1.1 Programmer's 'Must Haves'
Description
This article is from the Amiga Books FAQ, by Marc Atkin with numerous contributions by others.
1.1 Programmer's 'Must Haves'
o Amiga International: Amiga Developer CD V2.1 1999, [publisher?] DM 49.00 (about $27)
This CD contains all the material you need to start developing software for Amiga computers.
The new 3.5 Native Developer Kit: o Updated and revised `C' and assembly language header files and linker libraries
o Updated and revised system documentation and tutorial texts
o Example code covering the AmigaOS 3.0, 3.1 and 3.5 features
o The NewIFF v39 package
o The AmigaGuide and DataType documentation and example code
o WarpUP (PowerPC) developer documentation and examples
Additional developer material:
o BOOPSI gadget and image classes, ReActor BOOPSI toolkit and example code, the AmigaOS 2.04 example code, the RKM 2.04 code examples, tables listing which operating system modules were added, removed or updated in subsequent AmigaOS releases, the complete set of registered IFF forms, IFF example and stress test files, all IFF packages released by Commodore-Amiga, Inc., the camd v37.1 MIDI developer kit, the SANA-II standard package and developer kit, the Installer v43.3 package, the CDTV developer disks
o International support material: Sample text using the full ISO-8859-1 character set, translation guidelines
o Reference material: Amiga Mail Volume 1 articles (Spring 1987 - Jan/Feb 1989), the complete Amiga Mail Volume 2 articles in AmigaGuide format (Jan/Feb 1990 - Mar/Apr 1993), the Includes & Autodocs in AmigaGuide format, revised Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manuals in AmigaGuide format, HTML versions of all AmigaGuide format manuals
o Historical developer material: DevCon Disks (1988-1993), the CD32 developer package, 1.3, 2.0, 3.1 Native Developer Kits
o Packages contributed by 3rd parties: the StormC 68K C/C++ developer package, the WBPath and ActionFSSM packages (Ralf Babel), Personal Paint, CopyIcon, MailBX and DirDiff packages (Cloanto), INet 225 developer kit V2 (Interworks, Inc.), Picasso96 developer kit (Alexander Kneer and Tobias Abt), the Miami SDK V2.1 (Nordic Global, Inc.), CyberGraphX V4 developer kit (Frank Mariak), the MMUlib package (Thomas Richter), the Kiskometer and MakeCD packages (Angela Schmidt and Patrick Ohly), Enforcer v37.64 (Mike Sinz ), Envoy v3.0 developer kit (Heinz Wrobel), Wipeout, Blowup and Sashimi debugging tools and CheckGuide (Olaf Barthel)
o Ralph Babel: The Amiga Guru Book 1993, Ralph Babel (published by Ralph Babel, no ISBN) DM 79.00
hr@brewhr.swb.de (Heiko Rath), 3 Dec 1993: "The Amiga Guru Book is a book about the Amiga and its operating system. It offers fundamental knowledge of the Amiga system and covers such areas as: guidelines for proper multitasking programming, ANSI C, Aztec C and SAS/C, debugging techniques, AmigaDOS, the file systems, the format of load and object modules, process creation, CLI and user shells, handlers and packets (more than complete list of packets), and many other areas. There are many useful bits and pieces about the OS that you'd have a hard time finding anywhere else."
Further reviews are available in docs/misc/gurubook-info.lha on Aminet .
o Commodore Business Machines: Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manual: Libraries (3rd edition; dark gray cover) Addison-Wesley , 1991. ISBN 0-201-56774-1 $38.95
Basic introduction to using the Amiga library functions for intuition, graphics, and exec. Many C examples. Suitable for the beginner, although some background in computer programming (especially C) would be helpful. Covers Kickstart/Workbench through version 2.0. All examples are available in executable and source code form from Fish disk #741 and #742.
o Commodore Business Machines: Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manual: Devices (3rd edition; dark gray cover) Addison-Wesley , 1991. ISBN 201-56775-X $28.95
Basic introduction to programming Amiga devices and resources (basic I/O interface to the actual hardware). Many C examples which are available in executable and source code form from Fish disk #741. Covers Kickstart/Workbench through vesion 2.0. This book also contains the official IFF documentation, which covers the IFF format philosophy itself and many of its incarnations. The included IFF handling code has been superseded several times by publications on Fish disks. As of this writing, the newest version is 39.11 from Fish disk #985.
o Commodore-Amiga, Inc.: The AmigaDOS Manual (3rd edition) Bantam, 1991. ISBN 0-553-35403-5 $24.95, CAN 31.95, UKP 21.99
Covers all AmigaDOS through 2.04. It contains a user manual style introduction to the AmigaShell and its commands (which actually is identical to some user manualy shipped by C=), a printout of the Autodocs, and covers the on-disk structure of OFS and FFS, the format of linkable and loadable binaries, packets, and some internal DOS structures.
arno@yaps.dinoco.de (Arno Eigenwillig), 27 Jul 1994: "I would not recommend it, though. It has a high redundancy w.r.t. other publications from C=, and its exclusive parts are often incomplete or incorrect."
o Commodore Business Machines: Amiga User Interface Style Guide Addison-Wesley , 1991. ISBN 0-201-57757-7 $21.95
Describes the philosophy behinds the Amiga graphical user interface. Presents guidelines for interface design ("look and feel") that all Amiga applications (and games!?) should adhere to. Covers Kickstart/Workbench version 2.x. Well suited for the beginner, with emphasis on general interface principles, and less on the actual programming.
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