Add a README
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Project haven
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=============
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haven is an umbrella project for a range of mostly desktop applications.
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Goal
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----
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The greater goal is to create a fresh computing environment for daily work and
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play--easily controllable, reasonably complex, both visually and internally
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unified and last but not least responsive. One should be able to use it
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comfortably with a 60% keyboard and no pointing device.
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haven serves as a testing ground, leaning on the side of compromises. It aims
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to use today's Linux desktop as a support, relying on X11/Wayland, existing
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window managers and web browsers.
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The focus is therefore on going breadth-first, not depth-first. Applications
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only need to be good enough to be able to replace their older siblings at all.
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I.e. for me personally.
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Scope
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-----
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Subproject names aim to have the minimum viable, reasonably identifiable name.
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To group them together, a common prefix of "h" is used. The second column is
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what should be used as the name in .desktop files, just like the GNOME project
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figured out it would make sense:
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- hbe - bitmap editor
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- hbfe - bitmap font editor
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- he - text editor
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- hfm - file manager
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- hib - IRC bouncer
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- hic - IRC client
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- hid - IRC daemon
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- hiv - image viewer
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- hm - mail client
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- hmpc - MPD client
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- hnc - netcat-alike
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- ho - all-powerful organizer
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- hsm - system monitor
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- hss - spreadsheets
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- htd - translation dictionary
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- htk - GUI toolkit library
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See Projects for more information about the individual projects.
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Some taken names in Debian: hd (important), hte, hy.
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Identity
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--------
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The name merely hints at motivations and otherwise isn't of any practical
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significance other than that we need an identifier. This time I resisted using
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something offensive.
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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 meaninful anyway, though we might pick a specific font to use for the
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project name <1>.
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The only mascot I can think of would be a black and white or generally grayscale
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My Little Pony OC but I don't really want to bring my own kinks into the project
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and I'd also need to learn how to draw one so that I don't infringe on someone
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else's copyright, or find someone else to do it. Anyway, in lack of a proper
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logo, she could have a simple "h" or "hvn" for a cutie mark <2>.
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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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I'm not sure where I took this "h" letter styling from, it seems too familiar.
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The above illustrations also show how awful it looks when a logo is just
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a stylized version of the first letter of a name when you put the two next to
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each other. Distinctly redundant. Facebook and Twitter are doing fine, though,
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perhaps because they do not use them together like that.
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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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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<1>. 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<2>.
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<1> https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Window_creation/X11#Go
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<2> 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 used 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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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 is 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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Projects
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--------
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These are sorted in the order in which they should be created in order to gain
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the best possible momentum. The htk GUI toolkit is implied as a side product
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permeating the entire list.
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Some information is omitted from these descriptions and lies either in my head
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or in my other notes.
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hid -- IRC daemon
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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This project is unimportant by itself, its sole purpose is to gain experience
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with Go on something that I have already done and understand well. Nothing
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beyond achieving feature parity is in the initial scope.
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One possibility of complicating would be adding simple WebSocket listeners but
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that's already been done for me https://github.com/kiwiirc/webircgateway and
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it's even in Go, I just need to set up kiwiirc.
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Later, when we have a pleasant IRC client, implement either the P10 or the TS6
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server-linking protocol and make atheme work with a generic module.
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Alternatively add support for plugins. The goal is to allow creating integrated
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bridges to various public forums.
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hnc -- netcat-alike
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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The result of testing hid with telnet, OpenSSL s_client, OpenBSD nc, GNU nc and
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Ncat is that neither of them can properly shutdown the connection. We need
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a good implementation with TLS support.
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hib and hic -- IRC bouncer and client
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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An IRC client is a good starting application for building a GUI toolkit, as the
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UI can afford to be truly minimalistic and most of it is text.
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To resolve an issue I have with my current IRC client, the client is going to be
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split into two parts: a bouncer that manages all connections and state, and
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a separate GUI that communicates with the backend over TLS/WebSocket. Perhaps
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only the per-buffer input line is going to be desynchronized.
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https://godoc.org/github.com/gorilla/websocket
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htd -- translation dictionary
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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This specific kind of application doesn't need a lot of user interface either,
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just a tab bar, text entry and two columns of text with simple formatting.
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For simplicity we will establish a custom dictionary format based on either
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simple compress/gzip with separate files in StarDict style or, since we don't
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really strive for random access and memory-efficiency (those 120M that sdtui
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takes with my 10 dictionaries isn't particularly bad), pack everything with
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archive/zip.
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Instead of ICU we may use x/text/collate and that's about everything we need.
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Since we have our own format, we may expect the indexed to be ordered by the
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locale's rules, assuming they don't change between versions.
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hmpc -- MPD client
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Here the focus will be on the GUI toolkit. I don't expect this application to
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get big, since its predecessor nncmpp isn't either. The daemon takes care of
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all complex stuff. It would be nice to add lyrics and search later, though.
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hiv -- image viewer
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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JPG, PNG, first frame of GIF. Zoom. Going through adjacent files in directory
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using cursor keys. Possibly a dialog with image metadata.
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he -- text editor
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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VIM controls, no scripting, no syntax highlight, single-file, made for variable-
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-width/proportional fonts. Initially done primarily to produce a text editing
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widget, which is going to be an interesting challenge, arguably better solved by
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whole program composition. Scintilla may provide some inspiration.
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In the second stage, support for the Language Server Protocol will be added so
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that the project can be edited using its own tools. Some scripting, perhaps
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a tiny subset of VimL, might be desirable. Or other means of configuration.
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The real model for the editor is Qt Creator with FakeVIM, though this is not to
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be a clone of it, e.g. the various "Output" lists could be just special buffers,
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which may be have names starting on "// ".
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hfm -- file manager
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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All we need to achieve here is replace Midnight Commander, which besides the
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most basic features includes a VFS for archives. The editing widget in read-
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-only mode could be used for F3. The shell is going to work very simply,
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creating a PTY device and running things under TERM=dumb while decoding SGR,
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or one could decide to run a new terminal emulator with a different shortcut.
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Eventually the number of panels should be arbitrary with proper shortcuts for
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working with them. We might also integrate a special view for picture previews,
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which might or might not deserve its own program.
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ho -- all-powerful organizer
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Zettelkasten with fulltext search, arbitrary reciprocal links, arbitrary tags.
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Flat storage. Should be able to use translation dictionaries for search hints.
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Indexing and search may be based on a common database, no need to get all fancy:
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http://rachbelaid.com/postgres-full-text-search-is-good-enough/
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https://www.sqlite.org/fts3.html#full_text_index_queries (FTS4 seems better)
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The rest
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~~~~~~~~
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Currently there are no significant, specific plans about the other applications.
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