Re: [9fans] UI design | enhancements.

[Lucio De Re]

The thing is, a UI is a combination of far too many personal tastes
and habits and a GUI multi-dimensionally more so. It's like a marble
slab that needs a Michelangelo to turn it into an image.

We've had one Michelangelo and a Rodin and only a few Greek sculptors
in the past, what, three thousand years? Do we really think that a
near infinite number of monkeys is now going to solve that problem,
specially when the marble slab is undergoing its own metamorphosis
underfoot?

Good luck!

Lucio.

Re: [9fans] UI design | enhancements.

[hiro]

> wondering if anyone else or a group of us could work towards

no, you!

Re: [9fans] UI design | enhancements.

[Ethan Gardener]

No offense taken, but just to note: I found Plan 9 very refreshing and very 
useful as it is.  It was a relief after the massive noise and clumsiness of 
traditional GUI, and the different but still irritating inherent clumsiness and 
bugginess of terminal emulation. That's not to say Plan 9 is without irritants, 
but it's the least irritating window system I've ever used.

You know, I'm *sure* that any goodness in today's GUIs is not the result of the 
paradigm but rather a good deal of care and sense, requiring considerable time 
and education, respectively.  The paradigm helps by standardising a few aspects 
of interaction, but you can't just apply it to programs and expect good 
results. It arguably has too few standards and too many features.  Far too many 
programs end up with nonsense like Celestia, where View Options is not under 
View but under the adjacent Render menu. I often want View Options to toggle 
certain markers, choosing between orienting the view and taking in the scene, 
but it's too out of the way; it doesn't have a shortcut because the author 
didn't imagine my use case.  The item browsers which I want even more often 
don't have keybindings either, which is astonishing! Other options are hidden 
under sub-menus; immensely fiddly things that they are.  

The goodness in Plan 9's interfaces comes largely from a desire not to 
implement too much.  Instead, many of them are programmable.  Despite this, 
there are still major faults.  For instance, Acme's own window system is 
intrusive unless you follow a very specific workflow which was designed for 
programming only, and doesn't even seem to work for all programmers. Sam's dual 
clipboards are seriously intrusive for anyone who deals with a lot of snippets 
of text inside and outside the editor. (I've finally started using Sam now my 
usage is different, but for the entirety of my actual Plan 9 use it was just 
too painful.) 


Besides, why would we want to attract people who are put off by superficial 
differences when the differences go all the way down? And, if I remember right, 
many Linux-lovers have bigger problems with those deeper issues than they do 
with the window system.  Those who can accept good-but-different internal 
design can and do accept different interface design.

[9fans] UI design | enhancements.

[Darren Wise]

Hey folks,

I rarely post in-fact maybe my second ever, I was wondering if anyone 
else or a group of us could work towards some window manager UI 
modifications to appear more attractive in some form from the current 
interface appearing in comparison to dwm(on other Nix forks) to a more 
usable friendly interface like gnome, KDE and the like.


I'm just throwing the idea about really, I've not had much time at all 
with Plan9 but from just my bare basic usage I can already see a great 
future for Plan9 as a whole. As I say what with commitments currently 
the last few years I could be way out of my depth and experience even 
mentioning this and don't mind getting flamed a little.


From my point of view and limited knowledge, usage even though very 
streamlined, simple and very fast indeed it can become daunting for new 
users to adopt, it's not off-putting just a little daunting and seems 
somewhat inflexible to begin with. I'm sure it would attract a much 
wider community with a few simple UI modifications and I'd like to hear 
what others think about the subject in general.


*Maybe I should read and research more, either way I don't mean or wish 
to offend anyone mentioning the above, even this post in some form might 
jump start someone else or a group to just go ahead or have had thoughts 
of the same previously.. Who know eh, it's Plan9.


--
WISECORP 
Darren Wise
eMail: dar...@wisecorp.co.uk 
www: https://wisecorp.co.uk





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