Re: X11 Enhancements for Tiger
Re: X11 Enhancements for Tiger
- Subject: Re: X11 Enhancements for Tiger
- From: email@hidden
- Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2005 16:41:27 -0500
Sean, sorry it has taken me a while to get back. I had you flagged and
time got away for a few days.
I don't know if it is necessary _yet_ to populate the Menubar with
application specific functions. It would be best if this were taken in
steps in that with this update we simply have X11 moved into a system
service rather than an application offering itself as a continually
running service as a small icon over by the clock, Spotlight, etc.
Perhaps a good thing to do at this point as well would be to create a
running X11 application down in the Dock like other normal OS X apps
just to be able to quickly see and terminate (or perhaps "Keep In
Dock") rapidly. These icons could be either provided from a the app's
own icon or a resource fork that users could assign through the Info
view for that icon, etc. I do not know though if this is necessary at
this time. Basically the project of getting to the point where X11
apps act as true OS X apps would be done in phases:
1st) get X11 set up to operate like a service and simply list running
X11 apps under a hierarchy tree or a flat menu in the dropdown. Also
assign Exposé/Dashboard like functionality to this so as to have quick
manipulation of X11 apps and windows. There would be three
exposé/dashboard like function keys needed: toggle Root/Rootless mode,
show all X11 Apps/Hide all X11 Apps, bring X11 Apps to the
foreground/stick in background. Thoughts on this? Trying to keep it
as simple as possible for the developers who would need to make changes.
2nd) Push all X11 App icons into the Dock and integrate the
pasteboard/x11 copy/paste/kill, etc. buffers more thoroughly. So, for
example, a ctrl-k will place the contents into the yank buffer that
exists in OS X pasteboard or whatever is used to store that as well.
Basically creating a uniform feel/user interface between the window
servers.
3rd) Eventually extract the X11 applications' menus information and
place them into the Menubar so that they truly start to have the OS X
control/feel.
4th) skin the interfaces appropriately. Create an OS X skin for gtk,
kde, etc. interfaces and apply this appropriately to their
applications. Also remove (not sure how this would be done, but it
seems that there would be a way) the built-in menubars for applications
and just use the standard OS X Menubar...
Any thoughts, additions, ideas, corrections, improvements, critique as
to why things won't work? I really think that a direction such as this
would help X11 and some bases of users quite a bit to really enjoy Mac
OS X more while using certain applications. This would also help to
alleviate issues such as OpenOffice not integrating well; why integrate
it and rewrite it if there is no need and the feel of OS X is
maintained and the performance is the same? It's all about keeping
uniformity and simplicity for the user.
Thanks for the inquiry for thinking that this is interesting!
-George
On Mar 10, 2005, at 11:50 PM, Sean Ahern wrote:
email@hidden wrote:
Well, I'm not actually talking about managing the applications within
X11 and so forth, just simply the X11 interface itself. Rather than
putting the X11 application within the Dock, push its controls into
the menubar. Also the shortcut I was referring to is just a way to
more quickly and efficiently control and bring X11 into and out of the
foreground as well as quickly switch between root/nonroot display
mode.
It doesn't really seem that you need to do anything at all with the
way the widgets and they way that they're controlled with what I'm
talking about as this is all simply putting another face on the way
things are currently handled... Please correct me or rephrase your
thoughts if I'm missing something here.
Ah, it appears I misunderstood you. I thought you were talking about
applications running within the X11 environment. My mistake.
I agree that having a quick way of taking X11 in and out of
rooted/rootless mode would be very useful.
The idea of moving all of X11's controls into a menubar item is an
interesting one. If one considers X11.app to be a system service rather
than an application, per se, an Application must be identified as the
current one, so that an appropriate Application menubar is displayed at
the top of the screen. And that menubar must be populated with menus
and menu items that mean something to the "current" application. Can
you share your thoughts on this?
email@hidden wrote:
1) If you simply took the X11 app as it currently runs and turn it
into a menubar item so that all contents in the menubar (Preferences,
Applications, Edit, Window, Help) would all be items in the menubar
icon dropdown. Just simply use the stylized X logo and pop it in up
by the time and spotlight and you'd have much happier users. There
is no reason to have it otherwise as it is more a system service and
server than an application. Or at least give users the option to
have this.
-Sean
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925-422-1648
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