Old style icons last a matter of minutes on my hard drive nowadays -
here is one other program you should consider getting your hands on -
MagIcon (Aminet: util/wb/magicon.lha).  This puts an appicon onto the
Workbench, and when you drop icons onto it, the filetype is determined.  If
it is recognised, the image is changed to that of one that is preset by
you.  It works wonderfully well and is highly recommended for use in
combination with IconUpdate as included in the MagicWB package.

    For anyone who has been using a previous version of MagicWB, I
strongly recommend that you purchase this upgrade, especially if you are an
AGA user.

    My advice is that you go and download the demo of this package off
Aminet immediately, if only to get your hands on the SASG registration
program.  And while you're at it, register Magic User Interface as well.  MUI
and MagicWB used together give Amiga users a graphical working environment
of which they can be justly proud, and which outshines those of any other
home computer on the market - IMHO. :)


COPYRIGHT NOTICE

    Review Copyright 1994 Nick Ridley.  All rights reserved.

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