GUIs That Don't Look Like GUIs?

Muttley asks: "There are plenty of projects out there to provide Free Software replacements for products like like TiVo, ReplayTV or AudioRequest. However the one thing that these replacements don't have, AFAIK, is a TV-based interface which doesn't look anything like the standard GUIs we all are familiar with (see the screenshots). Are there any projects out there that would make it very simple to do this sort of interface? It wouldn't need to handle multiple windows open at the same time just some simple widgets for doing simple interfaces but it would have to look pretty with lots of eye candy (alpha blended text and so on). Talisman goes part of the way but it's for Windows. How does Tivo do it and are they going to release the technology as Free Software? Or is there some way of doing it with existing window managers and widget Sets?"

Which Input Device?

[SEWilco]

Your User Interface will be affected by what devices the user can use for input. Mouse, Keyboard, Numeric Pad, Gamepad, Touchscreen, IR remote control, fully wired body suit, posing-as-letter-P-for-camera?

Some devices can emulate others, such as a touchscreen emulating a one-button mouse. Some can't easily emulate others, such as using a numeric pad to create email (I'm not stating whether a numeric pad is worse than a mouse clicking on an image of a keyboard).

If you're using a mouse or touchscreen, you can use a click-on-icons design. If you're using a keyed device, menus are the common choice.

You have to start with your input device, then use your imagination within that limitation.

Assorted User Interface Info

[SEWilco]

• A Summary of Principles for User-Interface Design. [sylvantech.com]
• Graphical User Interfaces [pla-netx.com] gallery.
• Human Computer Interfaces [usernomics.com] (graphics oriented)
• Towards the Anti-Mac [advogato.org] (note the comments -- is the Adventure Shell non-GUI or only moving the images into your head?)

Re:Intuitive GUI's

[Cryptnotic]

The only truly intuitive interface is the nipple

Users suck.

To answer...

[cmowire]

From what I understand, the TiVo code that handles the GUI is probably part of the custom application layer. I doubt they are running X, instead, they probably are just writing code to write directly to the frame buffer and using their own custom code to do this.

I suspect that TiVo, despite their use of the open-source Linux OS in the boxes, considers the interface one of their key intellectual properties. Therefore, I doubt that they are going to release that part of their code as open source anytime soon.

It has already been posted that it's probably a very bad idea to take the set-top box interface and try to make it work on the computer. There is a completely different set of requirements that you need in order to make a interface work from a remote than the requirements that make an interface work from a computer console.

Qt/Embedded w/ pretty theme

[mallan]

Seems like using Qt/Embedded with a custom, elaborate theme would be the best approach. It supports alpha blending and antialiased fonts, has a mature, clean API, and could be retargeted for X11 or Win32 very easily.

You just need to find an artist who can create an appropriately beautiful non-standard-GUI-looking theme.

http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/embedded/in de x.html

Cheers,
Mark

Flash

[Ramses0]

Macromedia flash is a great example of "emulating the set top" on the computer. Just as dumb, just as easy to use ;^)=

--Robert

Flashy interfaces

[K.]

for non-standard curvy alpha-blended interfaces,
something along the lines of swf would be ideal.
You'd have to modify the scripting side of things
for function calling and such, though.

There are free versions of the plugin available,
which have iirc been ported all over the place.

K.
-

Intuitive GUI's

[markbark]

The only truly intuitive interface is the nipple

gtkextra could probably do it..

[Jose]

GTKextra looks like a nice widget set, in particular gtksheet should be able to make a nice table-like interface for showing a grid of tv listings..Of course it would mean running X and gtk, and some wm...(lots of overhead)

What tivo clones are available? I haven't seen any mentioned on freshmeat..
There are some components available..tvguide and xmltv to grab listings, mp1e to compress it to an mpeg1 movie file, and maybe mpeg2-movie to compress it a bit more after you are finished recording the show. [xtheatre, xmovie, mtv] will play the movie, lirc to provide the driver for your remote control..but there is nothing tying them all together.
I will be attempting to do so, but getting around to writting the code is somewhat difficult right now...has anyone actually started doing it?

What exactly are the free software replacements

[Keepiru]

Can someone post of the free software TiVO like programs?

X11 overhead my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

If a 66MHz MIPS handheld can run X [agendacomputing.com], then certainly something like Tivo can. And as for a window manager, there are such things as fvwm2 and wm2, not every wm is as bloated as enlightenment or WindowMaker.

Oh, and you don't need a window manger to run X. Type X & sleep 2 && xterm -display :0 to see what I mean.

My GUI doesn't look much like a GUI :)

[Benley]

Hey, my GUI [zoiks.net] doesn't look all that much like a GUI... works great for me, and it even includes some eye candy. :)

Or did you intend for it to be usable by non-CLI people too? Oh well.

ZooLib might help

[goingware]

The ZooLib [sourceforge.net] cross-platform application framework does not at the moment provide what you want but I think it provides the tools that could get you there pretty quickly.

It only requires very basic support from the underlying graphics subsystem for its GUI to work, so it can be bound to a new platform pretty quickly.

At the present time, it supports Mac OS, Windows, BeOS and POSIX platforms with XWindows (such as Linux). It enables you to write a single C++ codebase and build native executables for all those platforms from it.

I've had in mind building my own Linux distribution that would be all GUI with no command-line tools except for daemon services - all the configuration would be done through GUI kind of like the preferences under the BeOS. This would have a simple graphics subsystem that would be the minimum required to bring up ZooLib on it.

It wouldn't be aimed at the kind of user who wants command-line and XWindows, but would be very lightweight (could be used on a handheld, for example).

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc