Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

HelenOS 0.8

helenos.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 57 posts

Re: HelenOS 0.8

#21

Post by GordonS »

reaperducer wrote: post #19
warent wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tiny nitpick but the screenshot showing an application window rotated ~45 degrees is a little terrifying. Why would that be allowed?

You assume that everyone has their monitors the way you do. At work, I have two large 16:9 monitors rotated in portrait orientation (tall), so this would be useful to me. Currently macOS only allows 90-degree rotation increments. This allows you to have your monitor in portrait orientation, or mounted from the ceiling or a shelf, hanging upside down so there's nothing taking up space on the desk in front of you. I've…

> At work, I have two large 16:9 monitors rotated in portrait orientation (tall), so this would be useful to me.

OK... but at 45 degrees?

Re: HelenOS 0.8

#22

Post by zokier »

warent wrote: post #15
jacques_chester wrote: post #5

For those who, like me, wondered "what's HelenOS?" and got little idea from release notes: http://www.helenos.org/wiki/About

Tiny nitpick but the screenshot showing an application window rotated ~45 degrees is a little terrifying. Why would that be allowed?

It is just a demo of compositor effects; pretty much just a lo-fi version of classic Compiz wobbly windows and rotating cube.

Re: HelenOS 0.8

#23

Post by adamnemecek »

born2discover wrote: post #20

How is it different from [Minix3][1]? It seems to accomplish the exactly same goal. [1]( https://www.minix3.org/ )

You mean because they are both microkernels? In that sense windows and Linux accomplish the same goal as well.

Re: HelenOS 0.8

#24

Post by djsumdog »

warent wrote: post #15
jacques_chester wrote: post #5

For those who, like me, wondered "what's HelenOS?" and got little idea from release notes: http://www.helenos.org/wiki/About

Tiny nitpick but the screenshot showing an application window rotated ~45 degrees is a little terrifying. Why would that be allowed?

IIRC, You could also do this in Squeak (a Smalltalk implementation).

Re: HelenOS 0.8

#25

Post by viraptor »

GordonS wrote: post #21
reaperducer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume that everyone has their monitors the way you do. At work, I have two large 16:9 monitors rotated in portrait orientation (tall), so this would be useful to me. Currently macOS only allows 90-degree rotation increments. This allows you to have your monitor in portrait orientation, or mounted from the ceiling or a shelf, hanging upside down so there's nothing taking up space on the desk in front of you. I've…

> At work, I have two large 16:9 monitors rotated in portrait orientation (tall), so this would be useful to me. OK... but at 45 degrees?

To easily change timezone on an analog display clock? ;-)

Re: HelenOS 0.8

#26

Post by reaperducer »

GordonS wrote: post #21
reaperducer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume that everyone has their monitors the way you do. At work, I have two large 16:9 monitors rotated in portrait orientation (tall), so this would be useful to me. Currently macOS only allows 90-degree rotation increments. This allows you to have your monitor in portrait orientation, or mounted from the ceiling or a shelf, hanging upside down so there's nothing taking up space on the desk in front of you. I've…

> At work, I have two large 16:9 monitors rotated in portrait orientation (tall), so this would be useful to me. OK... but at 45 degrees?

I've been in a couple of events in the field where having arbitrary application window rotation would have been nice because there was no place flat to put the monitors.

Re: HelenOS 0.8

#27

Post by synchronise »

jayalpha wrote: post #4

Lot of new stuff coming up. Also see: https://harvey-os.org/ https://www.redox-os.org/

Just had a look over Harvey OS, looks like a pretty neat direction to take Plan 9.

But it got me wondering, is there any shared collaberation between any of the next-gen 'Plan 9-like' OS's like 9atom, 9front and Harvey OS?

Also, it looks as though Harvey OS is only using Slack for its discussion forum, which is a bit odd for an open source project.

Re: HelenOS 0.8

#28

Post by nolok »

reaperducer wrote: post #19
warent wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tiny nitpick but the screenshot showing an application window rotated ~45 degrees is a little terrifying. Why would that be allowed?

You assume that everyone has their monitors the way you do. At work, I have two large 16:9 monitors rotated in portrait orientation (tall), so this would be useful to me. Currently macOS only allows 90-degree rotation increments. This allows you to have your monitor in portrait orientation, or mounted from the ceiling or a shelf, hanging upside down so there's nothing taking up space on the desk in front of you. I've…

> Currently macOS only allows 90-degree rotation increments.

Windows has supported landscape/portrait switching since forever, I think it was already there in windows XP almost two decades ago, if not it was in 7 for sure (and it's in 10 since I use it right now).

Re: HelenOS 0.8

#29

Post by scrumper »

GordonS wrote: post #21
reaperducer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume that everyone has their monitors the way you do. At work, I have two large 16:9 monitors rotated in portrait orientation (tall), so this would be useful to me. Currently macOS only allows 90-degree rotation increments. This allows you to have your monitor in portrait orientation, or mounted from the ceiling or a shelf, hanging upside down so there's nothing taking up space on the desk in front of you. I've…

> At work, I have two large 16:9 monitors rotated in portrait orientation (tall), so this would be useful to me. OK... but at 45 degrees?

Non-desk applications: vehicle, industrial, marine.

Re: HelenOS 0.8

#30

Post by mwfunk »

jstanley wrote: post #17
warent wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tiny nitpick but the screenshot showing an application window rotated ~45 degrees is a little terrifying. Why would that be allowed?

Why shouldn't it be allowed?

Every feature has a cost. Not just cost to develop, but cost to maintain. Every feature has a benefit- how useful is it, for how many users? If the cost outweighs the benefit, then it shouldn’t be allowed, for the sake of keeping the code maintainable and minimally fragile.

Portrait orientation for displays isn’t unheard of, but it’s very very uncommon amongst even technical users. I’m sure a bunch of people reading this have all sorts of anecdotal evidence otherwise- congrats, you’re special, and either have very specialized needs or want to cosplay as someone with very specialized needs (usually the latter).

But that’s portrait orientation. That’s on the cusp of not meeting the bar for being worthwhile to support, but in general most OSes err on the side of supporting it for certain pro users. Extend that it into arbitrary rotations and you’re dealing with a feature that is way, way more niche than supporting portrait mode, and way more complicated than people might think. All for a feature that has no justification other than, “if it can be done, why not? Might as well right?!?”

Now, maybe there are other benefits that I’m not aware of or taking into account, but surely it’s clear why not supporting arbitrary display orientations is at the very least an extremely rational choice from an engineering perspective.

Post reply on HN