Which is better, Chevy or Ford?

Which is better, Chevy or Ford?

Coke.

Beta was better than VHS, yet failed to make inroads on the desktop (or the equivalent).

I'm talking about technical abilities here, not what folks like to use. It's certainly much easier to use Windows than Unix. It's much easier to use a factory CD player than an empeg. Yet neither of us choose the easier thing. Why?

Which is better, Chevy or Ford?

Coke.

At least we can agree on one thing.

If you port it let us know. It might be amusing to control the empeg from the Treo.

I'm talking about technical abilities here, not what folks like to use. It's certainly much easier to use Windows than Unix. It's much easier to use a factory CD player than an empeg. Yet neither of us choose the easier thing. Why?

I'm still waiting for the part where you tell me what "features" X has that make it a better GUI for a desktop operating system. The features you mentioned make it great for a server.

I think that Windows is a great desktop OS and an terrible server OS, just as I think the reverse is true for UNIX. But I think UNIX (especially Linux) has the potential to be both, and I think X, and the absence of one true standard GUI, together keep that from happening.

Stun/Kill Remote? why did the visual button have stun/kill printed under it on that remote?

I'm still waiting for the part where you tell me what "features" X has that make it a better GUI for a desktop operating system.[/list]I never said it was. I could come up with a few ancillary things, mostly customability related (for me it's things like being able to focus without clicking, focus without raising, and even click without raising, some of which you can do with MS Windows, but not without sacrificing stability, IME).

I think that X has a greater feature set than MS Windows' GUI. Note that X doesn't include Xm, Xaw, Gtk, etc. The fact that they failed to specify a solid consistent user interface is both a shortcoming and a feature IMO. But there are a lot of inconsistencies within MS Windows, too, even in MS apps, not to mention absurd skinnable and UI-non-compliant applications like WinAmp, RealOne, and Trillian (the UI is absurd, not necessarily the app itself).

The thing is, X has all the features that MS Windows' GUI has, plus more. It's the application developers combined with the lack of a consistent UI spec that have ``ruined'' it, IMO.

Because we'd spent the whole afternoon at the whiteboard discussing the button layout. I guess the whiteboard markers had got to us by that point .

Is "white board" equivalent to a dry erase board?

Yes. Even in the US. I hear whiteboard much more often than dry-erase board, and I'm only one state away from you.

i'm definately interested in this too if you manage to get it.

The thing is, X has all the features that MS Windows' GUI has, plus more. It's the application developers combined with the lack of a consistent UI spec that have ``ruined'' it, IMO.

Okay I wasn't saying that X itself is responsible. I'm saying the net result is that if someone puts me in front of a box and says "this is a UNIX box" and asks me to run an application I've never seen before, I have very few things I can be confident in when I go to use it. With Windows, unless the developers have specifically disabled standard controls, or replaced them with non-standard counerparts, I have no such problems.

To be clear, here are a few things that are inconsistent across UNIX GUI's:

1) Does TAB work to get between fields on a form?
1a) Is the TAB order consistent?
2) Will keyboard shortcuts work in standard controls? (combo boxes, text boxes, etc.) i.e. Can I press "Up" and "Down" to scroll through a combo/listbox? It's ironic that on an OS that sprang from the command line, often keys don't work for these simple widgets.
3) Do menus have alt-key shortcuts? 99% of the time they do on Windows, with X11 apps it's closer to 60%.
4) The hotkeys that switch between windows, minimize them, etc., IF PRESENT, always seem to be different.
5) The very functionality of minimizing a window differs. Some window managers "iconify", some have a taskbar that it minimizes to like Windows.

I could go on. I realize that some of these are due to programmers who choose not to set these things up right, but why does it seem to work more often in Windows apps than it does on X-based apps?

Again, I think X Windows is the defacto substandard. It's what's there, and it's too late to change it.

I understand that X is just one layer, and the widget libs and intermediate layers are really where the ball has been dropped. But I think specifying one and only one GUI is what made Windows successful on the desktop, and easy to use for your average user.

Trillian and WinAMP are cases where they throw ease-of-use out in favor of customization. My point is that by default, Windows gives you consistency, it's up to you to defeat that consistency by downloading the Britney Spears WinAMP skin. Although I'm sure you'd know where to click on her...

My point is that on UNIX, you have to work to make it standard, and on Windows, you have to work to make it customizable. I can see why each can be seen as both a strength and a weakness, but I think it's easier to make things customizable in Windows than it is to make them standard on UNIX.

Fair enough. While I agree with all of your points, I do so less than you do. We have slightly different priorities when it comes to GUI criteria.

Oh, and:

someone puts me in front of a box and says "this is a UNIX box" and asks me to run an application I've never seen before

Shades of Jurassic Park (the movie)! I'm sure we both giggled at that scene.

email me if you want the original vector artwork.
Tony - do you want to make this a download on riocar.org?

Hmm, should we just have a big zip file of a whole bunch of original empeg vector artwork? Original empeg logo, remotes, user manual, etc.?

We could put it in the downloads section (heck you can do that part without my intervention), and then I could link it from the FAQ.

That would rock.

Definitely! Stick the CAD files in there too.