Initial commit
Decided to split this out from haven git master, as it will change very often and contain information that is not strictly related.
This commit is contained in:
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*.html
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gen.sh
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Bad things
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==========
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Web browsers
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------------
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https://drewdevault.com/2020/08/13/Web-browsers-need-to-stop.html
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Scrap it all, start anew. Content goes first, presentation second. Don't allow
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for the inverse to happen. I'm not interested in anyone's animations and gray
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font.
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GNOME 3
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-------
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Removing features, worsening accessibility, making the UI incomprehensible,
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piling up laughable levels of complexity, politically driven development,
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everything is wrong here.
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KDE
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---
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KDE will always be hideously ugly, it's the one constant in the universe.
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Unix terminals
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--------------
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Barely tolerable with graphical displays. The character grid must go, not only
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because variable pitch fonts are infinitely more pleasant to read.
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The only redeeming quality is how well these work over slow links.
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ASCII
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-----
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Outdated, made for teletypes. Unicode mostly just adds more complexity (and
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characters). For sanity reasons, I'll put up with it and try to avoid the parts
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I don't like, perhaps even banning certain characters where possible.
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Centralisation
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--------------
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Try to build things so that they survive outages--resilient, robust, and even
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anti-fragile. Admittably, this principle is hard for humans to follow.
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Speaking of which, project Haven has no public mirrors yet. Not that it matters
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thus far... but eventually we should at least set up mirrorring to repo.or.cz,
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which is local.
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Good things
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===========
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Windows 95
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----------
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// TODO: Include a screenshot.
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Most applications followed design guidelines, giving a unified and simple UI.
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Could be reasonably well controlled from the keyboard.
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SerenityOS
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----------
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https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity
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// TODO: Include a screenshot.
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A project with a much larger scope than Haven but with somewhat similar goals,
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to create a nice new environment. Gives proof that such a project can be
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written in few people, given proper experience.
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ToaruOS
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-------
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https://github.com/klange/toaruos
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Similarly to SerenityOS, this proves that one can write an entire operating
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system from scratch. Somewhat sadly, it just replicates the Linux desktop
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without trying to make any fundamental changes whatsoever. Still, it makes for
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a very interesting data point.
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Haiku
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-----
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Pretty. Desktop-first. Just the window manager sucks, and C++ is no longer
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a reasonable choice for a high-level programming language, despite all the
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effort to improve it. It's the foundations that are rotten.
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VIM
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---
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Customizable modal text editor allowing for rather efficient editing. While the
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internals might not be so great, the user interface is hard to beat once you get
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used to it.
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With https://github.com/prabirshrestha/vim-lsp/[vim-lsp] it even shines as an
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IDE, which is a wonderful development.
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Qt Creator
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----------
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// TODO: Include a screenshot.
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Has a very good VIM emulator (rare!), excellent code navigation on top of that,
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clean UI.
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Primarily a C++ IDE, yet slowly the Language Server Protocol implementation
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makes it transcend into a general-purpose one.
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Vimperator/Pentadactyl/qutebrowser
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----------------------------------
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// TODO: Include a screenshot.
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Vimperator/Pentadactyl has created a new standard in web browser usability.
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The most important innovations being the addition of modality to the web browser
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and the "follow link" feature, which is what I feel all mouse-first UIs
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deserve.
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Too bad it can no longer work in current versions of Firefox as they cut off
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all support for XUL addons. The good times are already behind us. I certainly
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enjoyed them.
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qutebrowser went somewhat beyond in terms of how neat the integration of a VIM
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interface and a web browser engine can be, rebuilding the concept on top of
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Webkit, but to this day it lacks a normal AdBlock, and thus remains a toy.
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SourceHut
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---------
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https://sourcehut.org/
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Drew might be an opinionated asshole but that's not necessarily a bad quality.
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His creations are compatible with my values.
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WikiWikiWeb
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-----------
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http://wiki.c2.com/
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An interesting knowledge base. Simple formatting, automatic links. I've
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borrowed the general concept for this very collection of texts (I don't want
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to say "wiki" since no one else can edit).
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It's a shame that it's been frozen in time.
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AsciiDoc
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--------
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I despise Markdown for its choices, and I don't want to suffer while writing.
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Granted, I can see some faults in AsciiDoc as well, notably with how hard it is
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to parse and process, but I haven't found anything better yet. One day I might
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create a processor for a slightly modified subset of it. Until then,
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libasciidoc is what I'll be using for all markup.
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Plan 9, Go
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----------
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Pervasive simplicity. Sometimes it's annoying but overall you get the feeling
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you have the entire platform under your control.
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Haven
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=====
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// This is a wiki of sorts, although, since no one else can edit it,
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// it's just a personal wiki, or maybe just a collection of articles.
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// Might name it like "writings" or even simply "db".
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As computer power user, I often get unhappy, especially as a result of
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the changes that have happened over the last decade:
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- almost every application I use looks and feels different,
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- senseless animations vie for my attention and add delays,
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- many applications are hard to control from the keyboard,
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- visual clutter distracts me from tasks at hand,
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- lack of customizability sets all those problems in stone,
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- and unbelievable hardware requirements, stemming from accidental complexity
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and a general lack of care, push me to buy unnecessarily expensive equipment
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just so that I don't feel like being _used by the computer_.
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*haven* is an umbrella project for a range of mostly desktop
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applications. The greater goal is to create a fresh computing environment for
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daily work and play--easily controllable, reasonably complex, both visually
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and internally unified and last but not least responsive.
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I'm not trying to create anything novel but to achieve something
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*elegant* and *pleasing*.
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.Related articles:
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- https://lobste.rs/s/ksbcw5/12_principles_for_diverging_desktop +
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While I don't fully agree with the vision, we have similar concerns.
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Further reading
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---------------
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To get a better sense of the direction this project is going in, you can take
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a look at a list of GoodThings and BadThings. If you're of the shallower kind,
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have a look at Identity, and if you're interested in the overall design,
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consult Technicalities.
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Status
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------
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Trying to gain momentum, there's an astounding amount of work to be done. Hop
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on if you know Go well, my contact is on the link:/[front page]. Top priority
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tasks:
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- [x] start writing a detailed wiki for propagation purposes
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- [ ] create a basic terminal emulator for `TERM=dumb` (exercise)
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- [ ] create a basic CSV viewer (simple, useful)
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- [ ] create an IRC client (lots of know-how, trivial UI)
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- [ ] create a basic vi-inspired text editor (required component for later)
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- [ ] create a personal wiki/organiser (urgent)
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Mockups
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-------
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// TODO: Mockups can be just included from different places.
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// SVG is too precise, must use HTML/CSS.
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.ht -- terminal emulator
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+++
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<div style="border: 1px solid black; padding: 2px; background: white;">
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<pre style="margin: 0; padding: 0;">
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This is just supposed to be a simple terminal emulator application.
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It ought to be a rather simple exercise.
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</pre>
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</div>
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+++
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While I despise the Unix terminal, I can't just stop using Unix tools, and so
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I'll need a means to interact with them. One day it might evolve into
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a graphical terminal with a tty compatibility layer, which would need
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integrating a custom POSIX shell such as https://github.com/mvdan/sh[].
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Identity
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========
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The name "haven" merely hints at motivations and otherwise isn't of any
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practical significance other than that we need an identifier. (This time
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I resisted using something offensive for personal amusement.)
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A logo covering the entire project is not needed and it seems hard to figure out
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anything meaningful anyway, though we might pick a specific font to use for the
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project's name <1>.
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__
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<2> _/ /_ <1> | _ _ _ _
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\ _ \ |/ \ / \| \ / /_\ |/ \
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/ / / / | | | | \ / | | |
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/_/ /_/ | | \_/| \/ \_/ | |
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That being said, if any symbol is deeply desired, a simple "h" <2> or "hvn"
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could work. I'm not sure where I took this "h" letter styling from, it seems
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too familiar. The above illustrations also show how awful it looks when a logo
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is just a stylized version of the first letter of a name when you put the two
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next to each other. Distinctly redundant. Facebook and Twitter are doing fine,
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though, perhaps because they do not use them together like that.
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Mascots
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-------
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I can think of two kinds of mascots that would bring me joy: an anime-style
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character, or a My Little Pony OC. The color scheme would be mostly grayscale,
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with something like shades of orange thrown in.
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Either of the two choices is hard to draw for me if I don't want to infringe on
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someone else's copyright, so I might have to find someone else to do it.
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Eventually. Priorities lie elsewhere.
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Technicalities
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==============
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Languages
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---------
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Primarily Golang with limited C interfacing glue, secondarily C++17, mostly for
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when the former cannot be reasonably used because of dependencies.
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Build system
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------------
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https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring is a good example of a rather simplified
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project that makes do with a single Makefile, even for cross-compilation on
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Windows. Let us avoid CMake and the likes of it.
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It seems that Go can link dynamically, therefore I could build libhaven.so
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(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nr-TQHw_er6GOQRsF6T43GGhFDelrAP0NqSS_00RgZQ
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and https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1757090/shared-library-in-go)
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and have the rest of the package as rather small binaries linking to it.
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The "cannot implicitly include runtime/cgo in a shared library" error is solved
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by "go install", which again requires "-pkgdir" because of privileges.
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libstd.so is a beautiful 30 megabytes (compared to libc.a: 4.9M).
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GUI
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---
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Probably build on top of X11/Xlib or xgb. Wayland can wait until it
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stabilizes--it should not be a major issue switching the backends.
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Vector graphics can be handled by draw2d.
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- https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Window_creation/X11#Go
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- https://github.com/llgcode/draw2d
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The c2 wiki unsurprisingly has a lot of material around the design and
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realisation of GUIs, which might be useful.
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It seems like an aligning/constraint-based "layout manager" will be one of the
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first harder problems here. However I certainly don't want to use fixed
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coordinates as they would introduce problems with different fonts and i18n.
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We could use BDF fonts from the X11 distribution, but draw2d has native support
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for FreeType fonts and it's more of a choice between vectors and bitmaps.
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The looks will be heavily inspired by Haiku and Windows 2000 and the user will
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have no say in this, for simplicity.
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.Resources:
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- https://github.com/golang/exp/tree/master/shiny is a GUI library
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- https://github.com/as/shiny is a fork of it
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- http://man.cat-v.org/plan_9/1/rio has a particular, unusual model
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Internationalisation
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--------------------
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For i18n https://github.com/leonelquinteros/gotext could be used, however I'll
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probably give up on this issue as I'm fine enough with English.
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Go also has x/text packages for this purpose, which might be better than GNU,
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but they're essentially still in development.
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Versioning
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----------
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Versions are for end users. We can use a zero-based, strictly increasing
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number, be it a simple sequence or date-based numbers such as 1807. If we do
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this at all, we will eventually also need to release patch versions.
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Since dates don't seem to convey important information, let us settle on 0, 1,
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1.1, 2, 3, 3.1, 3.2, ... In practice releases are going to be scarce, unless
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we find a person to take care of it. Note that there is no major/minor pair--
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a new project will be created when radical philosophical or architectural
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changes are to be made. See Goal.
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Licensing
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---------
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All will be released into the public domain. The preferred way of doing so is
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the 0BSD license.
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Other people's libraries may be used or even imported if it makes sense, so long
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as they're not licensed under something either viral like the GPL, or annoying
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such as the original 4-clause BSD license.
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<meta http-equiv=content-type content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
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<!-- make mobile browsers happy -->
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<meta name=viewport content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
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<link rel=stylesheet href=../style.css>
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<style>
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.sect1 { margin: .5rem 0; }
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.sect1 h2 { margin: 0; }
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.paragraph { margin: 1rem 0; }
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.paragraph p { margin: 0; }
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.literalblock { margin: 1rem 0; }
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.literalblock pre { margin: 0; }
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.ulist { margin: 1rem 0; }
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.ulist .ulist { margin: 0; }
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.ulist ul { margin: 0; }
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.ulist li p { margin: 0; }
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#links, #footer { font-size: small; color: gray; }
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</style>
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<ul class=nav>
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<li><a href=../index.html>Me</a></li>
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<li><a href=../haven/Haven.html><b>Haven</b></a></li>
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<li><a href=../show.html>Showcase</a></li>
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<li><a href=../articles.html>Articles</a></li>
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</ul>
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