[OT] The lessons of Ion

[François Chaplais]

by curiosity, are you old enough to have lived the times where the controversy in the unix world that was:
what is the best editor: vi or ed (hint: at that time, emacs did not exist)?

I have, and, as far as I am concerned, I avoid by any means available OSs that make you feel like you are playing colossal cave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure
The pervert idea that Firefox should be called  iceweasel makes me puke.

And, on a non tangential relevant point, the whole point of Revolution is to facilitate the construction of GUI programs over transcripts. 

Le 18 sept. 2010 à 00:17, Peter Alcibiades a écrit :

> The interesting thing about ion is that it makes you think really hard 
> about what is ease of use, what is user friendly, what about those famous 
> laws, the HIG, and the one about where your points of clicking ought to be 
> that I always forget the name of because I hate it so much.  Here is how 
> Ion2 works.
> 
> It is sort of tangentially relevant because if you were packing a one app 
> OS, and you wanted a one app window manager, basically an embedded Rev app, 
> ion would be one way to do it.  As long as you do not have too many new 
> windows overlapping, however.
> 
> You start out looking at a totally blank screen with a top border which 
> says 'empty frame' at the top.  It is also totally black except this 
> border, which is a quite attractive shade of blue/grey, with white 
> lettering on it.  There are no clues what to do next.
> 
> You are an insider or have a crib sheet, and so you know that F1 brings up 
> a man page, F2 opens a terminal (the second most important thing a guy 
> needs in his interface), and F3 lets you launch an app by name, which is a 
> nice to have but not essential, because real men launch from a terminal, of 
> course.  
> 
> So lets say you go ahead, and you type in icewe followed by a tab.  It will 
> complete to iceweasel, which is the Debian name for firefox (yes, you had 
> to know that), and when you hit enter, firefox launches and occupies the 
> entire screen.  OK, you think, how about mail?  So you hit F3 again, now 
> you type in kmail, hit enter, and up pops your email.  In a tab, also 
> occupying the entire screen. 
> 
> Now you have an idea.  Why don't we split the screen?  So now you do alt+k 
> s.  instantly, your pane is split into two equal parts, vertically, one 
> like the first, black with nothing in it, the other with your two tabs.  
> You want to resize?  alt+r and use the arrow keys.  You want to kill a 
> panel?  Just right click in the border and close.  Same thing for a tab.
> 
> You are geting bored and desperately want the full Debian menu?  F12 brings 
> it up.
> 
> It sounds impossible, and rather ridiculous.  But here is what is amazing.  
> There comes a point at which all this suddenly becomes automatic as a way 
> of working.  You do not think about it or look for your crib sheet, you 
> just enter a few characters, and things happen.  You never have one window 
> behind another, nothing ever overlaps.  You get used to splitting up your 
> panes just so, for instance a calculator always open in the top right of 
> your three or four.  A file manager under it.  Then the main window.  A 
> terminal someplace of course.
> 
> There are no, zero widgets.  No taskbar.  No clock or date.  Nothing to 
> tell you about the status of the network.  What is F2 for, after all?  
> Presumably one of your little panes someplace is always running a terminal, 
> so who needs widgets?  There are not even any borders.  All you see is apps 
> and a tiny little bar at the top telling yoiu which tab you are in by going 
> a paler shade of blue grey.
> 
> I have to tell you, this is an experience to make you think and scratch 
> your head and think some more.  If Apple were right, it should not work.  
> If Gnome were right, it should not work.  And on day 1 it does not.  But on 
> day n, it not only works, it feels just perfectly right and automatic, your 
> fingers just do things, and you forget you are using Ion, its just how 
> things are done here.
> 
> Try it.  You will never feel the same about HIGs and that guy and his silly 
> law again.  Fitts he might have been.  And you will never again confuse 
> being easy to use on day 1 for the ignorant with being easy to use  when 
> you know it well and are experienced.  No, they are completely different 
> things.
> 
> Ion is a bit under resourced at the moment, as Richard pointed out.  But 
> for the deprived minimalist, there are other alternatives, most notably 
> from the nosuck school of software, wmii, awesome, and a couple more of 
> that ilk.  If you are interested enough to try ion, have a look at wmii and 
> its associates too.  Anyone with a serious interest in man computer 
> interfaces will find it worth the effort.
> 
> Peter
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