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EFL Preview Release: Asparagus
HandyAndE writes "For everybody out there who has been waiting for Enlightenment 0.17 or been thinking what alternatives are there to Gnome/GTK and KDE/QT this is an important day for you. The Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) today have an (albeit pre) release named Asparagus. From the E site: 'We are pleased to announce the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries Preview Release, codenamed "Asparagus"! After years of work, we've come to a place where it is time to start opening these powerful tools to the wider world to use.'
" Read more for more information.
Libraries included in todays release are:
- ecore-1.0.0_pre7 (loops, timers, X, evas and config abstraction)
- edb-1.0.5 (database library)
- edje-0.5.0 (powerful theming library)
- eet-0.9.9 (theme compression format)
- embryo-0.9.0 (embeded scriptiong for themes)
- emotion-0.0.1 (DVD / video wrapper for libxine)
- epeg-0.9.0 (super-fast JPEG thumbnailing etc)
- evas-1.0.0_pre13 (canvas library)
- imlib2-1.1.1 (image manipulation)
- imlib2_loaders-1.1.1 (image loaders)
Get your browsers pointed to sourceforge for a copy and see what EFL can do for you!
This is about a preview release of the core libraries going into e17, not the e17 desktop environment (it's moving up from just being a window manager).
Let me get this straight, the default theme of a five year old project doesn't look nice to you any more so the completely re-written codebase which is now a very strong set of X libraries and will be a complete desktop environment, is irrelevant?
Idiot..
Agreed on GNOME and KDE. I find it rather annoying that so many Linux, *BSD, etc. users will whine up and down about how much Windows sucks, but are also hopping on the bandwagon of trying to make the unix as much like Windows as possible.
I long to see a group of thoughtful geeks with some good knowledge of human-computer interaction sit down and say, "How do we want our OS to behave, really?" because right now with Gnome and KDE the plan seems to be to just get as many features out the door as quickly as possible without any realy overall planning and to heck with anyone who is noticing that they are both becoming serious contenders for the throne of "crappiest UI, ever."
And the geeks who are fed up with this go in completely the other direction and work hard at turning X into a text terminal that can also display graphics.
Meanwhile, I also sit around living with WindowMaker because it's the cleanest GUI I can find (with it's own set of problems, of course.)
The release is not of Enlightenment the Window Manager. It is a release of EFL, the libraries that they wrote to underpin Enlightenment. Here are some screenshots of E components that will depend upon the EFL: Evidence, Entrance. and Emotion.
Some other details:
Edje provides a revolutionary method of absstacting every aspect of your interface from the application itself. By passing signals between the interface and the application all communication is done in an interface neutral way. No longer are "themes" simple changes of pixmaps over a fixed area. Using Embryo we can provide scripting ability to the interface componant itself to harness even more power and flexability. [sic]
So, no, this is not just a brushed metal window manager theme (of course, E 0.16 was always more than that, too). I've been watching E, and making the same jokes on April 1st, but I must say that I'm looking forward to trying what they're coming up with once they've got a semi-stable release; and since the EFL seems to be close to a freeze, I think we can hope to see E 0.17 soon.
Enlightenment 0.17 ?!?
What's next, Duke Nukem Forever?
once you've had your way with the libraries, check out the enlightenment apps that use, them. all absolutely beautiful: - evidence -- file browser - entice -- image viewer - iconbar -- a button-toolbar - engage -- osx-like (in the default theme) toolbar - equate -- calculator app - erss -- a desktop rss viewer (gentoo users, most of these apps are ~x86 ebuilds) there are a lot of others, too. All with a remarkably logical and beautiful interface. Evidence has fully replaced all other file browsers on my computer, and is damn close to everything i want (although rendering directories with large numbers of files seems to take a while). Also, i noticed that the new real helix player seems utilize some parts of the EFL -- probably the best move real programmers have ever made, in my opinion. Anywho, enlightenment really makes everyday computing a joyful experience; thanks e team!!!
[ you and I are ugly ]
http://enlightenment.org/pages/systems.html
:)
Just take a look at some of those thumbnails and remember to pick your jaw up off the table once your done, my favorite has to be the embeded xine's alpha-transparancied ontop of other xine's
Text output does not vary depending on the window manager.