New Look

Could we have a bounty to change the appearance (just the sprites) of RISC OS so it is attractive out of the box to school kids?

If it looks wonderful but doesn’t work properly, it will make a better first impression that if it works perfectly and looks horrid.

(Obviously I’m thinking for the Pi release)

Which age? Toddlers, tweenies, teens, and older teens will all have rather different tastes and something enticing to a tweenie would probably be “lame” to an older teen.

What might be better is a configuration utility offering a selection of different styles, so the user can pick. Am I right in thinking that bigger tool sprites would make the window furniture itself bigger? It might be useful to use colour, contrast, and big for the younger children who may not be quite so dexterous yet at grabbing scroll bars and the like.

Mmm, there’s a thought. Perhaps a short tutorial program could be written (BASIC and some sprites would do it) to introduce somebody to the nuts and bolts of how the desktop works – a guided tour of sorts…?

I was thinking styling that would appeal to the iPhone market, for example.

Watch those Cupertino lawyers though. ;-)

Seriously, though, I agree that RISC OS needs a better UI. Right now, it looks very old and dated, and while there will be purists who want to keep the classic look, really the UI needs a decent visual update. It does not need to look just like a Mac, or Windows, but what it does need is a solid grounding in a 21st century sensibility.

My suggestion – a “themes” repository. Make it easier for the user to create new UI looks, see what emerges. Someone may come up with the right “default” look, with other choices available for those who are interested in other themes.

I don’t think I’d want the responsibility of designing a new default RISC OS UI collection, but I’d be happy to add to such a collection of themes.

I also think that it needs a better UI.

I also think that it needs a better UI.

Could we expand upon this? I see this, and Paul’s:

what it does need is a solid grounding in a 21st century sensibility.

And I am wondering what you have in mind.

Is there a specific functionality UI missing that you believe ought to be there?

Should it look different in a broader sense, semi-transparent title bars, iconbar that swishes out of the way, that sort of thing?

Or would a better/different design of icon(s) be what you mean?

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My personal thought for functionality is we ought to standardise a cut’n’paste metaphor in sync with the rest of the world – ^C copy, ^V paste (not “move” like in Zap), and ^X to cut but this implies ^V can paste the content someplace else. A system wide clipboard would allow for content to be taken from one application and pasted into another. We’re partway there…
Back in the late ‘80s we could do what we wanted as UIs were all different and Windows did not exist. However, as many people as this suggestion might rile, it is us who is out of step. We may have a hundred thousand excuses and reasons, but for the new influx, F3 doesn’t say “Save” and “F4” doesn’t say “Find” like ^S or ^A, and ^F do.

My thoughts on visual fluff. It would perhaps look lovely, but ultimately rather useless. There’s a reason RISC OS is nippy in use, and there is a reason why all the whoo-hoo effects and aqua-theme clones didn’t arrive until computers had enough spare cycles to make it a reality.

Standard blocking error messages would be better if they allowed linebreaks and optional left-alignment. Yes, yes, I know any sensible coder would implement this stuff in their own non-blocking handler, but that’s not a UI element, is it?

It would be good if a menu is open to have up/down/left/right/enter/space be able to be used to choose and select options (“Space” would be akin to right-click). Obviously this will be thrown away as soon as a menu option leads to a dialogue box.

It would be nice to look at the possibility of shrinking the iconbar – look at the Windows bar-thingy for an example of what I mean. As it is, RISC OS gains a lot of space by not having a dopey menu bar constantly visible – however thing how much space could be gained if there was an option to divide-by-two all the iconbar stuff.

My thoughts on visual fluff. It would perhaps look lovely, but ultimately rather useless. There’s a reason RISC OS is nippy in use, and there is a reason why all the whoo-hoo effects and aqua-theme clones didn’t arrive until computers had enough spare cycles to make it a reality.

There is a reason why PC’s in use on our hospital network have the themes service disabled: that tat slows things down and the machines are there for a function not entertainment.
The rot started with what I refer to as the “dancing dinosaurs” of Win 95/98, as for the wibbling paper animation that calls the actual file transfer once in a blue moon…
No sorry, can’t contunue without extreme language.

I’d generally agree but would it hurt performance to have a transparent IB? While not as bad as with earlier versions/lower screen resolutions (my A4000 looks ridiculous) the IB still stands out quite a bit.

P.S.: strongly agree about common shortcuts and the need for a real clip board

No sorry, can’t contunue without extreme language.

Gee, and we haven’t even made it to Mr. Clippy yet!

While not as bad as with earlier versions/lower screen resolutions (my A4000 looks ridiculous) the IB still stands out quite a bit.

Beagle – 700ish x 550ish (supposed to be 704×576)
RPi – seems to output around 640×480 whatever you actually asked for

One could say, in this respect we’ve actually gone backwards !

Oh for a cheap HDMI→VGA adaptor.

I’m not a fan of skeumorphism or photographic images. Icons should be iconic, like road signs, not artistic like magazine covers. I don’t see the point of skewing or rotating things because we can (I particularly dislike those skewed folders), and icons should not contain text (but can contain acronyms/file-extensions if unavoidable).

The icon set should not be an opportunity for some amateur to display their imagined artistic prowess. It’s not 1987 any more. Ooh. Bitter.

As a new user I would like to add my 10 cents worth to this. To be frank, the look of RISCOS isn’t that important, after all it is supposed to be a different system.
On the other hand Rick has it spot on with the need to ^C, ^V, ^X compatibility and the need for a proper clipboard. The huge popularity of the Raspberry Pi taken with the fact that RISCOS wipes the floor with Raspbian in terms of responsiveness means that RISCOS has a real chance to gain popular mainstream acceptance. However, people need to get real and recognise the main purpose of the Pi – to provide an environment that encourages (young) people to learn how a computer really work.
Speaking as a secondary school teacher, most teenagers will become quickly irritated/put off when they find that even simple actions on mainstream systems like OsX and Windows don’t work on RISCOS.
I’m not a programmer so I have no idea how much time and effort would be involved in implementing Ricks suggestion but in my opinion it is far more urgent than making things look pretty. Would it be appropriate to start a new topic to propose this?

On the other hand Rick has it spot on with the need to ^C, ^V, ^X compatibility and the need for a proper clipboard.

Many more than just Rick. Some people might have got used to the old style (Acorn) key combinations, but most of us long time users skip from platform to platform (yes that damn stupid \ on windows annoys me, why couldn’t they use the standard / ?)

However, as nemo said add the standard combinations, but don’t remove the old style (at least not yet) Migrate the old stuff into an alternate configuration would seem the sensible staging.

(yes that damn stupid \ on windows annoys me, why couldn’t they use the standard / ?)

LOL! What about a certain other OS? I mean, a dot as directory separator? Really? Whoever thought of that should be shot! ;-)
Actually, I’m not even half joking here. That’s one Acorn/RISC OS peculiarity that has annoyed me for years.

Couldn’t agree more on the key combinations. Made the necessary changes to my copy of StrongED years ago.

LOL! What about a certain other OS? I mean, a dot as directory separator? Really? Whoever thought of that should be shot! ;-)

Thanks, I was hoping someone would mention that one¹. Why did they do it?

¹ So I don’t get the flak…

(My original request was just a sprite change however the point about control keys is also important.)

I would like to see a new protocol that programs use to define the use of these key. As I understand it any program just uses what the author chooses.

I would like a system where the the copy and paste keys are set in configure, with a choice of presets, old RISC OS, Windows, Mac etc.

I much prefer the way old RISC OS deals with copy and paste. i.e one action to duplicate or move, rather than two, and i would hate to lose this.

Therefore they could be called duplicate and move, and be defined as well as cut, copy and paste.

I personally find the stronged key choices the best.

I mean, a dot as directory separator? Really? Whoever thought of that should be shot!

The historical answer is that it was chosen a Very Long Time Ago when interoperability with other systems (in general) and DOS (in particular) was not important. Bear in mind that when it was employed for the early DFS you could type *DIR A, *DIR B and then *DIR A and get back to the first directory! In other words, the past is another country. There are other (obscure) systems that use period too.

Philosophically, I’ve never found myself wanting to call something This.That (numbers apart, but then I use periodcentered for them, eg 3·14, because I’m a typophilic pedant with a penchant for writing keyboard drivers), whereas I’ve often wanted to call something This/That. Ideally one would have no restriction – hurrah for escape codes (such as backslash!). Speaking of which, Window’s backslash is looking increasingly outdated and the fact it auto-converts the URLish slash is testament to its equally non-obvious choice. Macs used to use colons of course.

Pragmatically, it’s not really a user interface problem (as you don’t type full paths in the desktop) and would be a breaking change (as code often manipulates paths).

I suspect that it’s a case of That’s Just The Way It Is. If the Founding Fathers had defined path manipulation SWIs there’d be no problem. Too late now.

Having said that, one could imagine various FS interfaces automatically adapting to URL-style syntax if encountered: ADFS://Drive/InRoot/SubDir/leaf<code> mapped to <code>ADFS::Drive.$.InRoot.SubDir.leaf – no doubt some enterprising soul could knock up a module to do exactly that… but on this occasion it won’t be me.

LOL! What about a certain other OS? I mean, a dot as directory separator? Really? Whoever thought of that should be shot! ;-) Actually, I’m not even half joking here. That’s one Acorn/RISC OS peculiarity that has annoyed me for years.

I’ve never understood what mythical “standard” hierarchy separator people think Acorn should have used?

Let’s see, from that period we have:
- DOS (and later Windows) used \
- Unix used /
- Mac used : (although you never saw it)
- Network addresses used .
- Usenet groups used .
- X25 used ! (IIRC)

So . was actually the most common separator :-)

So . was actually the most common separator :-)

Nope. The last three in your list aren’t filing systems. :-)

(Yes, I know about Tandem and DEC).

I think this is another case of “Unix did it this way, and everything everywhere should unconditionally imitate Unix in every possible way, because it is The Best.”

See also: packages.

Having said that, one could imagine various FS interfaces automatically adapting to URL-style syntax if encountered: ADFS://Drive/InRoot/SubDir/leaf

I trust you realise that the URI syntax is just a pre-existing domain name specifier with a Unix-style path bolted on to it?

Probably the reason for choosing Unix is nothing to do with them using it in the early ’90s, but rather: Nobody knew about RISC OS, DOS was a toy, so Unix was all that was left. ☺

Berners-Lee is quoted on Wiki saying he regrets using dots in the domain name and wished that it was slashes throughout. Am I the only person that thinks that would result in a seriously fugly parser? At least with dots and slashes you can tell easily which part is domain and which part is the resource path.

I find it interesting that TFS, Microsofts source control system, uses / as a directory separator and $ for the root.