unity-design team mailing list archive

["Chad M. Germann" <cgermann@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2011-11-30 at 18:55 +0100, frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 11:09, Chad M/ Germann <cgermann@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>         
>         
>         The problem is and you don't see it is your trying to cram a
>         touch
>         interface on a Desktop OS.
> 
> 
> i think human computer interaction has some basic rules which apply to
> all input devices that are pointer based.
> all pointers are emulations of the human index finger, our natural
> human pointing device.
> 
> 
> we drag stuff with the whole hand, Minority Report was science
> fiction, Kinect is Augmented Reality.
> 
> 
> we hold stuff in our palm.
> 
> 
> i could go on with this all day, but at the end of the day it's just
> an ordinary physical modeling of certain actuation habits humans
> already have onto the HCI framework of Free software.
> 
> 
> As you stated before, the goal might be well placed in becoming more
> "Unix-like" again.
> But what exactly this means in 2011 is yet to be presented.
> Concepts came, concepts were falsified, others improved and revisited,
> we learn from mistakes and so does the collective collaborative
> effort.

the Current year has nothing to do with what a Unix-like system is the
definition is in conforming with set standards

But sense you want something concrete.

lets go with Function first form as an afterthought

look at Unix interfaces from the past they have been not pretty but
functional back in the good old days we had XWM and applications written
different toolkits but they did not get in the users way and did not bog
the system. 

Jump ahead a few years and we had CDE
http://www.typewritten.org/Media/Images/solaris-2.5.1-LAR-ppc-CDE.png

It was a good desktop did it's job did not bog the system and did not
get in the user's way. but was locked in by some funky licanceing so us
GNU guys got to use

FVWM and FVWM 95 
http://fvwm95.sourceforge.net/screenshot-full.gif

Once agin it did its job well, did not bog the system and did not get in
the user's way. 

Now some guys got some bright ideas and decided we needed full "Desktop
environments"  

first came KDE 1 
http://www.kde.org/screenshots/images/large/matthiase1.jpg

it was decent Boged the system a little but did not get in the user's
way (too much) but it too had some flaky licensing issues (QT) 

so that spawned GNOME
http://www.linuxinsight.com/files/images/gnome_old.png
and it was decent did not bog the system too much and did not get in the
users way.

and things went well this way until recently (I still think it's the
result of Generation Y) but someone decided that Unix like operating
systems needed compositing and 3D effects and we got Compiz than Beryl
and than Compiz again  This Hackish at best window manager was tossed on
top of rapidly bloating desktop environments. and all of the sudden we
started to see Things Bogging the system heavily and getting in the
users way.

and now we have Unity and GNOME shell the epitome of getting in the
user's way  Dash and Overview take over the Desktop when evoked,
application navigation is cluttered, Unity hides key interface features
(menu bar) and lately you need more screen space to display less
information (to make things Touch friendly) fonts are huge, widgets are
huge, icons are huge.


So lets define what I was saying this way : create a desktop that does
it's job well Does not bog the sysem and most importantly does not get
in the users way   

Hints for the next unity (Call this a punch list)

Application fonts should not look like a Large print book scale them
down  

40+ pixels for launch bar icons is bad! 

Taking 1/4 to all of the screen to navigate Programs is annoying at
best. (Do not get in the way of someones focus on there work)

 
Do not make key application controls vanish for no reason the menu bar
is a key element in some applications for example most application dev.
tools, gftp, evolution and libreoffice