Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I beg to differ here... Kinetic scrolling is highly useful (and usable) in apps like Canola, Mauku, etc... I wish microB had it too. If kinetic scrolling was the only improvement in the next OS, I would be ecstatic. Unfortunately, I don't think it's even in the plan.

-T.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Yeah, I've been told I look like QT before. If only he was known for his good looks and not for his writing. :(

Just to gasp speak on topic for a moment here....

I really think the whole idea of Hildonization is absurd. Why should we have to modify the interface of each and every app to run on the tablet? There should be a way to "skin" or "theme" the interface of every single GTK app completely and utterly, so that it runs as a tablet app on a tablet and it runs as desktop app on a desktop. And, for that matter, it will run as a media-box app on my remote-controlled media box (usable from the remote control). If the tablet environment has kinetic scrolling, all of the apps that use the toolkit will automatically get kinetic scrolling. If the user finds that annoying, they can turn it off system-wide. One dropdown box will make the entire system "finger friendly" or "stylus friendly" or "keyboard friendly" or "joystick friendly". All GTK apps should just automatically invoke the pop-up keyboard, if that's what you like using....

What am I doing?! Must get off topic again!

I thought "Grindhouse" sucked, but for different reasons than most people did. It was painfully pretentious, and I got sick of the broad winks they kept giving the audience.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

While I like the idea I believe it to be near impossible. You are talking about a completely seamless integration for all apps to inter-cooperate... which means that everything from your Tablet, to your Laptop, to your TV, Microwave and VCR would all be based on one specific environment.. and then all apps written for that code-base. Apple and Windows do this.. they have 1 interface/kernel and then everything they release works great with itself (well; Apple is good as working with itself.. microsoft is well.. microsoft) - but none of them hardly cooperate at all with anything NOT made by them.

It takes away the options of say.. KDE vs Gnome. Or.. Gnome would have to support all calls that KDE apps might make and vice versa to get a complete seamless environment working. And the sheer amount of coding this would require is monumental...

Still; good idea though. Hopefully someone much smarter than me figures it out soon.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I was specifically talking about apps that use the GTK toolkit, not every single Linux app. Most of the core Gnome stuff uses this now. Why can't the GTK apps be auto-hildonized, I'd like to know?! Why is theming so shallow, so skin-deep?

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Yeah this is true.. the "hildonizing" code should have been written in a way that a normal app that was written for normal GTK would make the same function/library calls and would just receive the different "hildonized" environment...

but I think (haven't ported anything myself yet) some calls are missing in the Hildonized GTK.. meaning they needed to add some form of seamless 0 return or something to the missing functions so that the app doesn't completely die out.. but it may not work at it's 100%.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Qole, I think part of the problem auto-hildonizing would be restricting all GTK programs to a small set of features. For example, Hildon applications can only have one menu, while GTK applications can have as many menus as they want. Hildon applications, while able to have more than one toolbar, would look pretty silly with 8 toolbars stacked along the bottom - not to mention there would be very little usable real estate.

That is not to say that some things could not be auto-hildonized, like hildon input method. I have no idea why all editable text areas do not have this automatically, other than the fact that code would have to be moved into GTK.

I am by no means an expert on this, but I can see why Hildon is a layer on top of GTK. Having small-screen support built into GTK would be another option, but would certainly be much more complicated and I think many applications (Xournal, Abiword, Gnumeric, etc) would not be quite as nice as their Hildonized counterparts.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I think the one-menu limit of Hildon is a problem with the current Hildon spec. There needs to be a way to shoe-horn full functionality into a small form-factor. Toolbars also need to be more configurable; the whole toolbar-across-the-top (or bottom) concept makes some problematic assumptions about the screen size. I like the way gThumb auto-hides the toolbar in fullscreen mode (it can be recovered by tapping the top of the screen); I've found that this works well on the tablet...

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

But discussion is always good. :) At any rate, I agree that EVERY feature is a good feature so long as it's optional so I can turn it off or choose another.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

Then you aren't paying very close attention. ;) It's popped up in one or two commit logs (can't be bothered to dig them up, I know MicroB had one), and I've had several Nokia engineers mention it directly. Kinetic scrolling is likely to be a big part of Fremantle.

Re: can the '08 GUI be ANY crappier?
 

I'm not sure if it's been answered elsewhere, but will Fremantle suddenly arrive magically and flash over the Intarwebs... or will we be using the same ol' SHUT'R DOWN, WE'ER FLASHING THE WHOLE THING! method of the past?