lazypenguin 9 minutes ago [–]
Qt is great and I get disappointed that the discussions surrounding it often devolve into nitpicking the pricing and licensing terms. Seems people are less willing to pay for high quality tools these days.
QT
It's Qt. Pronounced "cute". So yes.
>>1,2
There is a reasoned critique of the overuse of GUIs, specifically when it might be that a system of symbols, search, commands, and hot-keys would be more efficient. At the same time I don't think anyone can deny the utility of dynamic visualization (in many fields), and use of GUIs in programs which perform visual tasks. (e.g. paint, 3d modeling, and game design) The failure to resolve this contradiction seems to be at the root of the black and white thinking regarding this issue. I believe that TempleOS presents most of a compelling solution to the resolution of this contradiction in many domains. There is unfortunately a further issue though with GUI frameworks as they exist.
GUI frameworks as they exist are exceptionally static, with any configuration options being provided by the graces of the developer in a limited manner which is incompatible with other applications. The user is not given control over the user interface, but rather it is enforced on them from above in a way which is not cohesive or easily intuited from the rest of the interface of their computing system. If you for example contrast something like Morphic which allows for dynamic modification of the GUI at run-time in a cohesive way, and is extensible so that it can even dynamically modify OpenGL objects, Qt is simply incomparable.
Licensing is an issue which similar divides the Lisp community. Naggum for example was a stanch advocate that it's unrealistic to expect quality free software. Sussman by contrast was a founding member of the FSF and has been a life long advocate. I don't think the contradictions between our system of resource allocation, the quality of our products, and our freedom are likely to be resolvable in the domain of software. I think we're going to continue to see software degrade in quality, the closing or effective closing of the source code, along with the consolidation of software as we continue to pile up colossal broken abstractions on top of colossal broken abstraction. Qt is just an example of a broken society.
I believe that TempleOS presents most of a compelling solution to the resolution of this contradiction in many domains.
has anyone ported this gui system to normal C?
>>5
Pick plan9c or holyc, normal c isn't capable of remotely sane graphics..
has anyone ported this gui system to normal C?
I wasn't so much referring to the TempleOS GUI system there as the embedding, and first class support for bitmaps, and polygonal 3d graphics. It's not a complete solution either, these embedded items are still based on lines with regards to printing for example. Further why stop at bitmaps and polygonal 3d graphics? Literate programming is just the embedding of program source in a text document with ideally embedded typesetting. A slip-box (zettlekasten) is just arbitrary links between text documents within the documents. Why not have links to arbitrary items at arbitrary positions, notes linking directly to the podcast, blog, or book that they came from? Why not have links updated when a resource is updated? Why are there still second class objects?
Also if you actually look at the interfaces of TempleOS some I think are rather restrictive. If you look at the bitmap and 3d polygon construction software to me they are excessively rigid and ungraphical. If you're going to be using your mouse anyway, or even a drawing tablet, an interface based on the keyboard is not necessarily the best. I think something closer to Krita's interface is a better example of what a paint application should be. Although the GUI should still be dynamically and graphically configurable by the user at run-time in a manner universal on the system like Morphic on SmallTalk.
I don't actually know how GUI programming works in TempleOS, I get the impression that it wouldn't be graphical, and I rather think that should be an option. I do know that it provides an infintly less baroque graphical library in contrast to something like OpenGL, but I have done fairly little graphical programming, basically just blitting raster onto the screen, setting up an OpenGL context etc. I don't really know where we should go, but it does seem like it shouldn't be OpenGL or similar. Judging by the rest of the OS I wouldn't be surprised if Terry had some decent ideas we can learn from, along with many ideas we could do without.
As long as it is distributed as source code, I guess it is technically non-binary.
>>8
free software is communism
>>9
Sounds based
>>10
Based but not redpilled or is it really "red"pilled after all.