Re: Helixcode WTF? [was: tlug: errr mail program?]

[simon@example.com (Simon Cozens)]

Stephen J. Turnbull (lists.tlug):
>>>>>> "Simon" == Simon Cozens <simon@example.com> writes:
>
>    Simon> Helixcode is good. Yes.
>
>OK, so what's helixcode?
>
>(Nothing I've seen from Gnome so far interests me in the slightest.


Then there's no point me telling you. :)

OK, Helixcode is a company set up by Miguel and Nat to hack full-time on
GNOME, and they have their own easy-install GNOME distribution. They're
also working on Evolution, the mailer, Gnumeric, and with the guys at Eazel
on the Nautilus shell.

I wouldn't use Evolution for mail, same as I wouldn't use the Nautilus
shell - I'm a command-line guy, and Windows Explorer-like shells aren't
of much interest to me.

Around GNOME 1.0ish, there was very little idea what GNOME actually
*WAS*, even among GNOME developers. Lots of buzzwords were thrown around
and there was no content, and I got very put off.

When I looked at it again at the beginning of this year, GNOME had
really seriously got their act together, and it was possible to discern
what GNOME was about: GNOME was going to add onto X plus your favourite
window managerall the stuff you'd expect from a friendly user interface
on the desktop. File types, drag and drop support, object linking and
embedding, CORBA so all the various GNOME programs can talk to each
other nicely, Gtk so that *at last* there's a standard look-and-feel for
X apps, (and it's skinnable, for added coolness.) and so on. Plus they
were going to produce a bunch of high-quality free desktop applications.

Thankfully, they're *not* playing catch-up with Windows; they've got
their own ideas about user friendliness, because these ideas are
actually coming from the users. For instance, the Nautilus shell has
four "user levels", from beginner to hacker. While beginner's the kind
of brain-deadness you'd expect from Win Explorer, hacker lets you do all
the things you wanted to do but were prevented from doing. They've also
got natty UI ideas like pre-lighting, which is subtly highlighting a
clickable icon when the mouse passes over it - now you can tell that a
click will do something at that point.  It's a trivial example, but it
does show they're interested in working out their own ideas.

If you haven't already, take a look at
http://www.helixcode.com/desktop/screenshots.php3

It sounds corny, but I used to use the console mode all the time, and
now I'm using GNOME. So it is worth a look.
-- 
A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Next Meeting (w/ YLUG): June 16 (Fri) 19:00 Mizonoguchi Marui Family 12F
Next Technical Meeting: July 8 (Sat)  13:30 Topic: TBA
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
more info: http://www.tlug.gr.jp        Sponsor: Global Online Japan