There is the GNUstep project which is an open-source framework with an interface that is compatible with OpenStep. OpenStep is the framework which Cocoa and Quartz are based on, and it used to be the library that NextStep used for its applications. OpenStep uses "Display Postscript" for its rendering, GNUstep comes with "Display Ghostscript" but it can also use Display Postscript implementation if available. The talk about Quartz being "PDF-based" is not much more than marketing talk. PDF is basically not much more than tokenized Postscript anyway. See a recent slashdot story about GNUstep.
I am also working on the concepts of a networked vector-based user interface system, where the graphics is based on SVG. The project would become much more than just vector graphics. Very early stage, no webpage. Mail me if you are interested in participating.
I don't think W3C would design the DOM for widgets in a way that you would not be able to use native widgets. That would be pretty stupid.
I believe the custom Mozilla GUI is just a marketing ploy, just like Adobe's and MetaCreations' apps have a consistent interface under Windows and Mac, Netscape wants Mozilla windows to be easily recognizable on all platforms.
As another point, the GUI toolkit is hardly usable. It's rendering is slow, it is nonresponsive and not much thought have gone into the design of how to operate them. For instance, open a menu and click on a menu item which has a submenu. If the submenu is not already open, the parent menu will close! According to what I have heard, that behaviour is intentional. Stupid.
Re:Blue Danube Waltz...
on
Sex in Space
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· Score: 1
I heard the following quote about sex a few years ago. Since then I have been wondering about the meaning. Now I understand.;-)
Size is not important. It is the rotation velocity that makes a difference.
Commodore 64 and tactile CapsLock
on
Interface Zen
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· Score: 1
I remember my old Commodore 64 and Amiga keyboards. Both had their Ctrl and CapsLock/ShiftLock keys side by side. Commodore 64 had a ShiftLock key which was mechanically activated - when it was on, it was kept down by the mechanism in the key. When you pressed it again, it released. I don't advocate CapsLock keys at that position, because I prefer CTRL there, but I want to point out the tactile feedback you got from that key. You could feel when the CapsLock was on, rather than having to look at the keyboard's LED. (Amiga had the LED on the CapsLock key itself, btw)
In future keyboards, I would like to see the tactile CapsLock key. It could have electronic grab and release so that it could be programmable and duplicated to a number of positions on the keyboard.
At work, I am using a device that could be the ultimate pointing device - a "Phantom" haptic device. It is a stylus that is connected to a robotic arm that provides high-resolution 3D tracking and force feedback.
The software drivers for Windows NT comes with a mouse emulation mode, but it has some serious drawbacks. The stylus has to be touching an imaginary plane (created with force-feedback) in order to move the pointer and the stylus' only button is used as the left mouse button.
If someone would write a new mouse emulator for the Phantom, it could just rock. It would become the ultimate pointing device.
It wouldn't have to be picked up. By applying a feedback force in the upward direction, the stylus would appear weightless and stay in place (in space) when you release your grip of it.
It is pressure sensitive
Senses the pen angle. The angle is actually very significant for real drawing/painting. I have only seen it being emulated in software before, and it has been done poorly.
It has 3D tracking. Actually, that is what it was designed for.
Force feedback. You could feel windows, widgets and icons. The resolution of this device is amazing. The software that I am using simulates rough, frictional and bumpmapped surfaces.
With a mirror or a flat display in front of the device you could align the position of the screen image with your hand to get hand-eye coordination. (see this)
Of course, it has some serious drawbacks:
No Linux drivers
All surfaces feel rubbery. There will always be a delay between stylus movement and feedback. Therefore, it is not possible to simulate hard surfaces very well. When hardness increases, so does vibrations in the device and it just does not feel right.
Expensive. It carries a five-digit pricetag (USD).
I agree with you. In the early 90's, before Internet became mainstream, Fred Fish's disk collection for the Amiga was the primary source of free software for a lot of people - many who are now activelly working with and supporting free software.
Many of the other people on the list would not be there if not for Fred Fish.
OK, if you think this guy went all out, visit www.ketzer.com which is linked to at the bottom of the page. He made a model of just the exterior of Millenium Falcom out of thousands of individually cut polystyrene pieces and plastic pieces from model kits. He actually got the name of the manufacturer for the model kits that the ILM guys had borrowed parts from for their models. The then got the manufacturer's catalog and tried to match the parts in the catalog with details found in photos of ILM's model. If that is not scary.. then what is.
I would say that Star Trek is dead as a format. There is a limit on how long you can do basically the same things over and over before it gets tedious and outright boring. I am sick and tired of the Enterprise/Enterprise/Voyager/whatever getting into a space-time anomaly and get rescued in the last minute by some clever technician or a character getting imprisoned on a hostile world, etc. etc.
I still think that the Star Trek Universe would be a great foundation for any kind of story. It is just up to the script-writers to realize what they have got and to make something breathtaking out of it - half of the work is already there.
A few years ago there were many rumors in the star trek newsgroups about a possible "Star Trek Klingon" series. I think that is a great idea, as long as it doesn't just give us another Enterprise or Voyager. The Klingon empire would certainly be an interesting place, and a less-than-utopian society. I think it would also be interesting to set it in a time when the Federation was still an Enemy.
I have not been able to find any info on the Dragonball on Motorola SemiConductor Products website. I would like to see the technical docs on the Dragonball VZ. Has anyone else had any luck?
The operating system is loaded from the CD, so it is theoretically possible to port Linux to it. The question is how many NDA's you would have to break and how many CD's you would have to write during the time. I don't know if they support CD-RW, but I don't believe that they would do that willingly, they would probably want to restrict illegal copying of their games.
I have been unable to find any documents about the early Berlin, which is very different from the current. Are there any documents published on any website anywhere? Please mail me the link or the docs if you have any. It would be interesting to read, at least in retrospect. Maybe there were some wacky good ideas in there.
I don't know, but it does sound a little bit like a feature of a GTK+ widget I am working on. It is a GtkTable, where each row and column is weighted, like HTML relative widths. You can specify that one row is twice the width than another row, etc.
I have also subclassed the widget and added resizebars between the rows and columns.
The good thing about standards is that you've got so many to choose from.
Re:No X -- we need a media-savvy, compositing GUI
on
Is X The Future?
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· Score: 1
1. All monitors doesn't come with a manual containing that information. Or the user throws the manual away. 2. Monitors might not handle what the manual say they would. eg. We got 4 Mag DJ530, all now has diffrent X configs for the monitor.
Amiga's keyboard had the caps-lock light in the button itself, but I like better how the caps-lock button worked on the Commodore-64 where it was actually lowered when on. My point is that you did not have to look down at the keyboard at all to see if capslock was on. You could feel it.
I have also seen (and felt) another capslock-behaviour on many typewriter keyboards that I have never seen on any computer keyboard (as standard behaviour). That is to automatically inactivate the capslock when a shift key is pressed.
Lucasfilm has themselves to be blaimed for most of the demand on the bootlegs from outside USA. If they had decided to start showing the movie at about the same date all over the world, instead of for instance withholding the movie for three whole months before showing it in Europe, the demands on the bootlegs would not be as large, and thus neither would the supply. The tickets will be released next week in my country, but most people I know have already seen it... I don't blame them.
By the sound of the article, I get the impression that they make it more out of fun that out of utility. I don't blame them. =) It would be cool to make the software they will be using. Would it be possible to make one that works down on earth maybe?
It is not the root that is used, but the fruit of the plant. Besides the guaranine, the fruit also contains fatty acids that delay the absorption of guaranine in the body making the effect last longer. Btw, you should be warned to use guarana because it stresses your libido, and after having tried it... I agree. When Josta was first introduced, some people who knew about the effect had opened a website warning people about the effects.
For me, ginseng has been my primary stimulant ever since my stomach complained about my consumption of latte and Jolt.
Well, outside of Europe the only countries where french is spoken in daily life are former - or current - colonies, where the language has been imposed on the people some time or another. In the rest of the world, where french is neither the mother-tongue nor by tradition the language of political administration, people tend to choose to use other languages and that is what counts in the end.
I have heard several rumors about a Swedish company that should be developing remote virtual retina projectors... that could project laser images on multiple people's retinas at once from a distance of a couple of meters. A friend of mine actually claimed having met one of the people who were working on it. I have no other information, sorry.. but it should be thrustworthy because I have multiple sources. Is there anyone who knows more about this than I do who can tell me more?
> Berlin actually looks rather more ambitious [...] Too ambitious in my eyes. It is tightly integrated in a Windoze-style registry (shiver), requires that people use their own widget set ("Warsaw"), and they seem to base the whole thing on top of GGI... (say no more) Y doesn't seem to go anywhere, and just seems to be a clean slate without X's definciencies but with nothing much new that is better.
What I believe could be the best technology to base a new windowing system on would be caching of display lists. It would minimize communication between server and client (something the Berlin people are striving for) while at the same time being relativelly lightweight, and not locking people to use any particular widget set. It could possibly also be backwards-compatible with old X programs running on the new system, but faster - not as many expose events. I have heard some ancient windowing system used that technology, but I don't know which. (Maybe it was W).
Where do criminals get their guns? They are legally bough before they become criminals, or they are stolen from people who have bought them legally. There has been a lot of talk about the declining murder rate in New York? What is the reason behind that? The police searched people for lesser crimes and arrested them if they had illegal guns on them. The guns were removed, the crime rate dropped.
I am a computer science student, and I frequently have to spend time in computer rooms with other people whom I don't know. Some people frequently piss me off by playing the trailers over and over again. I am getting sick and tired of having to close my eyes and cover my ears every time I hear "Lukes theme". The worst part is that I live in Europe, and the movie will not be released here until August. Already, there is too much hype and merchandise everywhere, from McDonalds to every other toy store. (well, isn't that what McDonalds is to kids anyway...) There is no valid reason to release it late in my country (Sweden), it just has to be copied and subtitled. That process does not need three months. But, what scares me is that this could be only the beginning. When it escalates, I am going to turn my TV off and buy earplugs. My friends tell me that resistance is futile, but I still struggle.
I am still standing by my thesis - I refuse to see the movie, until I go to see the movie!
Slashdot Mirror
I am also working on the concepts of a networked vector-based user interface system, where the graphics is based on SVG. The project would become much more than just vector graphics. Very early stage, no webpage. Mail me if you are interested in participating.
I believe the custom Mozilla GUI is just a marketing ploy, just like Adobe's and MetaCreations' apps have a consistent interface under Windows and Mac, Netscape wants Mozilla windows to be easily recognizable on all platforms.
As another point, the GUI toolkit is hardly usable. It's rendering is slow, it is nonresponsive and not much thought have gone into the design of how to operate them. For instance, open a menu and click on a menu item which has a submenu. If the submenu is not already open, the parent menu will close! According to what I have heard, that behaviour is intentional. Stupid.
Size is not important. It is the rotation velocity that makes a difference.
In future keyboards, I would like to see the tactile CapsLock key. It could have electronic grab and release so that it could be programmable and duplicated to a number of positions on the keyboard.
The software drivers for Windows NT comes with a mouse emulation mode, but it has some serious drawbacks. The stylus has to be touching an imaginary plane (created with force-feedback) in order to move the pointer and the stylus' only button is used as the left mouse button.
If someone would write a new mouse emulator for the Phantom, it could just rock. It would become the ultimate pointing device.
- It wouldn't have to be picked up. By applying a feedback force in the upward direction, the stylus would appear weightless and stay in place (in space) when you release your grip of it.
- It is pressure sensitive
- Senses the pen angle. The angle is actually very significant for real drawing/painting. I have only seen it being emulated in software before, and it has been done poorly.
- It has 3D tracking. Actually, that is what it was designed for.
- Force feedback. You could feel windows, widgets and icons. The resolution of this device is amazing. The software that I am using simulates rough, frictional and bumpmapped surfaces.
- With a mirror or a flat display in front of the device you could align the position of the screen image with your hand to get hand-eye coordination. (see this)
Of course, it has some serious drawbacks:Many of the other people on the list would not be there if not for Fred Fish.
OK, if you think this guy went all out, visit www.ketzer.com which is linked to at the bottom of the page. He made a model of just the exterior of Millenium Falcom out of thousands of individually cut polystyrene pieces and plastic pieces from model kits. He actually got the name of the manufacturer for the model kits that the ILM guys had borrowed parts from for their models. The then got the manufacturer's catalog and tried to match the parts in the catalog with details found in photos of ILM's model.
If that is not scary.. then what is.
I still think that the Star Trek Universe would be a great foundation for any kind of story. It is just up to the script-writers to realize what they have got and to make something breathtaking out of it - half of the work is already there.
A few years ago there were many rumors in the star trek newsgroups about a possible "Star Trek Klingon" series. I think that is a great idea, as long as it doesn't just give us another Enterprise or Voyager. The Klingon empire would certainly be an interesting place, and a less-than-utopian society. I think it would also be interesting to set it in a time when the Federation was still an Enemy.
I have not been able to find any info on the Dragonball on Motorola SemiConductor Products website. I would like to see the technical docs on the Dragonball VZ. Has anyone else had any luck?
The operating system is loaded from the CD, so it is theoretically possible to port Linux to it. The question is how many NDA's you would have to break and how many CD's you would have to write during the time. I don't know if they support CD-RW, but I don't believe that they would do that willingly, they would probably want to restrict illegal copying of their games.
Well.. Linus Torvalds had already got himself a Masters Degree in Computer Science a few years ago, so your argument does not hold.
I have been unable to find any documents about the early Berlin, which is very different from the current. Are there any documents published on any website anywhere? Please mail me the link or the docs if you have any. It would be interesting to read, at least in retrospect. Maybe there were some wacky good ideas in there.
What are "springs and struts"?
I don't know, but it does sound a little bit like a feature of a GTK+ widget I am working on.
It is a GtkTable, where each row and column is weighted, like HTML relative widths. You can specify that one row is twice the width than another row, etc.
I have also subclassed the widget and added
resizebars between the rows and columns.
The good thing about standards is that you've got so many to choose from.
1. All monitors doesn't come with a manual containing that information. Or the user throws the manual away. 2. Monitors might not handle what the manual say they would. eg. We got 4 Mag DJ530, all now has diffrent X configs for the monitor.
Amiga's keyboard had the caps-lock light in the button itself, but I like better how the caps-lock button worked on the Commodore-64 where it was actually lowered when on. My point is that you did not have to look down at the keyboard at all to see if capslock was on. You could feel it.
I have also seen (and felt) another capslock-behaviour on many typewriter keyboards that I have never seen on any computer keyboard (as standard behaviour). That is to automatically inactivate the capslock when a shift key is pressed.
Lucasfilm has themselves to be blaimed for most of the demand on the bootlegs from outside USA. If they had decided to start showing the movie at about the same date all over the world, instead of for instance withholding the movie for three whole months before showing it in Europe, the demands on the bootlegs would not be as large, and thus neither would the supply. The tickets will be released next week in my country, but most people I know have already seen it ... I don't blame them.
By the sound of the article, I get the impression that they make it more out of fun that out of utility. I don't blame them. =) It would be cool to make the software they will be using. Would it be possible to make one that works down on earth maybe?
For me, ginseng has been my primary stimulant ever since my stomach complained about my consumption of latte and Jolt.
Well, outside of Europe the only countries where french is spoken in daily life are former - or current - colonies, where the language has been imposed on the people some time or another. In the rest of the world, where french is neither the mother-tongue nor by tradition the language of political administration, people tend to choose to use other languages and that is what counts in the end.
I have heard several rumors about a Swedish company that should be developing remote virtual retina projectors... that could project laser images on multiple people's retinas at once from a distance of a couple of meters. A friend of mine actually claimed having met one of the people who were working on it. I have no other information, sorry.. but it should be thrustworthy because I have multiple sources. Is there anyone who knows more about this than I do who can tell me more?
Too ambitious in my eyes. It is tightly integrated in a Windoze-style registry (shiver), requires that people use their own widget set ("Warsaw"), and they seem to base the whole thing on top of GGI
Y doesn't seem to go anywhere, and just seems to be a clean slate without X's definciencies but with nothing much new that is better.
What I believe could be the best technology to base a new windowing system on would be caching of display lists. It would minimize communication between server and client (something the Berlin people are striving for) while at the same time being relativelly lightweight, and not locking people to use any particular widget set. It could possibly also be backwards-compatible with old X programs running on the new system, but faster - not as many expose events.
I have heard some ancient windowing system used that technology, but I don't know which. (Maybe it was W).
Where do criminals get their guns? They are legally bough before they become criminals, or they are stolen from people who have bought them legally. There has been a lot of talk about the declining murder rate in New York? What is the reason behind that? The police searched people for lesser crimes and arrested them if they had illegal guns on them. The guns were removed, the crime rate dropped.
It isn't new. The Open Group has owned the domain name for some time.
The worst part is that I live in Europe, and the movie will not be released here until August. Already, there is too much hype and merchandise everywhere, from McDonalds to every other toy store. (well, isn't that what McDonalds is to kids anyway...) There is no valid reason to release it late in my country (Sweden), it just has to be copied and subtitled. That process does not need three months. But, what scares me is that this could be only the beginning. When it escalates, I am going to turn my TV off and buy earplugs.
My friends tell me that resistance is futile, but I still struggle.
I am still standing by my thesis - I refuse to see the movie, until I go to see the movie!