Amiga Arena Interview -------------------- Entwickler: Helmut Hoffmann Software : PhotoAlbum / CyberShow Homepage : home.arcor.de/helmuthoffmann/photoalbum/index.html EMail : helmuthoffmann@arcor.de *Please introduce yourself to the readers! My name is Helmut Hoffmann and I was born in 1968. A couple of years ago I ourse of studies I began to develop shareware programs for the Amiga. *When did you start working with the Amiga? That must have been about 1989. *Which Amiga model do you own? My final "real" Amiga is an Amiga 3000 (with an aged 25 MHz 68030 CPU), but I actually use "UAE" on a Windows PC with 1 GHz nearly exclusively, as this runs orders of magnitude faster (thanks to the Just-In-Time compiler which has recently been incorporated into UAE). *Which version of the operating system is running on your computer? Currently still OS3.1. *Which software are you developing? My shareware programs are mostly from the domain of graphics programs (PhotoAlbum, CyberShow; in the past also EGS-TV and EGSPhotoAlbum) or add-ons for other graphics programs (modules for ImageFX, Photogenics and XiPaint). It's hardly known that I even developed a game once ("Supertrail", to be found on Aminet). But this has been a long time ago (and is rather a "juvenile sin", at least insofar as programming quality in respect to system conformity is concerned). For the rest, at times I have done remittance work for business programs on the Amiga. *Can you tell us what your software is about? My current software (in the graphics area) is aimed at facilitating the handling of graphics of all kind in a very fast, comfortable and particularly also reliable and stable manner. A thing that aggravates me with many (even commercial) programs from that domain is sluggish response and most of all frequent crashes. I have tried to avoid that with my programs. *What gave you the idea of (further) developing your software? I mentioned some of the reasons above, but my impulse for developing graphics programs was the lack of good programs especially with support for graphics boards in the starting time of Amiga graphics boards (in the year 1994). Back then I was using a VLab frame grabber and had an EGS graphics board. Regrettably there wasn't a decent way to use both together, as the makers of VLab supported only their own graphics boards in the software. That was the reason for me to develop EGS-TV. Unfortunately the market for this product was pretty small, for only few users owned an EGS board as well as a VLab board in combination. The idea for making a digital photo album then arose from separating the load and save functions integrated in EGS-TV. There was already some kind of picture manager for EGS, but that was very slow and cumbersome to use (I had received a demo version of that at one time or another). That resulted in EGS-PhotoAlbum. After a little while though, the EGS graphic boards (resp. the EGS graphics Software) vanished from the Amiga market, and CyberGraphX began to establish itself. As I had written only user interfaces für EGS, my first program for this market was "CyberShow", that makes do with only menus, keyboard commands and shell parameters. But soon the pressure rose to also offer EGS-PhotoAlbum for CyberGraphX. In order have a larger user group, I constructed it so it doesn't only run in 24bit with CyberGraphX, but also on all AGA Amigas (from OS3.x), even if it is faster and more high grade for graphics boards. Further developments emerged either at the request of users or my own wishes, like lately the rotation functions I have integrated for using my digital camera. *How long has development taken so far? The first program fragments of my current graphics programs emerged already in EGS-TV in 1994. The first version of CyberShow arrived in June 1995, that of PhotoAlbum in May 1996. Since then, both programs have been continuously developed further (albeit with gaps). *Which software do you use? I use "OMA" for an assembler. Ecept for the JPEG routines, all my graphics programs have been developed and highly optimized in Assembler. For the translation of the JPEG code (C++) I use Maxon C++. *For which system (AmigaOS, AmigaDE, MorphOS) are you developing? For the classical AmigaOS. *Which OS will you support in the future? Currently I'm not planning to switch. As I mainly use the UAE simulator on a cheap PC as development environment, the other systems also don't come into question. Furthermore, the money for a new Amiga hardware with PowerPC or similar cannot be earned with shareware anyway, so it probably will remain AmigaOS. My hopes are that though modern Just-In-Time compilers (as they're already available in the UAE simulator), also users of PowerPC Amigas will be able to execute my 68K assembler programs with lightning speed in the future. At least on the PC I don't perceive a notable difference in speed between my Amiga programs under UAE and similar PC programs anymore. *What can we expect of future versions? In any case a function for renaming pictures in PhotoAlbum; further planned innovations are (possibly) PNG loading functions and finer scaling in CyberShow. Of course this depends on user interest... *Don't you lose the fun and the interest in developing if you see the little amount of feedback you get from the small Amiga market? That, alas, clouds the mood considerably. *Do you receive anough feedback for your software? In recent years, regrettably, no. *When did you last use your Amiga? The real one a couple of days ago; I use the UAE simulator on the PC nearly every day. *Which software did you last buy for the Amiga? If that counts: The AmigaForever CD with the UAE simulator a couple of years ago, but strictly speaking this is a PC software, even if it emulates an Amiga. *Do you believe in a comeback of Amiga? Yes, in some way, but what will finally be is totally in the dark. For me even a fast simulator is eventually a successful comeback. I don't necessarily connect Amiga with a specific hardware. *Your last words to the readers? A quote from my shareware manuals: The future of Amiga software development lies in your hands... So, in this sense I hope for the support of all graphics enthusiastic Amiga users so I may realize my planned extensions and maybe receive further helpful suggestions, too. Best regards,Helmut Hoffmann © Amiga Arena 1/2002 (translated from German by Christian Busse)