[lug] The deal with applets / notifications / panels / indicators / systray.....
Bruce Long
qstream at gmail.com
Fri Feb 3 17:38:10 MST 2012
Thus the "distributed project" functionality. If a handful of us can
maintain a model or two that we care about perhaps we can keep them all up
to date. If I'm the only one I'll likely just maintain things like weather
data sources, email sources, Google Calendar and a few others. I'm
currently going to provide a model for Google tasks and basecamp. But once
I start using the slipstream I'll likely stop using Google tasks and
basecamp so I won't care if those go out-of-date. (BTW, I'm not the only
one.)
On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 5:18 PM, Matt Dew <marcoz at osource.org> wrote:
> I wish you a fun time while you're doing it, sincerely. I've lost count
> of the number of people I've known who've done this and then eventually
> stopped because the underlying 'APIs' change.
>
>
> On 02/03/2012 03:50 PM, Bruce Long wrote:
> > Funny! But what I'm working on not a universal standard. In fact, it's
> > an "anti-standard." I get to use my own UI, tools, protocols, etc. The
> > models of other people's/company's information/protocols, etc is used to
> > create a wrapper at "run-time."
> >
> > They won't know I'm doing it my way and I won't have to think about
> > their styles or worry that they'll change something and I'll have to
> > learn a new UI that I don't like. OTOH, if I decide I want to use (for
> > example) Kinect gestures to edit word documents or that I want only to
> > use a CLI for everything no one can stop me.
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 3:43 PM, Matt Dew <marcoz at osource.org
> > <mailto:marcoz at osource.org>> wrote:
> >
> >
> > http://xkcd.com/927/
> >
> > On 02/03/2012 03:19 PM, Bruce Long wrote:
> > > Here's my solution: http://infomage.com/home.html
> > >
> > > I'm making lots of progress. It's semi usable for hackers now
> (it's
> > > useful but you need to edit text files). My goal is to use it as
> > my only
> > > platform. I'm currently working on having it use the screens of
> > > mac//linux/iPhone/Android/Windows computers as a single large
> > monitor.
> > > Later, XBox, Playstation, Nook, etc.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On Fri, Feb 3, 2012 at 3:08 PM, Neal McBurnett
> > <neal at bcn.boulder.co.us <mailto:neal at bcn.boulder.co.us>
> > > <mailto:neal at bcn.boulder.co.us <mailto:neal at bcn.boulder.co.us>>>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > More and more the world of applets seems to be spinning out of
> > > control. I can't even keep up with or make sense of the
> various
> > > terms for what I'm trying to talk about.
> > >
> > > In the "good old days", real computers had plain text, and
> > that was
> > > fine. Well, except for character sets, but I digress.
> > >
> > > Then along came the GUI - graphical user interface - and the
> > bumpy
> > > ride commenced of how to deal with windows, applets, icons,
> > > notifications, etc. Yikes.
> > >
> > > I've used a crazy mess of GUIs over the years. Hell, I even
> > > designed a crude Unix/32V bitmap font in 1977 for a Plato
> plasma
> > > display. I've used the Blit/DMD, plain old X11 widgets,
> Motif,
> > > Sun's NeWS system and their other window managers, CDE,
> > xinit, TWM,
> > > FVWM, Sawmill, Gnome, KDE, Unity, etc.
> > >
> > > I've also been excited about using byobu/screen/tmux for
> > making all
> > > the same sort of "gui" window/notification stuff available
> > back on a
> > > nice efficient remotable terminal interface.
> > >
> > > The field is hard to even talk about, since everyone overloads
> > > terms, assumes I know what Windows or Mac are doing and what
> they
> > > call various parts of the screen, etc.
> > >
> > > Now the big battle seems to be about using "little apps" like
> > > weather report applets, workrave, hamster, etc. The official
> > > position from both Unity and Gnome 3 seems to be that there
> > was too
> > > much abuse of the designer's ability to make a left or right
> > click
> > > mean something unique for their applet, and that the chaos
> must
> > > stop, so it all has to go. But those are just my vague
> > notions, and
> > > I don't yet see a clear statement of what the designer or
> user is
> > > supposed to do in order to make vital information visible to
> > users,
> > > and allow the user to conveniently control them.
> > >
> > > Help!
> > >
> > > Do I have this latest shift even remotely correct?
> > >
> > > Is there a reasonable description of the issue somewhere?
> > >
> > > Are people really converging on a good, principled
> > > user-interface-design understanding of this stuff?
> > >
> > > Does it appply to geeks and tinkerers? So should I really
> > drink the
> > > kool-aid? Or should I just resist and stick with gnome 2 or
> > Ubuntu
> > > Server with byobu or whatever? (And don't tell me to run
> these
> > > applets in the ----ing cloud, like some
> > gmail/cloud9/orion-inspired
> > > attack from beyond.)
> > >
> > > Is there anyone that could do a nice broad, insightful LUG
> > talk on
> > > this topic? Or even better a pair of folks from different
> > camps so
> > > we could have a food fight^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H discussion
> > about it?
> > >
> > > What would we even call it - The Great Applet Debate?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Neal McBurnett http://neal.mcburnett.org/
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Give me immortality or give me death!
> > >
> > >
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> >
> >
> > --
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> >
> >
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Give me immortality or give me death!
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