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If you want a fleshed out demo [0], we had the author present at our conference recently. Worth a watch. [0] https://media.handmade-seattle.com/essence/ https:

If you want a fleshed out demo [0], we had the author present at our conference recently. Worth a watch. [0] https://media.handmade-seattle.com/essence/ https://media.handmade-seattle.com/essence/

myself248 5y ago
Thank you, that's a really great overview. Wow. Just wow. I wish everything in my life was designed like this.
HellsMaddy 5y ago
I wasn't really that interested in this project from the website, but this video sold me. Super cool, wow!
- zw123456 5y ago
  Agreed, the video really impressed me. He mentioned that you can't delete files yet, I am wondering what the idea would be if you delete a file that is open in an app, change it to untitled in the app maybe ? Very impressive, amazing amount of work went into it clearly.
digitalsankhara 5y ago
Thanks for the link. Appreciate the amount of work that has gone into this, very well done to the author(s), super work. Stunning attention to detail - font choice on install, dynamic file renaming, open file highlighting, tabbed windows with apps inside. These felt so intuitive to me as I watched. Vector based UI - excellent choice! Watching the demo brought back memories of OS/2 and BeOS in terms of aesthetics and usability. The theme designer blew me away - it looked like Sketch or Adobe XD in terms of UI prototyping. If this offers a way to draw your UI with vector based tools and have it "attached" to the OS's API then that's really exciting. Further, if this could be extended to a VB style application where one can code in actions, events etc in a user accessible way [1] then I think it would be a killer app for this OS where a user/developer could shape the entire OS to fit the needs of the design. I'm thinking here of a single use OS on a USB stick - for example, a writer's OS where the whole OS/Apps just provide a rich environment for wordsmiths to work in creative isolation. Like the "Zen" mode of many editors, but taken to the next level. Glorious looking dictionaries, pinboards for notes and research etc etc. Design the UI, apps and utilities and compile it all into a single, bootable OS would be wonderful. That would be very satisfying to me the way my mind is wired. [1] To be clear, a language which is approachable by beginners, e.g. BASIC like or some high level scripting language. Also pluggable languages would be very cool for advanced workers.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Free Pascal is already ported to many different operating systems. But to get the VB-like Lazarus IDE and component library across, you'd also have to port QT. Hm, QT itself is also already ported to many different operating systems, so...
guerrilla 5y ago
Does MacOS not highlight open files in Finder the way that it used to work back in MacOS 9?
- lproven 5y ago
  Nope.
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Wow that's sad. And I just noticed Nautilus doesn't even indicate which folders are open... Why have we gone backwards with all this...
    - lproven 5y ago
      I wonder the same thing. I do not like GNOME 3 at all myself. A lot of the features that the developers are proud of – things like CSD, no menu bars, that big empty wasted panel with no indicator icons, the clear empty desktop with no desktop icons and so on – are the specific things I do not like. I still use Unity on Ubuntu. One of my machines has the latest version of the Unity remix on it: https://ubuntuunity.org/ https://ubuntuunity.org/ ... but little regressions are accumulating. I can't empty the wastebasket from the dock any more; the volume control works but mousewheel control is now reversed (down is up, and up is down, although I have "natural scrolling" turned off); Firefox doesn't support the global menu bar any more; and so on. It seems to me that a lot of modern desktops are removing features, or changing features (like the disappearance of menu bars), because people today don't know how to use them. Since they don't know how, they don't use them, so they feel that these features are not important, so they remove them. Similarly, Windows 11 has now lost support for vertical taskbars. KDE has it but it's broken, as it was in GNOME 2 and now is in MATE. Cinnamon has a crude form, but it can't arrange status icons in rows, only in columns, which wastes a huge amount of space... but I suspect they've never seen a vertical taskbar, so they don't know how it should work. https://imgur.com/gallery/fLeAy https://imgur.com/gallery/fLeAy
ksec 5y ago
I just watched the video and noticed the whole Vector based UI. I know there are Vector based icons and graphics set in other OS or Desktop Environment, but is this the first time the whole UI being Vector based? Lots of interesting thoughts and experiment in modern day Vector UI capabilities.
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  Technically GUIs are, or used to be anyway, be drawn with drawing commands like "DrawRect, DrawLine, DrawRoundedBox", etc, which are basically vectors encoded in code and could be easily scaled. Windows has/had the metafile image file format[0] that basically encodes these calls into a stream for later reuse (AFAIK Office clip art used to be metafiles). Since these are vectors they can be arbitrarily scaled. The earlier versions of Windows even had to work not only on different pixel densities (that produced more or less the same visual screen space) but also on different pixel aspect ratios, like CGA's 640x200 mode. However once GUIs started relying on using bitmaps for drawing parts of the theme things got a bit less vector-y. But that happened later. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-wmf/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols...
tzot 5y ago
This video is already included in the web page under the “Watch a demonstration of the system running on real hardware. Recorded in October 2021.” paragraph.
- abnercoimbre 5y ago
  Don't think it was there until I mentioned it to the author :) The demo is under a CC license -- he graciously updated the site to reference this one.
bmitc 5y ago
Just a note that the same video is already on the linked website.
- abnercoimbre 5y ago
  Author said he'll update the site to reference this conference link. The demo is under a CC license and we want people to easily download it.

If you want a fleshed out demo [0], we had the author present at our conference recently. Worth a watch. [0] https://media.handmade-seattle.com/essence/ https://media.handmade-seattle.com/essence/

myself248 5y ago

Thank you, that's a really great overview. Wow. Just wow. I wish everything in my life was designed like this.

HellsMaddy 5y ago

I wasn't really that interested in this project from the website, but this video sold me. Super cool, wow!

zw123456 5y ago
Agreed, the video really impressed me. He mentioned that you can't delete files yet, I am wondering what the idea would be if you delete a file that is open in an app, change it to untitled in the app maybe ? Very impressive, amazing amount of work went into it clearly.

digitalsankhara 5y ago

Thanks for the link. Appreciate the amount of work that has gone into this, very well done to the author(s), super work. Stunning attention to detail - font choice on install, dynamic file renaming, open file highlighting, tabbed windows with apps inside. These felt so intuitive to me as I watched. Vector based UI - excellent choice! Watching the demo brought back memories of OS/2 and BeOS in terms of aesthetics and usability. The theme designer blew me away - it looked like Sketch or Adobe XD in terms of UI prototyping. If this offers a way to draw your UI with vector based tools and have it "attached" to the OS's API then that's really exciting. Further, if this could be extended to a VB style application where one can code in actions, events etc in a user accessible way [1] then I think it would be a killer app for this OS where a user/developer could shape the entire OS to fit the needs of the design. I'm thinking here of a single use OS on a USB stick - for example, a writer's OS where the whole OS/Apps just provide a rich environment for wordsmiths to work in creative isolation. Like the "Zen" mode of many editors, but taken to the next level. Glorious looking dictionaries, pinboards for notes and research etc etc. Design the UI, apps and utilities and compile it all into a single, bootable OS would be wonderful. That would be very satisfying to me the way my mind is wired. [1] To be clear, a language which is approachable by beginners, e.g. BASIC like or some high level scripting language. Also pluggable languages would be very cool for advanced workers.

CRConrad 5y ago
Free Pascal is already ported to many different operating systems. But to get the VB-like Lazarus IDE and component library across, you'd also have to port QT. Hm, QT itself is also already ported to many different operating systems, so...

guerrilla 5y ago

Does MacOS not highlight open files in Finder the way that it used to work back in MacOS 9?

lproven 5y ago
Nope.
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Wow that's sad. And I just noticed Nautilus doesn't even indicate which folders are open... Why have we gone backwards with all this...
  - lproven 5y ago
    I wonder the same thing. I do not like GNOME 3 at all myself. A lot of the features that the developers are proud of – things like CSD, no menu bars, that big empty wasted panel with no indicator icons, the clear empty desktop with no desktop icons and so on – are the specific things I do not like. I still use Unity on Ubuntu. One of my machines has the latest version of the Unity remix on it: https://ubuntuunity.org/ https://ubuntuunity.org/ ... but little regressions are accumulating. I can't empty the wastebasket from the dock any more; the volume control works but mousewheel control is now reversed (down is up, and up is down, although I have "natural scrolling" turned off); Firefox doesn't support the global menu bar any more; and so on. It seems to me that a lot of modern desktops are removing features, or changing features (like the disappearance of menu bars), because people today don't know how to use them. Since they don't know how, they don't use them, so they feel that these features are not important, so they remove them. Similarly, Windows 11 has now lost support for vertical taskbars. KDE has it but it's broken, as it was in GNOME 2 and now is in MATE. Cinnamon has a crude form, but it can't arrange status icons in rows, only in columns, which wastes a huge amount of space... but I suspect they've never seen a vertical taskbar, so they don't know how it should work. https://imgur.com/gallery/fLeAy https://imgur.com/gallery/fLeAy

ksec 5y ago

I just watched the video and noticed the whole Vector based UI. I know there are Vector based icons and graphics set in other OS or Desktop Environment, but is this the first time the whole UI being Vector based? Lots of interesting thoughts and experiment in modern day Vector UI capabilities.

badsectoracula 5y ago
Technically GUIs are, or used to be anyway, be drawn with drawing commands like "DrawRect, DrawLine, DrawRoundedBox", etc, which are basically vectors encoded in code and could be easily scaled. Windows has/had the metafile image file format[0] that basically encodes these calls into a stream for later reuse (AFAIK Office clip art used to be metafiles). Since these are vectors they can be arbitrarily scaled. The earlier versions of Windows even had to work not only on different pixel densities (that produced more or less the same visual screen space) but also on different pixel aspect ratios, like CGA's 640x200 mode. However once GUIs started relying on using bitmaps for drawing parts of the theme things got a bit less vector-y. But that happened later. [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols/ms-wmf/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/openspecs/windows_protocols...

tzot 5y ago

This video is already included in the web page under the “Watch a demonstration of the system running on real hardware. Recorded in October 2021.” paragraph.

abnercoimbre 5y ago
Don't think it was there until I mentioned it to the author :) The demo is under a CC license -- he graciously updated the site to reference this one.

bmitc 5y ago

Just a note that the same video is already on the linked website.

abnercoimbre 5y ago
Author said he'll update the site to reference this conference link. The demo is under a CC license and we want people to easily download it.