331–340 of 387 posts
>we decided to abandon the current path of using X11/KDE desktop components and write from scratch a new UI that will align better with our goals. A very early UI on the new WindowServer is starting to take shape as of 2022-07-27. I get the desire to avoid X11, but why write a GUI from scratch instead of using Wayland?
My guess is that it would take a lot of work to get Wayland working with FreeBSD.
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1. Doesn't macOS turn off font antialiasing for retina displays? I believe retina displays (with desktop scaling) is the real solution to crispy fonts.
apple was using grayscale shape-acxurate smoothing, it works on any display with any arrangement of subpixels windows clear type is using pixel-accurate subpixel smoothing, it works only in one direction with correct subpixel pattern what people (including me) dislike about windows fonts is aggressive hinting, that is snapping font shape to pixel grid, it made sense in displays around VGA (640x480) but does not make…
As an aside the PPI of my screen isn't that different from the PPI of my 15" CRT running 1024x768 (both are about 100). Note that there was less than 15" of usable space since CRTs were rated based on the tube size, not the visible size.
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Strictly speaking it’s just different. The behavior is inherited from the classic Mac OS which initially predates and was developed contemporaneously with Windows. Apple assigned one behavior and Microsoft assigned another. To the extent that one is “more intuitive” it’s because your expectations as to what should happen is different, and “maximize” is a lot easier to behaviorally define, describe and program than “z…
That's where window snapping comes into play. Maximize + Snapping is a much better system that "a hundred arbitrarily sized and arbitrarily overlapping windows". It's very much the opposite of finesse.
Ex graphic designer here, but don't (and never have) used Mac. I highly respect this project and initiative, and the following is more a commentary on my own reaction than your product. I read the title--finesse of MacOS. I open the link, and the first thing I see at the top is the circular raven logo vertically misaligned with the header on mobile. That made me think, okay let's try desktop version instead, so I swi…
Does MacOS really have that finesse they try to emulate? First thing I noticed when I started using a mac is that double clicking the Finder titlebar only expands it vertically while every other app expands both vertically and horizontally. Second thing, when I close a window and then press Cmd+tab, the icon is still there, and if I select it nothing shows up. There's more of these everyday things that work sloppy so…
Can it get the font rendering to the level that macOS or iOS have? If yes, then it's getting there. The few things that scream to me that I'm not using a mac: 1. Antialiasing of fonts, how crisp and clear does it look on my screen? Windows has struggled with this especially after ClearType. 2. Alignment of elements in various applications. The traffic light window controls look way too far into the app's header. Find…
Also, the hardware. (It is much harder to make it work reasonably well across so many platforms without an army of full time devs.)
Can it get the font rendering to the level that macOS or iOS have? If yes, then it's getting there. The few things that scream to me that I'm not using a mac: 1. Antialiasing of fonts, how crisp and clear does it look on my screen? Windows has struggled with this especially after ClearType. 2. Alignment of elements in various applications. The traffic light window controls look way too far into the app's header. Find…
It is interesting how you only have purely visual "signs" on your list ). It can't be only this for a tech crowd. There is so much more about the way software is shipped, configured & used. Also, the hardware. (It is much harder to make it work reasonably well across so many platforms without an army of full time devs.)
That's a genuine question, I just read yours in a few different ways.
However, I'd argue that relatively small details just fall into the category of overall interface polish. Not just aesthetic people polish, but the category of things that make you put your hands to your face and scream in frustration.
But yes, there are definitely important details in other layers that are worth considering. I think that when people make comparison's though, beetween macOS' level of finesse and something else, that finesse is defined by polish at most levels of interface with that hardware and so on.
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Oh, the good old "rewrite the world" approach. Good luck to the developers!
This is one instance where that approach probably pays dividends, if they can pull it off. Most macOS-like clones that I've tried fall short, due to there being only so much you can do to paper-over the Linux desktop experience. A sort of uncanny valley that I just can't get over and adjust to using.
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Yeah but they expose the same ABI. If you can write in Objective-C, you could write it Swift and externally it'd be no different. And since they're reimplementing this stuff from scratch, I'm surprised they didn't just do that. (I'm saying this as someone who would be more inclined to contribute if it was written in Swift.)
I imagine they are using either GNUStep or Cocotron as the basis for their Cocoa support, not starting fully from scratch.