Re: FYI: Mac OS X Desktop

[Julian Missig <julian linuxpower org>]

It would certainly be nice if all it took were just a few hours of
hacking to get alpha channels and anti-aliased fonts in X.
Unfortunately, this isn't the case... I've heard many conflicting rumors
about anti-aliased fonts in X, but there are discussions of doing
something about it for GNOME, at least.

Alpha channels mostly likely won't happen. I mean, the cursor is still
limited to two fscking colors!

Julian

Derek Simkowiak wrote:
> 
>         I just saw a preview of Mac OS X Desktop edition on ZDTV.  Mac OS
> X (pronounced, "Mac O.S. Ten") is the new operating system from Apple that
> is built on top of a modified FreeBSD.  It runs on the G3 and G4 Macs.
> 
>         It's very nice; lots of alpha transparency and animation.  More
> impressive and polished than Enlightenment. :)
> 
>         Menus have the way-cool "fade out" that Win2000 does.  Not only
> that, but the menus are also translucent (you can see the application
> underneath the menu, but only slightly).
> 
>         Minimizing does something they call the "Genie" effect.  It warps
> the image of the window (as if it was liquid going into a funnel) down
> into the icon that resides in their panel.  However, the icon is NOT a
> generic, meta-data (or "registered") icon.  The icon is, in fact, a
> miniaturized picture of the actual application window.
> 
>         The guy minimized a JPG of some fruit, and the icon was then a
> 64x64 image of that fruit.  In real-time.  They've taken the idea of an
> abstract "icon" and made it into a non-abstact reality--that is, a
> miniature version of a file and/or application.  The Genie effect makes it
> completely obvious what the icon is and what it means to click on it.  My
> mom needs this.
> 
>         Their Panel does not use wide, text buttons like the Gnome panel
> or Win9x panel.  All little iconized images.
> 
>         Putting the mouse over the panel invokes a lensed "zoom" effect,
> similar to the zoom that the Enlightenment Pager has.  Again, all in
> realtime.  Very spiffy!
> 
>         Finally, the guy brought up a tcsh terminal window and ran "top"
> to show the processes.  That certainly got my attention :).
> 
>         I wonder if Nautilus/Helix could put any manhours into X alpha
> transparency, or maybe fixing the crap-ass X font system...?
> 
> --Derek Simkowiak
> 
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