Re: The State Of The Art

[Christian Lavoie <clavoie enter-net com>]

> > (Forgive me if I'm missing something important, BUT...)
> >
> >  Couldn't a window manager running under X do this fairly simply? I 
don't see
> > why it would be much more difficult to handle than "flat" multiple 
desktop
> > areas. The hardest part would probably be the pager/mini-view - how 
would
> > you show the inner surface of a sphere?

> no need to forgive, but yes I think you are missing something.  and I
> think the biggest point I want to make right now is that the 
impression
> that'
> s beginning to form is that it WON'T be that hard.  it just isn't
> standard.

> the cylinder is almost DONE.  the sphere would be a little harder.  we
> just need to take the next step and make a window manager that uses 
this
> as its standard instead of having someone go "hey...you know what I
> think would be cool?" and spending two weeks trying to tweak it.

> the only thing you're "missing" though is that a scalable sphere is
> nowhere near as simple as stringing a bunch of desktops together.
> that's going to take some thought and time.

On the contrary, a sphere is one of the most simple geometrical object 
to exist. (That, and a god =)

One could simply give the center of a window a point on the edge of 
the sphere, and use those coordinates to have some kinda 3d-rendering 
engine (see the Berlin project) draw the windows as simple flat 
textures pinned on a 3d sphere. The only bad thing, is that the 
centered window will ALWAYS be BEHIND any other window around it.

(Stand in the middle of a sphere, and have a plane perpendicular 
(which represents the screen) to your field of view go away from you 
on a radius of the sphere, the last point would be right in front of 
your viewpoint, where the center of the window is, so all else would 
be before that point, from your perspective.)

But I too think this is a really powerful idea. Go for it, call me if 
you ever give this project life.

P. S.: It maybe could also be implemented on a standard X server with 
(that GGI thingie looks perfect for that kinda stuff) a even stranger 
WM than Enlightenment. But that's the kind of things that could 
require the quake engine =P

Christian Lavoie
clavoie@enter-net.com
UIN: 947212