Etoile Project Releases Mac-Like Environment

pschmied writes "Today the Étoilé Project released v0.2 of its Desktop Environment. Not only does Étoilé share user interface similarities with Mac OS X, Étoilé enjoys some source-level compatibility with Mac OS X as well. Many here undoubtedly remember NeXT, the revolutionary computer / development environment that gave rise to the first Web browser and later became the foundation of Mac OS X. Étoilé uses the FSF's own implementation of the NeXT development environment, GNUstep, making this a close technological relative of OS X. Screenshots and a source tarball are available."

Comments

Menus at the top!

[kinabrew]

Finally, an open-source desktop environment whose developers understand that menus at the top are infinite targets and always in the same place and therefore are easier to hit.

Re:Menus at the top!

[chill]

I believe this was fixed in 3.2. In any case, with the most recent version of KDE (3.5.6) I can't click above the menu bar.

Re:Menus at the top!

[kinabrew]

You're not giving up real estate by having the menu bar at the top. If each program has its own menu bar inside its window, that uses several times as much real estate.

For example, I have six windows open right now in OS X. Were I using an environment where each window had its own menu bar, that would use six times as much screen real estate.

If menus are hidden and only activated by right-click, many people wouldn't realize the options that are available to them. That is admittedly easy for some people, but it's better not to require most people to memorize a whole bunch of stuff. Using a computer shouldn't be frustrating even for someone just sitting down for the first time. A luddite isn't going to know that they need to right-click to see menus.

As for the dock(not actually called a taskbar), that can be hidden. I suppose it would be beneficial to let people decide whether to display menus in-window or outside, and do I agree that all commands should be accessible through contextual menus, but by default, I believe strongly that controls should be placed to waste as little screen real estate as possible, and to be very easy to hit, regardless of movement.

Re:Menus at the top!

[Space cowboy]

I'm not sure I understand your comment. I think you don't get the usual Mac workflow.

(a) The dock (which sort of doubles as a taskbar) is hideable. No screen real-estate need be sacrificed.

(b) The mouse-movement that the menu costs you is a lot easier than the mouse movement for menus attached to windows - that's the point of putting the menus at the top of the screen.

(c) If I'm using multiple applications on the same screen (and I'm not using a virtual-desktop, which to be fair I usually do), then I use Exposé to switch between them. It's bound to my 5th mouse button so it works anywhere and it's very quick.

(d) There are other ways the Mac tries to speed workflow, but to be fair, other systems have extras too, so I'll stick to what you identified...

You don't have to like the Mac way of doing things, but you ought to try it with a fair mind before criticising it...

Simon.

Re:Menus at the top!

[steeviant]

Here's a tip... tune your mouse acceleration settings so that the mouse goes completely to the left and right (or top and bottom if your monitor is in portrait orientation) in one sweep of the mouse, then you'll find you can reach any point on your screen in just one sweep of the mouse. This works not only for menus, but for taskbars and Docks as well.

If you're seriously having to use more than one movement of the mouse to get from say, the top-left of your monitor to the bottom-right of your monitor and don't know how to fix it then you should have your geek card revoked.

Hitting a unified menubar or taskbar is exactly the same process, "slam" the mouse to the bottom of the screen and you're there no "voyaging" involved. There's a lot of well established ergonomic research to suggest that screen edges are good places for commonly used objects because they are effectively infinitely large in a certain direction, and that research has been heeded by ALL major OS vendors in one way or another.

Interestingly, research suggests that the time to acquire objects like menu bars is purely a function of their size and their distance from where your hands (or pointer on a computer) spend most of their time. Once you are "up to speed" with an interface, those are the only factors that matter in acquiring a target, the training of the user is irrelevant.

That suggests that both attached and detached menu bars are a good idea, attached menu bars by virtue of being close at hand to the content that you're manipulating, and detached menu bars by virtue of being effectively enormous in size. I'm certain, as would be anyone with common-sense that all users can acquire a menu bar at the top of the screen more quickly than one in the middle of the screen.

However, as you state above unless the user is quitting the application they probably have to return to the application window, this is still a much larger target than a menu bar, but leaves you much further from the content than the attached menu bar would.

I don't think there actually is a consensus on which type of menu bar is best, but there is a lot of agreement that no-one should have trouble navigating to a detached menu bar, because it's infinitely large, so either you're exaggerating, stupid, or have such unbelievably awful hand-eye coordination that you can't even hit a side of the screen.

Speaking as a Linux, OS X and Windows user with a 24" 1920x1200 monitor.

Re:Menus at the top!

[Curien]

[T]argets at the edge of a display are infinitely large (given that you can overshoot them endlessly without missing them)

They are NOT "infinitely large". If they were infinitely large, then you wouldn't have to move the mouse *at all* to click on them. Calling them "infinitely large" just confuses people who know what the words "infinite" and "large" mean.

He's referring to Fitt's Law, and one of its interesting corollaries. The relevant bit of the law is that the time it takes to point at a target is related to the size of that target.

Fitts' law, according to that Wikipedia article, states that the time it takes to complete a movement is proportional to the binary logarithm of the ratio between the distance to the center of the target and the width of the target in the direction of motion.

Note that Fitts' law does not say anything about how "easy" the task is -- just how much time it takes.

Now, the argument you and others seem to be making is that, for the purposes of Fitts' law, an object at the edge of the mousing area can be considered to have infinite width; the amount of time it takes to complete the action is therefore minimized.

However, you are neglecting the other parameter: if the width of the target is infinite, then the distance to its center is also infinite, and the ratio between the two converges to 1/2. But it's still not even that good: the 1/2 ratio between the "center" and the width doesn't hold in this case. Rather than being infinite, the width of the edge in a given instance is however much farther past the edge of the screen the user chooses to travel. The "center" is therefore effectively wherever the user clicks, and the ratio between the width and the center converges to 1 (it converges more quickly for narrower hotspots, so a menu bar would have a ratio very nearly 1). So Fitts' law gives T = a + (.58)b.

On my monitor, each application takes up roughly 1/4 of the screen, so while performing a sequence of actions, the menu bar is, on average, only 1/8 of a monitor width away from the location of the next action. The menu bar is 1/40 screen tall, so my average D/W ratio 5. So by Fitts' law, that gives T = a + (2.58)b.

So the log-factor ratio is 4.4, in favor of edge menus.

What this neglects is the time it then takes to perfor your NEXT action. On small monitors, the distance from the edge to any other point on the screen is small, so the cost of moving back to the location of interest isn't prohibitively large. With large monitors, however, the edge advantage actually becomes an edge disadvantage, as you have to move farther back.

For edge menus, the average distance is half the monitor size, so Fitts' law says the time is proportional to lg (1/(2w) + 1). For my screen, with the menu bar at the top of the app, the average distance is only 1/8 of the screen. So it's proportional to lg(1/(8w) + 1).

The ratio between the two is -1.415 - lg w. (Where the units for w are in terms of the size of the screen). So to click on a large item, edge menus still have the advantage. But for me, most things are button-sized (again, 1/40 the screen size in the vertical direction). In that case, the ratio comes out to about 3.9 in favor of app-menus. The ratio will favor app-menus more as the size of the target becomes smaller and less as the size becomes larger.

So not only does Fitts' law show that users with my usage pattern (roughly, as monitor size increases, window sizes remain contstant), there is no clear winner between app-menus and edge menus. But app-windows are getting more advantageous as monitor sizes increase, while edge-menus are becoming less advantageous.

If someone sees a fault in my math or reasoning, please point it out to me.

Re:Menus at the top!

[someone300]

That's strange. The main aspects I like about my Mac are the menu placement and the way the dock+expose manages applications and windows.

The Mac argument for zoom is that noone wants maximised windows... which is true when you really think about it. Most Windows or indeed Linux converts (that includes me) I see are always struggling to maximise their windows until it hits them - they never really wanted it maximised in the first place. Why would they want to maximise Word on a 36" monitor?

I'm not sure why we maximise windows. I think I had two reasons:
- It was hard to tell which window was what. I have quite a bit of difficulty distinguishing between windows without decent shadows behind them, which neither Windows or Linux at the time provided.
- I always used to use the top of the screen as a sort of mouse reflection point. I knew that if I threw the mouse up there from any point on the screen, it's stop and I could be more precise and lower it carefully to select a menu button... it was easier because the top of the screen was a sort of infinite height target.

The small screen argument has been irrelevant for a few years, I think.

I think the problem you're having is that your mouse settings are crap. Macs are really optimised towards high precision mice optimised so that you can cover the entire screen in a short sweep as well as having good precision when you move slowly. This means quite high acceleration. I can cover over 1000 pixels in about 4cm when I move my mouse sharply, but if I move slowly I can almost move the mouse with 1:1 distance correspondence between mouse distance and screen distance... about 40px/cm.

Plus, try using cmd+tab (and other shortcuts or expose once in a while, though expose is also optimised for decent mouse settings. You do have a point about dual monitor, but I think even mac fanboys tend to accept that it's a PITA for dual monitor. What applications are you using that require menu interaction that frequently? CS3 suite or something? If so, do yourself a favour and learn the shortcuts. It's damn near impossible to use a program with that much menu interaction without learning shortcuts... Windows, Linux or OS X.

The want to avoid the GPL

[bomanbot]

Interestingly, the Etoile developers seem to want to avoid the GPL and prefer the BSD License (as seen on their about page here: http://www.etoile-project.org/etoile/mediawiki/ind ex.php?title=EtoileWiki:About/), which I find a bit odd...

Re:First web browser

[Anonymous Coward]

The very first web browser (called WorldWideWeb) was developed on a NeXT by Tim Berners-Lee.

Re:First web browser

[Stormwatch]

What is the historical basis for claiming that NeXT gave rise to the Web browser? Was NCSA Mosaic developed on a NeXT? Or are you referring to an earlier browser?

WorldWideWeb was the world's first web browser and WYSIWYG HTML editor and was introduced on February 26, 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee and ran on the NeXTSTEP platform.

Strategic importance of Etoile

[pschmied]

Etoile may be in its relative infancy, but I believe it has great strategic potential for the FOSS movement. Etoile / GNUStep is building some great infrastructure, uniting the Mac and FOSS communities, and is building on some very interesting ideas.

If you haven't already done so, I urge you to check out David's Core Object posting. There is some exciting stuff there. Smalltalkers will find it particularly interesting.

Props to the Etoile team! This is even more reason for me to grow my Objective C / Cocoa / GNUStep skills.

-Peter

Re:Trying to get this up and running

[pschmied]

No, it's not a window manager. It's more analogous to something like GNOME or KDE with their associated libraries.

Here's a rough step-by-step:

1. Install the dependencies listed here: http://gnustep.blogspot.com/2006/10/gnustep-on-ubu ntuppc-610.html

2. Use the GNUStep "Startup" package (you need a newer version of GNUStep than what is bundled with Ubuntu): http://www.gnustep.org/experience/Startup.html

3. Compile Etoile per the instructions in the tarball.

It's a bit different procedure than your average configure, make, make install. My hope is that someone will start packaging current versions for Ubuntu. Maybe I'll get off my duff and start doing that.

Cheers,
Peter

Re:First web browser

[marcello_dl]

Well if berners lee developed on windows he'd have to integrate his browser into the OS. If he developed on mac, users who surfed with http would have had their sexual orientation questioned. If he developed on unix nobody would have left telnet and gopher for http, unless it had either perl or remote exploits. That leaves the amiga and the next.

So does the FSF for GNUStep

[pschmied]

The reasoning is actually pretty good. They are building a services based desktop that also has a lot of components for which they want broad reuse to be possible. The FSF actually releases most of GNUStep under the LGPL. Given the age and status as an FSF project, I wonder if LGPL wasn't in part to address the requirements of GNUStep.

Re:Huh?

[mr_matticus]

Parent is not a troll.

Ubuntu is more Mac-like than this. This is the perfect example of just plain not getting it. Copying a general layout isn't good enough. Approximations of a user experience defined by close attention to detail and sound design principles are simply bound to failure. Just look at the screenshots. This UI has the exact same deficiencies as nearly every other window manager for Linux--poor typefaces, rendered poorly and positioned poorly. Manipulation elements that lack refinement. You've got flat icons on a flat background shoehorned into a plain rectangular space.

The "About" screen shows it all. The background image is unbalanced. That's fine. But the shadowbox on top of it is precisely centered. Those are clashing elements. The corners on that shadowbox are too rounded to appear crisp and too confined to appear smooth or blended. The "let your environment grow" text looks goofy and childish, and it doesn't seem related to anything. It should be superimposed on the image, above the gradient bar, or it should be boxed into a separate branding box somewhere. Right now, it's superfluous text, and it's a typical, ugly Linux text experience to boot.

I don't mean to be an art snob or to demean the people who doubtlessly worked hard on this. I certainly don't mean to imply that Linux's goals should be as heavily slanted toward the aesthetic as, say, OS X. But if you put *yourself* in the big kids' pool, be prepared to take it. This is amateur, uninspired, and completely misses the boat.

Re:Huh?

[pschmied]

I think some times that the Linux community can be too concerned with window dressing and not enough by substance. What make this Mac like isn't a skin deep sort of thing. It's about being able to write a program and have it run on both.

Now, there is such a thing as not having enough of an eye for Window dressing as well. That's one of the historic complaints about GNUStep. People complain that it looks too much like the Old School NeXT. That's probably a valid complaint. These guys are making progress. I'd rather have the UI look pretty in 0.3 or 0.4 than the development libs suck into perpetuity. On that front, GNUStep is reasonably Cocoa-compatible--to the point of being able to share .Nibs (user interface files) with the Mac.

-Peter

Re:Huh?

[mr_matticus]

But the problem exists on that level as well. I confined my comments to the visual layer because that's what parent started with this thread. But these people seem to writing themselves into a corner and it's pretty easy to see how their frameworks are going to have to be wedged in with electronic equivalents of shims and compatibility layers to come back into the fold. They're writing a lot of their own stuff and making it, just like on the surface layer, an approximation of true interoperability.

GNUStep is reasonably compatible with NextStep which is reasonably compatible with Cocoa. They branched from a common ancestor and happen to be reasonably similar now. All the extra frameworks tossed in to this project looks to be a third fork more than a bridge between the two.

Re:Huh?

[forkazoo]

Ubuntu is more Mac-like than this. This is the perfect example of just plain not getting it. Copying a general layout isn't good enough.

"Mac-Like" in this context refers chiefly to the fact that programming for this is very similar to Cocoa development on Mac OS X. The guts are quite Mac-like compared to writing for Qt/KDE or GTK/Gnome.

OTOH, I expect that your criticism is quite valid. You may want to consider contributing some art to the project, or submitting patches to make it more aesthetic. Personally, the way it looks doesn't bother me, but don't let my bland tastes stop you from scratching your itch! :)

Re:Mac OSX?

[marcello_dl]

In fact if I got TFA it has similarities with what the mac could have been if Apple didn't practically kill hypercard and left the newton and opendoc to wither. The monolithic app is what commercial software vendors want, while a document or object centric environment is very exciting from the power user point of view. In fact is kinda translating the unix philosophy of making specialized tools work together for complex tasks in a GUI and OO.

If it can be done and they also find ways to integrate the now ubiquitous web applications' data, database, and other languages in that environment we could end up, for example, having a set of remote EJBs and Rails's active record objects, a couple local database rows and some emails being processed by a filter written in c that once belonged to openoffice calc, ending up in a nice graph.

Anyway, Gnome's bonobo, netbeans and probably lots of other projects wanted to achieve something like this as a primary or secondary goal, maybe people don't want such a paradigm shift.

Re:Huh?

[mr_matticus]

Wouldn't it still be more accurate to say that this project is GNUstep-like? Or GNUstep-based?

Its similarity to OS X is purely by virtue of it using GNUstep, which is Cocoa-like. Credit for "Mac-like" would therefore go to the GNUstep project, at least in my book. I certainly agree with your assessment of the context of the summary, and I think that I simply glossed over the underpinnings. Perhaps my definition of similarity is too strict. I simply assumed that everyone knew GNUstep was Cocoa-like and that these people were making the claim based on their UI. It hadn't occurred to me that they would just take the "Mac-like" title from their GNUstep underpinnings.

Re:Huh?

[Orange Crush]

It looked more Mac-like before the name change, but Apple threatened to sue if they called it iToil.

Re:Huh?

[mr_matticus]

Perhaps you should ask yourself what your problem is. You're the blustery, vitriol-spitting pig that makes Slashdot infamous as a hive of morons and assholes.

Needing or asking for a blessing is irrelevant. This is a discussion site, in case you hadn't noticed. The summary makes a proposition. People disagree with that proposition. I'm one of them. The idea that people should get a free pass because they're not paid to do it is likewise absurd. These developers are not children. They don't get a writeoff for failing to capture the essence and for missing the point. If they want to invite comparisons to other products and want to put something in the public eye, then they can accept the consequences that result, which includes criticism. It's not an arbitrary, empty, personal assault, much unlike your comment.

"My personal taste" is not a factor in this assessment. They're called basic design principles and are sorely misunderstood and violated by people at large. That's why not everyone is an architect or a designer or a sculptor. It's an art of subtlety, but as you clearly personify, there's no one more dense than an angry Slashdotter. "My personal taste" would be to avoid purple and flowers. "My personal taste" would involve a more dynamic menu bar that goes beyond the Mac metaphor. But you see, these aren't the issues with the project from a design standpoint. Part of a fair critique is looking at what it purports itself to be and seeing how well-realized that is. I don't like Gothic architecture, but I can certainly admire the success of a great Gothic revival piece.

The "yardstick," further, is clear: they (be they /. editors or developers) threw down the gauntlet and said "Mac-like" while coughing up a poor approximation. Success and failure are determined by their ability to capture the theme. It's abundantly clear that this is sorely lacking. If you disagree, then be a rational adult and do it. I've outlined a few of the many ways they fail to measure up. Demonstrate how they ARE Mac-like if you can. The summary put itself in with the big kids and it can't hold its weight. You can't seem to divorce yourself from your rabid feelings and don't seem to know anything about space and weight, to say nothing of design in general, so I won't hold my breath for an intelligent response.

While you're at it, cook up some rationale as to how thoughtful criticism is demeaning.

Re:Way to confuse NEXT with Mach and BSD

[HeroreV]

You are confused (or trolling). Here's a history lesson:

1. NeXT creates the NextStep/NeXTstep/NeXTSTEP/NEXTSTEP operating system
2. NeXT releases a specification for some of their API as OpenStep
3. NeXT makes NEXTSTEP conform with the OpenStep spec and rebrands NEXTSTEP as OPENSTEP
4. Apple buys OPENSTEP and uses it to produce Mac OS X
5. GNU implements the OpenStep API as GNUstep
6. the Étoilé desktop environment is built on GNUstep

Mac OS X's Cocoa API is based on the OpenStep API, so Étoilé and GNUstep are related to Mac OS X through the OpenStep API. If you really love the Cocoa API and you want to make an app for Linux, you should take a look at GNUstep.

No, this is oblig. :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot 29 July 2007: Sun Says Project Indiana is Not a Linux Copy - yeah right!

Slashdot 30 July 2007: Etoile Project Releases Mac-Like Environment

Slashdot 31 July 2007: Mac OS-X is the most copied OS on planet - copying is the highest form of flattery.

So, Solaris copies Linux, Linux copies Mac OSX, but nobody is really interested in Vista.

Re:Way to confuse NEXT with Mach and BSD

[jrumney]

4. Apple buys OPENSTEP and uses it to produce Mac OS X
5. GNU implements the OpenStep API as GNUstep

I think you have these two the wrong way around. GNUstep dates back to at least 1995, while Apple did not buy NeXT until December 1996.