Since I've been asked a few times whether it's possible for
someone to adopt or continue the development of Ion, now that
I'm unlikely to work on it, I thought I should post my thoughts
here on the list.
First of all, as it always has been, it is, of course, possible
for people to fork a _renamed_ project, and develop it into
whatever direction. But, for various reasons, such complete
forks are not entirely desirable, and it would be better if
any new developments that fit under the banner "Ion" could
keep using this name.
I always intended Ion3plus as a sort of "wiki branch", where
most patches fitting some loose guidelines are welcome, and
that still remains the case.. but I won't waste time applying
them to the repositories (darcs and my scripts being broken on
Cygwin, etc.), anyone taking over its maintenance would have
to host it. These guidelines are there to keep the project
true to the name Ion, and therefore include
* Quality code
* A veto for me for major changes that do not simply enhance
existing features. XFascistType and Shitorama have snowball's
chance in hell of getting into Ion. Ion runs on pure X11, not
fugly complex extensions.
It's all, of course, a bit vague, as it should be; strict
catch-all terms and licenses suck anyway, and more should
be based on case-by-case negotations. Therefore, initially,
I would have to review all changes to see that whoever takes
over, can produce good code (or filter out bad code from
others)... take it as a job negotation, or trial period. If
I'm satisfied with the results, then there shall be more
free hands but, still, attempts at the scale of adding
Shitorama or XFuglyType should be passed through me (to
be rejected).
As for development after Ion3plus, which shouldn't
_fundamentally_ stray too far from Ion3, I have some new
ideas to try for Ion4, that I'd still like to see implemented.
I just doubt I'm going to do it myself... I'd really like
to move to the management department already, and have
someone else do the gruntwork. I'm not yet ready to just
give up the ideas, for various reasons, but if there's
good work on Ion3plus... or other arrangements are reached
that ensure that they're implemented in Ion instead of
a clone... I will consider that. I would also require
at that point that Ion be ported to Windows and, why not,
OS X at. Not necessarily as a full WM, but rather as an
"IDE" managing some nicely behaving embeddable applications.
If I magically found the time and interest to actually do
the gruntwork on Ion4, it would most likely be a Windows
program in any case. (Unless Apple somehow decided to add
a Trackpoint on their laptops and support unblurred fonts
- or screen resolutions quadrupled[1] - and my T43 died
so I had to buy current shallowscreen crap.)
---
[1] To replace my 5 year old phone with dying battery, and 6 year
old mp3 player, I recently got a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, as it
was the only sub-300e touchscreen phone with standard USB and
headphone sockets. (Easily loseable adapters suck. On the
downside, no charging off USB, which some competitors' more
expensive models would have. But you can get two two of these
for the price of an iTrendClown & co.)
I like the touchscreen. With hand-writing recognition (which
could admittedly perform even better), it makes the device
vastly more usable than T9 or even a mini-keyboard. But
that is not the topic of this footnote, so no more on that.
The device blurry fonts. Perhaps surprisingly, they're not actually
that bad in the �main interface. Partly this can be attributed to
the "graphical" interface style, partly to usage, partly to choice
of font, but mostly to the 230dpi screen, which makes sub-100dpi
desktop displays and even ~120dpi laptop displays pale in comparison.
By usage I mean that you don't read text for extended lengths
on the phone, as on the computer. By choice of font I mean that
the font in the interface is simple and thick, so the proportion
of blurred pixels is small. It's not so great for reading texts,
and the thinner font in the browser handles the blurring much
more poorly. But, still, it's vastly more tolerable than on
soddy computer displays resolutions, which are still the
technological equivalent of the PC beeper, which could not
play real music tolerably, only music designed for it.
Still, despite the blurring being more tolerable on the phone
than I expected, it confirms that 200dpi is not enough resolution
in serious use and with a wide range of fonts, for blurring not
to annoy. And, yet, OS makers keep pushing on the blur-fascist
front.
--
Windows may blow, but Linux sucks the crap in the wind.
