Intuition is the nativewindowing system and user interface (UI) engine ofAmigaOS. It was developed almost entirely byRJ Mical.[1][2] Intuition should not be confused withWorkbench, the AmigaOSdesktop environment[3] andspatial file manager, which relies on Intuition for handling windows and input events.Workbench uses Intuition to produce displays and AmigaDOS to interact with filing system: AmigaDOS is built onExec (OS kernel).[4][3][5]
Intuition is the internal widget and graphics system. It is not implemented primarily as an application-managed graphics library (as most systems, followingXerox's design, have done), but rather as a separatetask that maintains the state of all the standard UI elements independently from the application. This makes it responsive because UI gadgets are live even when the application is busy. The Intuition task is driven by user events through themouse,keyboard, and other input devices. It also arbitrates collisions of the mouse pointer andicons and control of "animated icons". Like most GUIs of the day, Amiga's Intuition followed Xerox's lead anteceding solutions, but pragmatically, a command line interface was also included and it extended the functionality of the platform. Later releases added more improvements, like support for high-color Workbench screens and 3D aspect. Replacement desktop file managers were also made available, such asDirectory Opus Magellan andScalos interface.
Initial releases used blue, orange, white and black palettes. This was intentional – in a time before cheap high-quality video monitors, Commodore tested output on the worsttelevisions they could find, with the goal of obtaining the best possible contrast under these worst-case conditions.
Intuition was heavily extended upon release of version 2 of the AmigaOS. The Basic Object-Oriented Programming System for Intuition (BOOPSI) was introduced. It allows a programmer to build graphics user interface using object-oriented programming. Some built-in classes are provided (like "gadgetclass" or "imageclass"), and it's also possible to build own classes on top of existing, or completely new (on top of "rootclass").
Due to the limitations of Intuition's basic widget set, developers adopted other third-party GUI toolkits, such asMagic User Interface (MUI), andReAction. Theseobject oriented UI engines driven by "classes" of graphic objects and functions with new standard gadgets, animated buttons, true-color icons, etc. offered developers standardized and more attractive interfaces. MUI and similar systems abandoned the separation of the User Interface between the application (which specified gadgets to be displayed) and the Intuition task (which actually managed gadgets for all applications, even when they were busy).
Modern day successors to the Workbench environment includeAmbient forMorphOS,Scalos, Workbench forAmigaOS 4 and Wanderer forAROS.There is a brief article on Ambient and descriptions of MUI icons, menus and gadgetshereArchived 2005-09-07 at theWayback Machine (aps.fr) and images ofZune stay at mainAROS site.
A new object-oriented toolkit for all Amiga-like platforms (AmigaOS, MorphOS, AROS),Feelin, was introduced in 2005, and makes extensive use ofXML guidelines. It uses its own memory management system, and its memory-pools system shares the embedded OS'ssemaphores. Feelin also features a non-centralized ID allocation system, a crash-free object invocation mechanism, and an advanced logging system. Details and images on Feelin can be found at itswebsite.
Stewart Alsop II said in 1988 that Intuition was among several GUIs that "have already been knocked out" of the market by Apple, IBM/Microsoft, and others. Stating that it "was slapped together in about six months ... and that lack of forethought or vision shows", he criticized Intuition'sdrive letters, lack of network support, and "hundreds of other small features".[6]
