[lug] The deal with applets / notifications / panels / indicators / systray.....

[Bruce Long]

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> 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>> 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/
> >     _______________________________________________
> >     Web Page: http://lug.boulder.co.us
> >     Mailing List: http://lists.lug.boulder.co.us/mailman/listinfo/lug
> >     Join us on IRC: irc.hackingsociety.org
> >     <http://irc.hackingsociety.org> port=6667 channel=#hackingsociety
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Give me immortality or give me death!
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Web Page:  http://lug.boulder.co.us
> > Mailing List: http://lists.lug.boulder.co.us/mailman/listinfo/lug
> > Join us on IRC: irc.hackingsociety.org port=6667 channel=#hackingsociety
>
> _______________________________________________
> Web Page:  http://lug.boulder.co.us
> Mailing List: http://lists.lug.boulder.co.us/mailman/listinfo/lug
> Join us on IRC: irc.hackingsociety.org port=6667 channel=#hackingsociety
>



-- 
Give me immortality or give me death!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.lug.boulder.co.us/pipermail/lug/attachments/20120203/bf053bf4/attachment.html>