GUIs That Don't Look Like GUIs? 13
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? (Score:3)
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 (Score:4)
Re:Intuitive GUI's (Score:1)
To answer... (Score:2)
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 (Score:2)
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/i
Cheers,
Mark
Flash (Score:1)
--Robert
Flashy interfaces (Score:1)
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.
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Intuitive GUI's (Score:1)
gtkextra could probably do it.. (Score:3)
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 (Score:1)
X11 overhead my ass (Score:1)
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 -displayMy GUI doesn't look much like a GUI :) (Score:2)
Or did you intend for it to be usable by non-CLI people too? Oh well.
ZooLib might help (Score:2)
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