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Off-Topic: Original GUI GoalsOff-Topic: Original GUI GoalsPosted May 19, 2004 18:03 UTC (Wed) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266)In reply to: Off-Topic: Original GUI Goals by doodaddy Parent article: The Spatial Way You may have never seen a word-processor embedded in a browser, but my company actually makes products that use that exact technology (we do document automation software). It's very useful to be able to embed a word processor. I'm not sure if you don't really have a contradiction: you want to see the "Unix way" but you don't want people embedding apps in other apps. In a GUI world, wouldn't the Unix way be to re-use an app that someone else wrote, in order to make your app do more? You may complain about the implementation of OLE in Windows, or its equivalent technologies in KDE/Gnome, but the concepts are very powerful and the impelmentation can be useful. Some programmers will get it wrong, and overdo the embedding thing, but in general it's a good idea. Conceptually, there's no reason why a document has to be opened in a different window when you're browsing the web. A JPEG opens inline, why can't a PDF or Word doc? (Security flaws inherent in opening a word doc don't apply to this discussion, since I'm talking about the concept of an embedded doc, not the poor MS implementation).
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Off-Topic: Original GUI Goals Posted May 20, 2004 15:37 UTC (Thu) by doodaddy (guest, #10649) [Link] I have seen a word doc in a browser, and you make a good point that uses can be made of this feature. I guess my point is that I don't see the strong connection between this kind of stuff and a desktop. I've got to take all of Gnome (or KDE) or none. They aren't really "desktops" but exclusive, expensive programming uber-environments. They each have an entire stack of (heavy) libraries, except that you can't interchange the layers of the stack. That is what I mean by violating the Unix Way.I wish a particular interprocess tool or two had calcified before desktops were built on top of them. (No one seems to like Corba.) In the meantime, Gnome and KDE suck up all the media oxygen for the "desktop wars" when they are too similar in the grand scheme of things to be worth the discussion. And the final choice of desktop will mean the final choice of a whole stack of libraries. I'd rather see the battle of *desktops* be somewhere else. That is all.
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