Handspring is a company which was founded by a bunch of the original PalmPilot engineers. This happened shortly after 3com announced the spinoff of Palm Computing and that they would be licensing the Palm OS to third parties.
It would definitely be a Good Thing if the Palm OS became ubiquitous as the environment for PDA's, completely displacing Windoze CE in this arena. It's nice to see a sector not dominated by BigBullySoft.
Genetic engineering will not be truly Innovative(tm) until they can figure out a way to splice Microsoft Active IntelliDNA (tm) into a lab mouse... resulting in a mouse with a little thumbwheel in its anterior.
The problem with Microsoft's 'voluntary' split is that it gives Windows and Office to the same division. MS used their preload advantage to take over the apps market, and that's just plain wrong. A truly corrective breakup would place Windows and Office in the hands of two companies that have no incentive to keep them locked to each other.
This is giving me a lot of stress, because I've got a serious moral problem with the idea of wishing another person dead, but Bill has managed to get me to that point.
Why would we want to spend our time debugging Microsoft's software, for FREE? That time would be better spent writing, documenting, and debugging free software alternatives. Unless Microsoft is planning to open-source W2K, they shouldn't expect free software people to give away their time for it.
Definitely... I'm using Verdana as my browser font (running the xfstt font server) and it definitely looks very nice on a 15" 1024x768 screen, even with Netscape's questionable rendering technbiques. (Can't wait to see how it'll look in Nav 5 though!)
Plus, there's just something deliciously ironic about taking something free from Microsoft (their web fonts collection) and them not getting any platform lock-in in return.
Exactly! A true message store will handle the distribution of a single message to multiple local recipients by storing one copy and keeping a reference count of how many mailboxes and/or public folders are pointing to it.
It looks out of place because it's not finished, not because it's a wxWin app. The pixmaps, for example, are merely a few images quickly grabbed off the 'net just to put there as placeholders. Gnome integration isn't a high priority for me personally -- partially because I'm using KDE desktops right now, and partially because cross-platform is more important to me than having the tightest possible Linux integration is.
Design decisions are the developers' perogative. Anyone who wishes to stand by the sidelines and criticize them will be considered with all the credibility of Andrew Tannenbaum ranting that the Linux kernel is obsolete right out of the door.
If you'd like to join the project and create a Gnome/GTK front end to the system, we'd be thrilled to have you aboard! Please log on to Uncensored and we'll discuss it there.
I did check into the licensing of wxWin. It specifically states that the license is GPL compatible.
Furthermore, the Linux version of wxWin does use GTK+ as its lower-level toolkit. Gnomifying a wxWin application merely involves Gnomifying the wxWin library.
We chose wxWin because it can target both Linux and Windows users -- resulting in a smooth migration for all those users who can take their groupware client with them when they make that big switch.
To address the other issue you mentioned... all Citadel sources are available through CVS, including the 'Daphne' GUI client. See the website for more info on this.
Anyone interested in an open source groupware project should check out Citadel, which has made quite a lot of progress so far. We started with the existing code to a BBS program and moved forward from there. It already supports email, public folders, instant messaging, web/telnet/client access, and a bunch of other stuff. We all know about the un-scalability of BSD-style mailboxes, and Citadel will be an open source messaging platform with a true message store (the message store is already in place and works quite well).
Development help is currently needed in the areas of address books and calendaring/scheduling. This would be a great project for someone to join rather than try to write a calendaring app from scratch with no infrastructure behind it.
If I may ask, why don't you use a DTP program? Quark is a good choice, and lots of people like PageMaker (although it's being replaced by the new InDesign program) and they're both a jillion times better at this than Netscape, a spreadsheet or WordPerfect.
A wonderful idea! Please tell me where we may purchase the Linux versions of Quark and PageMaker.
While it's good to have a choice, I personally don't care for the Enlightenment window manager.
The really sad thing is that many people now believe that E is "the" window manager for GNOME, due to RedHat's financial backing of both (until recently) and the fact that they usually shipped together if you got them as binaries. As a result, many people who think they dislike GNOME, actually dislike Enlightenment.
I'm hoping that with Raster gone, RedHat will switch to a smaller, faster window manager (such as IceWM) as the default for the GNOME environment.
I've been quite pleased with X10 -- both their equipment and the company. Yes, they do place your email address on a mailing list, but they will cheerfully remove it as soon as you ask them.
My home is decked out with X10 stuff. I've got the CM11A controller, which contains an actual X10 modulator. The "FireCracker" appears to be a device that transmits RF signals to a remote-control receiver, which then modulates the X10 signals. It's nice to eliminate the extra step... even if I do already have the remote receiver (and a ton of remotes).
Anyone planning on ordering should be aware that most of the Linux software found on Freshmeat et al is designed for the CM11A, not the FireCracker.
If you'd like to write GTK apps using C++, you might want to try the GTK version of wxWindows. It has a very sensible set of object-oriented bindings, and you get the added bonus of having your program be reasonably portable to Motif, Mac, and Windoze.
Who'd have thought in 1985 that IBM would eventually be supporting open standards and a level playing field? How times change!
Anyway, IBM's desire to take the desktop away from Microsoft is more than just "an axe to grind." IBM knows, just as well as Sun and HP do, that unless Microsoft's desktop monopoly is dislodged, Microsoft will use its modus operandi of "force everything to be integrated" to dominate the server universe as well. That, in turn, destroys the market for AS/400's, RS/6000's, and perhaps even 390's.
Even in the face of the current DOJ actions, Microsoft is still moving forward to tie things together with even more proprietary glue. Have you checked out Office 2000's server-side extensions? They run on Windows NT servers, of course, and use an MS wire protocol. Suddenly it seems that they were, in fact, listening to Vinod Valoppalil when he suggested the course of de-commoditizing the wire protocols.
Microsoft has proven that you can't concede anything to them, they won't just stay in one place and let you have a different sector of the industry. IBM and others must dislodge the Microsoft desktop monopoly in order to prevent Microsoft from eventually taking over the entire game.
That should immediately send up a red flag for most Slashdotters. To use Dish Network, you need Dish Network equipment, and vice versa. If you decide later on that you want to switch to DirecTV or some other standards-based DSS provider, you must replace your equipment.
If you don't believe me, check out this one. There is still no place to meet a more "folksy" online crowd.
The pay-for-use BBS's turned into ISP's, and the corporate sites simply went onto the web. Fine. The ones that remain are the true BBS's, the hobbyist ones!
Modern BBS software is quite capable of being accessed simultaneously by dialup callers, telnet users, WWW users, and folks with BBS client software. Naturally, the BBS's which continue to thrive are the ones which are connected to the Internet, allowing a global audience to connect.
BBS's are not dead. The rules of the game have changed, but the World Wide Waste-o-time can never offer the level of interactivity that a BBS can.
It should be fairly obvious. If Micros~1 were to port MS Office to the Linux environment, and MS Office is supposedly oh-so-integrated with the web, would they really want you using Netscape? Of course not! It's a cinch that if MS is going to get into the Linux apps market, IE absolutely would be the first app on the list to get ported.
Remember, it's not merely a browser that they're bringing over -- it's their whole integration framework. Once they've got the MS HTML rendering engine, CraptiveX/COM/whatever, and the rest of the glue that they use to tie their applications inextricably to each other, only then will they be ready to port apps like Slurd and ExHell over.
Sounds like a pretty straightforward plan to me. Ideally, they'd like for that framework to be "absolutely essential" on all of the world's Linux boxes, essentially making Linux useless on the desktop unless you buy MS Office for it, but I really doubt any free software authors (or even other commercial Linux apps developers) would fall into that trap.
Lemme tellya, the only reason I'm still using MediaOne for cable TV (rather than getting a dish) is that there will be cable modem service in the future. When? I dunno. I asked in 1996 and they said "two years," then in late 1998 I asked again and they said "another 18 to 24 months."
I'm banking on DSL becoming available -- and cheaper, because of COMPETITION -- before MediaOne finally gets their digital act together.
And if MS or AOL buys MediaOne, I definitely won't subscribe to cable modem service when it becomes available. I run Linux, and I run servers.
By the way, this is in New York state, in Westchester county.
Develop with wxWindows, run everywhere
on
The Desktop Wars
·
· Score: 1
Just develop your apps using the wxWindows toolkit. There's a GTK version out now, a Qt version is in development, and you can also build Windoze apps using the same source code. It's a terrific, sensibly classed API for both C++ and Python, and it eliminates the problem of tying oneself to any particular toolkit (other than itself, of course).
(Incidentally, I'm not part of the wxWindows development team, merely an extremely happy user of the toolkit. I'm developing a fairly large program using it and it just makes development a real pleasure.)
I've been using, installing, and recommending Xyplex equipment for years. It is without exception well-designed, intuitive, and based only on open standards. They're a good company with good products - it's a shame that they have to live in Cisco's shadow. I'm excited about this new product and hope to get a chance to tinker with one soon. There are just so many possibilities this opens up...
Slashdot Mirror
Handspring is a company which was founded by a bunch of the original PalmPilot engineers. This happened shortly after 3com announced the spinoff of Palm Computing and that they would be licensing the Palm OS to third parties.
It would definitely be a Good Thing if the Palm OS became ubiquitous as the environment for PDA's, completely displacing Windoze CE in this arena. It's nice to see a sector not dominated by BigBullySoft.
Genetic engineering will not be truly Innovative(tm) until they can figure out a way to splice Microsoft Active IntelliDNA (tm) into a lab mouse ... resulting in a mouse with a little thumbwheel in its anterior.
Better yet, how about the trash icon be made to look like the MS Windows logo instead of an actual trashcan?
The problem with Microsoft's 'voluntary' split is that it gives Windows and Office to the same division. MS used their preload advantage to take over the apps market, and that's just plain wrong. A truly corrective breakup would place Windows and Office in the hands of two companies that have no incentive to keep them locked to each other.
This is giving me a lot of stress, because I've got a serious moral problem with the idea of wishing another person dead, but Bill has managed to get me to that point.
Why would we want to spend our time debugging Microsoft's software, for FREE? That time would be better spent writing, documenting, and debugging free software alternatives. Unless Microsoft is planning to open-source W2K, they shouldn't expect free software people to give away their time for it.
If you had a time machine, which of the following would you do?
Any electronics surplus catalog will have a wide selection of video camera parts. You can get 'em cheap and mount 'em in any housing you want.
Definitely ... I'm using Verdana as my browser font (running the xfstt font server) and it definitely looks very nice on a 15" 1024x768 screen, even with Netscape's questionable rendering technbiques. (Can't wait to see how it'll look in Nav 5 though!)
Plus, there's just something deliciously ironic about taking something free from Microsoft (their web fonts collection) and them not getting any platform lock-in in return.
Exactly! A true message store will handle the distribution of a single message to multiple local recipients by storing one copy and keeping a reference count of how many mailboxes and/or public folders are pointing to it.
It looks out of place because it's not finished, not because it's a wxWin app. The pixmaps, for example, are merely a few images quickly grabbed off the 'net just to put there as placeholders. Gnome integration isn't a high priority for me personally -- partially because I'm using KDE desktops right now, and partially because cross-platform is more important to me than having the tightest possible Linux integration is.
Design decisions are the developers' perogative. Anyone who wishes to stand by the sidelines and criticize them will be considered with all the credibility of Andrew Tannenbaum ranting that the Linux kernel is obsolete right out of the door.
If you'd like to join the project and create a Gnome/GTK front end to the system, we'd be thrilled to have you aboard! Please log on to Uncensored and we'll discuss it there.
I did check into the licensing of wxWin. It specifically states that the license is GPL compatible.
Furthermore, the Linux version of wxWin does use GTK+ as its lower-level toolkit. Gnomifying a wxWin application merely involves Gnomifying the wxWin library.
We chose wxWin because it can target both Linux and Windows users -- resulting in a smooth migration for all those users who can take their groupware client with them when they make that big switch.
To address the other issue you mentioned ... all Citadel sources are available through CVS, including the 'Daphne' GUI client. See the website for more info on this.
Anyone interested in an open source groupware project should check out Citadel, which has made quite a lot of progress so far. We started with the existing code to a BBS program and moved forward from there. It already supports email, public folders, instant messaging, web/telnet/client access, and a bunch of other stuff. We all know about the un-scalability of BSD-style mailboxes, and Citadel will be an open source messaging platform with a true message store (the message store is already in place and works quite well).
Development help is currently needed in the areas of address books and calendaring/scheduling. This would be a great project for someone to join rather than try to write a calendaring app from scratch with no infrastructure behind it.
While it's good to have a choice, I personally don't care for the Enlightenment window manager.
The really sad thing is that many people now believe that E is "the" window manager for GNOME, due to RedHat's financial backing of both (until recently) and the fact that they usually shipped together if you got them as binaries. As a result, many people who think they dislike GNOME, actually dislike Enlightenment.
I'm hoping that with Raster gone, RedHat will switch to a smaller, faster window manager (such as IceWM) as the default for the GNOME environment.
I've been quite pleased with X10 -- both their equipment and the company. Yes, they do place your email address on a mailing list, but they will cheerfully remove it as soon as you ask them.
My home is decked out with X10 stuff. I've got the CM11A controller, which contains an actual X10 modulator. The "FireCracker" appears to be a device that transmits RF signals to a remote-control receiver, which then modulates the X10 signals. It's nice to eliminate the extra step ... even if I do already have the remote receiver (and a ton of remotes).
Anyone planning on ordering should be aware that most of the Linux software found on Freshmeat et al is designed for the CM11A, not the FireCracker.
Do check out the Linux Home Automation Page; it's got lots of useful resources.
Home automation, Linux, and nerds. A match made in Heaven. :)
If you'd like to write GTK apps using C++, you might want to try the GTK version of wxWindows. It has a very sensible set of object-oriented bindings, and you get the added bonus of having your program be reasonably portable to Motif, Mac, and Windoze.
Who'd have thought in 1985 that IBM would eventually be supporting open standards and a level playing field? How times change!
Anyway, IBM's desire to take the desktop away from Microsoft is more than just "an axe to grind." IBM knows, just as well as Sun and HP do, that unless Microsoft's desktop monopoly is dislodged, Microsoft will use its modus operandi of "force everything to be integrated" to dominate the server universe as well. That, in turn, destroys the market for AS/400's, RS/6000's, and perhaps even 390's.
Even in the face of the current DOJ actions, Microsoft is still moving forward to tie things together with even more proprietary glue. Have you checked out Office 2000's server-side extensions? They run on Windows NT servers, of course, and use an MS wire protocol. Suddenly it seems that they were, in fact, listening to Vinod Valoppalil when he suggested the course of de-commoditizing the wire protocols.
Microsoft has proven that you can't concede anything to them, they won't just stay in one place and let you have a different sector of the industry. IBM and others must dislodge the Microsoft desktop monopoly in order to prevent Microsoft from eventually taking over the entire game.
That should immediately send up a red flag for most Slashdotters. To use Dish Network, you need Dish Network equipment, and vice versa. If you decide later on that you want to switch to DirecTV or some other standards-based DSS provider, you must replace your equipment.
Sound familiar?
While I have nothing against Qt, I think it's a bit of a stretch for them to refer to Qt as "the leading toolkit on Linux."
That would seem to imply that it's used measurably more often than Xt, AW, GTK, and Motif, which I seriously doubt.
If you don't believe me, check out this one. There is still no place to meet a more "folksy" online crowd.
The pay-for-use BBS's turned into ISP's, and the corporate sites simply went onto the web. Fine. The ones that remain are the true BBS's, the hobbyist ones!
Modern BBS software is quite capable of being accessed simultaneously by dialup callers, telnet users, WWW users, and folks with BBS client software. Naturally, the BBS's which continue to thrive are the ones which are connected to the Internet, allowing a global audience to connect.
BBS's are not dead. The rules of the game have changed, but the World Wide Waste-o-time can never offer the level of interactivity that a BBS can.
It should be fairly obvious. If Micros~1 were to port MS Office to the Linux environment, and MS Office is supposedly oh-so-integrated with the web, would they really want you using Netscape? Of course not! It's a cinch that if MS is going to get into the Linux apps market, IE absolutely would be the first app on the list to get ported.
Remember, it's not merely a browser that they're bringing over -- it's their whole integration framework. Once they've got the MS HTML rendering engine, CraptiveX/COM/whatever, and the rest of the glue that they use to tie their applications inextricably to each other, only then will they be ready to port apps like Slurd and ExHell over.
Sounds like a pretty straightforward plan to me. Ideally, they'd like for that framework to be "absolutely essential" on all of the world's Linux boxes, essentially making Linux useless on the desktop unless you buy MS Office for it, but I really doubt any free software authors (or even other commercial Linux apps developers) would fall into that trap.
Lemme tellya, the only reason I'm still using MediaOne for cable TV (rather than getting a dish) is that there will be cable modem service in the future. When? I dunno. I asked in 1996 and they said "two years," then in late 1998 I asked again and they said "another 18 to 24 months."
I'm banking on DSL becoming available -- and cheaper, because of COMPETITION -- before MediaOne finally gets their digital act together.
And if MS or AOL buys MediaOne, I definitely won't subscribe to cable modem service when it becomes available. I run Linux, and I run servers.
By the way, this is in New York state, in Westchester county.
Just develop your apps using the wxWindows toolkit. There's a GTK version out now, a Qt version is in development, and you can also build Windoze apps using the same source code. It's a terrific, sensibly classed API for both C++ and Python, and it eliminates the problem of tying oneself to any particular toolkit (other than itself, of course).
(Incidentally, I'm not part of the wxWindows development team, merely an extremely happy user of the toolkit. I'm developing a fairly large program using it and it just makes development a real pleasure.)
I've been using, installing, and recommending Xyplex equipment for years. It is without exception well-designed, intuitive, and based only on open standards. They're a good company with good products - it's a shame that they have to live in Cisco's shadow. I'm excited about this new product and hope to get a chance to tinker with one soon. There are just so many possibilities this opens up...