KDE developer Pinheiro revealed his ideas on the next KDE menu, dubbed ‘Raptor’. “What is Raptor? Raptor is a an amazing project I have been working on in the last few days. It tries to be a fresh new way of finding your desktop applications, and interacting with its users.” A design document (containing more screenshots) is also available [.pdf].
I gotta have me one of those!
*drools*
It looks bizzare. I want to be able to goto the application category and find the launcher with a minimum of clicks or fuss. Linux Mint has the right idea with its Mintmenu. I don’t need an uber fancy looking panel that entertains me while I dig around trying to find applications. Let’s keep it clean and simple guys! And, lets not lose sight of what the thing is supposed to do.
Well, if this thing works anything like launching applications using Spotlight on the Mac (apple+space, type app’s name, enter) then I’m all for it.
Kickoff already works like this. Just press the default Alt-F1, type in the application name or part of it (auto-completion) and it should pop up at the top of the search results. From there you just have to hit Enter.
I’m curious whether Raptor will be included in 4.0 as the default KMenu replacment. So far it looks like it will miss every scheduled Beta release so I can’t imagine that the KDE developers will use an untested (both technically and usability-wise) piece of software.
Edited 2007-10-07 15:51
It seems Kickoff will be the only menu which will be stable by the time KDE 4.0 ships, so that might make it as default. Of course, this can change for 4.1
Well, if this thing works anything like launching applications using Spotlight on the Mac (apple+space, type app’s name, enter) then I’m all for it.
Alt+F2, type app name (with dropdown and automatic completion), enter. It’s been there all along.
It would help if you could search by function or description (I assume spotlight does that and it’s what you meant), so you don’t have to remember names like tutbKbtasuaatpotimfoantatywtadawwtcuwssnanl”t”btctosawwaai(This Used To Be KIllustrator But Then Adobe Sued Us And All The People On The Internet Made Fun Of App Names That Actually Tell You What The App Does And We Wanted To Come Up With Some Stupid New Age Name Like “Tranquility” But Then Came To Our Senses And Went With An Acronym Instead.)
EDIT: Yes, that was overdone, I admit it. But let’s face it the problem is real. We’ve gone from programs called “xchat” and “kwrite” (both still alive but around for a long time) to stuff like marble and pidgin (both clever names in their own way but you’d never come up with it when sitting in front of a run dialog)
Edited 2007-10-07 22:00
A litle secret, the discription should help on the finding and should be taged in the data base, so “burn cd” shoud in theory point them to k3b, and “web browser” to konqueror or firefox, that will do alot of good for linux apps that have big name marqueting problems for new comers.
Katapult already does exactly that (though the key combo is Alt+Space).
I don’t need an uber fancy looking panel that entertains me while I dig around trying to find applications. Let’s keep it clean and simple guys! And, lets not lose sight of what the thing is supposed to do.
You’re not going to like OS X then………
Seriously though, both Gnome and KDE have ambled around with application menus over the years. KDE has had a bit of trouble organising some of their stuff, Novell went off and moved away from the top menu entry to creating the SLAB menu, which then got recreated for KDE, and nothing much definitive has happened to be honest. At least Raptor looks like a departure.
We’ll have to see how this thing behaves once code is written and people can try it out. Arguing over screenshots is lame.
Oh I forgot! Finder->Applications->Pick your app.
Real tough.
Oh I forgot! Finder->Applications->Pick your app.
Real tough.
Finder -> Applications -> Pick your app from one of God knows how many that you can’t quite find. That’s what’s being solved here.
Unless you were talking about something else.
Edited 2007-10-07 23:04
Not to be rude, but this appears to be *very* similar to what Vista has.
It looks like this is just a more convenient interface to a menu that uses a non-standard way of categorising applications.
Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see the community commentary on this.
“Not to be rude, but this appears to be *very* similar to what Vista has.”
Hmmm… judging jsut from screenshots I’ll have to agree. In my opinion, it seems to be a trend today for Linux look and feel to imitate some MICROS~1 look and feel… it looks like a combination of CDE (XFCE 3), the Mac OS X dock, the “Vista” start menu, and the “Vista” color scheme. This is not the only example. Strange…
“It looks like this is just a more convenient interface to a menu that uses a non-standard way of categorising applications.”
As I read from the PDF (p. 3), the menu structure is guided by actions (what you actually want to do) instead by application categories (what tool you want to use). I think this may be a good approach to novice users who are not familiar with the tools (way), but know what they finally want (result).
Favourites and application description (more than just one line) are a very interesting idea. If it’s really used to extend user friendlyness, it might gain the communitiy more users.
I have to wounder what your on, it looks nothing like the Vista menu. Now just because Vista uses blue and green in it’s look, does that mean all other OS’s/DE’s with blue and green copy Vista?
If anyone posts any kind of screenshot or image that is related to the KDE project then, no matter how structurally/ conceptually different it is to anything in Microsoft’s oeuvre, *someone* will say “lol it looks just like Windoze!1”. It’s practically a law of nature – a really boring and tiresome one.
Edited 2007-10-07 16:30
“If anyone posts any kind of screenshot or image that is related to the KDE project then, no matter how structurally/ conceptually different it is to anything in Microsoft’s oeuvre, *someone* will say “lol it looks just like Windoze!1”. It’s practically a law of nature – a really boring and tiresome one. “
Yes, I agree, but if you’d place a “Vista” screenshot aside, you’d notice some similarities. It seems to be the nature of GUI design – you always find something familiar. This does not imply it cannot be innovative. In fact, it is, or, to be more exact, the combination of elements and functionalities is. But the elements theirselves are not entirely new. So you can see an analogy to CDE (which is many many years old today), as well as to Mac OS X.
For the color combinations: You could simply apply an algorithm that evaluates color compliances and gives a percentage result. This result would be high and coud described as “uses similar colors”.
I hope you can understand my comment a bit better now.
Not to be rude, but this appears to be *very* similar to what Vista has.
Okay, I’ve been using Vista for *years* (incl. betas and previews) and I really have NO idea how this is similar to ANYTHING Vista has – apart from the colour scheme of course, but that’s irrelevant.
Please enlighten me.
Finding relevant applications as you type?
Similar appearance.
How the document talks about organizing things according to usage frequency, etc.
Just my opinion…which isn’t worth much given the USD these days ;}
Sorry, but it’s not really Vista which came up with a quicksearch on applications… Mac has had it, Suse users have had it for years (patch on the standard Kmenu), there have been things like quicksilver and katapult and I’m sure much more. Saying “it is like Vista” is about as relevant as saying “Gnome is like Vista” because it also has icons and windows and uses a mouse…
I never claimed that Vista was the originator of the idea. I merely said it was *similar* to Vista. Two things can be like each other without either being the originator of the ideas contained within.
Therefore, it is accurate to say GNOME is like Vista since they do share similar characteristics. It is also accurate to say that Vista is like GNOME for the same reason. Now if you want argue semantics and claim that you can only state one or another as being true based on the time of implementation and origin of characteristics of comparison: please go somewhere else, this is a web forum, not a PhD dissertation.
This is just like the age old argument of “you can’t compare apples and oranges” — when actually, you can:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/321/7276/1569
So again, it seems I have to state in minute detail every single possible qualification of my statements so that people do not misinterpret me.
So, let me state very clearly, “I believe Raptor is *similar* to Vista in some ways, that is not to say that it is not also similar to many other operating systems or that Vista is the originator of the characteristics to which I compare Raptor to.”
Happy now?
Edited 2007-10-07 16:40
It seems everyone is doing what your doing lately like it’s in fashion. GNOME came before Vista like Blue and green came before Vista.
It really shows how Microsoft has got into peoples minds and changed their perception what something looks like. Anything remotely resembling a menu is a “Start” menu on any other OS.
Well, of course! You can only expect folks to do comparison based on things they are familiar with. Though I have used many operating systems over the years, there are many I have not used as well.
However, using what you are most familiar with as a point of comparison does not make it any less valid (not that you were implying that).
Microsoft may not be the originator of a “start-like menus” but they were certainly the most influential in their adoption.
Sure, it is valid. But also entirely useless, imho – and it has a negative connotation to it (I hope I use that word properly). It conveys a message of “it’s boring, nothing new, because MS has done it already” while that’s simply not true in this case – it is at least as different from the Vista startmenu as KWord is from MS Word, and them from WordPerfect – all wordprocessors, sure. Pretty useless to state that fact.
Saying it the way you said implies that someone is copying or “stealing” from vista. You should have been more clear with your intent if if was just a “well this looks like this” comment. Personally I think it looks different enough that the comparison seems like a jab at the project as opposed to an observation like you stated.
…and that’s a poor assumption to make. I never said they were “stealing” and actually, they could be copying! Though I did not imply that. I was merely using Vista as a point of comparison.
I’ll give you an example. There’s a tribe in in the African jungle that doesn’t use the words “red,” “blue,” or “green” to describe the colours of things. Instead, they say “this item is the color of this item.” For example, to describe red, they might say “the color of a man’s blood” or to describe blue “the color of the sky.”
In the same way, when people make comparisons to other items, they are not necessarily implying that someone is “copying” or “stealing” ideas.
When you go to a web shopping site that lists items side-by-side for comparison, is the web shopping site implying that one company is stealing from another? No! Of course not, they are merely comparing two products.
In the same way, I was using Vista as a point of comparison.
If I had said, “this looks like it was copied from Vista” or “they’re just stealing ideas from Vista” — that would be different.
It is better to ask questions in a discussion that make assumptions. I shouldn’t have to explain and qualify every statement with a painstaking amount of detail.
The whole point of my original statement was that the the author claimed that it was a “fresh new way” — which clearly, it is not. It is actually very similar in many ways as others have pointed out to existing technologies.
About the only way in which it might be considered “fresh new way” is in relation to KDE itself which the author gave no indication as to implying.
Gnome got that (through extensions) before Vista got it. And I wouldn’t be surprised if some obscure OS had it in the 80’es
EDIT: Windows Explorer in Win95 has “find as you type” if you type fast enough
Edited 2007-10-07 16:46 UTC
Not really… apart from “find as you type” it is quite unrelated. And both KDE and Gnome got “find as you type” long before Vista was released. “Raptor” is closer to Novell’s SLAB menu than anything in Vista.
http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/
http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/overview
yes, yes, we know, there are a million things which use search to find applications. Can we get back to *remotely meaningful* comments?
Well, I guess you can consider it offtopic if you don’t check the links I posted. They show the automatic ranking system which is similar to what the pdf for Raptor shows, chaining actions and a lot more than “just another app launcher”.
When something is described as a “fresh new way of finding your desktop applications, and interacting with its users”, I think showing that something very similar already exists is very much ON topic.
Well, to be honest – you’re right. The Raptor menu seems nice, not extremely innovative or special. But most things made today aren’t – they’re just a combination of things existing elsewhere. I mean, these things didn’t came out of nowhere in the apps in those links, they where partially based on pre-existing concepts and ideas as well. Stating it has similiarities (or borrows ideas) to other things isn’t exactly rocket science – it’s obvious.
It’s just a bit like the other guy saying it’s ‘just like the Vista menu’ – sure. It’s a way to start applications, with smart search functionality. My KDE menu always has shown most often used applications in the main menu. It’s not revolutionary to take that into account when presenting a UI at all.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to be too negative, sorry. You are right, it’s not that fresh. But hey, when MS announces Silverlight stuff, THEY claim it’s TOTALLY new… And get away with it. Saying “a fresh new way of finding your desktop applications, and interacting with users” isn’t that much out of place. I mean, is anything ever fresh? Besides salad?
wow … regardless of what you might think about the new design one thing is true … this is one of the few innovations to come from an OSS project. I’m not sure that the project will be finalized by the time KDE 4.0 comes out but kudos for the effort.
Just I hope that the design does not turn out to be a slow down much like the *improvements* in openSuse …
KDE4 is by far the biggest deception of 2007. I guess this statement needs a little explanation…
Basically, since the beginning of 2007, they kept promising us great things. KDE4 will have this and that, etc. Remember all these articles about KDE4 new exciting features?
However, they failed to deliver at least one usable “beta” up to now. They were supposed to release KDE4 on october 23 too. However, next week, all we will get is another alpha release (that they will call beta).
It’s time to face the truth: KDE4 needs another full year of development. A few days ago they started to work on one central piece of the desktop (that thing called Raptor). This is alarming.
Sure, these guys are great. They also work for free. But I still believe it’s wrong to lie to people. KDE4 is far for being ready. Up to now, all they have shown to people is mockups of what they think they will do. I know it’s good to communicate ideas but 2 months before a final release I guess you need more than ideas. You need late-beta quality software that people can test to find bugs.
I would be happy if someone could prove me wrong.
Have a nice day.
I’m the last to help KDE4 get released this year (it’ll cost me a Guinness
), but I don’t think Raptor will be the official KDE4 menu. It’s a separate effort, that, who knows, might one day be used as default.
If they don’t replace KMenu in KDE4 it’s another big deception. KMenu needs to be replaced with something more elegant and usable. Like another user mentionned, they could use the menu from Linux Mint KDE Edition. These guys managed to the much better than KMenu honestly.
“Basically, since the beginning of 2007, they kept promising us great things. KDE4 will have this and that, etc.”
Also, since the beginning of 2007 (exactly!), they’ve been giving us things like this:
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2600
Key quote from the article:
“There will be users (and young editors) who don’t understand the difference of KDE 4 and KDE 4.0 and will call KDE 4.0 incomplete or a disappointment because it will not do all stuff they read about KDE 4 will be able to do and who expect the release cycle and development cycle to be something like “Microsoft Vista”: a big dump of changes containing some new features to live with the next five years (and a lot of new features the competition introduced in the last five years).”
“Remember all these articles about KDE4 new exciting features?”
Which ones? The Road to KDE4 series? If so, Troy made sure to write articles only on features that were already present and usable in trunk. They may not be utilised in KDE4.0 (akonadi is a good example of this), but they are *there*, well-developed, and as such can hardly be labelled “vapourware”.
“However, they failed to deliver at least one usable “beta” up to now. They were supposed to release KDE4 on october 23 too. However, next week, all we will get is another alpha release (that they will call beta). ”
This I agree with – as far as I’m concerned, 4.0 itself will be at best a beta.
“A few days ago they started to work on one central piece of the desktop (that thing called Raptor).”
Raptor has been in development for several months – a casual stroll through websvn reveals commits going back to March. However, Plasma (including whatever will be the default 4.0 menu) is undeniably the least developed of the pillars of KDE4 which is bad as it is the most user-visible even as it has received the least amount of attention.
Far from a malicious “deception”, I think the KDE team are mainly guilty of not understanding the full extent of people’s expectations for KDE *4.0*, presumably because, as developers, it is perfectly obvious to them that the entirety of planned features for the KDE4 series are not going to be spring forth fully-formed and functional on the release day of 4.0. What they should have done is taken beineri’s blog posting and made it into a full-blown dot article so that more people are aware of what are KDE 4.0 goals and what are long-term KDE4 goals. Malice, incompetence, etc.
GeneralZod: You do have good points.
However, I still believe KDE 4.0 should be a major release. OSX 10.0 didn’t look like OS9 at all
OSX 10.0 didn’t look like OS9 at all
Mac OS X also had a very troubled start if the Ars review of 10.4 is to be believed. People look at Leopard/Tiger today and seem to forget that the initial release was allegedly plagued by serious performance and stability bugs so much that Apple released 10.1 for free. Plus, the UI and features got refined other the years (Spotlight, Dashboard, etc) so why don’t we give KDE 4 also a couple of years and releases before we pass final jugdgement on it?
Very true.
I had to do some maintenance the other day on a OSX 10.1 or 10.2 machine and it was indeed very different from 10.4, but when people say OSX they seem to only picture in their heads 10.3 and onwards, conveniently forgetting < 10.3.
You are seeming to forget that OS X was an entire OS, and had many issues at the kernel level, and many issues were hardware related. Those aforementioned issues loosely, if at all, apply to KDE.
KDE isn’t an Operating System. It’s maturing Desktop environment. The heavy lifting for the filesystem, networking, etc., is done in the kernel, whether it’s FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, OS X< Solaris, etc.
Let’s not forget Trolltech Qt which KDE is co-dependent upon getting much of it’s capabilities.
Edited 2007-10-07 19:19
Having been building Trunk for the past month this damn thing isn’t remotely ready for Beta, let alone Beta 3.
If they wanna bitch that OS X has slipped and isn’t ready for 10.5, let’s remind everyone that is an entire operating system/desktop platform/series of apps by Apple and all you read are concern comments on whether or not Apple will meet their deadlines.
It’s nice that KDE 4 is a complete overhaul architecturally and we will reap the rewards, but it’s better to promise less and deliver more.
It’s nice that KDE 4 is a complete overhaul architecturally and we will reap the rewards, but it’s better to promise less and deliver more.
a) I’m not sure that’s necessarily true for OSS projects. Hype can get you a long way.
I remember a time when Ubuntu had just passed Gentoo as the Linux flavor of the month. I remember what all those fanboys were saying how great it was etc. I wrote quite a few comments against Ubuntu because I’ve tried it more than once and especially the first years it was simply crap.
It had simplicity and a number of other stuff but it was *a lot* further from “just works” than most other big name distros out there, but you’d never have guessed it from the stuff you read on osnews and other pages (in fact it’s still the only distro whose partitioner is having troubles with my harddrive).
Now, the current Ubuntu actually comes close to delivering on what they promised years ago and it’s become a good distro (although I do think a number of the others are just as good), but IMHO it’s been an extraordinary amount of promises with very delayed delivery that’ve helped Ubuntu become one of the great distros instead of just being another flavor of the month.
In fact looking at all the successful OSS software out there I’d say good hype’s almost as important as good code.
b) Most of the stuff we’ve read about KDE4 is about the architecture and libraries. Of course those articles mention what those frameworks are for and what new apps they’re gonna make possible. But nevertheless the articles were about the frameworks that are up and working and are delivering and not about the apps that are promised.
c) I still remember KDE 2.0, the last time they did a complete overhaul. It was a buggy disaster and I really asked myself why they didn’t stay with 1.x.
But with 2.1 and 2.2 it became usable, and it’s been the framework of 2.0, released seven years ago, that’s made KDE2 and 3 possible.
Wow, someone’s bitter…
“They also work for free. But I still believe it’s wrong to lie to people.”
You can’t lie ahead of the facts. At worst they haven’t been able to keep the promises they made but that’s not the same as a lie.
It’s not like KDE4 is the first software project in history to get delayed and, from a quality point of view, it’s usually better to delay and have a solid product than to release something buggy and unfinished.
It’s also funny how people who are not involved in a project ALWAYS knows what’s best for it, how things should be done and what has been done wrong. Of course, 9 times out of 10 it’s just talk and those people never ever contribute anything valuable other than hot air.
Take it easy guys! There is no point in criticizing a project before there is code to try. That being said, I recently found this unrelated but interesting mockup over at kde-look.org which brings some new ideas to the table:
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/New+desktop+%28mockup%…
I assume it only pops up when you click the K icon. If so, why is the width so small? Why doesn’t the width fot to the screen to maximize viewing area? Being able to only see 5 things at a time sucks.
I assume it only pops up when you click the K icon. If so, why is the width so small? Why doesn’t the width fot to the screen to maximize viewing area?
Yep, I’m also a person who prefers his menus to actually use the available space. I still think Windows95’s “just show everything” approach was better than XP where you have to click all programs and Vista’s even worse (although I have used Vista only once. It could be possible that you can resize the menu like a window or something, I just don’t know)
Why even have a “menu”. Why not just use a desktop-like canvas as an area where you can drop all your apps and a searchbar and whatever and provide a button on the panel that brings that part to the front.
That said I like an integral searchbar, because on linux I hardly use the menu, I use the run dialog. So integrating those two doesn’t seem like a bad idea.
Its fulLy confugurable.
You can make it to any size you want.
As others already mentioned, Katapult [1] is a very effective (and efficient) find-as-you-type application launcher. (Plus it has Amarok integration and rudimentary calculator support…)
On a side note, given the fact that each an every text editing software on my machine (from vim to firefox and OpenOffice) has a built-in spell checker, there’s simply no excuse for releasing an official PDF with so many spelling mistakes. (Especially if you’re not a native English speaker… such as myself)
– Gilboa
[1] http://katapult.kde.org
Edited 2007-10-07 17:37
“[…] there’s simply no excuse for releasing an official PDF with so many spelling mistakes.”
Maybe I have an explaination, but it’s highly connected with a question: Has the paper been created by a German? Functional illitracy is very common in Germany. If you are not able to use your native language, what about a foreign one? Correct spelling does not matter anymore (according to contradicting dictionaries, missing basic education, and law).
An example is located at the end of the document. Missing commas, defective concatenation, incomplete sentences. Very typical.
“This is really just a WIP[,] take it with a grain of slat [salt]. Won[‘]t be ready in the next month[,/] and has huge room for improvement. We still need to perform huge usability studies [,/] and get user feed[_]back.”
This is exactly how it would like in German, believe me. I know my Pappenheimers. 🙂
I think this paper is to be seen just an inofficial note, an internal memo, a draft – judging from the language quality.
If the document hasn’t been created by a German, just forget this comment. 🙂
As an American and native English speaker, I try to cut non-native speakers all the slack that I can. We have a whole world learning our native language. And yet most of us here are too lazy to learn *any* other language. Many here have only a tenuous grasp upon our *own*, but are only too happy to make fun of people who are less skilled with the language than are they.
We’re arrogant and stubborn in other ways, too. One of the users I support said to me, a while back (while speaking of GWeather), that he couldn’t believe that Linux defaulted to degrees Celsius and kilometers, instead of degrees Fahrenheit and miles. (You know, the *real* way to talk about temperature and distance.) I had to *explain* to him that people who use the British units are in the minority on this planet. He seemed surprised to hear it.
I thank my lucky stars, every day, that the Internet has saved me from such small-mindedness.
Edited 2007-10-07 19:36
“As an American and native English speaker, […]”
You’re lucky. Your native language is the language of the Internet, the OSes and nearly every application. It’s also the default language in science (allthough German is much better sometimes :-)).
“And yet most of us here are too lazy to learn *any* other language. Many here have only a tenuous grasp upon our *own*, but are only too happy to make fun of people who are less skilled with the language than are they.”
The same situation can be found in today’s Germany. As you may have seen from my posts, English is not my native language, so I do some mistakes. Especially grammar and word order not my favourit part there. But in Germany, aspects of language quality do not matter anymore. Take the “joy” to read applications for a job, scientific papers of students, newspaper articles, or, even worse, web pages and eBay descriptions. If I’d translate them into English, you would hardly know what’s it about.
Judging from my usual “PISA victims” and the development in school politics, you cannot expect a German to use the english language properly, such as you can’t expect him to use his own native language properly. That’s the sad truth, unfortunately.
Lett me gife you ann impresion:
You`r exampl’e abowt the degree Farenheid and degree Zelsius, iss veri inntresting. Ive herd about, thatt manny Amerricans dont` Know the ‘re other unitsystems out ther’e and, you cann conwert themm.
Enough now, it’s really hard to type such nonsense. 🙂 This is how English would look like today if it was German. And believe me, Sir, I would not lie at you or exaggerate – it really is that bad.
“I thank my lucky stars, every day, that the Internet has saved me from such small-mindedness.”
As long as it’s possible to understand the contents of a document, one may argue about language quality. But as soon as it’s not longer possible, you really start asking yourself: Is a proper use of a language (usually the own native one) that useless? This question came up approx. 1995/1996 when the german language has been “modernized”, and it’s a process of ongoing changes since then.
Some months ago, I had to read a rental agreement that was formulated in such a strange way that you could not figure out who’s responsible in one point – the lesser or the lessee.
If you point (german) people to obvious mistakes, you can experience what real ignorance is. 🙂
Form and content have the same importance. If the form is bad, no one is interested in the content. If the content is bad, the best form does not make it any better.
And as I have explained, the mistakes in the PDF document seem to be the same kind the usual mistakes are in “new” german orthography, here transformated into the english language. But I’m just judging from these formal parameters, nothing more, nothing less. They just look too similar.
PS. I’m not ignorant or immodest, I just master my native language, which is something special today, at least in Germany. So forgive me my note regarding language aspects. =^_^=
Edited 2007-10-07 20:15
“””
“””
In a way, yes, perhaps I am lucky. But I have to wonder about the wisdom of perpetuating this illusion, in the US, that the US *is* the world. It will come back to bite us all some day. The US, most especially.
I *do* very much believe in standardizing upon a single language. Too bad Esperanto never took off. It makes too much sense to have been successful here, though. Kind of like SI units.
“””
“””
You do extremely well with English. I didn’t realize that German was your native language until today.
“””
This is how English would look like today if it was German.
“””
Ah, but English is a fork of German, more than anything else. English may be a mutt of, errr… diverse heritage. But the German is still there in force. The Canterbury Tales, in the original middle-English, absolutely stunned me back in my high school days.
“In a way, yes, perhaps I am lucky. But I have to wonder about the wisdom of perpetuating this illusion, in the US, that the US *is* the world. It will come back to bite us all some day. The US, most especially.”
Is this where “The World Map Of The United States” comes from? 🙂
“I *do* very much believe in standardizing upon a single language. Too bad Esperanto never took off. It makes too much sense to have been successful here, though. Kind of like SI units.”
The downside of the standardization on english, for example in OS and applications, is the lack of (fundamental up to good) translations. Imagine a german Linux user who has set his KDE to german language. But then, an error occurs, and the error message is in english. And… format c:… Linux is gone because it’s not German, and that’s bad.
Standardization on one language per country is another thing. While you have dialects in many existing languages, you usually have one ruleset for the language as you teach it in schools, use it at university, in government, in science. You don’t use dialects there. In Germany, standardization has been abandoned, and ruleless diversity has taken its place. Even law states this: You may write as you want to. (Only few have noticed the implication: Giving marks for orthography, grammar or punctuation at school is implicitely forbidden by law, because it limits individual freedom – thus ruled by the Federal Constitutional Court 10 years ago.)
“You do extremely well with English.”
But I do mistakes, too, so I don’t complain about a missing letter, one missing comma or “slat” when it’s “salt”. It’s just the kind of mistakes and the amount that made me seeing a relationship to today’s “new” german orthography.
But I’m still learning. It’s a continuing process of self-advancement. For example, I see my abilities to express in English getting better since I’m writing here at OSNews on a regular basis.
“I didn’t realize that German was your native language until today.”
This may be because I’m using the english language since I was 7 years old and started using and programming computers. Then, lessons at school took place: russian from the 5th class and english from the 6th class. Reading english manpages and using english applications today is no problem, so I think I learned much just reading english texts. Today, I even set my system to english and just use a german OpenOffice. On the other side, my pronounciation may not be the best one.
(Because german kids don’t like reading, their expression and ability to write is far behind reference kids of the same age 10 or 20 years ago. Basal cultural techniques such as reading and writing are decreasing, unfortunately, but this problem is home made by politics. Germans are comfortable with what they insist they know, no need to advance.)
“Ah, but English is a fork of German, more than anything else.”
This fork() happend long long ago. For example, things aren’t pronounced as they are spelled. The english written language is not a direct mapping from pronounciation to spelling. This is true for German, too, but some “language experts” don’t get it. Starting in 1940 (with no result) and tried again from 1995 until today, natural roots of the language are denied, while improper translations, incorrect etymology and stupid rules are forced, against any scientifical arguments.
“English may be a mutt of, errr… diverse heritage. But the German is still there in force. The Canterbury Tales, in the original middle-English, absolutely stunned me back in my high school days.”
Maybe “Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer, for chaos and madness await thee at its end.” is from the same source. 🙂
In approx. 20 .. 50 years, the principles of Newspeak will take place in Germany. That’s why “Neusprech” (Noyshprash) is a widely used term for “new” german orthography. It will disable people understand literature prior to 2000, seen as a long term process.
And english teachers keep telling german kids that “e. g.” is short form for “example given”… where do you want to go today with such teachers? 🙂
Furthermore, the German language suffers from proper equivalents, so english termini are included in the language, especially in computer science and communications. “Can I have your Handy, please?” 🙂
Edited 2007-10-07 21:00
Never ever, not a chance in hell, I’d rather die.
Language is the vessel through which culture is transferred to new generations. Remove that vessel, and you lose many cultural elements for which your standard language would not have an equivalent word or phrase. I can say things in Dutch that you cannot say in any other language, not even close relatives like English or German – and vice versa.
The best solution to the language problem is to simply *learn more languages*. I speak quite a few, and can understand a few more. And trust me, if there is one thing that enriches you, both mentally as well as functionally, it’s learning a new language.
Sue, it might be hard, but hey, nobody ever said life was supposed to be easy.
Edited 2007-10-07 21:04 UTC
Thom,
My inclination is that removing barriers to communication… reducing fragmentation in the name-space would, in the end, be beneficial. (I can’t believe I’m siding with Hans Reiser on this topic!)
This is not the sort of thing that I am ready to argue in a strong way.
But if we were all sharing a language, would there not be pressure to add those cultural elements back into the common language? And would not various dialects of that language spring up which included the culture-specific aspects which did not make it into the “official” standard, whatever that turned out to be. Assuming that we could ever agree upon a standard, of course.
I can’t help but feel that your solution to the problem, people learning more languages, is incredibly unrealistic, though admirable.
Edit: Then again, standardizing upon Esperanto is a pretty “pie in the sky” idea, too, isn’t it? But at least it would be easily extensible, in a logical sort of way that would not encourage new fragmentation.
Edited 2007-10-07 21:19
Artificial languages are unappealing, unless you can attach a culture to it. Think Tolkien fans learning Elvish, or Trekkies learning Klingon.
People are more likely to learn existing languages with a history and literature than Esperanto. Latin may be dead, but at least it used to be alive and kicking.
“One of the users I support said to me, a while back (while speaking of GWeather), that he couldn’t believe that Linux defaulted to degrees Celsius and kilometers, instead of degrees Fahrenheit and miles. (You know, the *real* way to talk about temperature and distance.) I had to *explain* to him that people who use the British units are in the minority on this planet. ”
In Britain we use Celsius, not Farenheit.
“””
In Britain we use Celsius, not Farenheit.
“””
Yeah, well maybe you’ve reformed. But you guys are the ones that taught us the bad habits in the first place. ;-P
Seriously, though. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I knew that the “metric system” made more sense. But *to this day* my brain still *thinks* in terms of degrees Fahrenheit, miles, feet, inches. I religiously keep my desktop settings on the SI units. And my brain keeps taking those numbers and doing the whole “times 9, divide by 5, add 32” thing before it really *understands* what the number means.
Edited 2007-10-08 04:24
“Yeah, well maybe you’ve reformed. But you guys are the ones that taught us the bad habits in the first place. ;-P”
Well we certainly never taught you that weird backwards date thing – lol.
You’re on your own on that score.
:o)
“””
“””
American innovation. And we can’t even really blame it on Microsoft. 😉
As a programmer, I absolutely *hate* the stupid backwards date thing!
..along with the missing “u”s (colour, flavour etc.) and the whole “z” thing (minimize, standardize etc.) ..ugh!
The u’s I kind of like. Unnecessary, but attractive. But it makes a great deal of *sense* to use z’s when you mean the ‘z’ sound to be used. Using ‘s’ is just too ambiguous.
Not that I think our flavour (oops!) of the language has any great degree of consistency. We really do need a phonetic overhaul.
Thom may disagree, though. Thom? 🙂
English’ spelling is completely out of line with its pronunciation anyway. Removing a few u’s and s’s is like removing a few hairs from a cat and then say “look, now it’s bald”.
On top of that, the way *I* pronounce ‘colour’, is different from how I pronounce ‘color’.
But *to this day* my brain still *thinks* in terms of degrees Fahrenheit, miles, feet, inches.
Oh man, no kidding. Tell me the height of a mountain in feet, and I can tell you how it compares to the tallest mountain in the states (mainland, and including Alaska), or to the Andes, or the Matterhorn or Everest or Australia’s highest (Mount Ksomething or other), Antarctica’s highest etc. Meters? Not so much. For me, the difference between 14,000′ and 16,000′ is a lot more memorable than the difference between 4,300 meters and 4,900 meters.
Same goes for distance between cities, long jump and high jump records (including my personal bests), height of the worlds tallest buildings and so on.
I understand 0C quite well, as it’s easy to think of it as 32f, but start getting up into 30C and I want to know is it 90? 100? I don’t know just how hot it is. 0-100f matches well with typical really hot and really cold as far as I’m concerned.
I’m cool with Metric, and think it should be used exclusively in scientific settings, but I’m not about to relearn the masses of numbers I know (some of them approximately) and retrain my brain to get used to them.
Yeah, well maybe you(the British)’ve reformed.
Not entirely. Road signs are still in miles and mph. At any rate, they should at least understand our reluctance to go with Metric, IMHO their attachment to the Pound over the Euro is similar. It’s typical that two of the countries I visit most often in Europe are the UK and Denmark. The continent’s common currency doesn’t help me much
I completely agree with you about cutting non native speakers some slack, but I really take issue with
And yet most of us here are too lazy to learn *any* other language.
I do tire of hearing this, particularly as someone who has learned a foreign language. Having done so, I know what is involved. It requires immersion.
In Europe, one has to drive for a few hours to be somewhere where a different language is spoken. Conversely, foreign language speakers will drive to you. Or you turn on the TV and pick up a channel from another country. Or watch a Hollywood movie or American TV show with subtitles. There is no Italy or France or Germany next door to us.
Most people don’t have the luxury or opportunity to move across the ocean for a few years as I did. Really learning a language can’t be done without extensive exposure to native speakers, and for the most part that is simply not possible in America. If you expect everyone to take a few years to live in Europe, well it won’t happen. Aside from Spanish, there is no real opportunity for us to hear another language spoken on a regular basis (and many people do learn Spanish here).
Then there’s the dubious return: as I mentioned before Europe has many different languages in close contact. America does not. Who would we use another language with? I learned German by living there for some years. Now my abilities are stagnating because there is no one here to talk with. How you expect anyone to learn another language in the first place in such conditions is beyond me.
And having been in Europe rather often (and on the internet) I can tell you that Europeans use English when talking with each other. Put a Norwegian and a German in a room and they will likely use English with each other. So there is very little need to learn another language for us. We would have to become extremely proficient in another language before we spoke it better than they speak English, and like I already explained, such proficiency is nearly impossible to obtain in a monolingual place like America, so what’s the point?
So to reiterate: there is very little need (America is a huge place with few people who speak anything but English, and anyone who does speak another language also speaks English), and it is very nearly impossible to really learn another language anyway (again, America is a huge place with few people who speak anything but English).
I do my best to talk to tourists when I can, and rent German movies, and chat with Germans on the net but it’s still not enough. Lacking a close-by population of native speakers, without regular (expensive) trips to Germany my abilities are slipping. If I have trouble maintaining a language with which I was once proficient, it’s fallacious to assume that people here could learn another language if they could only overcame their “laziness”.
Again, your “laziness” is actually “complete lack of necessity” and “nearly complete lack of opportunity.”
There are exceptions of course: international businessmen, professional translators etc. But those are the minority, as opposed to the majority, the “most of us” you are so eager to unfairly impugn for circumstances beyond their control.
Sorry for the novel. It’s a sore point.
“””
Sorry for the novel. It’s a sore point.
“””
I pretty much agree with what you say. I think that once we are adults our brains are pretty much ruined for learning new languages. Immersion is about the only solution at that point.
Perhaps I should have focused upon the *complacency* aspect rather than the laziness aspect.
Whatever it is, I find the situation here in the US to be disturbing.
Sorry all you guys my writen english sucks big time, I’m dislexic and my writen portuguese is not much beter.
Any way i had to produce that document in orther to get things in motion.
But sorry, I should pay more atention to sutch issues.
Don’t worry about it. People complaining about your English should try speaking and writing in Portuguese. I’m sure they’d have some troubles with that one.
Keep up the good work, this thing looks quite interesting.
… Sigh.
I wasn’t complaining about his English – God knows I had way too many look-ma-I-butchered-the-English-language days in my life. (Or as I like to call them: Bad Piglish day [1])
I was complaining about the spell-checking-before-you-post-part.
– Gilboa
[1] http://www.google.com/search?q=gilboa+piglish&hl=en&client=firefox-…
I’m so glad you’re not from Germany. 🙂
“Sorry all you guys[,] my writ[t]en english sucks big time, I’m di[=y]slexic and my writen portuguese is not much bet[t]er.
Any[_]way i[=I] had to produce that document in orther to get things in motion.
But sorry, I should pay more atention to su[t/]ch issues.”
Yes, you should. Dyslexia is a real disease, I know, and it’s an impact if the diagnosis is stated. But the mistakes done reminded me so much to the “new” german orthography, Newspeak, because they are that typical in fact.
Thank`s for Klarification! 🙂
Is there really no opportunity to go back in time again to 1995, when there was more use of the Eszett and “Schifffahrt” was sanely spelt as “Schiffahrt” (I saw this once on ARD/ZDF, and thought WTF)? I’ve read that the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung still uses the old spelling.
In the Netherlands the situation is not much different from the one in Germany. Spelling reforms that are changing and getting unclearer all the time are not limited to our large neighbour country. Spelling was always something I was proud of, but now with all the new rules I don’t really care anymore.
Wow, that’s getting off topic, but keeps to be interesting. 🙂
“Is there really no opportunity to go back in time again to 1995, when there was more use of the Eszett and “Schifffahrt” was sanely spelt as “Schiffahrt” (I saw this once on ARD/ZDF, and thought WTF)? I’ve read that the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung still uses the old spelling.”
There are still newspapers and sitributors who use the “old” spelling (standard orthography) because it’s superior to Newspeak in many aspects. Those who claim to be able to write in the “new” orthography de facto aren’t, which can be proven by refering to their preferred rulesets. In Switzerland, it’s still “Schiffahrt”, and they don’t use any Eszetts. But Newspeak is more than just “Schifffffahrt” or “Messsstrecke”. Many words have been deleted from the language in order to abandon semantic differentiation. Furthermore, rules have senselessly been complicated (esp. punctuation), and concatenated / connected words have been changed vice versa in an arbitrary way (e. g. zur Zeit – zurzeit, but still zu Tisch instead of zutisch).
If you want to be taken seriously, there’s no way araound standard orthography. There are even modern dictionaries for this “language”.
BTW, what about adding a new language variable? There are de_DE, de_OE and de_SW (for austria and switzerland, if I recall their names correctly), what about having de_DE for standard orthography and de_NS for german Newspeak? This would give a nice connotation: NS stands for “National Socialism”, too, in this period an approach to “reform” the german language (as it takes place today) has been started, and some of the former “reformers” are still in it today… 🙂
“In the Netherlands the situation is not much different from the one in Germany. Spelling reforms that are changing and getting unclearer all the time are not limited to our large neighbour country. “
Maybe you know a valid translation of the german term “Kleinstaaterei” – that’s exacly what’s happening. For those who live in the US or in GB: Imagine every federal state, district, every county, dutchy would have another orthography. That’s what is exactly in Germany, but much worse: Sometimes schools that are located side by side use different dictionaries with different contents and rules. Furthermore, “right spelling” changes over time. Pupils who left school 5 years ago find most of their knowledge deprecated today. You can see this if they applicate for a job in written form.
It’s sad how government and schoolbook vendors are working against the society… on a higher level, it could even be considered as a second “Bücherverbrennung” (setting books on fire)…
“Spelling was always something I was proud of, but now with all the new rules I don’t really care anymore.”
I’m still aware that I know and use the standardized rules. They belong to basal communication techniques of the society. And I may use them just because the Federal Constitutional Court has decided this way – everyone just as he / she wants, no rules anymore. What you can take from dictionaries are just suggestions, but no official rules you can rely on anymore.
I’m so glad you’re not from Germany. 🙂
Why? Because you don’t have to feel embarrassed for a fellow country man’s spelling?
Anyway, here’s a little spell check for you. I hope it makes you feel good.
Yes, you should. Dyslexia is a real disease, I know, and it’s an impact if the diagnosis is stated. But the mistakes done[=made] reminded me so much to[=of] the “new” german orthography, Newspeak, because they are that typical in fact.
“Why? Because you don’t have to feel embarrassed for a fellow country man’s spelling?”
I don’t need to feel embarrassed for something that’s a sad de facto standard today. If you had studied educational science and would have worked as a private lessons teacher, you surely would not, too. After the last PISA results, it’s obvious where Germany stands regarding linguistic matters.
“Anyway, here’s a little spell check for you. I hope it makes you feel good.”
No, doesn’t make me feel good, but I’ve learned from it. As you know, English is not my native language, but I keep learning and improving. So thank you, Sir.
… Nothing to be sorry about. (As in, fix the problem, not the person)
Good luck with Raptor!
– Gilboa
So their icon is a Slingshot?
🙂
I seem to recall Raptor as being the original name for Netscape’s Gecko engine. They had to change it due to a trademark conflict. This is a different type of software, and some years later, so maybe the trademark issue does not apply. Could someone more in the know please comment?
As to fancy new ways to display my available applications, just give me a sane, well designed and uncluttered traditional menu. Just because KDE’s menus suck so badly now doesn’t mean they need to “fix” it with some “revolutionary” (supposed) technological tour de force, which seems to be KDE’s answer to just about anything. They just need to apply good UI design to what they have. But that would seem too boring to the devs, I suppose.
Edited 2007-10-07 17:39
KDE4/Raptor copied from Mac and Vista
Naaah.. more copied from Gnome (OpenSUSE) and whatever old obscure OS’es one can think of, btw.
Exactly. I’m a Mac user and the first thing I thought of when I read the Raptor PDF was Quicksilver. They don’t look much alike but they are very similar functionally.
This seems very similar to a program I used a bit over a year ago, named Launchy: http://www.launchy.net/ . Still, interface innovation to an OSS project no matter how you spin it.
1. The usage database, “quite simply” considering the number of time each application has been launched.
As seducing such kind of simple solution may look, sometimes you have to think about it to see if there are any obvious use use case that would defeat it.
Let’s say I’ve installed raptor two years ago and I’ve been using it intensively since then. The total number of application launch through raptor ought to be considerable.
Now I want to install a new app that is so good that I use it everyday: it won’t weight any significant percent of the total amount of application launch for quite a while, and although I like to use it, raptor will consider it a rarely used application.
Or I could stop using an old application, or replace it with a different one, and those statistics “quite simply” won’t work anymore.
2. Section 6 of the pdf, “new user action structured menu”: “we propose in a raptor a redefinition of the menu structure blabla based on how the user see its apps and how he uses it”
This better just be the default setting for this menu hierarchy, because no two users are the same.
Otherwise, you fall in the trap which consist in dictating users what they are supposed to do and what they are supposed to prefer.
Edited 2007-10-07 22:15
1 the text is just a short intro, the database will take other issues into consideration like the date of usage,trends of usage, and hour of most usage, also a new app should have high values of entery offcourse you want to see it in the frist screnn and at the corect submenu, if you dont hit it any more form day on it will go down on the list, think thst it works a bit like the digg thing.
2 Its realy out in the open, so im not religius about it or anything. But if you cant get the distros to agrea on a standard menu structure.
Any way its a very touchy subject we all know.
But k3b is not a multimedia player is it?
Regarding 2), I was more thinking of who is going to use it and for what.
Obviously, as an artist you’d devote a whole sub-menu to playing, creating and editing artistic content (music, images, video etc.), whereas development would be buried into a sub-sub menu of sort.
As a programmer for instance, I really wouldn’t need an entire sub-menu right at the top level devoted to artistic endeavours. However, I would definitely need development stuff to be there instead for faster access.
Therefore, the menu hierarchy layout has to be configurable, as everyone has different needs and usage patterns.
I have always stayed away from KDE because it is a usability nightmare – especially the main menu, and because I have deep-seated Gnome roots. The new menu idea looks interesting and I am curious how it will function. I would be willing to take KDE for a spin if something like this gets implemented. I will still have to keep Gnome though because I’ve been using it since inception, and we share a birthday…:)
Personally I think this new menu system looks like a hassle to use, it seems like it wants to hide the system from the user.
I wonder if you are aware of dasher for typing text without keyboard (http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher).
I thought that one could use the idea and do a “menu” (placed like the one in OSX) where a move downwards would bring you deeper in the hierarchy, a move upwards higher, and right/left change between the categories or applications. One should use nice (and descriptive icons) that grow bigger the closer you are to select that category/application, and shrink when you change your mind and go backwards or move sideways. It’s kind of like the application bar in OSX but would have a second dimension giving the hierarchical structure of a menu.
The advantage to a standard menu would be that you wouldn’t need to be so precise with your mouse — I hate browsing a menu and accidentally selecting a wrong subcategory — and as shown by dasher, an experienced user can become extremely fast in finding just the right alphabet/application.