Friday, August 21, 2026

Free GUI: Core Applications

 All Posts Tagged: Free GUI  

Major desktop environments develop "core applications" that use the right GUI tools to make them ultra-compatible with the environment. This typically consists of a couple system utilities, a settings manager, a file manager, and a terminal emulator.

Free GUI's equivalent alternative to developing core applications is a set of assistive tools for creating its special form of custom applications.

The form that these tools come to exist in is a large contributing factor in why the application ecosystem generally is so up in the air. 

But I am going to describe these ideas in this post (and maybe some more posts) and attempt to describe their respective reasoning.

Most of these ideas that I have floating around would each require heavy development, and it is unclear to me as of yet, how they would be refactored or consolidated in a final cohesive design.

Plus, the UX Languages

In combination with the the ideas in this post, there is also an accruing number of potential approaches for user-facing UX languages that might span from:

  • a designated markup-type language
    • text elements
    • GUI positioning
    • simple action calls
    • API comprehension
  • to a designated configuration language
    • speaks the markup language
    • simple action calls
    • API comprehension
  • to a designated json-type data format
    • predefined dictionaries
    • custom dictionaries
  • to designated simple scripting language
  • to dedicated, full development language
    • with special compilation sandbox
  • to ultimately, the ability to opt out of the sandbox to develop with "any" liberties
  • to all of the above

Note:

  • The version of each of these languages might specifically correspond to respective DE versions


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