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First time I’ve heard of this project, so saving others a click: Arcan is a powerful development framework for creating virtually anything between user interfa
by bluejekyll 8y ago
First time I’ve heard of this project, so saving others a click:
Arcan is a powerful development framework for creating virtually anything between user interfaces for specialised embedded applications all the way to full-blown standalone desktop environments. Boot splash screen? no problem. SCADA HMI for your home? easy peasy. Xorg backend? got you covered. Wayland compositor? sure thing.
At its heart lies a robust and portable multimedia engine, with a well-tested and well-documented interface, programmable using Lua. At every step of the way, the underlying development emphasises security, performance and debugability guided by a principle of least surprise in terms of API design.
From the about page, same site as OP.
- Y_Y 8y agoAnd how did it manage to stay under the radar for so long. I hear about Wayland all day.
- cnasc 8y agoSort of intentionally in stealth mode according to the dev: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17683186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17683186
- nickpsecurity 8y agoAuthor has been posting a lot about it over time on Lobsters: https://lobste.rs/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=arcan+crazylogad&what=stories&order=relevance https://lobste.rs/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=arcan+crazylogad&w... Lots of interesting write-ups and comments. Check them out.
- chrissnell 8y agoCan I get a lobste.rs invite? First I've ever seen the site and I love it already.
- eitland 8y agoI have spent a few minutes looking for an email address to send it to. You can try contacting me on @eitland on twitter (I just followed your account I think). Edit, to clarify: The only way I know I can send an invite is to input the email address and an invite message into my settings page at that site. I'm not aware of another way to send it.
- nsomaru 8y agoCould you invite me? Hnusername at gmail
- codetrotter 8y agoAlternate summary, from https://arcan-fe.com/2018/05/31/revisiting-the-arcan-project/ https://arcan-fe.com/2018/05/31/revisiting-the-arcan-project... > the ‘elevator- pitch’ to the modern tweet-length attention spanned reader goes as follows: > Arcan is a curious blend of a streaming multimedia processor, game engine and display server with a novel design that lends itself well for both complex and simple realtime interactive graphics projects alike, and goes well with anything from Sci-Fi UIs for some homegrown embedded project to full blown desktops. It is highly modular, low on dependencies, yet comes with all necessary batteries included.
- kbenson 8y agoSo, what's it not good at, that's what I'm wondering. That's generally what I look for after reading overviews and PR pieces from evangelists. Right now, if I take the copy at face value, if I'm programming anything with a visual component I should be using Arcan. Knowing where some people find it a poor fit (or just too complicated for a simple use case) helps provide nuance to the hype.
- Mmddla 8y agoThe actual linked article says it aims for very complex things and simple (one-function) things but not in-between. I haven't looked into what that means in practice, but that's what's written.
- infogulch 8y agoI'm pretty sure they intend the phrase "from A to B" (used in both texts) to mean the entire range between as well.
- chriswarbo 8y agoNope, parent is right. From the article: "The perspective is to instead emphasise the extremes, that is to focus on the small “one task” kind of clients and on integration with bigger “embedded universes” like virtual machines and web browsers, and leave the middle to fester and rot."