AFileManager Public Preview Release

I am pleased to announce the first public preview of AFileManager, built on the emerging AROSA application platform for AROS.

This release should be considered a technology preview and architectural demonstrator, rather than a finished application.
AFileManager is my attempt to explore a more modern direction for AROS application development while retaining the efficiency, responsiveness and distinctive character of the Amiga architecture.
More importantly, it is the first substantial public demonstration of the wider AROSA architecture in a real application.

Download

The AFileManager / AROSA Public Preview can be downloaded from SourceForge:

SourceForge:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/afilemanager/

The main release package is:

AFileManager-AROSA-Preview-0.8.6.8.0.2-i386-AROS.zip
An optional CD / ISO distribution image is also available:
AFileManager-AROSA-Preview-0.8.6.8.0.2-i386-AROS-Media.iso
The ISO is intended as installation media for an existing AROS pc-i386 system. It is not a complete bootable AROS distribution.

Documentation is included with the release and is also available separately:

- AROSA-AFileManager-Quick-Start.pdf
- AFileManager-User-Guide.pdf

If you do not already have a compatible AROS installation, a current AROS pc-i386 build can be obtained from:

https://www.aros.org/download.html
What is AFileManager?

AFileManager is a completely new file manager developed specifically for AROS and AROSA.

It does not depend on MUI, Zune or another desktop application framework. Its interface is built directly on Intuition and the native AROS/Amiga graphics system, together with a growing set of AROSA graphical controls and reusable services.

The current preview already provides a substantial set of file-management and desktop-oriented features, including:

- Dual-pane file management
- Multiple file-manager tabs
- List, Details, Icon and Workbench-style views
- Editable path navigation and breadcrumb controls
- Standard keyboard and text-editing operations
- Copy, paste, delete and drag-and-drop functionality
- Context menus and configurable toolbars
- File preview and metadata handling
- Image preview, including common bitmap and IFF-related formats
- Archive inspection and compression support
- AmigaGuide viewing through the AROSA presentation system
- Limited HTML and CSS rendering
- Basic sound-file support
- Modern window-management features, including window snapping
- Integrated help, information and configuration interfaces

Some areas are intentionally incomplete.

The HTML and CSS implementation currently focuses on establishing the foundations of a lightweight document and presentation engine rather than attempting to provide a complete modern web browser. Multimedia support is still limited, and animation support has not yet been implemented.

Behind the visible interface, AFileManager also exercises AROSA's messaging architecture using native AROS tasks, message passing and message queues, allowing applications and services to cooperate without becoming one large monolithic program.

What is AROSA?

AFileManager is also a demonstrator for something considerably larger.

AROSA is intended to become a modern application platform for AROS, providing reusable infrastructure that applications should not need to implement independently.
Current work includes, or is laying the foundation for:

- Reusable graphical controls and UI infrastructure
- Application and resource invocation
- Presentation and document services
- File-format handling
- HTML and CSS presentation
- Font and text rendering
- Application configuration
- Logging and diagnostics
- Message-based services
- Registry and persistent data services
- Common dialogs and reusable components
- Application descriptors and capability descriptions
- Structured application startup and environment management
- User-defined workspaces based on the Amiga screen architecture

The objective is to provide a consistent application layer so that future AROSA applications can share common infrastructure instead of each implementing its own incompatible version of the same functionality.

Workspaces and the Amiga Screen Model

One of the ideas I am particularly interested in developing within AROSA is user-defined workspaces.
The Amiga introduced a powerful multi-screen architecture decades ago. Rather than replacing that concept with conventional virtual desktops, AROSA can build upon it.
A workspace can represent a dedicated working environment for a particular activity, for example:

- Development
- File Management
- Communications
- Graphics
- Documentation
- Media
- Administration

Each workspace can maintain its own applications, window layouts and working environment while still using the native Amiga screen model underneath.
The aim is not simply to copy virtual desktops from other operating systems, but to evolve the Amiga's original multi-screen concept into a more structured system of persistent, purpose-driven working areas.
AFileManager is already being designed with this model in mind and is one of the first applications being used to explore how such workspace management can operate in practice.

Native AROS Development

This is not an attempt to recreate Linux, Windows or another operating system on top of AROS.
I believe AROS should continue to build on the ideas that made the Amiga architecture unusual and interesting:

- Lightweight operation
- Native tasks
- Message passing
- Multiple screens
- Responsive graphical applications
- Small and efficient programs

At the same time, computing environments and user expectations have changed enormously since the original Amiga was introduced.
My goal is therefore not simply to preserve the past, but to explore what a modern Amiga-inspired computing platform could become today.

Compatibility

There is one important compatibility limitation with this preview.

The current AFileManager and AROSA builds target the current AROS development branch and its newer application-launch environment.
They are therefore not compatible with older AROS installations, including existing AROS One installations, unless the required newer AROS components are present.
This preview depends on functionality that is not available in older environments, and maintaining full backward compatibility at this stage would significantly restrict the architectural work being explored.

Included Technologies

The preview contains or integrates several technologies that are also becoming reusable AROSA platform components, including:

- ZIP and UnZIP support
- NanoSVG
- SQLite
- Supporting compression and file-format libraries

The intention is for these capabilities to become reusable across AROSA applications rather than existing only inside AFileManager.

The ATransfer transport and web-service framework is not included in this release. ATransfer remains a separate project and still requires completion of its Linux and Windows service components before I consider it ready for public release.

This Really Is a Preview

There will be bugs.
Some functionality remains incomplete.
Some user-interface behaviour still requires refinement.
Performance and rendering still need improvement in a number of areas.

This release marks the point where I feel the project is mature enough to put in front of the community for testing, discussion and criticism.

Why Release It Now?

Developing AROSA is a substantial undertaking.

AFileManager was never intended to be just another file manager. I started with it because I needed a real application large enough to exercise the graphical controls, services, messaging, presentation system, resource handling and architectural ideas that AROSA depends upon.
In that sense, AFileManager is the proving ground for the platform itself.
With this preview, I would like to understand whether there is genuine interest in this direction and whether the community believes these ideas are worth developing further.

Feedback Welcome

I would particularly welcome:

- Testing on real AROS systems
- Bug reports
- User-interface feedback
- Feature suggestions for AFileManager
- Ideas for additional AROSA services
- Architectural discussion and criticism
- Developers interested in experimenting with or contributing to the platform

Positive feedback is appreciated, but constructive criticism is equally valuable.
At this stage, understanding what works, what does not work and what people would like to see next is very useful.

Looking Forward

AFileManager is the application you can see today. AROSA is the platform being built underneath it.
The long-term goal is not simply to preserve what the Amiga gave us, but to explore how those ideas could have evolved if the platform had continued moving forward.
My ambition is for AROSA to help bring Amiga-inspired computing into the 21st century while remaining recognisably rooted in the architecture and principles that made the platform interesting in the first place.

This preview is the first public step in that direction.

i386? seriously?

I do intend to support x86_64 once the foundation is stable, and ARM is also interesting to me — especially for small, low-cost systems such as Raspberry Pi-class hardware. I would rather stabilise the AROSA architecture on one target first than spread the work across several architectures too early.

Out of interest, which platform do you think would be the most useful target for future AROS development and support?
For this first AROSA/AFileManager preview I chose i386 because that is the environment where my current FPC toolchain and integrated components are tested and stable.
Longer term I am interested in other platforms, but I would be very interested to hear which architecture the AROS maintainers and users think makes the most sense to prioritise next.

Link SourceForge not Work

Apologies, here is the link https://sourceforge.net/projects/afilemanager/