Slashdot Mirror
Berlin 0.2.0 Released
starseeker writes: "The Berlin people have released version 0.2.0. Check out the new screenshots.Talk about your awesome graphics!" For a project that's had a lot of smoke over the years, it's pretty nice to see something tangible.
it's nice to see transparency and multiple language support at the same time. keep up the good work.
Hmm.. not sure about this. Why would anyone want a terminal window that's tilted at a weird angle? :)
I'd get a big crick in my neck trying to work that way.
Fialar
Berlin is not a window manager, it's a full blown windowing system. ie. it's a replacement for X not for fvwm! I don't know if it is API compatable or not, I hope so!
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
This isn't "just" another window manager, this is a whole new graphics server.
This isn't intended to run under X, it is intended to replace X.
For more details, see this page.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Please check out the software before you rant about it. Berlin is NOT a window manager, it is a complete (or will be) windowing system (like xfree86).
Or if they want to start theoir own project why don't they develop something new and innovative. Another window manager? Give me a break!
I would say a new windowing systems is pretty new and from their feature list and screenshots looks pretty innovative. Pay attention before shooting your mouth off.
Finkployd
A few words of `enlightenment' so to speak:
Berlin is not a window manager, it's a windowing system. Berlin won't replace Sawfish, lwm, or even enlightenment. It will make them - initially - irrelevant.
Berlin is here to replace X, and that's a very, very good thing.
Some technologies have been surprisingly long lasting. X is good, but it's not one of them.
Instead of a lame spin-n-disappear, how about "spin to get your attention"? Beats the pants off of "flashing title bar" or "tiny light in the corner of the window".
--
Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Am I the only one here that likes his windows without any zoom/shear/rotate transformations, with readable text and contrasting background? If so, does this make me or you insane? :)
Seriously, working on nice font renderer is A Good Thing -- X11 fonts always looked ugly, even with FreeType (X11 fonts will always be rendered to 1-bit bitmaps) -- but do you see any use (other than having a nice eyecandy) for those fancy transformations?
I couldn't agree with you more. There ought to bee like a hundred more exiting things to develop that yet another wm. Maybe I'm a bit drastic but sometimes I feel that the numerous vm's makes more harm than good to the OS...
Okay, it looks nice and has a lot of interesting effects, but I'm really wondering what the whole point of being able to do linear transforms on windows is, other than for purely cosmetic reasons. Who here would ever really need windows tilted at some neck-wrenching angle whilst actually trying to get something done?
Apart from that though it looks like it'll be promising if it ever gets to a fully working state and people start supporting it. The idea of having its API exposed through a CORBA interface is interesting, though I do wonder at a possible performace hit there.
Anyway, it's about time something took over from X, a system which is becoming increasingly aged and complex. I certainly hope this takes off in the next few years.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
What are the different graphics systems, and on what levels, and in what combinations? Where do things like X, xvwm, KDE, Berlin, etc fit in? What alternatives are there on various levels? What compatibility problems?
.... would people look at a product described as 0.2.0 alpha test and proclaim "Not Vaporware Any More"! The "community" does itself no favours by boasting about these promising but half-finished applications on public fora like sourceforge. Why not concentrate on products which are ready for primetime like (insert your favourite example here -- I'm not interested in flamewars). Taco et. al. have the right idea with the Slash code -- release reasonably early and often, rather than constantly crying wolf over a product that's still sucking nipples. The way some projects carry on, you'd think they were just playing the hype game to raise IPO capital -- even some of the much-reviled marketing droids would quail at the number of "launches" and "new releases" that these projects go through. Relax, guys, you're not in the commercial arena so stop huckstering like you're selling raw prawns from an unrefrigerated truck on a hot day.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Yeah, they could work on improving an existing window manager, but given the freedom would you create something of your own or pick up something thats not initially your work.
I know what I would do.
"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach 18" Einstein
First of all, congrats to the team for all the hard work and concrete results. All too often, it must be discouraging for developers to work so hard and see the majority of posts bitching about things.
Having said that, I have a question. I thought Berlin was to remake the graphics system from scratch. So why do the widgets, borders, etc. look so similar to stuff in X? In particular, I'm horrified to see the checkbox in the first screenshot which looks pretty similar whether it's on and off. In general, the looks are similar to X, so I'm a bit surprised.
If Berlin can avoid going down the same look n feel of X, it would be great. We need change.
Their Berlin vs X document makes a big thing of pixel independence, but I see this as a disadvantage. Present displays, and future ones for that matter, still have pixels that are big enough to see, and the difference between a 1 pixel line and a 2 pixel line is significant. As a result I'm not ready to go for pure non-pixel metrics yet, although I grant that they are increasingly useful.
I also worry a bit about the CPU/GPU overhead of all this stuff, although I grant that this is a pretty short term concern. Modern high-end graphics cards can do this stuff at the necessary speeds without problems, so its only 2-3 years until the bog-standard consumer PCs have this capability.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Maybe this will help. Also the FAQ is here. Personally I like the idea of someone working on an alternative/replacement for X, things change.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
The idea of a 3d interface has interested me for a while ...
/.'ers think of the concept of a 3d interface?
Does anyone know of any windowing system that offers anything approaching this?
I guess transparency and "weird angles" to windows are a start to this idea...
What do
Surely it must allow you to interact with more material allowing you to be more productive?
Can it be done effectively on a 2D monitor or do we need new hardware?
(I guess this is could be an "Ask Slashdot"?)
Berlin is not API compatible with X.
If it was they wouldn't have been able to do some of the cool things they are doing.
What I hope though is that some stuff can still be ported to it quite easily. For example. I don't know too much about it, but since the GTK+ ppl make the (IMHO) brilliant decision of writing GTK+ for GDK and GLIB rather than making it depend on X, they may now be in a position of writing an alternate gdk library over the berlin APIs and suddenly gnome works on Berlin!
Okay, I have made it sound simpler than it is (not least because I don't really know how complicated it is) but hopefully it's possible.
wow. just imagine that. a CHOICE of windowing systems to run a choice of desktops on might be a reality in the near future.
I like choices.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
How do you define a "bog-standard consumer PC"? I just checked Gateway's cheap boxes (I've never bought anything from Gateway, it was just the first mainstream consumer box vendor that popped into my head). It turns out that these machines, which retail from $799, include integrated Intel 3D graphics hardware. Without a doubt, that hardware doesn't exactly compete with the big guys' stuff, but it might be able to handle the probably rather modest fillrate requirements of a GUI. Then again, it's a completely different question when we can expect to actually find this kind of hardware in the homes of the consumers... Hm.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
Nice screen shots. The only problem is that beauty isn't really what Berlin aims to fix. The weaknesses in X are well known but I will list them here for those who are unaware.
1. Size. X 3.x eats up 16 megs of RAM If you run it on 8 MB ( I have ) you will notice a distinct crawl caused from swapping.
2. Speed. X is fast but not quite fast enough. On a low end Pentium Linux runs wrings around NT or 95 for most things. The GUI is only a little faster however. I won't be happy until the *nix GUI is 3X the speed of the Windows GUI on the same Hardware.
3. You can't resize the desktop without shutting down X. Yes I know you can switch resolution but the Virtual desktop size will remain the same. I.e. this is good for Zooming in on fine print or small pictures. Nothing much else. If you use Mac, Windows or OS/2 you know why someone would resize a whole desktop.
4. X is not stable. Sure most of us hardly ever get a GUI lockup or spontaneous X server termination. Too many of us have seen this though. I have never seen an E-Smith server go down without massive hardware failure. Same goes for Cobalt Cube. X doesn't approach the stability of Linux or Apache or SaMBa. Bad Applications can't take down the Kernel. It can take down the GUI however. I.e. Sometimes Alpha quality KDE from CVS dose this for me.
Everything else that people see as wrong with X can be fixed at a higher level. If these problems can be fixed without ditching X then by all means do so. If X must be replaced then so be it. Berlin will still run X apps. It won't matter if it doesn't.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
A nice feature that Alpha transparency allows is antialased text. I think that is useful.
What the...? I think I saw a penguin...
I think this is why pixel independence is so important - think anti-aliasing (and we all know how good X is at that). Represent the data as unlimited (or very large) resolution and resample to the actual display. This would be very cool for CAD, wireframe 3D (i.e. all the content creation apps), proper AA fonts, etc.
Jon.
If the sourceforge site is getting a bit slow, then try this for the screenshots.
Find funky gifts
Microsoft thinks, "Well the command line is not very useful to the average computer user, let us do away with it."
Unix programmers think, "Well I do not think rotating windows in 3d is useful, but let us keep this feature, someone else may have a use for it."
Keep this in mind... it is hard to find a use for something that does not exist!!!
--
May the source be with you!
--
May the source be with you!
Jason Zwolak
Think of Berlin as something that is rather useless right now, given current hardware constraints, but will become a very nice graphical interface once we have monitors with pixel spacing more comparable to paper.
Given a future world where such hardware exists, it's easy to see where current windowing systems (X and MS Windows in particular) are woefully inadequate. Anyone who has a high-end monitor and has set the resolution to something like 1600x1200 knows what I'm talking about. All the fonts are way too small. So then you go and change the default font size. *Then* you find out that there are a lot of application developers who never tested their applications with a larger font size.
Berlin will be a good basis for a future windowing system. It's time will come.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
There used to be a marketing guy who posted here, offering maretking advice for free. He was a bit clueless, but he could have been helped and recruited for a "good" project like Berlin (if it is any good, I don't know), and showed them how to get these eyeballs in the best way. Instead, the SlashBots decided that their fantastic wisdom was too great to need help, and flamed him off the forum. Wasn't this a mistake?
Given that the main marketing effort of Open SOurce appears to be self-appointed "advocates" like Raymond and Stallman, who surely put off as many people as they attract, wouldn't some of the IPO money, or O'Reilly's be better spent on good marketing advice rather than yet another Perl wizard? Linus Torvalds is an exception to this; as someone who cut his teeth at Nokia (a company which knows the value of marketing), he seems to have an instinctive understanding of the science.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
The Icon for this article is wrong.
It should, if it must incorporate the X Logo, have a circle-slash over it. One of the main points of Berlin is to finally kill the X Window System dinosaur. I mean, really.
well, from the comments I've read it sounds pretty cool, but I have yet to see the screenshots since the site seems to be suffering the infamous /. effect. anyone got a mirror we can look at?
Why, we'll make Rock Ridge think it was a chicken that got caught in a tractor's nuts!
Present displays, and future ones for that matter, still have pixels that are big enough to see..
Have you seen the Roentgen display from IBM? 200ppi 16.3" 2560x2048 pixels. I'm sorry but future displays will be more like going from dot-matrix to laser in the print technology. I can't wait!
J.
shouldn't be called Y?
Just to head off confusion.
The most interesting Berlin idea IMO is the change in the client-server protocol : in Berlin protocol, ASAIK, the presentation details (like repainting a window when exposed ) are in charge of the server. In X, they are in charge of the client ( though they are handled by the toolkit for standard widgets ).
This should greately reduce the communication flow between client and server, therefore making it possible to implement it over low-bandwith connections ( as is the Internet for most people ).
Also, this should also make possible for applications to be truly and easily toolkit-independent.
Ciao
----
FB
Dynamic scaling of windows is possible if you can apply an arbitrary transform to something before displaying it - which would make it possible to zoom windows in and out fairly trivially.
And it's transparency in general, not transparent windows, which is useful - this allows antialiasing, among other things, to work properly.
(Not that I'm a Berlin programmer or user, just an observer...)
Can I put it on my HPUX or Solaris box?
Then again, last time I asked this simple question, I was told that HPUX and Solaris is going away, and Linux will take over everything.
This is strange: this seems to be the same crowd that not so long ago has been actively discussing just how much X sucks: it is ancient, does very poor job displaying fonts, curves, is all crufty, etc., etc., etc.
Now, here comes the news of a project [long in development and refered to a number of times in the previous discussion] making a new (though pre-pre-pre-alpha) release, boasting numerous new advances, done in the [so much adored] OS way. And what do we see? Sceptical "well, this is all so nice but it is nott even close to become a replacement for X" or "WTF do I need those rotating/tilted windows for?".
Folks, this is about developing new things! This is about a brave new world. There were so many people who were going ooh!... and aah!.. about Apple's Aqua -- Berlin can almost do the same sort of thing (correction may be able to do the same sort of thing in future)! Why on Earth does it produce so much scepticism?
--AP
OK, Why are people marking these FUD posts "Insightful"? All the way up to 4? There is no insight into the open source process, in fact, these people don't even remember the release early/often strategy that open source is about! Not only that, but this person seems to have neglected to read the web page at all. Otherwise, he would know more than the screenshots tell them. A non-retard would look at the page, and see that Berlin has a dramatically improved architecture over the kludge that is X, including a brilliant corba based inmplementation and a far superior, unified API.
Please don't put MS Windows in there. Windows has been pixel-independant from way back as far as I've known (back to the 3.0 days) and maybe even further. Yes, you can still use pixel alignment, but non-pixel based measurements are built into the GUI.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
This really looks nice. I'm not sure how much berlin can be compared to apple's aqua but it looks like it has rather similar capabilities. For those who are wondering what to do with all this functionality: it makes it really easy to write graphical applications. Graphical applications generally display lots of 2D shapes which need to be manipulated in arbitrary ways. A GUI library like Berlin does all the difficult transformations for you. Since it's all integrated, it works fairly transparently too. I admit that rotated, translucent X-terms are not a particularly exciting example (I wouldn't want one on my desktop) but you have to realize that it is only an example of how easy it is to make such graphical objects (in any case, what would make a terminal window exciting?). Note that these transformations can also be applied to objects inside a window.
Having resolution independent graphics is a particular nice feature which can for instance be used to add high quality printing functionality to applications in a very straightforward way but also allows for zooming functionality etc.
Jilles
The basic difference between X and Berlin at this level is that the Berlin system stores representations of all graphical objects on the server, whereas X only stores windows. There are swings and roundabouts here, but one of the swings is that, as the parent message points out, that Berlin does repaints on the server. However, the downside of this is that the server's memory usage is dependant on the complexity of the display, and probably higher on average than that of an X server.
This does not have much impact on bandwidth use - all display changes still have to be sent by the client to the server, and these are more frequent by far than window-damage repaints. Oddly, remote UI graphics are not especially bandwidth hungry - both LBX and Citrix's ICA use roughly modemeseue amounts of bandwidth. It does, however, have a positive impact on latencies and Berlin, if done right, should be usable over much higher latency connections than X (like the internet).
Simon
Disclaimer: I work for Citrix, but am not speaking for my employer.
I refuse to respond to this obvious troll...
That said, I think it's time I changed my
... or maybe i don't
IIRC I thought what was really revolutionary about Berlin was that the _server_ had more or less control over where and how to put things. Programs would just say what to display and the server decides on the best way to display it, basically allowing thesame programs to be run on a variety/several kinds of displays (Palmtop, lowres LCD, highres CRT, etc etc) Don't like the way programs look and are arranged? get another server(plugin?)
Basically you could use thesame program on Pixelscreen(tm), or in vectorspace (postscript) or even in 3D (opengl), and each time it would probably use features available to the best of its abilities, no lowest common denominator stuff. (i guess they could even make a text based server or something
This isn't another XServeralike with the windowmanager layered on a toolkit layered on X etc. It's conceptually different.
Of course i might be totally wrong cause it's a real long time ago that i actually looked into it.
Sure, the effect is silly, but what it says about the software's architecture is not.
What this is meant to demonstrate is that the software design is highly orthagonal -- that you can make a list of objects going down the page and a list of operations going across, and if you checked out which operations apply to which objects, nearly all the cells would be checked.
Orthagonality is a desirable property for two reasons. First, it implies flexibility. One of the most frustrating things when using other peeople's designs is to find out you can't do x with y because the developer never thought anyone would need to. Secondly, it eases the learning curve. When you wonder "Can I do x with y?", the answers is likely to be yes and you are less likely to have to refer to the manual on a regular basis.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
For an interesting take on "rewrite it from scratch" software development, check this out:
http://joel.editthispage.com/st ories/storyReader$47
Talks about Mozilla, Borland, and other projects that have had serious problems rewriting from scratch. Also,
http://joel.editthispage.com/2000/05/26 (scroll down)
A great quote from Lou Montulli of the original Netscape team.
Gah. Over the weekend, I made myself a CD (at work :) of all sorts of neat things to take home. Things like new OS's, new windowing systems, and a few other things that I want to play with. Berlin was one of them.
And of course, to follow with murphy's law, several of them have to post updates within a day or two after the CD is burned and at home. Plan9 even had a patch that covered my hardware setup. Boy I wish I had a fast connection at home...
Calmacil
I can't seem to face up to the facts, I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax... --Talking Heads
Berlin is not a replacement to GTK/Qt or to GNOME/KDE or to any of the window managers that run on top of any of the previous. It is a replacement for X, an attempt to redo what X did, only more intelligently, with a knowledge of the limitations of X and taking into account the developments of the computer industry and for that matter the new needs of the computer industry.
X is powerful but there are several areas where it cannot be revised and extended without breaking all the other applications which currently depend on X. Sooner or later you need to throw out the old software and do a clean start.
The real significant developments in Berlin are the fact that it uses CORBA for brokering the API, a well thought out approach to client/server distribution of resources over the network and the support of resolution independent graphics as well as other features of modern graphics hardware.
Why not use X? Because X was designed in a far more different era than the one we have now. It is better to have a system that is optimized for modern computing uses and has room for growth.
Why would anyone switch from X? As has been commented over on the Berlin site, one can create an XLib compatibility layer, and between that and ports of GTK and Qt, which are designed to be insulating layers between programs that use a GUI and the underlying graphics API, running existing software on Berlin shouldn't be that difficult. Modular software design in the Unix world has its overhead but there are advantages to it.
Unix needs to evolve with the times. Yes, there is power in continuity and well-hammered tools that have survived the test of time, but that should not be a barrier to progress. That includes things that are technically separate from Unix but closely associated with it, such as X. Apple keeps pushing the standard for graphics forward and OS X has raised the bar for graphics technology. The Berlin people have a moving target to hit.
People may wonder at the hype of a 0.2 release, but the fact is that Berlin is slowly starting to move from the 'interesting toy' level to something more along the lines of a serious prototype for a new windowing system. Hopefully it will start reaching the point where it attracts more developers interested in a cool windowing system.
The second step is the XLib and GTK/Qt porting support, at which point the number of applications that can run on Berlin shoots up dramatically.
The real goal is to get software driver support for Berlin on the order of support for XFree86. That is going to be a pain in the neck unless someone can figure out a brilliant way to get device drivers for X to be used by Berlin. Those systems with open source drivers will probably have drivers written by motivated developers.
I'd like to see a real competition for developer mindshare between Berlin and XFree86 on the order of GTK/Qt or GNOME/KDE. Competition can only benefit the consumer.
For antialiased fonts, the font bitmap is basically the alpha transparency. There is no real image bitmap to speak of. Normal X fonts have alpha transparency, only it is either 100% opaque or 100% transparent. A 4-bit bitmap provides more than adequate anti-aliasing.
But Berlin looks like a dog. I know that it is version 0.2.0 and very prototypical, but I would prefer them to work on the underlying stuff rather than generating their own widget sets which look really foul and basic. I approve of the other posters idea of porting GTK+ to Berlin just by rewriting the underlying libraries - that would make things look a lot nicer immediately.
Anyone who doesn't know what use Alpha transparency in windows does not have an imagination. Subtle drop shadows for active windows is one UI prettification, fading backdrop windows is another.
Does Berlin allow for affine transforms of windows at all? Does it allow for basic image processing of windows (that would be great!) such as tinting them, or greyscaling them? If you are going to do transparency and rotation, then these other things should be done as well.
8.5
Nicely done. Very nicely done. The fact that you got moderated up to a 3 shows that you put some thought into it. (Sadly this is also a sad comment on the state of moderation) Your ability to mix some truth in with your troll really shines on this one. As all good trolls know that is the key to a good troll and easier said than done.
You do lose a little by coming off just a little angry. If you toned it down just a bit here you would certainly have been in the 9's for this one.
Your troll score: 8.5 out of 10. Nicely done indeed.
Or is there another mechanism that causes text to get cut off and missplaced in some applications when you switch to large fonts? I've had little pop-up windows with a "continue" button, where that button was pushed off the bottom of the (non-resizable) window due to my choice of larger font size, and therefore I couldn't even click it!
Whether or not MS Windows is pixel-independant or not, there are a lot of applications that can't seem to handle a fontsize different from the default.
I am making the assumption that this would not be a problem under Berlin, but I could be mistaken.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
There's a very nice technology base to Berlin that should, if it can replace X, take *nix graphical development to a totally new level.
>Berlin is not a window manager, it's a full blown windowing system.
>ie. it's a replacement for X not for fvwm! I don't know if it is API
>compatable or not, I hope so!
Who cares? Berlin is too little,too late just like the "rebirth" of the Amiga and Mofit becoming "Open Source". We've got Xfree 4.0 now. Pretty much nobody is going to be adopting Berlin at this stage of the game. Does anyone really see RedHat,Suse,Debian replacing X with Berlin? I didn't think so.
What is this really?
A replacement for X? why?.. is X(XF86) not good enough? I wonder..
Is this a fight for a better GUI platform for unix in general? or just a battle between organisations for the credits they get from providing it?, which is their platform for the future.
If these organisations are developing the GUI platform for the future FOR THE PEOPLE.. why not open the R&D(Research&Development) share and cooperate organisations in between aiming at developing THE GUI platform that the WE the users, are to BENEFIT from and USE as OUR FOUNDATION for OUR CREATIONS.. In our future.
How OPEN are their eyes really?
Or how about 'pulsate' to get your attention? Sort of like a heartbeat rhythm. The possibilities for cool-looking and intuitive UI are enormous!
Wah!
I think that Apple's Aqua--as bad as I think it is on some points--demonstrates the utility of transaprency and translucency in a GUI. It cna be used to give the user the feeling of being immersed--almost a 2 1/2D experience. Transparency is not the most useful of features IMHO, but translucency can be used to great effect. There is no good reason that a window should not very faintly show up behind another. It gives the user more information, in a controlled fashion. This is a Good Thing.
It can also be used to make an interface more attractive. This is not as immediately useful, but it is a fact that we are more comfortable with attractive things than with those which are, shall we say, ugly. Why is it that every few years every GUI gets some sort of facelift? Because people want an attractive interface. It's the same reason that car interiors change. It's Style.
As far as pixel-based vs. measurement-based systems go, I think that it is pretty unarguable that measurement-based systems are superior. The only reason for being pixel-based is that it removes a layer of processing. But wiht more powerful computers, this is not such an issue. It just makes more sense. Granted, individual pixels are still visible (at least on screen; try seeing one dot in a 600 dpi printout), but this will not be so forever. Resolution-independence is a Good Thing because it simplifies printing, because it simplifies changes in monitors and monitor parameters and because it uses a scheme which is familiar to users (whether that scheme be inches or centimetres, we've grown accustomed to using them). In addition this solves the problem of screwy fonts (can you say Windows?). Fonts are defined in points, which are 1/72 of an inch; with a measurement-based system, fonts will display perfectly, and at the exact size specified, both on-screen and printed.
BTW, for those who hate metric and those who hate English units, I imagine that any display scheme is going to use its own internal measurements, translating to the user's preference. So the rest of the world need not worry about font sizes measured in old-fashioned points screwing up their displays, and I don't need to try to think in millimetres. This way we're all happy and all compatible. What a thought!
People keep calling this "a 3D interface," which isn't quite correct. Only 2D affine transformations are demonstrated...this provides a skewed, pseudo-3D effect, but ultimately it's just a kludge. True 3D requires a projective transformation. Dig up [Heckbert89] for canonical examples with code.
Hear, hear!
It's even not needed to have 1600x1200, just change your default GNOME/KDE font on Linux to something with non-standard measures and run applications. Dialogs broke, labels appear in wrong places, button sizes inconsistent with labels, all the zoo...
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Morphic in Squeak can already rotate arbitrary windows, resize them in any magnitude, and make anything transparent. But nobody uses these things because they're just eye candy. The programming interface for Squeak is good. Why not just make Squeak use the kernel's framebuffer driver and use that instead? At least Squeak has a userbase and a great MVC style programming interface...
X11 can make fonts large enough if you configure it correctly. In any case, when hardware becomes good enough that pixels don't matter, adding a resolution independent imaging API to X11 is easy. In fact, people are already working on it.
The only sensible way I find of implementing that kind of design is with a safe, platform neutral language, like PostScript or Java.
In fact, most of the goals of Berlin seem already satisfied using Java as a display server: widgets run in the server, a resolution independent API, etc. I think the Berlin effort might be better expended on implementing AWT and the Java2D imaging API on raw hardware in an open source project.
The X11 folks weren't stupid, and design like Berlin's were around before X11 even was created. To me, it really appears that the Berlin model is fatally flawed.
All of this talk about X, Berlin, KDE, Eazel, etc. isn't much more than mental masturbation. The thing that will make Linux more usable on the desktop is APPLICATIONS. Lots and lots of applications. Maybe if you're a graphic artist you need sub-pixel rendering and high-bandwidth BLT stuff and whatever, but 95% of the users out there simply want their application windows to display. That's all. The file managers in KDE and Gnome are 'good enough' for most users. Windows was 'good enough' to take desktop market share away from the Macintosh, despite the Mac's superiority wrt anything on-screen.
Bottom line: more and better apps will drive adoption of Linux on the desktop.
--
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
You have no idea what you are talking about. Most of what you see as Berlin today is actually Fresco merged with corbra.
They chose to complete the basic infrastructure before they go and improve the appearance of the widget set. Read the website.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Transparency does come in handy, because there is a limit to the number of programs you can have visible at one time. For instance at work my machine runs at 800x600 (much smaller than I'm used to) which means netscape must take up nearly 75% of the screen to be readable. If I am reading off commands from a Howto in netscape and have to juggle my xterms around so I can read and type it just becomes annoying. Imagine having a transparent Xterm with proper a color setting overtop netscape. Or even those little netscape download windows which you need to have open to see the % complete. If I make all my Xterms translucent I could still see the process of my downloads in the background.
Personally I think transparency would be useful. Remember just because you can't see a use for something doesn't mean someone else can't.
Many of the work involved with acceleration is the same no matter WHAT the windowing environment is, whether it's MS Windows, X Windows, Berlin, etc.
It's just going to take work from the people doing the current space of drivers to migrate the stuff to the FBDev or KGI specific driver set (since, Berlin is using GGI and for peak performance, you'd be using FBDev or KGI for rendering layer work...). Honestly, this might not be a bad thing- we need some thin kernel layer (more than just DRI) to manage the details of the display adapter properly so that something dinking with the display won't take out the OS. XFree86 4.0's a major improvement, but it's not enough. We need better than even that.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The first thing that comes to mind for me when I see window managers/graphical systems that have 3D rotated windows is arranging my workspace.
What I mean by that is this: I would place all the windows related to a particular task in one area of space. Others would be placed in another area. When I want to move to a different task, I would just look left or right, maybe move up a bit.
It's similar to the multiple desktops concept that various window managers support (Enlightenment, fvwm and co., etc.) but with even more flexibility. You have all of space to arrange your work. It's similar to the 2D space of your physical desk, but extends in 3D now. It's like having the world's largest desk, with the ability to hang things in the air as well.
Don't have enough room to edit code and also view the web page with the API information? Just put the web page above you. When you need it, just look up.
With a 3D mouse hooked up, this could become very useful!
The parent post is quite correct that getting new code onto the server is a question the Berlin team have not yet addressed - though if I remember correctly there are a number of approaches that might work, including adding new widgets as remote CORBA objects. Allowing Java, or better (though probably not appropriate to Berlin) Postscript, code to be downloaded to the server would certainly be a big plus. Probably there are other configuration management issues to tackle in the system (as there are in X).
... Java2D ... on raw hardware" - they already use acceleration where it is available, what more is needed ?
I'm not sure comments on how other people choose to expend their free-time are really appropriate, and Berlin is at the very least interesting, and at best possibly very useful.
I'm not at all sure how one could "use Java as a display server". You could provide remote access (using, say, RMI) to the AWT or Swing, and this has indeed been done for the AWT, and works. Kinda. You still have the same issues with getting new graphical objects from client to server as you do with Berlin. Remoting Java2D would really only give you a "better X", or really a "better ICA" since it has no windowing primitives. Nor am I sure what is meant by "implementing AWT and
Finally, while the design of X has much to commend it, the protocol itself is by no means the last word in how to design a graphics system. It has no support for, for instance, vector based fonts or antialiasing, and these problems do show increasingly as the protocol is used more and more to push bitmaps and nothing else in systems that try to get more out of it than it was designed to provide (eg Englightenment).
Simon
It's not as if Berlin just pulled this code out of its collective ass -- a good chunk of it is mature work from the Fresco project, of which Berlin is essentially a continuation.
A lot of the Fresco code was 13 years in development. The only relatively immature code in Berlin is the underlying graphics subsystem, the CORBA stuff, a few aspects of layout, and the new event/input model.
So, they're buliding on an existing system, rather than just trying to redo EVERYTHING from scratch.
DNA just wants to be free...
Hello? Are you paying attention? It is not a WM, it is a replacement for X. Totally different.
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
I'd just as soon read a book celebrating what a wonderful thing Windows 3.0 is.
Who's to say that what was relevant then is not relevant now? Windows 3.0 is dead and gone, an imperfect system that was replaced with an imperfect system. X is not only still alive and kicking, it's off and running. I think the fact that this book is still relevant is a testament to the wonderful design of X.
You're are probably the same kid who complains that his math book is old. "I want the new stuff!" Hilarious.
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
The 3D rotations and such were added to support a new project in the 3DWM group (http://www.3dwm.org). Alpha transparency doesn't have much use for full windows, but can be useful in highlighting regions and for short term effects like window placement. This was never meant as a default state for the windows. As for the scene graph rendering, we should see major drop in the CPU load when KGI is ready to allow us to use acceleration.
Anm
Sadly, every time I see this comment made, it's generally been written by someone who:
;^) and just about the only thing that the reviewer faulted Word on was poor WordPerfect compatibility. WordPerfect compatibility, he reasoned, would make Word a WP-killer. The same has been reasoned in the past about Excel. Today? How many people care about Lotus 1-2-3 compatibility? Show of hands?
1.) Isn't writing any applications
2.) Is unwilling to pay for commercial applications
3.) Both
Really, what *are* the missing applications? You need office apps? How about Corel Office? StarOffice? For that matter, how 'bout Applix? How about AbiWord and/or Gnumeric?
If you're going to list a whole host of apps that we need compatibility with, I'll say "bull". I remember a few years back a review of Microsoft Word for Windows (don't remember the magazine, but it was Ziff-Davis, which tells you how glowing the Microsoft review was
So what was the main selling point of Word, Excel, and the motley crew of Microsoft apps? Bundling. Home users used Word "'cause that's what came with the computer." The workplace grudgingly moved over to Word & Excel mainly (IMHO) because they could be ordered cheaply enough AT THE SAME TIME & WITH the machines from the factory. Does it make much sense to order a machine with Windows & Microsoft Office bundled and then turn around and purchase another suite? Not from the purchasing agent's perspective, it doesn't.
Let's face it: what's needed is a.) tight app integration and b.) bundling apps with computers. Most folks are too scared to install their own software. There are, I'm sure, a lot of users who only use what came on their machine. I've seen folks that still have (in Windows) a green background because they don't want to screw anything up by changing the color. It's true. They also use Microsoft Outlook to check their mail, Microsoft Internet Explorer to do web browsing, Microsoft Word to do document prep, Microsoft Excel to do bookkeeping...shall I go on?...all for one simple reason:
It came with the computer.
For Linux to "make it" on the desktop, machines need to ship from manufacturers like Dell and Gateway, HP & others, especially from retail outlets. These machines should have a system like Linux Mandrake (IMHO) and a small host of apps like StarOffice <i>pre-installed</i> and already installed on the desktop. The linux distro should have some way of logging in as a default user. Why? Because most people hate logging in, as much good sense as it makes to secure your home machine.
Do this, my friend, and no one will give a shit about the lack of apps.
And exactly how do you expect us to test out these underlying features, such as events, without some basic widget set?
Berlin's contribution to the user interface world is that it offers several enhancements to the user interface that makes your UI look cool and spiffy. Accompanied by 3DWM, you're on your way to creating a very good starting environment for developing visually stunning as well as utilitarian user interface. As most people seem to be screaming for performance, we'll have to wait and see how well theGGI team does for making use of advances in hardware and software.
Just like most technologies, you probably will have to wait a while to see the emergence of new applications that take advantage of 3D visualization. Think back to all the fantastic images of user interfaces in movies: The Lawnmower Man (1992), Disclosure (1994), and Wierd Science (1985)... (There are probably alot of better examples here, but what can I say... it's daylight out.)
Most likely we'll have our usual pioneers into the immersive environment, 3d games, pr0n and chat rooms. It will be interesting to find the other applications that will be introduced once this becomes more standardized and refined: statistical analysis, RDBMS/OODBMS visualization, network administration, etc. Truly intersting.
-Caracal
"There is no snooze button on a kitten who wants breakfast!"
One reason X still works, despite problems, is that it did not have "widgets". If X had "widgets" we would right now be stuck using an interface that was designed in 1982 (it would probably look like Athena or XView). Actually, more likely, X would be long dead and obsolete.
The complaints about X all center on the graphics capabilities (or lack of them). These graphics capabilities also date back to 1982, but the interesting thing is that there really has not been as much advancement in that area, and that even old graphics can be used to emulate new graphics. I don't hear people complaining that X's problem is the lack of a native call to draw a button or a menu!
I personally feel Berlin should concentrate on their (admittedly awsome) graphics capabilities. "Widgets" should be display lists provided by the client program, and events should be sent directly to the client program. There should be no classes of widgets. "Themes" can be done in a graphics-oriented way (rather than widget-oriented), by having calls to do things like "draw a raised area" that a theme can replace the code for.
The designers should exercise some humility and not try to solve problems that the client software can solve itself.
I would also like some proof that "different looking widgets" somehow "confuse users". I think this is a giant piece of FUD being given to everybody by the toolkit-mongers.
I read somewhere that a good deal of Berlin's drawing is done via OpenGL.
Does this mean that, on a linux machine with robust hardware OpenGL (not really a reality now, except maybe with a new SGI workstation) that my OpenGL card's T&L engine would conceivably be able to take all the load of drawing windows etc off the CPU? Not that it takes all that much CPU power now, but more free CPU is always good.
That they could be beautifully textured, moved 'in' and 'out' of the screen to give a real sense of depth with 'proper' depth-cueing and fog effects?
I don't know whether renderman-style displacement shaders are going to be possible in realtime, but that would be pretty awesome... cubic mapped bump-maps go part of the way there, but don't actually deform objects like displacement shaders do..
Theoretically, you could use the OpenGL to implement window stacking etc. With shadows, lens flares and all sorts of wild stuff that would leave Aqua users asking 'how come your desktop looks cooler than mine?'
I'm a bit of a 3D artist (http://hammer.prohosting.com/~ikekrull/), and the thought of having a themeable, pseudo-3D windowing system makes me drool...
(A 'true' 3D window system, in which you can rotate windows around an axis parallel to the screen surface is probably useless outside of a 'true' 3D environment like a CAVE or one of those fancy new DTI monitors.)
This is almost certainly not going to be a reality in the near future with berlin, but i'd love to see it happen.
Maybe if GTK+ was ported to run inside the Unreal or Quake3 engine....
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
OK, this is a junk post. I admit it. I just had to figure this thing out myself OK.
Now on topic, I also think it is a nice idea but I'm definately missing a practical use for the transparent windows (I guess I'll have to think about it for a few days), right off hand: they seem like a good way to get lost.
Now the idea of IDL is intreging, definately have to look into that more.
Bad User. No biscuit!
Size. [XFree] 3.x eats up 16 megs of RAM If you run it on 8 MB ( I have ) you will notice a distinct crawl caused from swapping.
Keep in mind that when you start an XFree X server, it maps the video card's address space into system virtual memory. This makes it look like it is using a lot more memory then it is. You need to look at the RSS (Resident Segment Size), or how much physical memory it is using.
In most cases (on Linux, mind you -- commercial UNIXes are another story), I've found it isn't the X server that eats up memory, but the desktop manager, window manager, Netscape, terminal program with translucent inverse rotated backgrounds, and that sort of thing that really chew up memory.
Try just running "X" (not "startx", not "xinit", just "X", the server itself) and compare memory usage to a full blown X desktop. I think you'll be surprised.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Y hasn't been touched in over two years.
Not in the least. The architectures are way to different.
however, there has been talk about a X interpretation layer, but no work that I know of.
Anm
true, I am squinting at Netscape right now at 1600x1200.
Has any one got this working on RH. I keep getting cant find Corba after carefully following all the instructions. It would be nice to have downloadabe packages for this and all the dependancies. If anyone succeeded on RH6.2 please could you email me the steps. Thanx.
I'm wondering how many of todays projects in development such as gnome, gtk, qt, kde, and all the windowmanagers and tools that will become obsolete, if berlin should become a must.
/. ?
Should the developers involved in these projects already now concider Berlin's oportunities and adapt their ideas and ressources to this development?
In the the X vs Berlin advantage overview we are presented with the advantage of 'Consistent user interface policy'. I can see this as an advantage for the mainstream, when having a standardized userinterface.. but how about when people take it to the next level and feel like really wanting/needing to tailor their system into personal desires. I know from myself that I have my ideas of how I want my tools organized and presented. Is this customization still possible?
X has it flaws, that is certain, but will Berlin correct them? Will the Berlin development be controlled by one organization or by an OpenProject consortium for the people, by the people with no commercial interests like for instance w3c? I hope so and then I really can see Berlin as a part of the unix future.
Another concern, compatibility with current products developed under X.. Should they need to be updated with Berlin required libs?
Ok nuff said.. Lots to think about when designing new fundamental tools. Actually the base GUI system is such an obvious necessity, that should it not be concidered as a static issue to be dealt with on
...or did scifi movies, series, and all that stuff just get a wee bit more realistic.
Now all we need is just infinite resolution fractal thingie cameras that can zoom into anything, working voice recognition, working identification thingie that copes with crappy VHSs in 7-elevens. And *sigh* AI.
Offtopic! Redundant! Troll!-J
.SIGSEGV
Ok, I can see the use of transparent windows, that makes sense to me. Can anybody tell me what you do with 3D rotated windows?
Eh...
This would be useful say... as an interface to a hologram monitor... You could have a window to your left, right, and above... And I suppose that you could use the API in a game or something. Perhaps for 3D modelling?
Eh...
Heh, perhaps you could really ice over your programs like in Neuromancer, but you could also kill -9 the ice, so, who cares, eh?
Eh...