Am I the only one who noticed just how much the file browser (the picture showing how the screen looks if the correct font is installed) looks like X-Tree Pro for DOS?
That would be a port of Tree which Eugenia ported herself, in fact.
Really, what you're talking about is straight FS support for file attributes. AFS (The AtheOS FS) is one current example of a filesystem that supports file attributes.
Really though, the ideas above is more of a way to make better use of file meta data. Of course if the meta data implementation in the FS was particularly efficient, you may be able to combine the database & filesystem "layers" by using the file attributes as the database.
Yup, that would be exactly the idea. This sort of abstraction would be done at the OS/GUI layer, with some assistence from the applications.
Your example with the SQL is a good one as well, you could do for example:
select * from files where description like '%project%'
Or maybe:
select * from files where description like '%project%' and date > '11012001'
Or even:
select * from files where description like '%project%' and date > '11012001' and author='John Smith' and revision>'3'
Obviously, as you say, I wouldn't expect the user to manually enter SQL to find their files, but it conveys the correct idea. A friendly dialog would be the prefered method, and wouldn't be too different from the current slew of file & find dialogs.
files cannot be located with other files relating to the same project, making file management across multiple projects/efforts, data archiving and deleting obsolete files more difficult.
Not at all. That sort of information (E.g which project the file "belongs" too) is Metadata too. There is no reason this information cannot be included with the file record in the database layer.
it is trivial to place a file in the wrong directory, breaking the system. Metadata should be assigned by the creating application, and editable by the user from some obscure location or utility.
How so? In my system that I outline, the user doesn't even get the choice of which directory to place the file in. The files MIME type is set by the creating application, and the OS chooses the directory to store the file in based upon that MIME type. The whole idea of the creating application setting the MIME type is, in fact, one of the main backbones of my system working:)
your method can only be used to convey ONE piece of information
No, because the "other" meta data associated with the file is stored in the file record at the database layer. For example the creation date, the user who created the file, the long description of the file, and any other information the user wants to include as meta data, can all be stored with the file record in the database. All of that information should be sortable & searchable. It does, in fact, provide much more flexibility for the end user where meta data is concerned.
The main problem with current desktop systems is not the metaphor of a 2D desktop itself, but rather that as computers have become more powerful, and more complicated, we end up with more junk to wade through. It's exactly the same with a "real" desktop too. The more files you pile on your desk, the harder it is to find something. So it would seem that in keeping with the KISS principle, we shouldn't be trying to find a new metaphor, but instead improving our current one.
One of the main problems today is that the OS doesn't make the best use of the information available to it. The OS can know the file type, the application(s) associated to those files, when the file was created etc. but in general, it doesn't do much with that information. Sure, if you double-click on your file, it can find & launch the application associated to the file type, but you're still left with the problem of finding that file.
My own proposal would be to make better use of the file information that the OS has available to it. Its theory, but basically you place a database layer over the filesystem. We should also make use of MIME types for each file, and create a hierachical directory structure, one for each MIME type inside the users "home" directory. As a simple example, you may have something like:
Now we have this, we can put the information we have to good use. Whenever a file is created, rather than asking the user for a directory and a filename, we ask them for a description of the file. Create the file in whichever directory suits the files MIME type, with a system generated filename, and add an entry for the file into the database which is layered above the FS. The record should include the users long description, type, creation date etc.
Now when the user wants to find & open a file, they can easily find their file by e.g the decription, using a wildcard if they wish. Or the creation date, using a range is they want to. The major advantage is that they don't need to navigate through a heirachical directory structure, nor do they need to remember what type of file their looking for, as the OS can present all of the files that the user can open as a flat list in the dialog.
O.K, it's a clumsy description, but the basic premise is that a) The OS can handle placing the file on the FS instead of forcing the user to decide & b) We know have a flat list of files to manage, instead of a possibly very complex heirachical tree. We do retain the advantages of the hierachical tree for the filesystem, however.
In general I agree with you. Most Open Source code never gets past the Unit testing stage, and that is only because you tend to test your functions are you write them. In the Open Source model, testing after that is upto the users.
Now there is nothing wrong with that, as long as the users are actually testing with some sort of structure. Most of your users may only touch upon 10 or 20% of the functionality in your code, and the rare few that might venture into the depths tend not to be able to remember what they did & cannot provide steps to reproduce. Its not much use when you're trying to hunt bugs!
It would be nice to see Open Source coders start to provide some form of structured Test Plan along with their product, and ask the users who are downloading the software if they wouldn't mind running through some, if not all, of the Test Cases.
Could it work with Open Source? I don't know, I'm not aware of any previous examples where this sort of Open Source structured testing has taken place:)
Re:Kurt is not accepting patches to base system.
on
AtheOS Hits 0.3.7
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· Score: 1
Nah, it's more like Kurt wants a consistent design and implementation, and taking a mob handed approach to the implementation isn't going to achieve that.
Kurt has accepted some patches, for example the ISA-DMA was a third party patch, and the latest build contains wheel mouse support which is based upon another third party patch.
It may also be that yes, Kurt does intend to relicencse AtheOS at some point in the future as he isn't a massive fan of the GPL zealots running around, but having said that he seems to be well aware that relicensing AtheOS now would garuntee a fork from the GPL licenced code. As we all know, forks are bed, m'kay?
Re:Excuse me while I wet myself
on
AtheOS Hits 0.3.7
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· Score: 2, Informative
The compiler is GCC. The C & C++ libs are Glibc. Sadly, there is no debugger yet, as they are complicated little buggers to write, and no one has needed one that badly yet.
It is a complete waste of time and money, I'm afraid:-(
I'm sorry, but when I was a 'phone monkey taking calls for the TPS it was free to register. It worked too, I registered a lot of friends and family on the TPS and all of our TM calls dropped to near zero.
Many companies claim, when told my details are on the TPS, "Oh, wre have not had the latest update yet".
Actually, they're probably telling the truth. A new TPS list used to be compiled on a quarterly basis, this meant that if you registered just at the begining of the quarter, it would take a good three months before the calls stopped. They may have changed that now, I don't know
/me mumbles to Eugenia "The VM has been broken since 0.1.2, not fixed although not missed"...*cough*
Although I agree with you that the whiney kid above you should put up or shut up. IDE support for one chipset is no laughing matter, let alone attempting to support the multitude of horribly buggy IDE chipsets. I just hope Joe & Co. come up with something soon; install from CD would be sweet...
If all you want is DOS, get Bochs and install DOS on it. Bochs just emulates a full x86 CPU & hardware, but it will be plenty fast enough for DOS games. Hell you might even be able to use FreeDOS, which would make it absolutly no cost to you.
Well, thats why I'm developing as much as I can for AtheOS at the moment, and why I think AtheOS has a bright future.
I currently run KDE2 at home, but I wouldn't ever expect someone less technical to install & administer Linux. Its also fragmented and not so easy to deal with the user interface, so I think AtheOS, being Open Source and targeted at the desktop, is going to be a great replacement for Linux on the desktop. Really.
Not only that, but AtheOS is pretty much uncharted territory, and I like that about it too;)
Linux needs a single GUI. Be it Gnome, KDE, or whatever. Pick one, build it right. Follow Microsoft's example and do extensive usability tests, and make it easy and intuitive for the user to use it.
Hey! That sounds like AtheOS! I havn't tried sitting my mother in front of my AtheOS box and letting her go yet, but I think i'll get IPTables set up on my Linux box and give it a go. I reckon I can have her doing the basics in a few minutes.
Re:here's the instructions how to do it
on
Hotmail Hacked
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· Score: 1
Ya know, it you could some how get that posted out somewhere that has greater volumes of general everyday traffic
Even if someone else named it after him, if he's really so humble he'd have changed the name
The name had already been changed, for crying out loud. Linux had originally called it Freeix, but the maintainer of the very FTP site you use as an example above had decided that the name sucked, and chose Linux instead.
Frankly, Linux sounds a lot better than Freeix, so I guess Linus just went with it. If you've ever tried to come up with a decent name for any of your own code, you'll probably understand why Linus did that.
It's unfair to compare a Java UI directly with a native UI.
Why? Users don't care about wether your application has a slow user interface, all they'll do is complain that "This program is slow"
Java has a place, and by extension Java UI's have their place. But saying "Oh well it's O.K for the user interface to be slow, because it will run equally slow across all platforms" is a load of rubbish. If Java code can run just as fast as native compiled C or C++, just why are the Java User Interfaces slow?
Any Java zealots want to clear up the aparent contradiction there?
Re:It *is* broken, and needs to be fixed.
on
Secure IRC?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Any IRC Network? I think you'll find it is only the larger networks such as Efnet, IRCNet, Dalnet, Undernet etc. that are currently under kiddie attacks. There are plenty of other networks out there that do not have any of these problems.
Most people who use IRC regularly will stick to a few channels 99% of the time. It isn't a huge task to move a channel onto a new network if everyone who uses the channel is aware of the move. Something as simple as placing the details in the topic is usually all that is needed. The channel I've used for the past three years has moved twice now, and even changed names once.
IRC as a protocol does has flaws when you scale it past a dozen servers or so, but that doesn't mean IRC is a wasteland. Smaller networks are better, generally, as they're run by admins and opers who give a damn.
So what you're saying is that Linux is ready for general use on the desktop, provided the desktop is ready for Linux?
Yeah, now not to be funny, but people arn't going to use Linux if they have to shell out $$$'s for new hardware to run it on properly. It wouldn't wash.
Linux isn't ready for installation on the desktop or usage on the desktop. I have KDE2 running right here, and there is no way I would expect anyone without several years experience with computers (And some experience with Unix at that) to be able to install, configure & yes, trouble shoot Linux.
If you use Linux on your desktop, good for you. Just don't think that 90% of the computer using populace will fall over themselves to use it as well.
I would second that. C for Dummies Vol I & II are good learners books. Combine them with K&R and you have a neat little learning & reference library.
The only complaint I would have with C for Dummies is that it is a little too Borland-centric, although I had no problems using 99.9% of the example code with GCC.
A GTK+ port would not be out of place; neither would a full Qt port.
Possible, but no one is yet interested in doing it. Kurt spent his time porting khtml away from Qt, rather than port Qt for khtml.
If it has POSIX emulation (which ISTR it does nto yet)
AtheOS is POSIX.1 compliant. POSIX isn't an emulation layer by the way, it's a defined API for UNIX systems.
it can run GNOME and KDE, which is the sine qua non of a modern OS, unfortunately.
While we're at it, we could replace libatheos with X. Then we'll dump the kernel and replace it with Linux. AFS, well we may as well just use ResierFS.
Why should AtheOS have to use KDE or Gnome? I sense much trolling in you. Either that, or you are seriously misguided.
Honestly, AtheOS has the potential to beat out KDE and Gnome. libatheos is (IMHO) a better toolkit than Qt, certainly better than anything GTK+ has to offer. It's being written almost entirely by one guy, so everything is consistent, and integrates nicely.
I'm hoping to be able to replace my current KDE2 setup with AtheOS for my every day web/email/IRC/coding before the year is out. Give AtheOS 12 months, and lets see.
Although I do find the fact that there are "scrollbars" and "text edit" things in the interface (see the change log) indicates that he has made the GUI interface way too high level.
What you're looking at are basic widgets that any GUI provides, including any and every toolkit for X. How do you think those scrollbars and menus get on your applications? They're high level, yes, but they need to be.
I would much rather see an interface that reliably and quickly does "draw a rectangle here" and "format this UTF-8 text here" would be more powerful, as it would allow variation in the GUI design.
Many of the low level constructs are available in libatheos, although the lower level 2D graphics primitives are weak to non-existent. That doesn't mean you can't create a bitmap and draw to it yourself, or write a library to do that for you.
Why would you want to allow "variation in the GUI design" anyway? It sounds as though you want to do exactly what X has done, and provide only the low level stuff and then end up with seven diferent toolkits on top. GUI diversity on the same platform is not a good thing, it confuses users and adds redunduncy. If Kurt wanted to do it this way, he could just be running Linux with X and be done with it. The end result would be the same.
Sorry if this seems like a flame, it is in part I guess. I would seriiously suggest you get hold of AtheOS and try out libatheos though, its a nice little system.
Firstly, he beat a bunch of tech journalists. That's like being impressed if an NBA coach beat a bunch of local sports beat writers at making free throws.
Um, not really. Certainly back then, and even in todays "modern" world, a fair number Tech Journos are certainly able to code. We're not talking Jon Katz style "journalists" remember.
Secondly, do you REALLY believe that Gates didn't do some coding before hand
Of course he did. Wouldn't you? Whats that got to do with it anyway, the others who were coding against Gates had probably writen code before the contest as well.
Thirdly, I bet you that the task was hand-picked to highlight VB's qualities.
According to the reply above, I may be wrong about it being VB, and it may in fact have been QuickBasic. If thats the case, then the tasks that could have been set would have be fairer matched. Personally, i'm still fairly sure it would have been Visual Basic as a) Microsoft had been writing BASIC interpreters since day one, and Quick Basic was just an extension of the original MBASIC & b) BASIC is just BASIC, and Microsoft wanted to show off their new "Visual Paradigm" no doubt.
Anyway, I'm not trying to be a Microsoft apoligist, just adding some historical flavour to this discusion. Personally I can't stand Microsofts products, and I run Mandrake 8.0 at home, and hack on applications for AtheOS when I have the time. I just like ancient-history;)
Since the TRS-80 BASIC, the last recorded instance of Bill Gates writing any code was when Visual Basic was launched. As a publicity stunt, Bill, using Visual Basic, went up against a bunch of tech journalists, who were allowed to choose their language. They (Gates & the journalists) were given a task to implement, and the person who completed a working solution first "won".
Luckily for Microsoft, Gates beat the journalists, coding in the new Visual Basic. The guy hadn't coded for over a decade.
Microsoft products may suck, but at least Bill can code. When he isn't writing snotty letters and fending off hordes of US Government Lawyers.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only one who noticed just how much the file browser (the picture showing how the screen looks if the correct font is installed) looks like X-Tree Pro for DOS?
That would be a port of Tree which Eugenia ported herself, in fact.
Really, what you're talking about is straight FS support for file attributes. AFS (The AtheOS FS) is one current example of a filesystem that supports file attributes.
Really though, the ideas above is more of a way to make better use of file meta data. Of course if the meta data implementation in the FS was particularly efficient, you may be able to combine the database & filesystem "layers" by using the file attributes as the database.
Yup, that would be exactly the idea. This sort of abstraction would be done at the OS/GUI layer, with some assistence from the applications.
Your example with the SQL is a good one as well, you could do for example:
select * from files where description like '%project%'
Or maybe:
select * from files where description like '%project%' and date > '11012001'
Or even:
select * from files where description like '%project%' and date > '11012001' and author='John Smith' and revision>'3'
Obviously, as you say, I wouldn't expect the user to manually enter SQL to find their files, but it conveys the correct idea. A friendly dialog would be the prefered method, and wouldn't be too different from the current slew of file & find dialogs.
Not at all. That sort of information (E.g which project the file "belongs" too) is Metadata too. There is no reason this information cannot be included with the file record in the database layer.
How so? In my system that I outline, the user doesn't even get the choice of which directory to place the file in. The files MIME type is set by the creating application, and the OS chooses the directory to store the file in based upon that MIME type. The whole idea of the creating application setting the MIME type is, in fact, one of the main backbones of my system working
No, because the "other" meta data associated with the file is stored in the file record at the database layer. For example the creation date, the user who created the file, the long description of the file, and any other information the user wants to include as meta data, can all be stored with the file record in the database. All of that information should be sortable & searchable. It does, in fact, provide much more flexibility for the end user where meta data is concerned.
Like I said, it's a sloppy description
The main problem with current desktop systems is not the metaphor of a 2D desktop itself, but rather that as computers have become more powerful, and more complicated, we end up with more junk to wade through. It's exactly the same with a "real" desktop too. The more files you pile on your desk, the harder it is to find something. So it would seem that in keeping with the KISS principle, we shouldn't be trying to find a new metaphor, but instead improving our current one.
/home/
One of the main problems today is that the OS doesn't make the best use of the information available to it. The OS can know the file type, the application(s) associated to those files, when the file was created etc. but in general, it doesn't do much with that information. Sure, if you double-click on your file, it can find & launch the application associated to the file type, but you're still left with the problem of finding that file.
My own proposal would be to make better use of the file information that the OS has available to it. Its theory, but basically you place a database layer over the filesystem. We should also make use of MIME types for each file, and create a hierachical directory structure, one for each MIME type inside the users "home" directory. As a simple example, you may have something like:
user1/
files/
image/
jp eg/
pn g/
x- bmp/
audio/
x- mp3/
Now we have this, we can put the information we have to good use. Whenever a file is created, rather than asking the user for a directory and a filename, we ask them for a description of the file. Create the file in whichever directory suits the files MIME type, with a system generated filename, and add an entry for the file into the database which is layered above the FS. The record should include the users long description, type, creation date etc.
Now when the user wants to find & open a file, they can easily find their file by e.g the decription, using a wildcard if they wish. Or the creation date, using a range is they want to. The major advantage is that they don't need to navigate through a heirachical directory structure, nor do they need to remember what type of file their looking for, as the OS can present all of the files that the user can open as a flat list in the dialog.
O.K, it's a clumsy description, but the basic premise is that a) The OS can handle placing the file on the FS instead of forcing the user to decide & b) We know have a flat list of files to manage, instead of a possibly very complex heirachical tree. We do retain the advantages of the hierachical tree for the filesystem, however.
In general I agree with you. Most Open Source code never gets past the Unit testing stage, and that is only because you tend to test your functions are you write them. In the Open Source model, testing after that is upto the users.
:)
Now there is nothing wrong with that, as long as the users are actually testing with some sort of structure. Most of your users may only touch upon 10 or 20% of the functionality in your code, and the rare few that might venture into the depths tend not to be able to remember what they did & cannot provide steps to reproduce. Its not much use when you're trying to hunt bugs!
It would be nice to see Open Source coders start to provide some form of structured Test Plan along with their product, and ask the users who are downloading the software if they wouldn't mind running through some, if not all, of the Test Cases.
Could it work with Open Source? I don't know, I'm not aware of any previous examples where this sort of Open Source structured testing has taken place
Nah, it's more like Kurt wants a consistent design and implementation, and taking a mob handed approach to the implementation isn't going to achieve that.
Kurt has accepted some patches, for example the ISA-DMA was a third party patch, and the latest build contains wheel mouse support which is based upon another third party patch.
It may also be that yes, Kurt does intend to relicencse AtheOS at some point in the future as he isn't a massive fan of the GPL zealots running around, but having said that he seems to be well aware that relicensing AtheOS now would garuntee a fork from the GPL licenced code. As we all know, forks are bed, m'kay?
The compiler is GCC. The C & C++ libs are Glibc. Sadly, there is no debugger yet, as they are complicated little buggers to write, and no one has needed one that badly yet.
but if that means a 500MHz Transmeta CPU equals a 10GHz Z80... :)
Yeah, but Horrace Goes Skiing would be completely unplayable on it.
It is a complete waste of time and money, I'm afraid :-(
I'm sorry, but when I was a 'phone monkey taking calls for the TPS it was free to register. It worked too, I registered a lot of friends and family on the TPS and all of our TM calls dropped to near zero.
Many companies claim, when told my details are on the TPS, "Oh, wre have not had the latest update yet".
Actually, they're probably telling the truth. A new TPS list used to be compiled on a quarterly basis, this meant that if you registered just at the begining of the quarter, it would take a good three months before the calls stopped. They may have changed that now, I don't know
*cough*
/me mumbles to Eugenia "The VM has been broken since 0.1.2, not fixed although not missed"...*cough*
Although I agree with you that the whiney kid above you should put up or shut up. IDE support for one chipset is no laughing matter, let alone attempting to support the multitude of horribly buggy IDE chipsets. I just hope Joe & Co. come up with something soon; install from CD would be sweet...
If all you want is DOS, get Bochs and install DOS on it. Bochs just emulates a full x86 CPU & hardware, but it will be plenty fast enough for DOS games. Hell you might even be able to use FreeDOS, which would make it absolutly no cost to you.
Yup, however
:)
:)
:)
It wasn't intentional
Most people involved with AtheOS know this already
Why should anyone care?
AtheOS used to be named AltOS, under Kurt discovered the name was owned by someone else, so it became AtheOS.
Thats really all there is too it
Well, thats why I'm developing as much as I can for AtheOS at the moment, and why I think AtheOS has a bright future.
;)
I currently run KDE2 at home, but I wouldn't ever expect someone less technical to install & administer Linux. Its also fragmented and not so easy to deal with the user interface, so I think AtheOS, being Open Source and targeted at the desktop, is going to be a great replacement for Linux on the desktop. Really.
Not only that, but AtheOS is pretty much uncharted territory, and I like that about it too
Linux needs a single GUI. Be it Gnome, KDE, or whatever. Pick one, build it right. Follow Microsoft's example and do extensive usability tests, and make it easy and intuitive for the user to use it.
Hey! That sounds like AtheOS! I havn't tried sitting my mother in front of my AtheOS box and letting her go yet, but I think i'll get IPTables set up on my Linux box and give it a go. I reckon I can have her doing the basics in a few minutes.
Ya know, it you could some how get that posted out somewhere that has greater volumes of general everyday traffic
Like The Register you mean?
Even if someone else named it after him, if he's really so humble he'd have changed the name
The name had already been changed, for crying out loud. Linux had originally called it Freeix, but the maintainer of the very FTP site you use as an example above had decided that the name sucked, and chose Linux instead.
Frankly, Linux sounds a lot better than Freeix, so I guess Linus just went with it. If you've ever tried to come up with a decent name for any of your own code, you'll probably understand why Linus did that.
It's unfair to compare a Java UI directly with a native UI.
Why? Users don't care about wether your application has a slow user interface, all they'll do is complain that "This program is slow"
Java has a place, and by extension Java UI's have their place. But saying "Oh well it's O.K for the user interface to be slow, because it will run equally slow across all platforms" is a load of rubbish. If Java code can run just as fast as native compiled C or C++, just why are the Java User Interfaces slow?
Any Java zealots want to clear up the aparent contradiction there?
Any IRC Network? I think you'll find it is only the larger networks such as Efnet, IRCNet, Dalnet, Undernet etc. that are currently under kiddie attacks. There are plenty of other networks out there that do not have any of these problems.
Most people who use IRC regularly will stick to a few channels 99% of the time. It isn't a huge task to move a channel onto a new network if everyone who uses the channel is aware of the move. Something as simple as placing the details in the topic is usually all that is needed. The channel I've used for the past three years has moved twice now, and even changed names once.
IRC as a protocol does has flaws when you scale it past a dozen servers or so, but that doesn't mean IRC is a wasteland. Smaller networks are better, generally, as they're run by admins and opers who give a damn.
So what you're saying is that Linux is ready for general use on the desktop, provided the desktop is ready for Linux?
Yeah, now not to be funny, but people arn't going to use Linux if they have to shell out $$$'s for new hardware to run it on properly. It wouldn't wash.
Linux isn't ready for installation on the desktop or usage on the desktop. I have KDE2 running right here, and there is no way I would expect anyone without several years experience with computers (And some experience with Unix at that) to be able to install, configure & yes, trouble shoot Linux.
If you use Linux on your desktop, good for you. Just don't think that 90% of the computer using populace will fall over themselves to use it as well.
I would second that. C for Dummies Vol I & II are good learners books. Combine them with K&R and you have a neat little learning & reference library.
The only complaint I would have with C for Dummies is that it is a little too Borland-centric, although I had no problems using 99.9% of the example code with GCC.
A GTK+ port would not be out of place; neither would a full Qt port.
Possible, but no one is yet interested in doing it. Kurt spent his time porting khtml away from Qt, rather than port Qt for khtml.
If it has POSIX emulation (which ISTR it does nto yet)
AtheOS is POSIX.1 compliant. POSIX isn't an emulation layer by the way, it's a defined API for UNIX systems.
it can run GNOME and KDE, which is the sine qua non of a modern OS, unfortunately.
While we're at it, we could replace libatheos with X. Then we'll dump the kernel and replace it with Linux. AFS, well we may as well just use ResierFS.
Why should AtheOS have to use KDE or Gnome? I sense much trolling in you. Either that, or you are seriously misguided.
Honestly, AtheOS has the potential to beat out KDE and Gnome. libatheos is (IMHO) a better toolkit than Qt, certainly better than anything GTK+ has to offer. It's being written almost entirely by one guy, so everything is consistent, and integrates nicely.
I'm hoping to be able to replace my current KDE2 setup with AtheOS for my every day web/email/IRC/coding before the year is out. Give AtheOS 12 months, and lets see.
Although I do find the fact that there are "scrollbars" and "text edit" things in the interface (see the change log) indicates that he has made the GUI interface way too high level.
What you're looking at are basic widgets that any GUI provides, including any and every toolkit for X. How do you think those scrollbars and menus get on your applications? They're high level, yes, but they need to be.
I would much rather see an interface that reliably and quickly does "draw a rectangle here" and "format this UTF-8 text here" would be more powerful, as it would allow variation in the GUI design.
Many of the low level constructs are available in libatheos, although the lower level 2D graphics primitives are weak to non-existent. That doesn't mean you can't create a bitmap and draw to it yourself, or write a library to do that for you.
Why would you want to allow "variation in the GUI design" anyway? It sounds as though you want to do exactly what X has done, and provide only the low level stuff and then end up with seven diferent toolkits on top. GUI diversity on the same platform is not a good thing, it confuses users and adds redunduncy. If Kurt wanted to do it this way, he could just be running Linux with X and be done with it. The end result would be the same.
Sorry if this seems like a flame, it is in part I guess. I would seriiously suggest you get hold of AtheOS and try out libatheos though, its a nice little system.
Firstly, he beat a bunch of tech journalists. That's like being impressed if an NBA coach beat a bunch of local sports beat writers at making free throws.
;)
Um, not really. Certainly back then, and even in todays "modern" world, a fair number Tech Journos are certainly able to code. We're not talking Jon Katz style "journalists" remember.
Secondly, do you REALLY believe that Gates didn't do some coding before hand
Of course he did. Wouldn't you? Whats that got to do with it anyway, the others who were coding against Gates had probably writen code before the contest as well.
Thirdly, I bet you that the task was hand-picked to highlight VB's qualities.
According to the reply above, I may be wrong about it being VB, and it may in fact have been QuickBasic. If thats the case, then the tasks that could have been set would have be fairer matched. Personally, i'm still fairly sure it would have been Visual Basic as a) Microsoft had been writing BASIC interpreters since day one, and Quick Basic was just an extension of the original MBASIC & b) BASIC is just BASIC, and Microsoft wanted to show off their new "Visual Paradigm" no doubt.
Anyway, I'm not trying to be a Microsoft apoligist, just adding some historical flavour to this discusion. Personally I can't stand Microsofts products, and I run Mandrake 8.0 at home, and hack on applications for AtheOS when I have the time. I just like ancient-history
Since the TRS-80 BASIC, the last recorded instance of Bill Gates writing any code was when Visual Basic was launched. As a publicity stunt, Bill, using Visual Basic, went up against a bunch of tech journalists, who were allowed to choose their language. They (Gates & the journalists) were given a task to implement, and the person who completed a working solution first "won".
Luckily for Microsoft, Gates beat the journalists, coding in the new Visual Basic. The guy hadn't coded for over a decade.
Microsoft products may suck, but at least Bill can code. When he isn't writing snotty letters and fending off hordes of US Government Lawyers.