Women in Technology

Article:		Switching Back to Desktop Linux
Subject:		The UI matters
Date:		2006-06-02 07:08:27
From:		tbuskey
I had a similar experience w/ MacOSX. I used MacOS extensively around System 6 to 7 timeframe and liked it very much. I wish both MacOSX and Windows let me have a virtual desktop ala kde/gnome/fvwm2/olvwm. I live in an xterm world with up to 100 xterm/editor/browser/etc windows open. The standard Win/OSX desktops don't do that. This isn't a bash on the stock UI. It's great for the average office worker working in 1-2 applications. I'm not the target audience and it doesn't fit. Why don't cp/tar/mv etc desl with resource forks? Use those utilities on your user's classic mac data (quark?) and you lost data! Yes, there's another command that does it. Why not at least have a see also entry on the man page for cp/mv/tar to it?

Showing messages 1 through 4 of 4.

• The UI matters
  2006-06-02 08:17:48  daviddennis [View]
  
  
  The command line applications now deal with resource forks just fine, starting in Tiger.
  
  It would be nice to see virtual desktops in MacOS X. Oddly enough, I first saw them on a SGI machine and think the interface was superior to what I've seen in Linux. They're definitely a boost for productivity, and that kept me using my SGI machine as a desktop until I switched virtually all my computing to MacOS X, where it remains today.
  
  That being said, what I really love about MacOS X is how it combines the best of the proprietary and open source worlds. I can do all the Unix-style development I want (mainly web server applications) and still use polished commercial email, photo editing and (the huge strength of the platform) video editing applications.
  
  When I started using MacOS X, the great looking fonts were an enormous part of the appeal. I gather now you have similar things in Linux (and even Windows, not that I want to go there). Now, I really love the designer look and feel of Apple's interface, the polished quality of the computers, and the great Apple applications like Final Cut Pro.
  
  I can see someone who doesn't need or care for those things preferring Linux.
  
  D
• The UI matters
  2006-06-06 22:53:36  Ronald_Pottol [View]
  
  
  http://virtuedesktops.info/ Does virtual desktops fairly well (I'll wait until I can replace my ibook to switch back, until I found Virtue, I was thinking I'd switch to a desktop running Linux).
  
  I'll switch back to Linux too, I'm tired of not having apt, of having to manually track and upgrade apps, let alone find them.

• resource forks, virtual desktops etc.
  2006-06-02 08:12:45  saschabrossmann [View]
  
  
  the resource fork awareness problem has been fixed with tiger. all of the shell tools now deal properly with resource forks. if they still have to, that is: most applications i know have not used the resource fork for any relevant(!) data since years (say hello to windows data exchange). the only exceptions i still encounter from time to time are internet shortcuts (.webloc) and classical postscript fonts. and that's it.
  
  concerning virtual desktops i have become quite happy with virtue (a fork from desktop manager). i still would like to see some improvements with the default terminal application, though (like window tabs, use of x11 bitmap fonts, fullscreen mode, a proper meta key, more speed, extended coluor support... for example -- otherwise i think it is quite nice)
  
  otherwise comparing the (G)UI to x11 plus gnome/kde/whatever and some other comparisons in the article make me faintly smile... oh no, i am not going to waste my time on that topic. >;->
• resource forks, virtual desktops etc.
  2006-06-04 19:13:24  sjk [View]
  
  
  all of the shell tools now deal properly with resource forks. if they still have to, that is: ...
  
  Well, that depends how you're defining "shell tools". :-)
  
  It's still very easy to accidentally zap resource forks if you're not careful manipulating files with many Unix commands. Any sort of stdout redirection can be troublesome, e.g. substitutions/replacements using traditional Unix commands like awk, sed, etc. since none of them (or any shells!) are resource fork-aware. Using language commands like perl, python, ruby (invoked directly or indirectly) can easily clobber resource forks. The BOMArchive GUI tool preserve resource forks but zip/unzip commands don't. Pick your poison.