[openbeos] Re: (G)UI design, round 2 (split from: Patch: Prettifying the default decorator)

BeOS and the classic GUI...
Yeah, it would be great to see the Haiku decor compliment the new icon set; meaning an improvement. Couldn't the Haiku team give Stuart McCoy (is he still around?) a shout to see if he could help out in this area?
And as far as function goes; Haiku R1 should be as close to BeOS R5 as possible in both form and function and hopefully have some improvements added when/where possible. I would think future releases of Haiku would make the GUI more fluid but maintain BeOS UI tradition in much the same way Apple did with Mac OS X from the ole Mac OS classic environment. One thing BeOS did really well was deliver a flexible UI. 

On Feb 26, 2007, at 12:05 AM, Thomas Winwood wrote:


Michael Phipps wrote:
We've always said that, initially, we thought that our audience would be former BeOS and other alternative OS people. 
Eventually, I can see lots of uses for something like Haiku. <snip>
Short term - yes, BeOS fans and people who visit sites like OS News. :-) 
Long term, I think that the opportunities are a lot wider.
I'm going to equate terms like "initially" and "short-term" with R1, and "eventually" and "long-term" with R2.
Does that imply there is a good argument for initially making Haiku resemble BeOS R5 and only considering divergence - carving our own furrow, if you will - at a later date?
This point seems to be a bone of contention among those with an interest in UI matters - and we've also seen some Torvalds-esque insertions from those occupied with other areas of the project. ;) We have an excellent opportunity here to decide exactly where we're taking this in terms of the large-scale GUI (window decor and widgets) before the time really comes to do anything about it, and I'd like to make full use of that rather than dilly-dallying and arguing about silly things as we seem to have been doing thus far.

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