Re: [9fans] Evolving rio / GUI development

[Sergey Reva <rs_rlab@mail.ru>]

Hello Tiit, Kenji, Nemo, and others

TL> GUI not necessarily means controls/widgets; sometimes the whole is bigger
TL> than the sum of components. Our society is literate, i.e., text-based,
TL> no matter how hard certain groups try to change this. Take a look around,
TL> basically every GUI has some textual info attached to an action that
TL> can be performed. Even in 100% graphic icons the mind has first to
TL> form a textual "token" before it can recognise what it is.
IMHO text/language only represents thoughts, images most fastest way to recognize
something, text one of images. If your say 'disk' only who known English
(ok, this word in many languages sounds like 'disk' but it's only example)
can understand you, but when you show 'disk' anyone understand you.
If in Acme 'Get Put send' change to button you lose nothing.
TL> The framing of a button is just syntactic sugar so that you -god forbid- would not
TL> actually have to think what's written there.

TL> In "all-text" systems there of course remains the problem how the user
TL> is supposed to pick active snippets from the general flow. Typescript
TL> systems have this one solved rather elegantly IMHO, by making everyhing
TL> active. The whole universe is your playground.
Plan 9 my first system with typescript system, and first impression was
great, but now I see many things is missing (buttons, lists etc).

Example:
If I need cad system, how I can create it in typescript system?
Or maybe you suggest type all command in console ;)

KO> Once upon a time, programming was a fan for many scientists because
KO> it was not so difficult. They have to just care of the precisenenss of
KO> their own parts. Now a days, I think most of them are buying some
KO> commercial products and students don't know how to make it from
KO> scratch.
It's good for people who 'write code', it's every time have
work... I am sure 'programming user' is utopia...
RO> It will soon make this world darker I fear.
We can't stop this :-)

nemo> Regarding the UIs,
nemo> we have what we call omero (another experiment), it's a mixture of
nemo> a window-toolkit and a file server, that handles all the graphics by
nemo> its own. The application creates files to build its UI, and the fs takes
nemo> care of the mouse and everything else. This allows you to replicate
nemo> and move around UI components without placing the burden in the
nemo> application.
Can I see it?


--
http://rs-rlab.narod.ru                            mailto:rs_rlab@mail.ru