:: Re: [DNG] Eye candy: I have a quest…
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Author: Rick Moen
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] Eye candy: I have a question about libsystemd0 in devuan ascii,
Quoting Steve Litt (slitt@???):

> On Wed, 21 Jun 2017 13:44:34 +0100
> KatolaZ <katolaz@???> wrote:
>
> > Steve Jobs understood that users must be won with eyecandies, and on
> > that side we will never be able to beat Apple. Not because Free
> > Software cannot produce better eyecandies, but because the newly-won
> > users, lured through eyecandies, would flee back to Apple as soon as
> > Apple provides a more appealing set of eyecandies.
>
> I very well could be insane, but I've always thought that Windowmaker
> is extremely beautiful. I don't understand Windowmaker, and I can't get
> it to do what I need, but when it comes to eye candy, I find Windowmaker
> the best. Windowmaker is also lightweight, and as far as I know, it has
> no association with either systemd or dbus.
>
> It would be cool as hell if somebody who likes the way Windowmaker
> looks could modify it to be more useable by someone understanding the
> Win9x user interface. If somebody does that, I'll help with the
> documentation.


This would of course be welcome, but runs against the grain of what
Window Maker is all about: It's an implementation of the OPENSTEP
specification based on NeXT Computer's NeXTStep, which as some of us
aging fans of same know, was a proprietary BSD variant using Display
PostScript rather than X11 as its display engine. NeXTStep charmed many
of us back in the day by being elegant, and uncluttered. It was
extremely self-consistent and simple in its graphical UI, but that
graphical UI simply had different operational semantics than the
(metaphorical) genetic line of descent (in UI design) represented by
Motif -> Win3x -> Win9x -> WinNT. And thus, the same is now true of
Window Maker and its (largely notional) GNUstep DE, those having been
directly inspired by NeXTStep.

Win9x-UI habituees might be happier with IceWM or something like that,
that actually aspires to behave more-or-less the way MS-Windows does.