Hi,
I've written an initial version of a FreeMWare GUI prototype in Java, and
I've written a mini-FAQ about it (see below).
You can download the source at:
http://huizen.dds.nl/~wottie/fmw-gui-20000218.tar.gz (12k)
It was written with jdk version 1.1.7 on Linux/i386. I've not tested it with
jdk 1.2.x. Instructions on how to run it are included with the source.
I'm not shure as to whether this should go into the CVS server, as the
source distribution contains 6 (small) GIF images.
Mini-FAQ
--------
"Why?"
The Open Source community is always said to be a bad designer when
it comes to designing User Interfaces for their programs. This I
want to change. The whole idea of this project is to create a
prototype of the FreeMWare GUI, test out every little detail of it,
and generally make it easy and intuitive to use, so the final
implementation of the FreeMWare GUI can use it as a reference model.
"Why Java?"
Java is the only real cross-platform language I could think of that
supports GUI programming, and is it's (sortof) free. That, and using
Java gives me the ability to convince my school (where I'm supposed
to learn it) that I really do know how to program in it :^).
"Is this really necessary?"
Yes, I do think so. Firstly, it would clearly show that the Open
Source community takes things such as good and intuitive User
Interface development seriously.
Secondly, it could be used to further promote FreeMWare, by being
able to use it faor screenshots and demos.
"Why not work on the main FreeMWare source directly?"
By making this a separate project, you can effectively parallelize
the development of both projects, and prevend situations where one
part of the developers would have to wait for the other part to be
actually able to compile the FreeMWare source.
"Why doing this now, instead of waiting until FreeMWare is sortof finished?"
FreeMWare is a project that is targetted at the 'ordinary desktop
user', which is not necessarily a programming guru. This means that
the User Interface of FreeMWare is a very important aspect of it. So
we might as well start now, so we'd have a fully functional User
Interface in The Real Thing by the time it's ready for beta, than
wait till then and quickly throw in some GUI routines.
Wouter
--
* Wouter Coene * Linux/sed/PHP3/OS development *
* Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * PGP key on request *
Daily crap:
Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all
real understanding. An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an
understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors.
-- R. Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
