OSDev.org

MessiahAndrw wrote:We need companies like Linux Game Publishing.

Resulting in always being quite some time behind. Been there (Amiga / Hyperion), done that.

No, what is needed is the games from the "PC" shelf running on either Windows or Linux. With as little additional hassle for the game producer as possible (i.e., same binary).

Hi,

Solar wrote:No, what is needed is the games from the "PC" shelf running on either Windows or Linux. With as little additional hassle for the game producer as possible (i.e., same binary).

Um?

The same binary that runs on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, and 32-bit 80x86 Ubuntu, and 64-bit 80x86 Slackware, and Itanium Fedora, and SPARC Redhat; while also getting very good performance in all cases (e.g. no emulation)?


Cheers,

Brendan

DirectX isn't a game framework. It does graphics, sound, etc. but it isn't tied specifically to gaming, and doesn't provide things like physics or scene management. It *is* the underlying API on Windows.

But most of DirectX (DirectDraw, DirectSound, DirectPlay, DirectInput, DirectShow etc.) have been depreciated, so these days, DirectX == Direct3D...

Now, as for the original question, I was thinking of writing a word processor a while ago because there aren't any open source ones (and very few commercial ones) that I really like. They all have cluttered, bad interfaces and look out of place and integrate badly with most of the platforms they run on. I was thinking of writing a library that handles importing and exporting documents, uses Cairo and Pango for the actual document editing, rendering, printing etc, and then making native (Win32, GTK, Cocoa) interfaces around it... I don't know if I'll ever get round to it though...

They all have cluttered, bad interfaces

Tried Scribes?

Alboin wrote:

They all have cluttered, bad interfaces

Tried Scribes?

That does look very cool, but I'm thinking more of a word processor...

I'm still saying we need a Microsoft OneNote for Linux.

The only reason I kept Windows on my tablet PC during college was because of OneNote (virtualising it didn't work, since I lost the touch sensitivity and the erase function of the stylus).

You loaded a work book, which was split into tabs (along the top, I split them into each subject), and on the right under that tab there were pages (which could have subpages - I had a page per weekly lecture and assignment - each with subpages if needed).

You can click anywhere on the page to start entering text (keyboard shortcuts to create a table as you type and calculate math formulas), and draw anywhere with the stylus to write and draw diagrams (with varying pen colours and thicknesses). You can convert entire pages to handwritten text (with pretty good accuracy if you use your tablet a lot since I think it adapts to your handwriting).

There was a diving tool, so you can click between two lines and drag an empty space out (e.g. if you had dot points and wanted to extend the space under one of them to describe it). The tool could be used to remove huge empty gaps from pages too.

The page would be infinite and could scroll out right/down as far as you wanted. In lectures I would just write, scroll down, write, scroll down, etc without worrying about running out of room on the page.

It is also quite simple to insert a voice recording (or plug in a webcam and insert a video recording) into a page, and I think you can sync your notes to the recording so it shows your notes as it plays back the recording (I never tried that).

You could give things tags (web pages to go to, things to Google, appointments to remember, to do) to items, and when you searched through a page/tab/workbook it searched through all the images/video for the text, as well as the audio (I'm not sure how good it was though).

It's the editor (well not really, more of a workbook) of my choice when it comes to brainstorming (drawing diagrams, bubbles, lines everywhere) and drafting documents.

MessiahAndrw wrote:I'm still saying we need a Microsoft OneNote for Linux.

You seem to be rather passionate about wanting that. Why not work on it yourself? I mean, even just starting something, you knowing what works and does not with the touch screen, should attract the attention of other like minded individuals.

That does look very cool, but I'm thinking more of a word processor...

Scribes with Latex.

Alboin wrote:

That does look very cool, but I'm thinking more of a word processor...

Scribes with Latex.

Heh, LaTeX is a little time consuming and over the top for most everyday word processing...

berkus wrote:Or you can save yourself a gazillion hours literally and use Qt4 GUI.

That's the kind of thinking that I don't like - Qt 4 will only integrate properly in KDE... It may fit in somewhat visually some on other platforms, but it's nowhere near as good as a native interface...

berkus wrote:native on Mac OS X
Mimics native looks on XP. Looks pretty decent in Gnome.

There might be some "foreign accent" but it is by far outweighted by ease and speed of programming, plus ease of use - UI looks entirely the same on all platforms because it is built from the exact same code, no diverging between codebases possible.

It's still fells a little wrong on Mac OS - take Virtualbox for example. But I suppose if I was going to use any cross platform framework, it would probably be GTK...

Brendan wrote:The same binary that runs on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, and 32-bit 80x86 Ubuntu, and 64-bit 80x86 Slackware, and Itanium Fedora, and SPARC Redhat; while also getting very good performance in all cases (e.g. no emulation)?

Well, OK, a 32bit and a 64bit binary, then.