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This is more on the UX side than the technical side, but: I'd like to see an OS with a really robust plugin system. One which prioritized plugins over new apps.
by Wowfunhappy 4y ago
This is more on the UX side than the technical side, but: I'd like to see an OS with a really robust plugin system. One which prioritized plugins over new apps.
Right now, if an important feature is missing from e.g. the built-in calendar app, your only option is to throw away the entire app and replace it with something new. This new app is probably less integrated into the rest of the system, or may be missing some other feature you use, or may come packed with features but also a cluttered and confusing interface.
This causes OS vendors to pack too many features into their default app suites. Today's default apps are at once too barebones for advanced users (like most people who read Hacker News) and too complicated for e.g. my grandmother, who keeps accidentally recording iPhone videos with slow motion enabled.
I want an OS with a base feature set similar to early versions of iOS or the original Macintosh, but which can be easily extended by third party software. Need to batch rename calendar events, or send an email at a specific time of day? There is not an app for that—but there is a plugin!
- Decabytes 4y agoI wonder if an image based programming language might be the best for this. I think that was the idea with Guile and Gnome apps, but the reality is a lot of people don't want to learn a whole other separate language to modify the UI. Something Like SBCL or Pharo which have great reflective capabilities and can modify themselves easily at runtime would be great examples
- zbuf 4y agoSome memories of the old RISC OS (Acorn): There was an implementation of OLE (similar to Windows, I think) where a desktop publishing tool would display a frame containing data from another application. Double-clicking would open the other application to edit it. In later year I remember this extended to a demos of a concept called PCA where the application and its toolbars existing in-place. I feel these concepts were along the right lines (and probably they go all the way back to Xerox PARC) but it would be interesting to come up with equivalents for a non document-oriented world -- embed an image in a calendar entry, edit it, send an email containing the calendar entries etc.
- warrenm 4y agoSounds like you long for the days of BeOS :)
- Wowfunhappy 4y agoDoes BeOS work this way?! Maybe I need to play with it. I booted Haiku in a VM once or twice but never really dig in further.
- Jtsummers 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_File_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_File_System https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/the-beos-filesystem/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/07/the-b... BFS does some of the kinds of things you're interested in.
- Wowfunhappy 4y agoI don't think this is related?
- Jtsummers 4y agoBFS is the BeOS filesystem. It's what enables applications to share content without having to directly share things, it's kind of related to what you're interested in in that the filesystem then becomes a communal database. Email isn't dumped into an (whatever the extension) Outlook file, each email is placed in a directory with metadata permitting a filesystem wide query. Calendar entries would be the same. So all users can drop calendar event cards (or whatever) into the filesystem with, say, the date, time, duration, and other metadata. Then anyone can create a calendar app or integrate calendaring into their own application. Even if just to view the data.
- warrenm 4y agoBeOS allowed widgets (I think was their term) whereby parts (or entire) of applications could be embedded in others - https://www.waltercedric.com/gadget/beos/ https://www.waltercedric.com/gadget/beos/ - https://www.howtogeek.com/696193/what-was-beos-and-why-did-people-love-it/ https://www.howtogeek.com/696193/what-was-beos-and-why-did-p... - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS