That doesn't mean you can't have widgets or a toolkit implemented over/dev/draw. Saying there's no widgets/toolket is like saying "You can't write a graphics library for a dumb framebuffer."
Had I had more time, I would have made something more integrated looking. You're right, they do look alien--that's because they are. I don't program GUIs so I was left with what I could quickly bolt together in GIMP. Otherwise, I would've coded up a sample GUI where all the widgets came from the same toolkit. I never liked the old Athena-style scrollbar on the left. I'm right handed, darnit.
Reading through the Plan9 docs that DrSkwid posted a link to, Pike and co. that their input/UI model is strong enough that they don't need separate text editors, shell history mechanisms, a scroll history or even cursor addressability. Clearly, this is from outer space, and so my gut reactions for "what I want in a GUI" are probably horribly misinformed in a Plan 9 context. But, nobody here who claims to use Plan 9 has bothered to take the time to explain *why* I'm wrong. Rather, I just get "You don't get it" (and not until umpteen replies later, "RTFM").
And I thought us Linux guys had deficient advocacy skills.:-)
Of course, the response I've gotten is more along the lines "I don't care what you think. You're wrong about Plan 9. Plan 9 is clearly perfect. Why should I bother to advocate?" So why bother to respond to me at all then?
Ugh, my pedantic side takes over... I said "if they happened to live a country where that makes sense." GAH. Had I sufficiently edited my post, that would have read "if they instead were in a country where that made sense to do." There are probably other mechanical errors in that post. I'll stop now before I'm further behind.:-)
Somedays, I feel like punching in the nose the next person I hear say "My computer has five-twelve RAM and, uhm, sixty hard drive."
If you can't sort out kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes, you're not computer literate. And if you insist on talking about kibibytes, mebibytes or gibibytes, you're either a snot-nosed elitist/inflexible pedant (if you live here in the USA), or you're outside the USA and may not even speak English as a first language. If you're the former, I just shake my head, sigh, and make sure not to bump into you again. If you're the latter, well, maybe you and I can sit over a beer (or beverage of your choice), and I can explain to you why those units will never catch on here, except for among those who might memorize train schedules and catalog individual trains' appearances, if they happened to live a country where that makes sense.
In general, I give Bell Labs high marks for usable command lines. (I started with Bourne Shell almost a decade and a half ago, and use Bourne Again these days. Never could stand C Shell derivatives.) I've never been a complete fan of their UIs—going all the way back to the mouse pointer that points one of four directions depending on what quadrant you're in (with hysteresis!), such as the UNIX PC and 620 Terminal did from within Layers—so I suspect we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I'll stick to my eleventy-billion xterms and spartan X desktop, and you can stick to acme. It's obvious you're not interested in winning converts by actively demonstrating the flexability of your favorite solution, but rather just rely on unconvincing screen shots, an assertion of superiority, and feigning indifference to others' opinions and criticisms. I don't feel like rewriting acme in order to determine if I prefer it.
Ok, explain how making a few minor tweaks, such as spacing menu items a little further apart and placing them in another font, as well as updating the scroll bars a little makes it less usable? In my opinion, it makes it less ugly. Compare: this Acme screenshot to a mockup I just made that I find significantly less ugly.
How have I ruined usability?
You remind me of the guy in Crazy People who came up with a slogan for Volvo: "Boxy, but good." What you're telling me goes a step further: "It can't be good unless it's boxy." The two are separable to some extent.
Believe what you will, but I'm not asking for "bling bling," and I think most modern UIs are too flashy. I can't stand OS X for extended periods of time (except over an ssh connection), and when I have to use WinXP, I set it to "classic." *sigh*
Is it too much to ask for the menus to be spaced a little further apart in a less jagged font, or even just confirmation that it can be done? Compare the original to a mockup I just made.
Notice that the menus are in a more approachable font and spaced further apart. The scroll bars are also the more common type you find these days on the right, not the Athena/X11 style on the left.
Just because an interface is spartan doesn't mean it must eschew all the useful minor improvements UIs have made over the years. I know when my eyes are tired and bleary from a long day of hacking, I'll have a better chance of hitting the menu I want in the proposed version.
You're right, but it's clear Gonzales' statement places him in the same territory the US Gov't was in when it brought the New York Times and Washington Post to court over the Pentagon Papers. Sure, the Attorney General and the US DoJ will have to find different angles on the law to get their case heard. I would guess if the same Supreme Court heard those cases as heard NYT v. US back in the 70s, we'd see a similar outcome. With the current court, it's harder to say.
The fact that the government's cases may all get decided in favor of the press in the long run doesn't change the short-run chilling effect such posturing might have on smaller sources. I expect the big guys to have a little more backbone, but we'll see. The press hasn't really pressed this Pres as much as I'd've liked.
It may be usable (highly usable in fact), but I have yet to see a non-ugly screenshot. Heck, my ideal UI lets me multiplex a bunch of xterm-esque Windows and lets me highlight/paste among them with ease. I understand that Plan 9's GUI takes that model rather further, which is actually intriguing to me.
I'm not actually trying to cut down Plan 9's advances. I just was openly curious if anyone has managed to match the usability up to some asthetics?
In a democracy, there is always a tension between a free press and the government, between what the government claims ought to be kept confidential and what reporters believe the public ought to know.
There are some other choice tidbits in there... such as (emphasis added):
[The First Amendment] leaves, in my view, no room for governmental restraint on the press. There is, moreover, no statute barring the publication by the press of the material which the Times and Post seek to use... [I]t is apparent that Congress was capable of and did distinguish between publishing and communication in the various sections of the Espionage Act.
So any power that the Government possesses must come from its "inherent power." The power to wage war is "the power to wage war successfully." But the war power stems from a declaration of war. The Constitution by Article I, Section 8, gives Congress, not the President, power "to declare War." Nowhere are presidential wars authorized. We need not decide therefore what leveling effect the war power of Congress might have.
These disclosures may have a serious impact. But that is no basis for sanctioning a previous restraint on the press...The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of governmental sup-pression of embarrassing information. A debate of large proportions goes on in the Nation over our posture in Vietnam. Open debate and discussion of public issues are vital to our National Health. The stays in these cases that have been in effect for more than a week constitute a flouting of the principles of the First Amendment as interpreted in [Near v. Minnesota].
The rio (1) window manager gives me flashbacks to TWM, and gawdy color schemes inspired by 256-color displays.... More screen shots here. I'm not saying GNOME or KDE have the best look either. I actually was happy with OpenLook / OLVWM. If I have to go to a window manager look that's 10-15 years old, can I go to that one instead?:-) (Of course, anyone can make any window manager look bad.)
Well, I suppose if you use a nicer font and space the menu labels further apart than is shown in screen shots like this one, it could be reasonable to work with. That, and ditch the ancient X11/Athena style scroll bars for something a little more contemporary, and we'll talk.:-)
Since you've been using Plan9 for 10 years, do you have any counterargument-making screen shots of your own?
Ok, seem to remember hearing about some really neat usability features in the Plan 9 interface awhile back. I'd be useful if some were recapped here... Also, is it just me, or do these Plan 9 GUIs combine eye-bleeding fonts with poor Gestalt, as my tech writing professor would say? I'm talking about figure-ground separation and all these things that separate a GUI from a big jumble of text.
(Given that I'm having a hard time finding good links for Gestalt and figure-ground separation mean my tech-writing prof was ahead of his time, or a total crackpot? I happened to really agree w/ everything he taught.)
Sell the debt to a collection agency? You might only get $0.50 on the dollar or something, but at least it's Not Your Problem any more. And I imagine debt collection agencies are pretty tight with credit bureaus...
How about Unca Cece? The Straight Dope covered this awhile ago. Cecil references a book called The Bermuda Triangle Mystery--Solved by Lawrence David Kusche.
The main reason they don't allow cell phones on planes is not the disruption of the airplane's systems. Rather, it's because the phone calls would jam the cell network, since you're violating two underlying design criteria:
You're not on the ground. The antenna arrays on towers are optimized to transmit horizontally with a downward bias. You're above them. Furthermore, you look roughly equidistant to many towers, because you're above them all. At 30,000ft, you're nearly 6 miles above the towers, and that may be the dominant term in the distance equation depending on tower density in the area.
You're moving too fast. Handoff protocols are meant for people moving 70-80MPH tops, not 500MPH. At 70MPH, you probably don't hand off more than once a minute. At 500MPH, you're handing off 7x as often.
Rather than using guarana or coffee, why not add caffeine directly? You would want to choose a beer recipe that would counteract/complement the extreme bitterness that comes with caffeine, but you could make a beer w/ a hell of a kick! (And it'd be one hell of a diuretic, too.)
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That doesn't mean you can't have widgets or a toolkit implemented over /dev/draw. Saying there's no widgets/toolket is like saying "You can't write a graphics library for a dumb framebuffer."
--JoeHad I had more time, I would have made something more integrated looking. You're right, they do look alien--that's because they are. I don't program GUIs so I was left with what I could quickly bolt together in GIMP. Otherwise, I would've coded up a sample GUI where all the widgets came from the same toolkit. I never liked the old Athena-style scrollbar on the left. I'm right handed, darnit.
Reading through the Plan9 docs that DrSkwid posted a link to, Pike and co. that their input/UI model is strong enough that they don't need separate text editors, shell history mechanisms, a scroll history or even cursor addressability. Clearly, this is from outer space, and so my gut reactions for "what I want in a GUI" are probably horribly misinformed in a Plan 9 context. But, nobody here who claims to use Plan 9 has bothered to take the time to explain *why* I'm wrong. Rather, I just get "You don't get it" (and not until umpteen replies later, "RTFM").
And I thought us Linux guys had deficient advocacy skills. :-)
Of course, the response I've gotten is more along the lines "I don't care what you think. You're wrong about Plan 9. Plan 9 is clearly perfect. Why should I bother to advocate?" So why bother to respond to me at all then?
--JoeUgh, my pedantic side takes over... I said "if they happened to live a country where that makes sense." GAH. Had I sufficiently edited my post, that would have read "if they instead were in a country where that made sense to do." There are probably other mechanical errors in that post. I'll stop now before I'm further behind. :-)
--JoeSomedays, I feel like punching in the nose the next person I hear say "My computer has five-twelve RAM and, uhm, sixty hard drive."
If you can't sort out kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes, you're not computer literate. And if you insist on talking about kibibytes, mebibytes or gibibytes, you're either a snot-nosed elitist/inflexible pedant (if you live here in the USA), or you're outside the USA and may not even speak English as a first language. If you're the former, I just shake my head, sigh, and make sure not to bump into you again. If you're the latter, well, maybe you and I can sit over a beer (or beverage of your choice), and I can explain to you why those units will never catch on here, except for among those who might memorize train schedules and catalog individual trains' appearances, if they happened to live a country where that makes sense.
--JoeFlat grey desktop with no icons? Cute. I usually go for dark blue.
And I thought Linux zealots were annoying. :-)
In general, I give Bell Labs high marks for usable command lines. (I started with Bourne Shell almost a decade and a half ago, and use Bourne Again these days. Never could stand C Shell derivatives.) I've never been a complete fan of their UIs—going all the way back to the mouse pointer that points one of four directions depending on what quadrant you're in (with hysteresis!), such as the UNIX PC and 620 Terminal did from within Layers—so I suspect we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I'll stick to my eleventy-billion xterms and spartan X desktop, and you can stick to acme. It's obvious you're not interested in winning converts by actively demonstrating the flexability of your favorite solution, but rather just rely on unconvincing screen shots, an assertion of superiority, and feigning indifference to others' opinions and criticisms. I don't feel like rewriting acme in order to determine if I prefer it.
--JoeOk, explain how making a few minor tweaks, such as spacing menu items a little further apart and placing them in another font, as well as updating the scroll bars a little makes it less usable? In my opinion, it makes it less ugly. Compare: this Acme screenshot to a mockup I just made that I find significantly less ugly.
How have I ruined usability?
You remind me of the guy in Crazy People who came up with a slogan for Volvo: "Boxy, but good." What you're telling me goes a step further: "It can't be good unless it's boxy." The two are separable to some extent.
--JoeBelieve what you will, but I'm not asking for "bling bling," and I think most modern UIs are too flashy. I can't stand OS X for extended periods of time (except over an ssh connection), and when I have to use WinXP, I set it to "classic." *sigh*
Is it too much to ask for the menus to be spaced a little further apart in a less jagged font, or even just confirmation that it can be done? Compare the original to a mockup I just made. Notice that the menus are in a more approachable font and spaced further apart. The scroll bars are also the more common type you find these days on the right, not the Athena/X11 style on the left.
Just because an interface is spartan doesn't mean it must eschew all the useful minor improvements UIs have made over the years. I know when my eyes are tired and bleary from a long day of hacking, I'll have a better chance of hitting the menu I want in the proposed version.
--JoeWell, that may be. Hopefully we can get a good precedent onto both sides of the disclosure.
Why should I? It's 5 digits long and it's not even prime! ;-)
--JoeYou're right, but it's clear Gonzales' statement places him in the same territory the US Gov't was in when it brought the New York Times and Washington Post to court over the Pentagon Papers. Sure, the Attorney General and the US DoJ will have to find different angles on the law to get their case heard. I would guess if the same Supreme Court heard those cases as heard NYT v. US back in the 70s, we'd see a similar outcome. With the current court, it's harder to say.
The fact that the government's cases may all get decided in favor of the press in the long run doesn't change the short-run chilling effect such posturing might have on smaller sources. I expect the big guys to have a little more backbone, but we'll see. The press hasn't really pressed this Pres as much as I'd've liked.
--JoeIt may be usable (highly usable in fact), but I have yet to see a non-ugly screenshot. Heck, my ideal UI lets me multiplex a bunch of xterm-esque Windows and lets me highlight/paste among them with ease. I understand that Plan 9's GUI takes that model rather further, which is actually intriguing to me.
I'm not actually trying to cut down Plan 9's advances. I just was openly curious if anyone has managed to match the usability up to some asthetics?
--JoeThe Introduction to the Court Opinion on the New York Times Co. v. United States Case (the Pentagon Papers case) opens with:
There are some other choice tidbits in there... such as (emphasis added):
Hmm....
--JoeThe rio (1) window manager gives me flashbacks to TWM, and gawdy color schemes inspired by 256-color displays.... More screen shots here. I'm not saying GNOME or KDE have the best look either. I actually was happy with OpenLook / OLVWM. If I have to go to a window manager look that's 10-15 years old, can I go to that one instead? :-) (Of course, anyone can make any window manager look bad.)
--JoeWell, I suppose if you use a nicer font and space the menu labels further apart than is shown in screen shots like this one, it could be reasonable to work with. That, and ditch the ancient X11/Athena style scroll bars for something a little more contemporary, and we'll talk. :-)
Since you've been using Plan9 for 10 years, do you have any counterargument-making screen shots of your own?
--JoeOk, seem to remember hearing about some really neat usability features in the Plan 9 interface awhile back. I'd be useful if some were recapped here... Also, is it just me, or do these Plan 9 GUIs combine eye-bleeding fonts with poor Gestalt, as my tech writing professor would say? I'm talking about figure-ground separation and all these things that separate a GUI from a big jumble of text.
(Given that I'm having a hard time finding good links for Gestalt and figure-ground separation mean my tech-writing prof was ahead of his time, or a total crackpot? I happened to really agree w/ everything he taught.)
--JoeI ducked.
Sell the debt to a collection agency? You might only get $0.50 on the dollar or something, but at least it's Not Your Problem any more. And I imagine debt collection agencies are pretty tight with credit bureaus...
It's a triangle just like a Y is a triangle.
How about Unca Cece? The Straight Dope covered this awhile ago. Cecil references a book called The Bermuda Triangle Mystery--Solved by Lawrence David Kusche.
--JoeMaybe they check for spelling errors in some <smartass>paralell</smartass> universe...
Does anyone have a link to the really bad music this worm subjects its victims to? Hearing it would seriously enhance my sense of schadenfreude...
--JoeAbout the same time it dumps RCS for its change-history database.
The main reason they don't allow cell phones on planes is not the disruption of the airplane's systems. Rather, it's because the phone calls would jam the cell network, since you're violating two underlying design criteria:
--Joe
Cryptographic methods only solve sniffing and masquerading. What about full up jamming?
--JoeRather than using guarana or coffee, why not add caffeine directly? You would want to choose a beer recipe that would counteract/complement the extreme bitterness that comes with caffeine, but you could make a beer w/ a hell of a kick! (And it'd be one hell of a diuretic, too.)
--Joe