AMOS Manuals / AMOS Pro Resource Kit Project

[MadAngus]

Another little update:

Got newsletters vol2 issue 1 to 3 rev1 complete.

AMOS-Pro User Guide - all the page graphics have been put in place. That is the section/chapter/subsection numbers, footer/Header graphics.

Did I say the rework of EASY AMOS user guide is ready for release, well I've said it again. I'll release this along side the Newsletters and AMOS Pro guide, before Christmas.

[Edit] Forgot to mention, I have started scanning Ultimate AMOS by Jason Holborn. 50 pages done so far.

[MadAngus]

Forgot to mention in the last post that one of the Vol2 newsletters has an article Called the Kennard Effect: Real time lens and shadowing effect.  If you remember the Predator character and how it appeared invisible with only the background distorted slightly around it's shape, then this article 1 and half pages that shows you how. Included is a Ten Liner an example, it's actually 51 lines of code including 8 comment lines.

Thought that might tease and interest you.

[MadAngus]

Amiga Game Makers Manual - With AMOS Basic
We have decided to make one and only one exception to the 'No permission, No book' rule for this book.

I will keep trying to find Stephen Hill to get authorisation for this book.

Until then I have added a link to the pdf book created by asymetrix on the first post of this thread. scroll down to the Downloads: section. It's a 50MB download.

At some point I'll recreate this in ODT and export it to PDF, should be able to get the file size down below 10MB.

[Edit]
On a side note, I forgot to mention Phil South has allowed me to use any part of his Mastering Amiga AMOS book in any other AMOS documentation. This will help towards the AMOS Resource Kit Project. Another thank to Phil South  .

[MadAngus]

A little progress update:

I've got some graphics rework to do on the manuals and then I'll be able to release the ClassicAMOS Resource Kit 1st edition in the next couple of weeks.

The ClassicAMOS Resource Kit 1st edition incorporates all AMOS Manuals, Software, Source Code, the TOME software and Manual and a few other bits and bobs.

I've started splitting the AMOS Pro User Guide into Language Reference/Programmers guide etc, so work has started on the AMOS Pro Resource Kit.

Updates coming soon.

[Lonewolf10]

Forgot to mention in the last post that one of the Vol2 newsletters has an article Called the Kennard Effect: Real time lens and shadowing effect.  If you remember the Predator character and how it appeared invisible with only the background distorted slightly around it's shape, then this article 1 and half pages that shows you how. Included is a Ten Liner an example, it's actually 51 lines of code including 8 comment lines.

Thought that might tease and interest you.

That sounds really cool. I'll have to take a look at that sometime

[MadAngus]

Some Updates: I think you've waited long enough, put a lot of hours in this month to get this done.

re-typeset the Easy AMOS Manual and added bookmarks.

re-typeset the AMOS Professional User Guide and added bookmarks.
Note: The this version of the AMOS Pro User Guide is not the same as that done by Asymetrix, this is an near exact duplicate of the original.
Note 2: Also note that the AMOS Pro User Guide only covered AMOS Professional 1.0. There was never a 2nd edition of the manual covering any AMOS Pro 2.x version

New release
AMOS Club Newsletters Volume 2, PDF
A must have for AMOS fans as these issues contain some very interesting code listings.

All Available from the download section.

Easy AMOS Manual (PDF)
A re-typeset duplicate of the original user Guide
The Easy AMOS User Guide by Mel Croucher and Kate Cameron-Dauml.
(c) Europress Software 1992
OCR by echo of the English Amiga Board (2009)
Typesetting by MadAngus

AMOS Professional User Guide 1st Edition (PDF)
A re-typeset duplicate of the original user Guide
(c) Europress Software 1992
OCR by asymetrix (2008)
Typesetting by MadAngus

AMOS Club Newsletters Volume 2, PDF
Consists of Issues 1 - 4
OCR and typesetting by MadAngus

This completes Phase 1 of this project.

Note: there is undoubtably many errors in the code listings of the above books. Over the next year I will be working through these books and correcting the errors. Addendum's will be released (regularly) and updated as errors are found and fixed.

Within the next two weeks I will be releasing the ClassicAMOS Resource kit. This will include all the AMOS Manuals, Software (unregistered versions) along with some installation guide and a couple of other things.
No, you will not need to register the software, this is just versions that have not been previously installed.

Once that is done February is reserved for AIAB which will result in a new version finally being released and updated website.

[bruceuncle]

Just downloaded the Pro User Manual.  Superb work MadAngus.   

When do you get time to sleep? 

[bruceuncle]

And thanks for the AMOS Club Newsletters Volume 2 in PDF format.  There's even a bug fix in there that may be relevant to the AMOS Pro Redevelopment work.  Great stuff!

[MadAngus]

@bruceuncle
The bookmarked version of asymetrix's AMOS Pro manual you created, did you do any other edits to it or just add bookmarks.

There is now three versions of this User Guide in the download section.
I want to keep my version and asymetrix's original and delete the other one.

However if the bookmarked version you created is identical to asymetrix's original except bookmarks have been added them I'll keep that one and remove the unbookmarked one.

asymetrix's original matches the HTML version so the content and page layout must be remain same.

[bruceuncle]

The bookmarked version of asymetrix's AMOS Pro manual you created, did you do any other edits to it or just add bookmarks.

There are some notes I added in the Interface chapters.  They're easy to identify and remove as they've got a yellow background.
However, I also corrected a few OCR glitches.
They would be impossible to revert without a side-by-side comparison. 
If  you absolutely have to have an identical, but bookmarked, version it would be far easier to just add the bookmarks to an original copy.

I can edit PDFs with an ancient Adobe Acrobat running in XP Mode under Windows 7.

I'll  check if I kept an intermediate version next time I'm back at my PC (typing all this batch of replies on the phone -we're in a heatwave that's more suited to reclining next to a fan than sitting).

[MadAngus]

LightBulb!

Better still I'll add all you notes to the wip addendum which I'll release at the same time as the ClassicAMOS Res Kit.

Hold on for now, I'll contact asymetrix and get his take on which PDF to keep.

[MadAngus]

I'm going to be refocusing my plans concerning the AMOS Pro resource kit. The resource kit documentation I'm going to do is going to primarily focus on developing and documenting the AMOS reimplementations, both xAMOS and my own. It will still be designed around the basic outline I have already posted (Ref. Post).

As such an AMOS Pro resource Kit will predominately consist of the work work from other sources such as done on AmigaCoding and the work bruceuncle is doing on the tech ref docs, and any back portable work I do. This will also be designed around the basic outline I have already posted (Ref. Post). My main focus on this will be typesetting bruceuncle's work and others into a consistent document structure. I still intend to port EASY AMOS User's guide to AMOS pro so I will be adding something.

At the moment I'm writing the HTML pages for the ClassicAMOS Resource Kit. This 1st edition will be a basic version with all AMOS software, sources, manuals, newsletters (AMOS Club and Totally AMOS diskmag) and a couple of extensions (AMCAF and TOME), including installation guides etc. I don't want to add too much as I want this to be a baseline for a second edition.

Rather than have two Resource Kits, AMOS Pro and ClassicAMOS, I intend to have just one - The ClassicAMOS Resource Kit with everything AMOS inside, this will avoid confusion.

I already have some outline plans for the 2nd Edition which I expect to take 12-18 months to complete.

• Everything from the 1st edition.
• Updated and corrected AMOS Manuals.
• The 3rd Party AMOS Books Set (Ref. Post).
• Source Disks for the manuals and books.
• More extensions (Legal distributions only).
• The beginnings of an AMOS Factory Developer Network Library (Tutorials, guides etc. Sourced from wherever I can get them).
• AMOS Pro Resource Kit (As described above).
• An updated and modified version of Mequa's AMOS for windows including an installer and launch interface for the different variants of AMOS.

The second edition might sound like a lot of work but it isn't really, well except for the only difficult part. Hacking the AMOS Installers to produce an unattended installation installer for the updated AMOS for windows.

[Lonewolf10]

New release
AMOS Club Newsletters Volume 2, PDF
A must have for AMOS fans as these issues contain some very interesting code listings.

I have only had time to have a quick look at Vol2 issue 1, but that some great work there

[MadAngus]

I have only had time to have a quick look at Vol2 issue 1, but that some great work there

Cheers

Beware the code listing, they will be bug ridden, which includes any errors from the original doc and any errors I introduced during the conversion.

2nd revisions of all docs will have everything fixed.

[MadAngus]

Note:

After discussion with bruceuncle and asymetrix I have deleted asymetrix's original version of the AMOS Pro user guide from the download section.

bruceuncles updated version with bookmarks, fixed OCR glitches and some notes has been retained. This version is identical in every other way to asymetrix's original. If you already have this you do not need to download it again.

@bruceuncle/asymetrix I have renamed the 'AMOS Professional Manual (PDF bookmarked version)' to 'AMOS Professional Manual (PDF)' as the original was named. All acknowledgements are in place.

@All
Although I have ODT versions of all the manuals, I would prefer to hold back from releasing them until I have been through them and fixed any errors. Once this is done and all unnecessary typesetting styles are removed I will release the ODT versions along with the updated PDF versions. The previous ODT versions I uploaded have been removed from the download section until then.