Free GUI: Application "Ecosystem"

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The aforementioned application "ecosystem" is the most moving-est of the moving targets in this ideation of Free GUI. It is kind of a blind list of disconnected wants that likely overlap with each other, and are very hard to express in words (as UX design already is, let alone when it's a venture into new territory.)

The point is to hone in on the purpose that these ideas intend to collectively accomplish - a beating heart that ties them together to make them jive and click to produce something special. A killer whale is big, but a beached whale is too big and too slow, not to mention pretty morbid boys.

Free GUI: Window Manager Capabilities

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This post here mentioned some things about a window position API. This post is about describing some more API specifics and window manager capabilities.

I make a low key distinction between "capabilities" and "features" here, because capabilities could emerge into various custom features, or they could be prevented from becoming available to a use-case or workflow. It would all depend on any given system's configuration and scripting.

Free GUI: Containerized Apps (Plus Segues)

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A desktop and application menu should be able to recognize and handle designations of containerized GUI applications to maintain a UX that makes sense with their usage context and priority.

Containers in this context might be used for handling favored application versions, or alternating versioning, or handling applications with multiple different configurations. This might also be useful in a development context. It might apply to making something like Docker or Podman more convenient on the desktop

Free GUI: Browser Engine

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Free GUI needs a browser engine that can work with a system-wide customizable toolbar system, and whatever other system-wide features that get incorporated into the application ecosystem infrastructure. (spoken with a mockingly nerdy lisp while pushing your over-sized glasses back up your nose.)

More on Free GUI

Some additional random thoughts and ideas around Free GUI.

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Staying Grounded on Free GUI

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Best way to sum up grounding my last post is that it is a lot more hyperbole than I usually engage in on this blog. Still, I am very tempted to continue and to go full-on hard-sell and branding with this idea.

Free GUI is a reference to an idea for a new way of doing GUI for an OS desktop environment, as well as an application ecosystem. It is a series of standards, and an implementation of a user-facing GUI toolkit - as opposed to a graphical toolkit like GTK, Iced, or QT.

It is such an intense idea that by comparison to other desktops, it is emotionally closer to the idea of something like the RedoxOS project, although RedoxOS is an OS. The comparison is that it is a long term project that probably does not get truly seen for a proportionally long period across the time span of its development. This is different than a project like Hyprland has been for instance, where many people are using it early on, while it is still being very actively developed and changed.

(As a sidenote, RedoxOS is just about to get seen a lot more, if/when it gets general Linux VM support.)

For GUI to Be Free for Non-Developers

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(Non-Developers AND Developers)

There is no great way to get UX right in a concise way. (It is possible to do better yes) Also very relevant is that really good UX requires too much specific attention, and then it gets locked in every time you think you have it just perfect. 

• Good UX is expensive and difficult in the short term and confining in the longterm.
• Good UX typically requires strange means of gathering user data
• After the fact, there're too few or too many biased deciders to go through for UX changes.
• improvements are not objective. Too many people that will be heartbroken, even if the UX wasn't well thought out in the first place. Misguided familiarity even with flaws. Results in group choice paralysis
• disconnected purposes of software influence what constitutes good design without examination

Thus, if you want to get a single, concise UX, you will be handicapping Linux.

UX for Linux does not only bare the typical problem of pleasing all people, all the time. It caries an additional challenge of there being more options of what to do on Linux, given its very many purposes and user types, and a desired propensity towards freedom and options. Thus, if you want to get a single, concise UX, you are effectively handicapping Linux.

The solution is for there to be at least one or two options (For a DE, and compatible Toolkit) that are about being more-or-less Windows replacements, but then to have a new advanced toolkit for a DE and application ecosystem that is built on the idea of applications that share a common method for making customizations to the UX, small and large. (Obviously still compatible with old application ecosystems.)

An Obvious Take on FOSS Funding

The idea of trying to create institutions that are not corrupt, and who have the right priorities does not require any particularly ingenious skill - just people with a clue, who also have the willpower. 

That simple thing for FOSS will be what people call cult behavior. But it's just what all institutions with particular interests do - look out for their interests. For FOSS, that includes a much stronger focus on funding smart infrastructure chains and pathways. - Looking for logical gaps in applications and tools, and trying to fill them in.

In the case of FOSS, there is not a singular institutional form (as in non-profit, for-profit). If for-profits can do it, then more power to them. If non-profits can do it, then more power to them.

If development community can be see a mutual benefit to contribution, then more power to them for building the same things that the FOSS institutions are building: even the for-profits.

Command Wiki: Backend Development

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The elephant in the room is the plan for backend development.

This is a strange question in the real world, because I don't know how invested I am personally going to be in this project. I tend to write the ideal situation, but in reality could actually fall back quite a bit, to the closest thing I can do at a given time.

Of course falling back to different technologies is terrible, because it does not create an application that could serve as a foundation towards the more ideal one.

Command Wiki: Personal Development Intentions

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If I personally start this project, it will definitely have to go through one or two iterations of experimental development first, so I can learn the ropes. The full version of this application is too large a project for one individual to develop. I will have to see how it pans out personally.

I am not upset by people trying to build something like this. My advice is to not do it yourself if you are not actually in love with the idea itself, as opposed to seeing a way to charge for plugins or chop the application up.

Messages can be sent to this blog to consult about its ideas if so desired. I am trying to make enough sense about it to transmit its vision.

Command Wiki: High Level Structure

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"High Level Structure" could also be read, "High Layer Structure". It is about the expression of data structures that is made possible at the UX layer. It is specifically about how the application's users can create things at the frontend, as opposed to low layer backend programming code of the application. 

This is inclusive of:

• GUI UX tools
• Text-based syntax coding and markup UX
• Abstract models / logic models / relationship models

The concept of this high level structure is to provide basic means to creating more emergent complexity from it. It's about using these tools to provide the maximum amount of practical usability within the confines of non-professional level coding. These tools include GUI tools, markup syntax, coding syntax, and pre-configured models of abstract data representations.

Command Wiki: Daily Driving and Plugins

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As a natural consequence to fulfilling its educational objectives, this application would also be good at serving as a daily driver. There will always be new and old information that remains on the periphery of users' minds, and there will always be new things to learn in the future.

Having the ability to serve as a way to connect knowledge with implementing the knowledge is like note taking, but it becomes something of a different animal as a whole. It's more multi-purpose than note taking.

Terminal Command and Scripting Wiki

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3 stages of learning are:

1. mimicking and memorization
2. static perceived understanding and memorization with awkward dynamism
3. working dynamic understanding with owned knowledge and context.

(1. Child 2. Teenager 3. Adult)

This description of learning stages are major in the process of going from child to adult, but they are still very descriptive of adult learning, especially when learning very new or alien skillsets.

Almost zero software applications are built to transition users between these phases of learning.