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Linux Software

The ROX Desktop 209

Posted by emmett from the yet-another-desktop dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "The ROX desktop aims to provide a RISC OS style GUI on Unix/Linux machines. Currently the filer is mostly finished and the desktop already supports drag-and-drop loading and saving, application directories and an iconbar. The desktop is stable and fully usable - I have been using it as my only desktop for several months now without problems."
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The ROX Desktop More

The ROX Desktop

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  • Is it me, or are all these GUI servers popping up making the focus on the movement in the XFree86 Project less and less important?

    If all the attention were focused there, we'd probably have v4 by now, instead of projects like Berlin and now this one that do nice pretty graphics, but don't give us what we really want/need in the end.


  • Sometimes people like to create things for the challange of it. Not really to try to make something better, but just because they want to see if they can do it. Creating a new graphics enviroment is an extreamly challenging thing to do, and instead of saying "Who cares?" we should take a look at it, maby offer a few suggestions. It's always nice after youv coded long and hard on something, not because you have to, but becasue you want to, to have someone say "Nice job". So, to the creators of this program, NICE JOB GUYS!

  • Functionality Makes It To A Linux GUI (Score:4)

    by Bill Daras ( 102772 ) on Monday January 03, 2000 @12:52PM (#1409138) Homepage
    With most major developments in X Windows lately being more directed at the aesthetic aspects, not usability, this comes at a pleasant surprise.

    Far too often eye-candy is used to gloss over a terribly underdeveloped interface. Finally someone has acted on the notion that appearance must go hand in hand with functionality to create an effective GUI.
  • It's not a server, it's a desktop that runs on top of X11. XFree86 is important because it's free and it works good, at least by my standards, and the majority of gui apps available are developed for it.

  • RISC OS != RISC CPU (Score:5)

    by Christopher B. Brown ( 1267 ) <cbbrowne@gmail.com> on Monday January 03, 2000 @12:57PM (#1409140) Homepage
    See the dmoz.org page on RISC OS [dmoz.org]

    RISC OS was an OS developed for the Acorn platform. This was a British phenomenon; I believe that these machines were StrongARM-based, which is where the RISC part comes in.

    Acorn is no longer in operation, and so a whole lot of RISC OS folk have started looking at Linux/X as their future platform.

    This is a pretty good thing; they may have some useful UI ideas, as well as useful code that might be ported.

  • Is it a desktop or a window manager? (competing with gnome/kde or enlightenment/windowmaker)
  • risc os is a an operating system i believe
    used by the acorn risc boxes (arm based).
    this project is just the look and feel of riscos
    on X.
  • Its a desktop. Screenshots show it running on top of enlightenment.
  • I love the fact that we have so much choice. I mean isnt' that what linux is all about? Choice? Come on. Let people make whatever the hell they want. It's just a lot of encouragement for the rest of the people to make better stuff. Oh.. and love the quote of the guy above this post (the state ruled).
  • I noticed that as well, but I figured they might have taken some of the enlightenment code or design when they created it.

    If it's a desktop though, I might have to give it a try. I don't really like Gnome or KDE very much. I'll probably just stick with enlightenment alone, but I'll at least give this a shot.
  • My fault for not seeing it was a Desktop, not a Server - However, I guess my eyebrows are still raised; With GNOME and KDE being as strong as they are, do we really need yet another one that will take the next year+ to catch up with what we already have? Why not build off the CVS of one of the previously existing Desktops and make improvements to them?

  • What RISC OS is (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    RISC OS is the name of the operating system used in Acorn Archimedes computers. The fact that it's RISC isn't important for this; what is important is that it has a GUI with some interesting features. One of these is that what appears as an application is really a directory containing separate files for icons at various resolutions, scripts to run the program, additional data and so on. Another is that the normal way to save is to drag an icon from the "save" dialog into a directory window.

  • Read the f*cking article, before posting! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Christ, don't be such a moron, its not an X11 replacement, its a rather mundane "desktop environment". Try reading the articles before complaining. For a much more "complete" desktop environment alternative to gnome and kde, take a look at XFCE (gtk based) at www.xfce.org Much better than this (for now)
  • While I agree choice is good, does it really add to the community to keep taking steps backwards in the programs we use? If we already have something that works, and works well, why not join the community and work to make that better? If you want the program to do something different, why do you have to write it from the ground up and sacrifice your time and energy in what others have already done?

    It's like installing a 1.x kernel and saying, "I want it to do this so I'm gonna code that" when it's already in a later release, -and- you lose everything that's been added since then and have to write it all over. Does that sound like progress?
  • Read this if you know nothing about this RISC OS thing like finding out about old operating systems...

    RISC OS is about the only OS to `get' this drag-and-drop thing. It didn't have a clipboard from day one or those ghastly save/open boxes which infest every other OS. You have a Filer (the RISC OS filesystem explorer) and when you want to save a file, you open the application's save dialogue, which is a small window with a filename and a document icon. You then drag the icon onto the Filer to save it, or onto the Printer icon to print it. I'm sure this could be grafted onto GTK somehow, if only someone would write a filer as functional as the RISC OS one.

    The other thing RISC OS got really really right was its application encapsulation. That is, you have a directory which contains the main program binary, an initialisation script, any other program-specific resources, plus an icon for the Filer to display. This directory could then be zipped up and copied elsewhere which is why pretty much no RISC OS application ever had, or needed, any mucky or unreliable install wizards. This also meant that for many people the Filer served as your application launcher too-- a concept completely alien to most desktops these days.

    Hmm... it sortof went wrong in the shared library department, though. The only `standard' way of doing shared libraries in RISC OS was through kernel modules providing extra system calls. Yup, in the ARM's supervisor mode and everything. So they have to be pretty perfect otherwise bugs crash the machine.

    But its fate is pretty much sealed, sadly: last year Acorn cancelled its new hardware project, laid off half its staff and eventually disappeared. By this time nearly all the talent who had once programmed for the machine had left for greener pastures (with some exceptions who continue to amaze me :-) ) and the OS has been taken over essentially by two enthusiastic hackers and lots of well-wishers trying to extract a salary out of it. Check this page [riscos.com] out for the list of new and exciting features that you get for £120. There's also a somewhat suspect conflict of interest created by the fact that the people who have taken it over are those people who want to sell software for it.

    Bah; I could go on but ultimately I left because the thing was too slow for me to play games on, the SDK increasingly dated and the application support had long since dried up. I hope somebody someday gives it the shot in the arm it needs, but for now ROX is quite a good simulation :-)

  • History Lesson (Score:4)

    by MartyJG ( 41978 ) on Monday January 03, 2000 @01:14PM (#1409154) Homepage
    Personally, I'm really pleased to see this project.

    The RISC OS desktop was developed by Acorn here in the UK. After their success in the mid-eighties with the BBC/Acorn computer series, they used their own machines to design the next generation, the Archimedes series. At the core of the Archimedes was four ROM chips that contained the RISC OS.

    Man, that operating system was the best! Like greased lightning, obviously, because it was on ROM chips. More stable than anything else I've ever seen (Linux included - no flames please). I would love to hear from anyone who ever crashed one.

    So coming into the nineties the Acorn Archimedes took the market in educational machines, being used in 9/10 schools here in the UK, with tons of educational software being developed (and still available today), as well as other packages.

    Unfortunately somewhere around 1995(ish) they lost their way after targeting the home market with the A3010's - it should have worked, it's what all the kids used at school. They also had a fabulous new line - the RISC PC - which took their line up to using the StrongARM processor (now owned by Intel), and at the time blew away all the Pentiums on the market. It also had a PC card option, allowing you to boot Windows on one of these boxes.

    RiscOS itself went up to version ~3.5 or version 4.0 IIRC. It was Drag 'n' Drop HEAVEN! Absolutely everything could be done with a mouse (making an ideal special needs hardware/applications platform), and used three-button mouse operation to the full potential.

    Sorry to get all nostalgic, but I passed my A-levels programming on these machines, and I have an old A3010 gathering dust undeservedly.

    As with most good computer stories, this one came to a sad end a few years ago, with Acorn downsizing, loosing their education markets and being swallowed up by bigger fish. I'm sure that some of you know the details better than I do, if so, don't worry about correcting what I have said.
  • Why is this project being built from scratch? Good gods, someone's actually going back to square one and implimenting drag-and-drop? Why not rip apart GNOME or KDE and re-impliment the desktop GUI there? At least then, you'd have several dozen programs that were already compliant out of the box.

  • Re:Another server? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You're forgetting that people work on what they like to work on. Not on what you want them to work on.

    The saying about a herd of cats comes to mind...

  • Re:Functionality Makes It To A Linux GUI (Score:3)

    by SurfsUp ( 11523 ) on Monday January 03, 2000 @01:28PM (#1409159)
    Far too often eye-candy is used to gloss over a terribly underdeveloped interface.

    Yes, this applies particularly to the Gnome desktop. Sure, go ahead and mark this comment down as usual, but that doesn't make the fact go away: Gnome has got a long way to go in useability, particularly in the window manager department. Sheesh. I feel like I'm offending sensibilities every time I bring up a point in Gnome that needs fixing. This is wrong. We'll never get Gnome to where it has to be for world domination if every constructive suggestion gets buried and ignored.
  • Gnome has got a long way to go in useability, particularly in the window manager department.

    Gnome is neither a window manager nor does it contain/depend on any single window manager. So what do you mean?

  • Because it's small, and they're not. Now if it was pretty too, that would be awesome. But it looks functional, and that goes a really long way in my book. Gnome and KDE both have lousy filers (sorry, they just 'feel wrong'). GMC wasn't stable and I never could get it to recognize apps it didn't want to. KDE puts those dang 'Templates' and 'Autostart' folders on my desktop (Maybe KDE2 will stop this? I could always buy more RAM then :-). Besides, both hate running without their window-manager/panel/sound-server/take-over-all-my -RAM companions. Maybe they've gotten better, but I retreated into Eterm, blackbox, and LyX, waiting for something I liked to arrive...

  • I don't mean to make this sound like a flame, but that 'drag and drop' approach sounds really inefficient. That's one of the things I hate about the Mac... everything is the mouse, with very few keyboard shortcuts. I type pretty fast, so every time I have to reach for the mouse, it's a huge waste of time.

    Unless I'm misunderstanding you... if I want to save a file, do I have to use the mouse, or is there a standard way to do it from the keyboard? (Shortcuts built into a particular application don't count).


    ---

  • From what you describe and what I remember, the early versions of OS/2 worked this way. I quit buying it after the first edition called 'warp', so I don't know if that has changed. Also, I don't recall how the filesystem was structured, but I think most of an app's files were found in a single directory.

    I haven't played with it much, but dfm is supposed to be like OS/2's desktop.

  • Clue Stick (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 03, 2000 @01:40PM (#1409169)
    The problem with Linux is that people seem to mistake it for a Windoze clone operating system instead of what it is: a fast, scalable, rapidly maturing kernel.

    If you want less 'crap' to wee through, you could start by telling people to stop writing software.

    P.S. Please do not do this. Thank you.

    Ermac

  • Re:Alternative desktops (Score:5)

    by reptilian ( 75755 ) on Monday January 03, 2000 @01:42PM (#1409170)
    Look, I'm starting to get sick of this. It's all Community this, Community that.. abandon your project, no one needs it. Work on something that's already there and make it better for me. You're wasting your time. blah blah blah. Go whine to someone else. These people can do whatever the hell they want with their time, and so can you. It's called freedom, and it's why they call it FREE SOFTWARE. If everyone only did what was good for the "community" we'd have about as much innovation in free software as microsoft has.

    I know I'm going to get moderated down, but this really drives me insane. "Is this where we want to be going as a community?" Tell me.. who is we, and why do we have to all go in the same direction as you?


    Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.

  • -
    im quite curious why there are so many poorly made "desktop environments" and not ONE good one
    i really dont see the attraction of GNOME or KDE or the rather lame XFCE.. who cares?
    desktop evironments arent really that cool, and dont provide any real important features to an X station...
    perhaps if all these desktop environment writers would get together... write one that actually works and provides features that improve your X session....
  • That's actually functionality of the window manager, not Gnome. Were you running Gnome with WindowMaker, Enlightenment, or something completely different?

    If you're using Enlightenment (Default for most systems using gnome), It can be set that way, but only using the ENLIGHTENMENT configuration tool, not the gnome one.
  • Yes, this applies particularly to the Gnome desktop. Sure, go ahead and mark this comment down as usual, but that doesn't make the fact go away: Gnome has got a long way to go in useability, particularly in the window manager department. Sheesh. I feel like I'm offending sensibilities every time I bring up a point in Gnome that needs fixing. This is wrong. We'll never get Gnome to where it has to be for world domination if every constructive suggestion gets buried and ignored.


    I have found in discussions on this topic that have taken place on /. and Usenet, the inevitable question of "Why do many Window Managers look like Windows when we know the GUI sucks?".

    On more than one occasion the response has been that the intent wasn't to correct the glaring mistakes made by Microsoft, but to provide a reasonably accessible UI that fits within most users' frame of reference.

    I find that attitude detrimental not only to XWindows but to the concept of Linux itself. It isn't just about the cost of the OS, but of the freedom to innovate, and copying mistakes isn't innovation, but the perpetuation of the same crap we are trying to rid ourselves of.

    Basically, what I am trying to say is, if it isn't going to be better than what it intends to replace, don't bother with it.

    I find the cries of "But it's *SO* configurable!" a excuse often used to deflect criticism of the actual usability of Window Managers. Configurability is a moot point when what you are tweaking isn't very functional in the first place.

    I would take a static but productive interface over a configurable but hopelessly inconsistent, non functional and archaic one any day.
  • The RISCOS desktop was designe to use the mouse. There were standard shotcuts for cut, paste and so on, but like Win9x no direct command for copy this file. By hitting F12 you entered a command line mode. You could enter your single file copy command here.
  • From my understanding, Acorn didn't entirely disappear. Have a look at Element 14 [e-14.com].

    They concentrate on set-top boxy things now.

    ...j

  • Wow (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    From looking at this project and just now trying it out I have the feeling ROX just surpassed GNOME and KDE in functionality! Yeah, this thing is all I need for my Desktop needs it seems. GNOME and KDE will bring me so called integrated applications but so far neither have givent me a real 'Desktop Enviroment' experience. The killer combo I see now:

    Enlightenment + IReX theme + ROX

    Thanks!!!

  • Excellent. (Score:3)

    by raster ( 13531 ) on Monday January 03, 2000 @02:06PM (#1409179) Homepage
    All I have to say is - congratulatiosn and well done. Keep workign oon RXO - the more competition, the better - it means i wont have time to get lazy. i'm goign to check this out and have a look.

    i wish people would be more positive and offer encouragement not disparagement just because someone has a project they want to work on and it isnt what you're wishing was "the thing". let people have their projects - often they have a good reason they started it.. and sometimes they are so far into it that they aren't just goign to give up because someone else has a similar project...

    Well done ROX - keep it up... Glad to see more stuff around.
  • One of the nicest results of this was that you could drag the icon from a save dialog in one program into another program entirely, resulting in the file being opened in the new one without having to bother saving it to disk in the mean time. I miss it...
  • F3 brought up the save dialog. You could enter a path by hand if you wanted.
  • Care to give some examples of this alleged non-functionality and inconsistency of the various window managers?
  • Why not redo it from scratch, if it doesn't work the way you'd like it to GNOME and KDE? While you're "ripping apart" GNOME or KDE, how can you make sure that all the previously compliant apps aren't broken?

  • It was under Enlightenment (Red Hat 6). I think I actually found the selection (monstrously stupid that it isn't the default), but it didn't work right even after I selected it. It might be a side effect of using Exceed rather than direct video. Still, that was the major reason I'm using KDE.


    ---

  • Specific examples, please. If you simply rant on like this, you will doubtlessly be ignored, because you haven't given anyone any indication of what you think the problem is.

    Besides which, statements like 'Gnome has got a long way to go in useability, particularly in the window manager department' tend to argue that you simply don't know what you're talking about. GNOME is WM independent. If you have WM problems, then the criticism is better directed against the specific WM that you're having trouble with.
  • Now if there was just a way to get Exceed to pass on alt-tab and ctrl-esc to KDE.

    Then again maybe this is an unsurmountable limitation of Windows.

    At least I could rebind ctrl-esc to shift-esc but had no such luck with alt-tab. (Actually if no one beats me to it I will fix this myself).
  • Cuz that's the whole history of most GNU software and the Linux kernel - if it doesn't work for you (either ideologically, technically, or ethically), you either hack on it till it does, or do it yourself.

    From my own point of view, I don't blame them - I for one think GNOME is bloated. KDE's not as bad, but it's starting to suffer from code bloat as well. WindowMaker is good, but it still suffers in a few areas, Enlightenment too, and as far as LiteStep goes I simply don't have the need for all that customization and plugging in. Here's my point: it's not about what's right, or who's better at coding, or what's popular, or (and goddamn I HATE this) what's best for the Community. When something works for me, I use it. So, I use a fudged-together unreleased hybrid WM at home, and if it's not available on the go I use FVWM and forget the desktop bit.

    Personally, I'm not that much into customization either. I like my desktop pretty and all, but I'll settle for a few window colors and a desktop background, and some icons that start up emacs and gdb and gimp. I don't need, or want, any more. Flame me for being a minimalist, but IMHO the less there is, the less there is to break or run slow. I'm one of the few who like having clock cycles unused on my machine.

    -Ryan Myers (borisian@planetquake.com)
  • How would looking at KDE/GNOME source break apps? It's like saying my car will break down by reading the manual. :^P
  • Right on brother. Oops, I mean fellow individual.

  • Re:Random RISC OS trivia by an ex-user (Score:3)

    by spiral ( 42436 ) on Monday January 03, 2000 @02:52PM (#1409199)
    The other thing RISC OS got really really right was its application encapsulation. That is, you have a directory which contains the main program binary, an initialisation script, any other program-specific resources, plus an icon for the Filer to display.

    They're not the only ones to ever have this idea.

    This sounds identical to the NeXT/OPENSTEP/OS X .app format that's been around since the 1980's: a directory that contains the executable and support files (such as data files, graphics, the interface description (.nib files), locale specific data, and the application's icon) but shows up as a single icon in the UI.

    The real beauty of this kind of format is that an application can be treated as a unit: installed, deleted, moved, FTPed, etc. without losing any of the associated files -- so much cleaner than the windows uninstall mechanism, or poking through /usr/lib and /usr/bin for that matter.

    But don't mind me, I'm just a bitter NeXT bigot.

  • Amen, Raster--if only the lesser coders had such a healthy attitude....even if they are better typists ;^)

    Hehe, jus' kiddin'-keep up the good work. :^)
  • I don't doubt that all OSes have some good ideas that can be learned from, but ultimately the usability of RiscOS was awful.

    The filer for example. To do even the most trivial thing you end up with about 20 windows on the screen. Then you just get totally lost amoungst the windows. Maybe there was a gem of an idea in there with drag and drop, but the over-all effect was a loser.

    Don't get me started on the OS core, interface and so on. Absolute junk.

    Ahhh the powers of nostalgia frying peoples brains.

  • cause i dont need one :) AfterStep [afterstep.org] for me please.

  • YES! Why doesn't KDE let you rebind Alt-TAB to something else??? That's the one big annoyance I have left.

    In fact, I should send that to the KDE team. Maybe it will sneak in the next release.


    ---

  • This isn't a Gnome issue really -- it's a window manager one. But: not having new windows get the focus is a GREAT and intelligent default. Otherwise, you're typing along, and something causes a new window to pop up, and suddenly, before you have a chance to react, whatever you've typed goes into the new window!

    This is often a problem on MS Windows, as error messages get accidentally dismissed before you have a chance to read them.

    --

  • Is it just me or do all the "I'm going to get moderated down for this" posts get moderated up? This isn't intended as a flame, I'm just wondering why people must constantly forwarn others about how they feel their opinion is. Just say what you intend to say and let it be that. What does it matter if you get moderated down anyway? Some people will still read it.
  • Well I could have gone on. I know its shortcomings but it struck a very nice balance between being friendly towards developers and users alike. Indeed there's lots of stuff which smacks of terrible design, but for a few years it was a truly lovely OS to work with (e.g. the fine Zap programmers' editor [eu.org]-- incredibly fast (though impossible to maintain) because it was written entirely in assembler and the CorelDraw-mashing Artworks [cconcepts.co.uk]). It's certainly not faded into the realm of `nostalgia' for me, anyhow. Linux is just shit in different ways :-)
  • Well, it seems obvious to me that you can only post positive comments about a subject to not be marked as flamebait or a troll. What the hell ever happened to freedom of thought expression? There are two sides to every coin people.

    --
  • It's like installing a 1.x kernel and saying, "I want it to do this so I'm gonna code that" when it's already in a later release

    No, it's more like saying "I don't like the Linux kernel, so I'm going to code my own kernel instead of trying to work with it." Sometimes it's easier and, dare I say, better to start anew rather than trying to reform an older project.

    There are other email programs out there. Should I base mine on one of them or contribute to one of them when their philosophy is so obviously contrary to mine (when it comes to MUAs)? Should I contribute if their codebase is so bloated as to make it easier to simply implement anew than to reimpliment functions within the existing framework?

    I think not.
    ---

  • Re:Functionality Makes It To A Linux GUI (Score:3)

    by alhaz ( 11039 ) on Monday January 03, 2000 @03:24PM (#1409213) Homepage
    I think he means that E is a sorry excuse for a window manger.

    I'm sorry for offending all the E fans, but from the beginning Enlightenment wasn't about functionality, and you can't deny that.

    I appriciate what rasterman & co have done for X along the way, the programming techniques make for great eyecandy, I just choose to use a window manager that follows a different philosophy.

    I use Icewm, 'cause FEEL is more important than LOOK.

    At least it is for me.

    Now, hold on for a moment while i put on my asbestos suit before you respond.

  • Actually, in Win/98 at least, error messages don't immediately pop up. The button on the task bar flashes to let you know that something new has happened.


    ---

  • The thought of someone recreating one of the worst graphical OSes in existence really isn't very appealing.

    Some things are just better left to die.... I believe this is one of them!

  • This is the combination of an enlightenment theme ( DID anyone read the pages? ) and a few programs to acompany the theme for an overall awesome effect. All of its really simple to use. I cannot beleive people still flame Enlightenment as to much eye candy. And this theme proves E can be used for a lot of stuff other than A purdy WM. I dont like E so much. I prefer Fvwm2 myself. But I am good at its config files and its totally useable and I am good at developing within that enviroenment So its what I use. Anyways. Go read it. It made me go download it and try it! :-) Its pretty nice and I may consider using it.
  • must be. this ain't it, though.
  • I agree with Alorelith completely.

    This is not an attack on the author of the comment two levels up from mine... but please, why must people discuss the moderation of their own comments??

    It's nearly always secondary to the topic at hand. Please, people... Stop your comments about "I'm gonna get moderated down for this, but..." sympathy cries. And please don't beg "Please moderate this up so people can see it" either. Sometimes it comes across like a child begging for attention.

    Moderators will (and should) moderate as they see fit, without having to read the "please (do/do not) moderate me (up/down)" cries.


    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

  • An observation (Score:3)

    by PurpleBob ( 63566 ) on Monday January 03, 2000 @03:34PM (#1409220)
    It seems that most of the comments on this article are saying one of the following:

    "ROX sux"
    "ROX rox"
    "ROX sux rox"

    ...only more elaborately.
    --
  • Actually, there's even more history than that.

    The *Original* RISC OS was Mips RISC/os - written by Mips Co. to run on, you guessed it, Mips Co. RISC hardware.

    My first *nix experience was Mips RISC/os 4.53, in 1993. It was, for the time, a pretty slick *nix implementation, and was capable of making itself feel sysv-like or bsd-like by simply toggling an option in the admin menu.

    As everybody knows, SGI eventually bought Mips Co, and subsequently shut down RISC/os development in favor of Irix.

    AFAIK, the last release if Mips Co. RISC/os was 5.01a, released in late 1993. I could be wrong on the date.

    I actually have no idea what the RISCWindows gui looked like, since i never used anything but the telnet console.

    This, of course, has nothing to do with Acorn RISC OS, it's just that every time i see it mentioned, I get all nostalgic for that old account. You know, you never forget your first unix.

    Mips RISC/os is currently maintained by Controll Data Corp as their EP/IX operating system. Or at least, if they're no longer maintaining it, they were the last to do so.

    Incedentally, if anyone out there has a tape or tarball of MIPS RISC/os, I'd sure love to have a copy to re-load my rc3240. You won't be violating anybodies ip, ownership of the box gives you an implied license. 4.52 or 5.01, I'll take either one.


  • Another UI which did drag-and-drop quite well was HP's NewWave....wonder where the code for it wound up?
    NeXTstep though, is the best UI I've yet encountered, and pleasantly, is also being re-created www.gnustep.org.
    William

  • I have found in discussions on this topic that have taken place on /. and Usenet, the inevitable question of "Why do many Window Managers look like Windows when we know the GUI sucks?".

    Could it be that *gasp* the GUI doesn't suck all that much? And most of the animosity is rooted in silly Microsoft hatred?

    I know this is really unpopular on Slashdot, but the Win/98 GUI is currently the best in the world. Yes, you can cite particular features that you might like in particular GUIs, and cite particular pieces of brain damage in Win/98, but on balance it provides the most functionality and efficiency.

    Now, this is not to say that the GUIs under Linux haven't made tremendous strides forward (I would even say remarkable), but it still isn't where Windows is.

    I would ask that people developing GUIs (and software in general) not be blind to the fact that occasionally Microsoft produces some pretty damn good stuff. Good ideas are good ideas, regardless of where they come from (ALT-TAB, for example).


    ---

  • I don't get it.

    Why do we need Desktop Environments (DEs)? In their current form, at least, they are mostly useless. I don't want desktop icons; the dock is much better. And, with KDE at least, there's no way to turn off said desktop icons, which only clutter my desktop. So if I want to use, say, kfm, I can't, not without running the rest of KDE, memory and CPU time I'd rather not spend.

    I can see some use for them in the drag-n-drop functions and interprogram communication and integration (a la CORBA). But why oh why must this come with a desktop?

    I, for one, would love to see a desktopless DE, if you get my meaning. Everything but the desktop, and the taskbar. Pure functionality. Pure libraries, really.

    This way, the DE doesn't become too homogenous, as with GNOME and KDE, where for many things, there is only one program, since that is the one developed by the GNOME/KDE team.

    I fear I have little time for such projects myself right now, but it's an idea for those with more time, and more skill, than I.
    ---
  • I'm so embarrased . . . .

    sofya ran RISC/os 4.52+, not 4.53, I'm not sure there was a 4.53.

    OTOH, I'd be shocked if anyone who reads /. would have recognized that error.

    Man, it's like forgetting an anniversary . . . . how embarrasing . . .

  • Thus spaketh the Slashdot crew:

    Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting. The real goal here is to find the juicy good stuff and let others read it. Do not promote personal agendas. Do not let your opinions factor in. Try to be impartial about this. Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down. Likewise, agreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it up. The goal here is to share ideas. To sift through the haystack and find needles. And to keep the children who like to spam Slashdot in check.

    With this I leave you to consider.

    --
  • It's like installing a 1.x kernel and saying, "I want it to do this so I'm gonna code that" when it's already in a later release, -and- you lose everything that's been added since then and have to write it all over. Does that sound like progress?

    It's like Linus saying "Let's start all over" and creating Linux, instead of just enhancing Minix. Or Thomson and Ritchie enchancing an existing OS instead of creating Unix. You think we would be better off if they had not started from scratch?

    -- Abigail

  • But what I want to know is, where does your app go when you iconize it? There's no icon. And then I thought maybe it was behind the panel, so I closed the panel. But no, it wasn't. And that's the second question, how do you get the panel back after you've closed it? I had to logout with ctrl-alt-bksp!
  • First: ROX is a desktop tool suite. It is neither a WM or a X replecement.

    Second: Some of us grew up with, and are much more comfortable with, alternate UI like the one RiscOS sported. We have favorite keyboards, mice, el al; Why not a favorite UI? I favor NextStep myself, with E (thanks R+M!) and TWM coming close on it's heels. (plus a PS/2 IBM M13 w/ touchpoint and easyCAT1)
    This fortune intentionally blank.
  • That's funny. At this exact same comment I was just wondering that too.

    The reason why is that I have been guilty of making similar statements, and guess what? Those where the comments that where moderated up like crazy.

    Some interesting psychology going on here.

    In any case, this is what Meta moderating is for I believe so we should probably not be posting this sort of stuff either.

    Breace.
  • No. It seems these people actually use enlightenment. What you are looking for seems to be sawmill [sourceforge.net].
  • what are sys reqs ? email me if you know where theres a faq or smt
  • I am continually amazed by this thread.

    We are trashing a valid open-source project for taking a different approach and focusing on a style of useability that perhaps exceeds that of existing ones.

    GNOME/KDE are visual fluff and no easier than windows to code for. Trying to 'take what you like' from an older successfull WM and creating new WM projects diversifies the selections and perhaps will lead those whom 'try' before trashing it, to a conclusion that something light and highly useable is often preferred to bloat-ware eye-candy.

    Un*x desktops are loosing thier useability and becoming buggy and inefficient resource consuming slovenly beasts. There is good cause to consider that just because a few people want windows that look like anime frames, doesn't mean that its a good solution for everyone.

    Heck, I thought my IRIX Interactive Desktop was way resource intensive, until I started working with GNOME/Enlightenment/KDE etc.

    Has anyone tried running a modern workstation with a simple window manager, like WM2 in a while? Its amazing the difference in memory and CPU available after such a change. I have a dual-channel display and often switch to a 'light' WM when I do work requiring many windows and resources. I can run GNOME+Enlightenment up to over 120megs on my SGI Octane! If I run the same apps and same number of windows my desktop under WM2 or AfterStep is just a tiny fraction of that!

    My point being, lets lay off trashing people for trying to be user-friendly instead of focusing on the aesthetics. (especially since 1/2 of the posts here are obviously from lil script kiddies whom haven't the foggiest cloo about what they are posting)
  • hey...if anyone emails vastor about this, please post to slashdot (yeah offtopic but useful im sure)

    or just email me

    brian@holt.henry.il.us

    thanks
  • 1) Inconsistency. Is the file system bassed in a "my computer", or in a: c: etc drives? depends what you ask. Why does "my computer" look ike a normal directory but you can't add things to it? How come you can see the treeview in one way of accessing the filesystem, but not another? Is the file system capable of long names, or only 8.3 ones? Too many different ways of doing the same thing, each with differing side effects and capabilities.

    2) Spurious crap. Internet explorer as a window viewer. Half the dir window taken up by a pane full of non-useful info. The MSDOS underpinnings. A start bar, desktop icons, a MSOffice toolbar, all to launch apps in different ways.

    3) Un-protected access to stuff you absolutely do not wish to touch (unless you are very fond of the color blue). Complicated and hard ways of altering things you frequently want to alter.

    4) The fact that it's designed to fulfil the interests of M$ over your own, where they conflict.

    5) minor design faux-pas like putting the quit command in the file menu, or putting scroll bar arrowheads at each end

    6) no security worth spit
  • My take on it is that people like to work on the most interesting aspects of Open Source Projects. There had been a lot of "who-ha" about Window Managers, and a lot of publicity for the makers. (Icaza(ya ya ya Not a WM), Raster, etc) I love my WindowMaker, and I have used it for a long time. You use what you are used too, and I do have a lot of respect for people that spend the time to make these things, but there are a lot of boring projects that need attention to. Read the MadDog Interview to learn more.
  • I've always hated it when people complain about a WM being a Windows look-alike. There are Window Managers out there that don't look like Windows, and If you don't want the Windows look and feel, use one of those (them?) or write your own. Some people *like* the Windows look and feel (not me), and prefer the WM's that provide that interface.

    In the end, let the user decide for him/herself what interface they want. Or maybe you are just upset that the Windows look-alike WM's are the most popular?

  • The .app format is a truly lovely thing.

    I find it astounding that the default for RPM is to put EVERYTHING in the /usr directory, which is just one of the reasons I don't use it anymore. I have a folder named /Apps which contains separate folders (i.e., /Apps/Mozilla and /Apps/WindowMaker) for each application and another folder named /Libraries which contains things like GTK and Qt. Considering that Linux doesn't have any of those obnoxious global directories like System Folder:Extensions or WINDOWS\System, I don't understand why this kind of setup isn't the default.
  • Ok, I'll take the challenge... :)

    1) Inconsistency. Is the file system bassed in a "my computer", or in a: c: etc drives? depends what you ask. Why does "my computer" look ike a normal directory but you can't add things to it? How come you can see the treeview in one way of accessing the filesystem, but not another? Is the file system capable of long names, or only 8.3 ones? Too many different ways of doing the same thing, each with differing side effects and capabilities.

    The file system is based in drives. The drives are based in My Computer. What's so strange about that? Would you like a file system on your monitor? No, didn't think so... but the monitor has to logically be grouped somewhere, and My Computer is the place for that.

    You can always see either Tree or List Views, no matter where abouts you are. Right click on any object: Open gives you a List View, Explore gives you a Tree View. Quite consistent.

    The file system is capable of long filenames. I don't see where confusion over 8.3 comes from, unless you're referring to Microsoft's continued (and, I agree, somewhat braindead) usage of 8.3 filenames in the SYSTEM directory (no long names on DLLs, etc.).

    You can add stuff to My Computer. Plug in a scanner, a camera, a zip disk, etc., and it appears in My Computer.

    I agree that there are many ways of achieving the same thing. I think any Perl programmer will tell you that this is A Good Thing, because the system is able to adapt to your work methods, rather than you having to adapt your work methods to the system.

    2) Spurious crap. Internet explorer as a window viewer. Half the dir window taken up by a pane full of non-useful info. The MSDOS underpinnings. A start bar, desktop icons, a MSOffice toolbar, all to launch apps in different ways.

    IE as a window viewer is a personal choice, I guess. I used to hate it too, but IE 5 has finally won me over. It takes quite a bit of grunt to render it all, though. Conceptually I like the idea of a single browser for local files and remote content. I think ultimately it's a personal choice though. I think there should be a way to disable the integration for those who don't like it.

    It's quite easy to remove and/or customise (via HTML) all that extra stuff rendered in the file views.

    MS-DOS compatibility is part of Windows' legacy, in the same way that sh (or any other shell) is part of GTK and KDE's legacy. It's generally hidden from the GUI, though - you have to specifically invoke a command shell to see it.

    The MS Office toolbar (which is not installed by default in 97 or 2000, I believe) is not part of the base Windows GUI - it's app specific, so beyond the scope of this discussion. Windows is document centric, so of course there are multiple ways to launch documents and their parent applications. And of course you don't have to use all the methods available. You can ignore the methods you don't like.

    3) Un-protected access to stuff you absolutely do not wish to touch (unless you are very fond of the color blue). Complicated and hard ways of altering things you frequently want to alter.

    Um, I think this is a security gripe. It's nothing to do with the GUI. Try deleting system stuff on a decently admin'd Windows NT box.

    Which things do you frequently want to alter, and in what way is it hard to do so? In Linux, you drop down to a command line for repetitive stuff; same in Windows with Windows Scripting Host (VB-based commandline).

    4) The fact that it's designed to fulfil the interests of M$ over your own, where they conflict.

    I agree that using IE as a file browser is self-serving for MS. Is that what you're referring to? Or do you have something else in mind...?

    5) minor design faux-pas like putting the quit command in the file menu, or putting scroll bar arrowheads at each end

    The thing I dislike most is the fact that app close buttons are right next to app min and max buttons. I think that's a fairly major design flaw. I know the close button is slightly offset from the others, but it's still too damn close... :)

    All current GUIs have little bits and bobs like this which some people like and others don't. I think Windows' major failing is that it's too hard to customise some of this stuff; e.g. I should be able to move the app close button around and put it where I want, but I can't do this.

    6) no security worth spit

    Irrelevant to a discussion of the GUI. Again, see Windows NT.
  • So enlightenment crashes all the time. Hmmm... Is Linux more stable than Windows? Linux zealots boast that linux is more stable than windows; however, they never offer any actual proof.

    ----

    I still do not understand why people like you have this attitude. E on my mandrake 6.1 system runs fine. When I want to work, I load a light theme, when I want to show off, I load up a huge background and theme. I've run linux for about a year, and I never have had a problem with any major projects, with the exception of netscape. I am constantly amazed with the posts on the newsgroups / irc ... I believe most people either don't have the intelligence to use a computer OR they have substandard equipment. If a piece of hardware doesn't work on linux, then it probably sucks anyways. Example: Winmodems. If a person was computer literate in the first place, they would have never bought one for windows either.

    As far as the "desktop wars" are concerned, everytime there is a new version, etc. we get dozens of posts about how bloated and slow it is. NO ONE IS SHOVING THESE DOWN YOUR THROAT!!! That's the beauty of linux, if you don't like it, don't use it!! There's something for everyone here. If you're a real linux fan, you'll be trying them all just to see what they can do anyway!! Right now I'm ripping/encoding a cd, burning an .iso, irc'ing, listening to .mp3s, browsing, and cracking rc5 keys, on 4 virtual desktops, at once ... try that on windows ...

    I'm glad we have another fun toy to play with.. :)
  • you know I was just thinking that to myself.

    --
    Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
    Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
  • I think he means that E is a sorry excuse for a window manger

    No, I didn't mean that - I happen to like E, even though many of the Gnome useability issues right now are E-related (I posted a pretty good list a week or two ago.) What I meant was: the Gnome team doesn't seem to have thought through the question what a window manager should do for the user, how it should act, how it should feel under the fingers. Regardless of whether the window manager is part of the desktop system or not, the desktop team is still responsible for quality control - that is, laying down the ground rules about what the WM has to do, and in some cases, how it has to do it. It's really easy to just shrug it off and say "that's not a Gnome issue, that's a WM issue". But that's bogus - you can't do that, in the end you're responsible for any problems the user might perceive in your system, no matter where they may come from. So if something's broken, it's your responsibility to make sure it gets fixed, or just fix it yourself. Is there some law against the E team accepting a patch from the Gnome team?

    The Gnome team also has its own WM now (sorry, can't remember its name) so that really makes it impossible to pass the buck on issues of WM useability.
  • Why not redo it from scratch, if it doesn't work the way you'd like it to [in] GNOME and KDE?

    1. GNOME and KDE are both mammoth libraries with tons of applications, and the complexity of both is growing every day. To start from scratch means coming up with all of that all over again, or sacrificing functionality.
    2. There is a lot of value in learning from the mistakes of others.
    3. Some features like the component object models are very hard to get right, and doing it all over again means developer-years of effort for what will likely be the wrong answer (given that most projects that have embarked on such a quest have either failed or had to re-write at some stage).
    4. Many people already know how to code in those other toolkits, and there are many tools for working with them.


    While you're "ripping apart" GNOME or KDE, how can you make sure that all the previously compliant apps aren't broken?

    You check.

    The bottom line here is that you have a lot to start from, and any leverage that you can get from that is likely to speed development radically. It also reduces the likelyhood that your project with fade into obscurity by a whole lot.
  • > 1) Inconsistency. Is the file system bassed in a "my computer", or in a: c: etc drives? depends what you ask. Why does "my computer" look ike a normal directory but you can't add things to it?

    Agreed. Total crap.

    > How come you can see the treeview in one way of accessing the filesystem, but not another?

    So that it can adapt to the user's preference. I like a normal window without the treeview (aka "My Computer") one of my best friends prefers the treeview on the side (aka "Windows Explorer"). IT's adaptable. This is a good thing, not a bad one.

    > Is the file system capable of long names, or only 8.3 ones? Too many different ways of doing the same thing, each with differing side effects and capabilities.

    Again, I agree: this is crap.

    > 2) Spurious crap. Internet explorer as a window viewer. Half the dir window taken up by a pane full of non-useful info.

    Again, agreed.

    > The MSDOS underpinnings.

    This has nothing to do with the GUI. This is the underlying Operating System. Don't get them confused. You were complaining about the GUI, not the OS. If you don't like the OS, fine, but that's a totally separate argument. You're not helping yourself here.

    > A start bar, desktop icons, a MSOffice toolbar, all to launch apps in different ways.

    ...And this is bad how? I, for one, happen to like having different ways of doing things. And I often use many of these different methods combined. Preserve this! This is one of the things that should be brought to unix (well, actually, it's already here, but anyways.) This is a good thing! Don't lock me into one and only one way of doing something. Make it redundant, by all means!

    > 3) Un-protected access to stuff you absolutely do not wish to touch (unless you are very fond of the color blue).

    Again, this is the underlying OS you're talking about, not the GUI. If you run a unix GUI while you're logged in as root, you get exactly the same problem.

    > Complicated and hard ways of altering things you frequently want to alter.

    True, but I find it's not a big deal. Most things are easy enough to get at. And if you want minimal complication, you can drag them to the desktop or whatever, to minimize clicks. For the most part.

    > 4) The fact that it's designed to fulfil the interests of M$ over your own, where they conflict.

    Examples?

    > 5) minor design faux-pas like putting the quit command in the file menu, or putting scroll bar arrowheads at each end.

    This is really personal preference. You don't have much cause to complain here. Possibly you could complain about lack of tweakability in this regard, but that's about it. Any GUI has to go one way or another, and whichever way they go, someone isn't going to like it. When it comes to personal preference issues, you can never please everyone. And don't quote those "usability studies" at me. It's still personal preference. Not everyone prefers the layouts that are "proven" to be more usable.

    > 6) no security worth spit

    Again, this is an OS issue, not a GUI issue.

    Ok, so you have some legitimate complaints, but a lot of the thigs you are complaining about seem to me to be more related to the OS than to the GUI. The GUI is an interface, not a security system.

    And any gui is going to have some things that "suck," especially when it comes to matters of personal preference. The argument here was that on the whole it's better than a lot (most, even) of the others out there.

    And despite what you tried to claim, I, for one, still believe it to be just that.
    --
    - Sean
  • not having new windows get the focus is a GREAT and intelligent default

    No, that's just a starting point. You can't stop there. The next step is to distinguish whether a and unrelated program popped up the window, or the user through an explicit action. In the latter case the new window should get the focus. This is called useability. Remember that your pain theshold may not be the same as mine, and most of userland consists of people with low pain thresholds. That mean don't make do extra pointless clicks that will make them think badly of you. Don't grab away their focus by surprise, either, you're on the money there. I've mentioned this one before, I'll mention it again: when the user puts the panel away the focus should go back to a reasonable place... it's useless and irritating to the user to have the keyboard focus stay on the panel as it does now.
  • I just want to take a moment to point out the interface hall of shame [iarchitect.com] which has a huge section on the windows interface.

    I'm not a microsoft detractor(well sometimes, but I bash everything when I'm grumpy) but they do make some good points.

    This website should be your bible if you design major gui's(they also have a hall of fame)

  • but please, why must people discuss the moderation of their own comments??

    1) There's no rule against it
    2) The author is often right: the comment would get moderated down if the author didn't get the attention of the moderator first.
    3) In my case, a previous comment with similar content was moderated down in the past.
    4) Yes, it is a useful technique for karma whoring. That won't last long though...
    5) If you want to get your controversial letter to the editor printed in a newspaper, you'd better start it with "you don't have the courage to print this" or words to that effect
  • Actually Gnome still doesn't have its own WM, although they are considering adopting Sawmill as their "standard." As to the Gnome file manager, the current one is simply a temporary measure.

    Here is a bit from a recent Gnome developer interview:

    GMC and GNOME

    I know that it was decided to drop GMC as the file manager for GNOME. Can you please tell us why GMC was dropped? What is its replacement? What will the major differences be between it and GMC?

    [Miguel de Icaza (miguel@gnu.org)]

    The GNOME team will make an announcement about the next generation file manager soon. I can tell you that GMC was just a stop-gap measure that grew too much. There is a new code based being worked that will be soon announced to the public.

    [Federico Mena Quintero (federico@redhat.com)]

    GMC is the GNOME edition of the venerable Midnight Commander file manager. We made a mistake when we decided to make it into a graphical file manager for GNOME; at that point we were naive and we thought that the MC code base provided a good framework for a GUI file manager.

    MC has a very particular and idiosyncratic architecture; it is a piece of code that has evolved over the years and was never designed to be extensible or to accomodate other UI paradigms than text terminals. So it has its own internal "text mode" widget system and its event model permeates to many areas of the code. The code flow is hard to follow, and it is hard to bend it to accomodate something like GTK+'s event model.

    Also, the virtual file system (VFS) that MC uses is completely synchronous. This does not scale very well to a graphical desktop, where you may want to perform several file operations at once. The new replacement for the Midnight Commander is an as-yet-unnamed file manager living in the "gnome-fm" module on the GNOME CVS repository. It uses a new VFS that is completely non-blocking and supports asynchronous operations, and has a much cleaner architecture as well. The new file manager is designed to be able to plug in Bonobo components so that you can install viewers for different types of files or different file systems altogether. Basically, the new file manager is designed to be extensible and to integrate well with a graphical desktop. And the new VFS can be used by all applications so that they can access any file system, local or remote, with a consistent interface.
  • The problem occurs any time the focus is switched without the users explicit approval. I will often open multiple browser windows (internet explorer, not sure if Netscape exhibits this behavior) to load all of my favorite sites, so I can then switch between them at my leisure. Unfortunately, while I am typing in urls in one window, another window which has finished displaying grabs the focus and interrupts my typing.

    No program/window should grab focus by itself, the window manager instead should surrender focus if the situation merits it (of course that's the difficult question). When a new program is started, chances are a window manager window will be closing or losing focus, so switching to the new window is fairly safe.

    Doug

  • Moderate this up. People need to see this. (Score:4)

    by Chas ( 5144 ) on Monday January 03, 2000 @09:48PM (#1409279) Homepage Journal

    EXCELLENT. You're hitting on what could be a sticking point for Linux. Similar to the Mac platform.

    Over-evangelization.

    It's great! It's wonderful! It doesn't do everything like we want it to but we love it anyhow and everything else is just a cheap hack!

    WRONG attitude! That's pulling a bag over your head and dooming yourself to obsolescence.

    If you don't stay critical, and either blind yourself to, or minimize, shortcomings within Linux (and let's be REAL people. Linux DOES have a lot of shortcomings.

    You need to be able to acknowledge that something sucks and that it needs to be changed. This is for both the programmers AND the user-only-base out there.

    Programmers, don't get pissed when a user mails you and tells you that your pet project(s) need work, or are buggy. Even if their ideas about what's broken aren't in-line with your conception of the project's goals, keep an open mind about it. Someone might spew for a genuine, bobdamned GOOD IDEA{TM} Remember, a TCP/IP stack wasn't essential to Windows at one time.

    Userbase. Don't be afraid of hurting a programmer's feelings by criticising his work! (Note: But try to stay within the bounds of civility for pity's sake!) Even if you couldn't write a Perl script to save your life, even if you just installed Linux for the first time yesterday night, stay critical.

    • Think about what it is, SPECIFICALLY that you don't like about the program, or Linux itself. Write this stuff down.
    • Think about what you DO like. Write this down as well.
    • Think about something that could make it even BETTER, and (you guessed it) WRITE IT DOWN.
    • Take these notes and turn them into e-mails to the appropriate persons who are responsible for maintaining the software. Without honest input, their projects will stagnate sooner or later. No one man can have ALL the ideas.

    Summary: Don't be afraid to say "This sucks and I want to help change it!"


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • One of the primary reasons the RiscOS GUI was so fast and responsive is that they got seasoned games writers to code the GUI.

    All well and good - they got stuff like solid drags going on a 1 meg machine long before PCs could manage it -- but it sacrificed proper abstraction. I wouldn't like to try porting RiscOS to a new architecture; I'd imagine the whole lot is in ARM assembly language.

    Cloning the desktop is a great idea. The only shame is that (like Mac software), the paradigm relies on *all* apps groking the interface. e.g. the RiscOS save dialogue is just a file icon, and a field to type the filename into. To save it to a directory, you drag the icon. That's great if all your apps share that method, but a UI pain in the arse, if they don't. Still, that's always been the blessing and the curse enjoyed by X.
    --
  • OK, I loved RISC OS; and I wrote some of my best software ever on that platform. It had many wins. Yes, the drag-and-drop was really well done and really clean, but there were lots of other things that were really clean. The menuing system was a particular one. Look at any Windows / Mac / Motif / KDE / Gnome application, and you see a great squodge of real estate permanently wasted - the menu bar. RISC OS applications have no menu bar. Instead, the menu always pops up when you hit the middle mouse button - and, of course, it's always context-sensitive.

    The other thing that RISC OS did - well - differently was file typing. Files were typed with (effectively) an unsigned short in the directory structure. This is sort of a kludge; it meant there was a finite number of file types, and by the early nineties they were already in short supply. I remember we asked Acorn for a block of sixteen, and, after intense negotiation, were actually awarded eight.

    But it had the advantage that when a file icon was dragged to your application, you got a request which said, effectively, here's one of these files, and it's this size, how do you want to handle it?. This saves an awful lot of messing about... The other nice thingb was that when the user selected a file and didn't drag it to a particular icon, the file was offered to the existing running copy of the application it was registered to, rather than starting a new copy. And if a file registered to your application was dragged to the printer, your application got alerted to decide how to render it on an abstract output stream, which the printer driver then translated to the particular printer actually in use.

    People elsewhere in this discussion have criticised RISC OS's collaborative multi-tasking. Yes, if your application failed to make it's next wimp_poll() call in due time for whatever reason the whole desktop locked up - so it was vital that you caught and handled all your own errors. But the upside was responsiveness. Yes, the ARM was faster than any other microprocessor available at the time by a good margin, but that didn't really account for the whole improvement in responsiveness that users percieved. Another big part of that responsiveness was due to the very low system overhead.

    However, nostalgia over. What can we learn from this and take forward? Well, one of the things we can learn is that RISC OS died in the marketplace (I know: my company was trying hard to sell it into big industry). Part of the reason it died was that it was different. People didn't take time to look past the difference to see that it was actually better. Part of the reason it died was lack of applications (although by 92 this was ceasing to be a real issue - most of the things people really needed were there, and most of them were very good). Part of the reason was that too few people will pay even a little more for a genuinely superior product. Part of the reason was single-vendor - 'what do we do if they go bust'. A lot of the reason was the old unfair reasons of the computer industry: FUD, whispers, lies, dishonest marketing.

    There are a lot of lessons out of RISC OS for the Linux community. And at some stage I think a desktop based on RISC OS-like drag-and-drop will win out over all the different cruddy file dialogs and stuff. But if I was designing a desktop application now would I write for this desktop? Well, I wouldn't, because a desktop needs critical mass. This is a chicken and egg situation... what we really need to be doing in application design is separating out the functionality into layers with well abstracted boundaries between them, so that if I wanted to put a ROX-compliant shell around, say, Mozilla or the GIMP it would be reasonably straightforward to do. Because whether ROX is it or not, some day there really is going to be a really creative new user interface metaphor which comes along and sweeps away the Windows-style GUI we're all currently using. It will come quicker if it's easier to experiment with new metaphors; and when it comes we'll all want to get our favourite applications working on it as soon as possible.

    Off topic, this is why I like the Abstract Window Toolkit so much, and think Swing is, in effect, a retrograde step.

  • Indeed. This is called "reactance" in soc psy parlance. I wonder if this is related with the moderator having a sense of authority when they get those magic points. I wonder.
  • Did the first Archimedes actually have RiscOS, or some earlier system? I recall that their architecture was bootstrapped from the BBC Micro and Electron, and attempted to build an Amiga killer on top of it.

    (The BBC was a very impressively designed system; from what I could recall, you could execute arbitrary system calls by outputting characters to the console, which beat the pants off ANSI art. And the BASIC interpreter was light years ahead of anything Microsoft had at the time. The Archimedes continued that tradition of impressiveness; apparently it was so fast that the entire UI system was written in interpreted BASIC, as was a 3D game that shipped with it. When I was in my teens, I really wanted an Archimedes.)

    Anyway, from what I remember, RiscOS showed up a few years after the Archimedes made its debut (circa 1987), as a second-generation OS for it.

  • focus (Score:2)

    by mattdm ( 1931 )
    I guess another part of this is that I have my UI set so that focus follows the mouse. So there's no extra clicking involved.

    --

  • It all comes back to two things:

    1) By default, do the "least surprising" thing.

    2) Gimme a checkbox to make it work the other way if I want.

    I would hazard the opinion that new windows that pop up shouldn't have the focus UNLESS the user can't accidently dismiss them with his typing, or accidently cause bad juju.

    Both of these bad things happen to me all the time, and not just with Windows; CDE apps do it too. Sometimes it's not trivial to figure out what it was that popped up and vanished while I was typing, and sometimes it can be VERY BAD.

    What if what popped up was part of a Unix app with root access?

    And don't folks launch into the "setuid" arguments, please; what if you started that app as root on purpose? What if the popup was a confirmation as to whether or not you wanted it to rm -rf /*, or rpm -e `rpm -q -a` ?

    It's bad enough when an instant messaging app steals my characters, I'd hate for my network management tools or backup apps to do it. And they have.

  • Arthur (Score:2)

    by acb ( 2797 )
    Ah yes, I remember... the reference to British heroic myth is quite apt.

    Which reminds me: I heard that the Archimedes and RiscPC are massively popular in Wales, mostly because it is the only system that is fully localised into the Welsh language (mostly a matter of national pride).
  • I'm sorry. I shouldn't have mentioned moderation. I should have said that I'll probably get flamed, because I don't give a shit about moderation, but I don't like getting flamed. So perhaps that bit of reverse psychology would have been more in my favor.

    I'm not a karma whore. IIRC, I even turned off my +2 bonus for this because I *knew* I was posting flamebait. Well, I was being infammatory at any rate. I definitely think my comment is over-rated anyway. This is the first time I've come back to look at my comment so it's been a while but I just want to make it clear I didn't mean to sound like a karma whore.

    Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.

  • If I recall correctly from an article in Acorn User magazine (mmm, that was a good magazine - still going but not as good any more), they only used games writers by accident.

    The new Archimedes was meant to use an OS called ARX, designed as an 'office automation system', whatever that means. It kept slipping, so eventually they scavenged together some spare coders and hacked up a single-tasking OS called Arthur, which in some ways resembled the BBC OS of six years earlier (ie 1981). The window system was written by a games programmer - which turned out to be an inspired choice, at least for performance. Arthur later became RISC OS. ARX was never finished. Another example of 'worse is better' at work.
  • At the risk of repeating what others have said, here are the three main features of the RISC OS GUI that I think would be worth duplicating:

    1. The Filer - a fairly run of the mill file manager that displayed each directory in its own window. As with most RISC OS things, clicking with the right mouse button did almost the same thing as the left, but with a small difference. In this case, right-double-click opened the new directory in the same window. Another cool feature is that selecting items with the right mouse button adds to the existing selection rather than replacing it (like holding down Ctrl in Windows).

    The important part is that the Filer wasn't just a file manager but was 'pervasive' (ugh) throughout the UI. There was no separate application launcher - you just open the directory where your application is stored and double-click on it. Like NextStep, each app was its own self-contained directory, containing icons and a file to run when you double-click it. And saving files meant dragging them to a Filer window - no need for a separate File Save dialogue box.

    2. The menus. No menu bar, but clicking the middle mouse button almost anywhere brings up a context-sensitive menu. There were some flamewars on Usenet with Mac fans over whether this is quicker and easier than having an explicit 'menu bar' on screen - IMHO it is much quicker. It makes using the mouse a pleasure rather than a chore.

    3. Proper use of drag and drop. Mainly this is involved with the Filer again - drag a file to an app to load it (you could also double-click on the file, of course), drag it back to save (subsequently just press Return to save using the same filename), drag onto the printer icon to print. Oddly, there was no Trash - just a delete option.

    It would be nice if there were some way to integrate this with David Alan Gilbert's arcem Archimedes emulator. But I don't think there is, unless you want to do some serious patching of RISC OS to let its windows play nicely in your X desktop. (Actually, although RISC OS is a binary-only OS, it was mostly written in assembler anyway, so it's relatively easy to disassemble and patch. The ARM has a clean but powerful instruction set.)
  • I would hazard the opinion that new windows that pop up shouldn't have the focus UNLESS the user can't accidently dismiss them with his typing, or accidently cause bad juju.

    Both of these bad things happen to me all the time, and not just with Windows; CDE apps do it too. Sometimes it's not trivial to figure out what it was that popped up and vanished while I was typing, and sometimes it can be VERY BAD.

    OK, this is a *very very* late reply and noone will every read it, but I feel compelled to mention that the correct and obvious thing to do is: never to give focus to such a popup unless it comes from the application that currently has focus. Applications should cooperate by never popping up a dialog unless absolutely necessary (Netscape is a HUGE offender here).

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