Hello. I'm new to homebrew OS development. Essentially I'm interested in GUI's. I know there's alot of work that goes into an OS before that point, but I'm really not much of a programmer. My question is: Are there any OS projects out there with the goal of an open GUI in mind? Meaning it is set up to allow either through programming or a secondary interface to allow the user to craft their own interface. I'm a OSX Win2K user now. I'm content with OSX, but I'm dead tired of the Windows UI. I'd love to have a project box that I could craft my own GUI for. I'm aware of Stardock's ObjectDesktop suite that "covers" the Windows UI with whatever you want... but that justs wastes resources and is like an adhesive bandage for a headwound. Anyone have any suggestions or thoughts? Thanks for your time and good luck with your various projects.
-Dranore
An open GUI OS?
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Dreamsmith
Re:An open GUI OS?
A lot of operating systems don't deal with GUI issues at all, pushing the entire issue off into user-space. For example, under Linux, the GUI is entirely in the user's hands. Most users (or the makers of their distribution) launch the X Window System to present a GUI, but absolutely nothing prevents you from launching something else instead. Most embedded or "palm-ish" Linux distributions do precisely that, e.g. those that use Qtopia. You could easily write your own GUI. Not up to writing a hundred video drivers? Use the kernel's framebuffer interface.
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Dranore
Re:An open GUI OS?
Thanks for the reply. Again... I'm really not well versed on the subject... which is why I'm posting here. hehe... Any more info you can give me, or if you know of any links on the subject would be quite helpful. 
And no... I'd probably shoot myself in the face trying to learn enough just to attempt to program one video driver... much less hundreds... hehe...
-Dranore
And no... I'd probably shoot myself in the face trying to learn enough just to attempt to program one video driver... much less hundreds... hehe...-Dranore
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DennisCGc
Re:An open GUI OS?
Hi,
for an open GUI OS you could use Linux/*BSD with X, or Menuetos (www.menuetos.org)
You can try it
for an open GUI OS you could use Linux/*BSD with X, or Menuetos (www.menuetos.org)
You can try it
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Dranore
Re:An open GUI OS?
Does anyone have any links to information pertaining to coding GUI's for Linux based systems? There don't seem to be any projects that are attempting what I have in mind. They're all based on the idea of just skinning traditional windows and menu's... I'm thinking more of a system like the Stardock software... except even more flexible and integrated as the base GUI instead of merely masking another GUI wasting resources.
-Dranore
-Dranore
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mystran
Re:An open GUI OS?
I am currently working on a GUI toolkit, which should be able to support pretty much anything from plain framebuffer to X11 and Win32 (although only X11 is there at the moment) provided a driver is written. Obviously plain framebuffer needs a bit more from the driver though (although working around the stupidity of X11 is painful as well).
It's not quite usable yet, but I'm planning to release first 0.1 alpha version quite soon. It can however do all the basic stuff one can't live without. Mostly different widgets are missing.
As for developing a full GUI system, I'd on Linux I'd try to use whatever X11 provides, as impractical as it sometimes feels. After all, switching the toolkit and window manager used on top of X, and replacing all the apps with new ones pretty much gives you a totally new GUI, without losing the ability to run existing apps. You can always later replace the lower-layers anyway, if you're careful with not relying on X11 stupidities too much..
Finally, I have this unofficial competition for the default theme of my own toolkit. I'm no good in graphics, so I though if somebody sends me a theme I really like (or even a few imaginary screenshots or something) I promised to make it the default theme of the toolkit. Just a warning: I usually like simple, even minimalistic stuff...
It's not quite usable yet, but I'm planning to release first 0.1 alpha version quite soon. It can however do all the basic stuff one can't live without. Mostly different widgets are missing.
As for developing a full GUI system, I'd on Linux I'd try to use whatever X11 provides, as impractical as it sometimes feels. After all, switching the toolkit and window manager used on top of X, and replacing all the apps with new ones pretty much gives you a totally new GUI, without losing the ability to run existing apps. You can always later replace the lower-layers anyway, if you're careful with not relying on X11 stupidities too much..
Finally, I have this unofficial competition for the default theme of my own toolkit. I'm no good in graphics, so I though if somebody sends me a theme I really like (or even a few imaginary screenshots or something) I promised to make it the default theme of the toolkit. Just a warning: I usually like simple, even minimalistic stuff...
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Dranore
Re:An open GUI OS?
Mystran: hehe... maybe I'll design one for you... I'm very minimalist most of the time... what elements would it need?
I'll just outline my idea more basically.
A simple menu and a simple window manager. All of that would be skinnable. That would be all that exists in the standard interface.
From this you would be create anything in the 2D realm... 3D too I guess... but that's more of an extended scope.
You could have a developer mode and a user mode, developer by default. In this mode you could adjust the interface. In this mode, a right click menu allows you to create any text or graphical element. These can be used to create menus with shortcuts or what have you or any other graphical element be it a button or container. They could be made to scale or remain stactic in size or even lock in place.
Frame - You can control the size of the area that the user interacts with. You can create a frame, graphical or not. This can be merely for show or allow you to place entities inside of it that display information if you desire.
Alternate Cursory Devices - Allow the creation of a custom cursor that that definable control perameters using any input devices.
Scriptability - Every element would be scriptable. You could animate an icon to run away from your cusor or create an interface that looks and runs like the original Zelda for NES. The idea being that you could create the interface out of anything you wanted to do whatever you want. Asing macros or whatever. There wouldn't even have to be any additional graphical elements, programs could be run simply by monitoring how the user inputs and interpret what they're intending to do.
Object/Group/Theme Based - You would be able to group any created objects together. Any object or group can be exported as a file including it's associated scripts and imported into anyone elses interface. Or you could export your entire interface as a theme for anyone to use.
That's the idea in a nutshell. I'm probably forgetting details... but you get the point. A barebones GUI that lets you establish a GUI that works for you. To me this seems like the most logical GUI you could have... clearly not everyone would be into this sort of thing... but having clean slate for people who are interested in such things allows other to benefit from their exploration... How useful would ZeldaGUI be? Probably not much... but if that works for someone, why shouldn't they be allowed to? It's no less absurd that the silly OS interfaces we've come to know and use... and secretly despise.
Anyways... that's what I want in a GUI. Again... I'm not much of a programmer... and making that happen would require some massive learnin' on my part. hehehe...
-Dranore
I'll just outline my idea more basically.
A simple menu and a simple window manager. All of that would be skinnable. That would be all that exists in the standard interface.
From this you would be create anything in the 2D realm... 3D too I guess... but that's more of an extended scope.
You could have a developer mode and a user mode, developer by default. In this mode you could adjust the interface. In this mode, a right click menu allows you to create any text or graphical element. These can be used to create menus with shortcuts or what have you or any other graphical element be it a button or container. They could be made to scale or remain stactic in size or even lock in place.
Frame - You can control the size of the area that the user interacts with. You can create a frame, graphical or not. This can be merely for show or allow you to place entities inside of it that display information if you desire.
Alternate Cursory Devices - Allow the creation of a custom cursor that that definable control perameters using any input devices.
Scriptability - Every element would be scriptable. You could animate an icon to run away from your cusor or create an interface that looks and runs like the original Zelda for NES. The idea being that you could create the interface out of anything you wanted to do whatever you want. Asing macros or whatever. There wouldn't even have to be any additional graphical elements, programs could be run simply by monitoring how the user inputs and interpret what they're intending to do.
Object/Group/Theme Based - You would be able to group any created objects together. Any object or group can be exported as a file including it's associated scripts and imported into anyone elses interface. Or you could export your entire interface as a theme for anyone to use.
That's the idea in a nutshell. I'm probably forgetting details... but you get the point. A barebones GUI that lets you establish a GUI that works for you. To me this seems like the most logical GUI you could have... clearly not everyone would be into this sort of thing... but having clean slate for people who are interested in such things allows other to benefit from their exploration... How useful would ZeldaGUI be? Probably not much... but if that works for someone, why shouldn't they be allowed to? It's no less absurd that the silly OS interfaces we've come to know and use... and secretly despise.
Anyways... that's what I want in a GUI. Again... I'm not much of a programmer... and making that happen would require some massive learnin' on my part. hehehe...
-Dranore
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mystran
Re:An open GUI OS?
Well, at the moment there is only a basic label (which is text only anyway), a panel container (which is almost as interesting), and a basic skinned button, which at the moment has three ugly bitmaps which should be replaced: normal, mouse-on-top, and pushed-down.Dranore wrote: Mystran: hehe... maybe I'll design one for you... I'm very minimalist most of the time... what elements would it need?
In the future I know I'm going to need at least tabbed dialogs, some kind of drop-down box, menus, scrollbars, mixer-style sliders (like found on audio equipment), normal (vertical) sliders, knobs (like in audio equipment again).. and pretty much anything else there is...
Oh, who guessed I'm going to use the toolkit in a soft-synth project