I'm trying to use Nautilus, again. Dammit. Every time I try to use a desktop-metaphoric system, it strikes me, just how stupid the desktop-metaphor is. The fact is that, even if I manage to put something useful on the desktop..., well, I the fact is that I can't put anything useful on the desktop, because, if it goes on the desktop, it's always covered up! It can't be useful if it's always covered up--if I can never get at it, if I can never even see it. A palette metaphor might be good. Add stuff to the palette, pull stuff from the palette. Mix stuff on the palette--I can't even mix things in a file-manager or on a desktop. Well, I could mix things on my desktop, but it'd be messy and be frowned upon by `civilised' society. The key is that the palette would be just like any other item with which I (the user) interacts. It'd show up in the same lists. It'd be cyclable with the same keys. It'd be managable by the same management-primitives. A meaningful and useful parent/child display-/window-relationship would be nice to have, too.... A general run-time display-extension mechanism would be really nice to have. I wonder if, some day, I'll write a general display-system of some sort. I wonder if it'd be better best to build it atop X11, or atop some widget-set GTK+, or to interface directly to the hardware, or what.... Interfacing with the hardware, I'd need an X11-compatibility application. If I just implemented on top of X11, then I wouldn't have that problem. I also wouldn't need to write bit-twiddling hardware-driver code. [Reply] |
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