Athena: A Fast Kernel-Independent GUI OS 190
Per Wigren writes: "I just found out about Athena OS which got me really amazed. It's a 100% OO, kernel-independent GUI OS with an XML-based scriptinglanguage called DML that allows the user to edit the OS itself, as well as creating simple applications and extensive GUI interfaces! It's extremely fast! It started an Amiga Workbench-clone desktop with draggable screens in less than 2 seconds... Download is less than 1M ... I honestly think Athena has potential to obsolete both Gnome and KDE ..." Take note of these words from the FAQ regarding Athena's terms: "[O]pen source may be something of a misnomer from a purist's point of view. Linux users should note that Pandora has nothing to do with the GPL or any other public licensing scheme."
Neat (Score:1)
The flexibility of the interface is very cool, especially considering how (relatively) simple the language is for creating your own GUI. The occasional mysterious crashing, redraw lag when moving windows over icons, etc. do make it impractical to really use at this point, but it's fun to play with, and has lots of potential.
If you ask me, Athena's going to be a Big Thing(tm) in the fairly near future. Do yourself a favor and try it out. The download is small, it installs easily, and it's got that cool "getting in on the ground floor" feel to it.
Re:What does operating system mean ? (Score:1)
The term I've always used is Desktop Manager. As you indicated 'Window Manager' isn't only wrong, it's misleading. Desktop Manager on the other hand seems about right; icons, panels, backgrounds etc. Of course they work well with other apps and allow you to set your WM and such, but they don't actually do the work.
As for what an OS actually is... IMHO the definition of OS requires that the project to be the primary center for device IO AND the spawning of new processes, et al. However, with microkernels and dual-boot this definition might further be confused.
Very Fishy (Score:1)
1. They suggest they can precisely mimic just about any kind of UI. Sure.
2. They are running against something -- particularly OO and C++. Why not tell us more about how they are good instead of why the status quo is so bad.
3. These guys know how to build UI's and they put up all their docs in web pages with 'Back' links and no 'Next' links????
If this thing ever gets 1% market share of anything I'll be astounded. Looks like pre-IPO hype to me.
Actually (Score:1)
"While as much as 1/3rd of the source code is publicly available for Athena and Pandora combined, we prefer the term 'open system' in this regard. Because of the strict distribution rules and terms and conditions, calling it open source may be something of a misnomer from a purist's point of view. Linux users should note that Pandora has nothing to do with the GPL or any other public licensing scheme."
they also mention on another page that
"Athena is currently available for free download from official distribution sites. Please note that unlike the GNU/GPL licensing schemes often used in Linux products, Athena is 100% commercial, and we do not allow Athena to be sold or distributed by third parties unless they have been given the right to do so."
got to love how
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Re:The problem... (Score:1)
Re:Sounds fishy... (Score:1)
DML is evil, evil, evil (Score:1)
If you're gonna do conditionals and have variables, use a proper language! Its just madness otherwise. This whole infatuation with XML baffles me. Its not even that great for marking up - it just creates lots of fat noise in the document.
Here's a simple rule: A program with no lines of code has no bugs.
All XML does is add noise and lines of code to an already hard to read document. Just say no! XML = Hard drugs (you certainly need to be on them to do any XML work).
Yours - Rabid at Christmas
KDE (Score:1)
Re:100% commercial and NOT open source (Score:1)
Re:Cute project, destined for failure. (Score:1)
That says exactly nothing. They had to start from somewhere, right? And if their inner workings are not dependant by OS (I don't know if they are or not - they are only source of info on this) they could do it on the other OSes later. Though facts are I have yet to see achieving a true platform-independancy without a lot of ugly hacks on the way and a ton of compromises (like, the core works on Linux, Solaris and Win32 but multimedia is Windows-only and this funky module works only for Linux, etc.)
Re:Time for a harsh dose of reality..... (Score:1)
How using C or C++ means using refcounting? Ans yes, refocunting is pretty good and efficient memory management strategy, but has its own problems, like circular links, etc. Garbage collection memory managers, like Java, don't have these problems (they have their own
Independent... (Score:1)
(**) SVGA: 24bpp not supported for this chipset
*** A configured device found, but display modes could not be resolved.***
Fatal server error:
no screens found
Seems to be a long way to go until we reach at least particular-hardware-dependency problem. Then we might start talking about kernel-dependency and stuff.
Re:Time for a harsh dose of reality..... (Score:1)
Believe me, I'm well aware of the pros and cons of various stategies for managing memory. I'm just saying that the "breakthrough" these guys have come up with, isn't a breakthrough.
Re:Forgive me for my cluelessness,... (Score:1)
There have been environments where everything is an object for decades.
Lisp machines were essentially objects all the way down. (For loads of fun, read up on Symbolics and their Genera operating system & development environment).
Smalltalk-76 and beyond were also objects all the way down. Check out Squeak; it's a modern implementation of Smalltalk-80.
The nice thing about Smalltalk and modern Lisp systems is that it isn't just the human interface that's object-oriented; everything about them is object-oriented. It's very powerful, particularly when combined with the fact that most of these systems also have their source code available.
Say you suddenly need to be able to reverse strings. In many Smalltalk systems, you just add an instance method named 'reverse' to the String class. Bam! Now you can send the #reverse message to any instance of String and it will be reversed. If you implement it correctly (relying on the public interface to String rather than any private implementation details) you can even send #reverse to any subclasses. And all without taking down a running system. This is a trivial example; you could do the same kind of tricks with the scheduler and the file system in a Smalltalk-based operating system.
I guess my point here is that you probably shouldn't give these "Athena" guys too much credit; instead, look at Common Lisp and Smalltalk systems for truly pioneering work in object-oriented systems.
--
Christopher M. Hanson
President
Re:Sounds fishy... (Score:1)
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see anything that suggested any open source code was lifted, just that 30% was available as open source. That could be because they put some earlier parts of the project in the public domain, not an uncommon practice in Amiga-land.
Also, could they pick a new name before it comes out, please?
Agreed! I thought it was a story about the Athlon processor at first!
I'm as happy as a little girl (Score:1)
- I didn't read the white paper, but what you describe sounds [like] the ResizeTool object we use in our own product...
Now that my post has gotten a couple of responses, I realize that by the end of the day, there will probably be two dozen examples of things that this is "like". Yeah, it's kind of like your ResizeTool and it's also reminiscent of the Decorator Pattern as the other poster pointed out.Fine. Maybe I'm insane and DML is the pinnacle of OOP. Go ahead and embrace it... love it... touch it! Lieben Sie das DML! Now is the the time on Slashdot when we dance!
Re:X11 requirements (and others) (Score:1)
Sure looks like they require X11 & Linux to me. BTW: What about the Alpha & SPARC I have at home? I note that it requires an Intel processor.
This looks like a closed, proprietary window manager. Maybe someday they'll port it to other systems, but note that up-front about "Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows systems" Hm. for an Operating system, it seems you need another OS in order to run (Linux, Mac, Windows). So, again, other than semantics, how is this an OS? I know the talk about "stand-alone" versions, sometime, maybe. Gee, right now, they don't even support 3D (something my GNOME box supports right now with OpenGL). BTW: Why do I want a GUI OS? What if I want to run it on my server & reflect back?
Oh, and I suggest reading the definition of Open Source. Key test: Can I fork the code? If not, whatever they release won't be Open Source (GPL or otherwise). Why should I depend on someone else to keep the system up to date? How do I know that if they currently support something, they will in the future? As someone else noted, look at the QT issues that finally resulted in TT GPL'ing QT. Why shouldn't Rocklyte expect a similar reaction to their proposal (in addition to all of the other ones)?
Sorry, nothing here that remotely interests me. Good luck, and I suspect Rocklyte will desparately need it.
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:1)
2. Dual-license (yes, you have to keep the sources separate, so they eventually drift apart, unless you require folks to assign copyright to you, and are good enough that they don't fork it).
If you want to sell proprietary software, the Open Source revolution will eliminate you. If, however, you look at where you can make money in the Open Source revolution, you may be rewarded (assuming your other business skills work).
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:1)
Short answer: by selling it. Oh, you want guaranteed profits. Nope, can't get that. See the Open Source definition at http://www.opensource.org/osd.html. Yes, you can charge, but you are limited because those downstream also have the right to do so, and can undercut you. If you don't give them this right, it's not Open Source. So, you charge for the packaging, support, etc. Note that the FSF sells tapes / CDs of FSF software. Key is you charge for services besides the continued selling of SW (support, custom modification, custom apps, etc).
Remember, fundamentally, if it can't be forked, it isn't open. Others have tried to get around this (Sun in particular), no one would play. If you want the benefits of Open Source, you have to accept the Open Source way.
For an example of a company that has created Free (libre) software, check out Digital Creations at
http://www.digicool.com/. Note that Cygnus Solutions made money on gcc / egcs (totally GPL'd) before being bought out by Red Hat.
Remember that there is basic level of support (e-mail, newsgroups) and more detailed / guaranteed levels of support (what companies expect).
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:1)
In a way - you give up mandatory control of your software(allow forking). Of course, all the Open Source projects I know are either run by the people who started them, or they voluntarily gave it up, so giving up the mandatory control doesn't mean you necessarily give up control, as long as you play nice in the community.
> unless you're willing to give up major parts of one of them
Well, you need to give up thinking that software is a product, which you haven't yet. Think of the services around software as the product, software is the enabler.
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:1)
Re:AthenaOS _sounds_ good... (Score:1)
Dr.Whiz-Bang
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:1)
Why, pray tell, does the title of the homepage [rocklyte.com] read: "The Athena Operating System" and "Athena is Rocklyte Systems next generation, object based operating system for the consumer market." (emphasis mine)?
Regarding distribution, this is a pretty simple policy that prevents third parties from distributing the software on CDs or from web-sites without our permission.
The reason so many are upset about this is because the right to redistribute is kind of accepted as part of the basic definition of open source (or Free Software, as RMS would have it). This is made pretty clear here [gnu.org]. Of course, you're perfectly at liberty to license your product in any way you wish. It's just that it doesn't really fit under the label of Free Software.
Although judging from some of the posted remarks, it could also be interpreted as an evil plot designed to destroy the Linux community from the inside, eating it away like a cancerous cell to ensure that Microsoft can still reign supreme - because after all, Rocklyte Systems is just another corporation out to get you all while you're tucked away in your beds.
I'm sorry you've been treated this way--there are a lot of losers hanging around this place with nothing better to do than formulate screwball conspiracy theories.
Re:Those who do not know NeXTSTEP.. (Score:1)
Re:Exactly (Score:1)
Well, maybe if Windows were more Unix-ish.
Athena! That name sounds familiar ... (Score:1)
for a while?
That browser that was such a piece of shit but
I always accidently installed it for some reason
or another and then reached for a shot gun but
at the end decided that uninstalling it was the
best approach.
Operating System? (Score:2)
Re:OK, this is just crap (Score:2)
What if the client wants to get the data displayed in a format they can control?
Who wants this?
Here's a short list off the top of my head:
* Visually impaired
* Batch software
* Different departments within an organization who need to access the same data in different ways
Yes, in each case, there is a better way to do it than XSL, but there are times when having the single interface that XML offers is worth the awkward programming of XSLT.
----
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:2)
> can't) release source code in a Free manner
For most games this is true, although Quake-derivatives have partial source released (SoF, for instance), and there is OpenUT, etc.
More importantly, though, all our tool/library source is availble, usually through GPL or LGPL. http://cvs.lokigames.com is our public CVS server.
m.
Loki Software, Inc.
Re:Hardly (Score:2)
Re:Uhh... head injury evidence abounds (Score:2)
- Well, we know a *little* bit about XML.
... Here is a bit of fun, as is here and here.
Wow. You've generated XML documents straight out of "XML for Dummies." Better buy a ticket to Stockholm... I think there's a Nobel Prize in your future. - ...there are things that [Language P] can do quite exquisitely simply that are practically impossible in other languages, or quite clumsy
I hope you're not under the delusion that any of those sample XML documents are more than trivial to generate in other languages.nil
Re:Get with the plan (Score:2)
- Show me what you can do? Perhaps in JSP? Something like this?
I could write a Servlet to dump the results on an arbitrary SQL query as an XML document like this (including schema) in under 50 lines of code. In fact, this is the sort of thing that you'd do as a student excercise to teach Servlets and JDBC. You'd cover it in an hour or so in an afternoon introductory course.- You seem capable of constantly missing the point.
... This is pretty much totally unlike anything that has gone before, and your cheap shots do you no credit.
Fair enough, and maybe it's because I can't read any of your web pages that I haven't been able to see the coolness that you are offering, but I don't see anything particularly interesting, much less revolutionary about what you are doing.- You and I both know that [Netscape] is the inferior browser, and has little penetration in the corporate market where IE and Outlook rule.
Inferior at what? Handling the latest cutting-edge HTML extensions? The fact that supplying basic "can't miss" HTML to a popular client "pains you" is a pretty solid indication that your technology isn't very good. Every leading presentation and web-authoring technology provides for straight-forward client-sensitive content. It should be easy for an arbitrary web application to support Netscape (as well as WML) in any "modern" web application technology. No excuses or finger-pointing is going to change that.- If you bothered to try learn what is going on, then you may understand why the demo's are impressive. Right now, you can't see the wood for the trees.
Right now, I see browser windows full of blankness. Maybe if you could explain what was going on without being annoyingly vague... "this is unlike anthing that has gone before"What is something that's hard to do that Language P makes easy?
- There is more, if you care to continue, mail me.
Take a stab at answering this question and I might. As it is, I'm contributing to the TLS and Servlet API standards discussions -- things which people will actually use -- I don't feel like expending much more on this unless you can't convince me it's more than it seems now.XML-centrism (Score:2)
- For people dealing with very large and varied sets of XML formats
... it is infinitely more maintainable to have the conversions ... written out as a set of XSL sheets instead of ... one rat's nest of perl script after another.
Well, as a Java bigot, I am dedicated to eliminating Perl rats' nests wherever possible! In fact, I'd agree with your statement 100% if I'd ever had to deal with XML documents. I don't have to deal with XML documents and I've never seen anyone who did (with the exception of certain specific publishing applications).My data is always in the form of some kind of Java object or collection of Java objects. I suppose that if I were a Perl programmer, I'd have some Perl arrays, hashes or object containing my data instead.
An XML document in a file or a memory buffer does me almost no good whatsoever, so the closest I'll ever have to an XML document is the JDOM tree resulting from parsing the source document. This JDOM tree is, of course... you guessed it... a collection of Java objects. Again, if I were a Perl programmer, I could use Perl's powerful text munging to stay closer to the original XML, but I'd still end up parsing stuff out of it.
Seeing as how my data is not in XML documents, but in Java objects, I have a variety of standard, non-confusing, error-free and flexible ways of turning it into HTML, WML, PDF, TeX, MIF or some kind of XML. WebMacro [webmacro.org] is a personal favorite.
XML is a useful data description and interchange mechanism, but things got way out of hand before people finally figured out what they really wanted to do with it. During this time, I saw several systems that operated on data by passing it around as XML documents. This might make sense in a server-to-server context, but within an application, it represents a fuckload of unecessary parsing and reconstituting of XML documents. If I already have the data in a format that is convenient and accessable to my programming language of choice, why the hell would I turn it into an XML document, unless I was exporting it to some "black box" on the end of a socket connection? Because it's trendy?! No thanks!
XSL and XSLT are predicated on the idea that my data will be in the form of an XML document while I'm working on it. In practice, it turns out that this is extra effort. If I find myself in the position of being given existing XML documents that need only to be converted to another kind of document, I'll revisit XSL, but I tend to work on more dynamic data than that.
Uhh... head injury evidence abounds (Score:2)
- Protium-XML will be immediately familiar to persons conversant with XML (or to a lesser degree, HTML).
Huh? This is like saying that LISP is "immediately familiar to persons who use parantheses." Bollocks. Do you know anything about XML or do you just like acronyms that start with "X"? They are cool, aren't they...- Perl, Coldfusion, Java Servlets, PHP and Microsoft Active Server Pages,
... none of these offer the speed, ... of ... Protium-XML...
Protium-XML runs as a CGI-bin application on a webserver.
Do you know anything about web servers? Do you realize that you're re-inventing JSP with taglibs? Except with really crappy performance?Fuck, why am I bothering? I can barely read your fucked up web pages on Linux Netscape. You don't even know HTML, you freak losers. So, to answer your conditional, you are not crazy; you are butt stupid. Sorry, but that's just the way it is.
Re:100% commercial and NOT open source (Score:2)
Thanks
Bruce
Re:O/S requirements - who cares about the GUI? (Score:2)
You could well be right, but since an operating system is not an application, your view doesn't apply to Athena.
Furthermore, whether or not the UI is the most important aspect of an application surely must depend on the purpose of the application, don't you think? If the application's main purpose is to control, manage or process things by itself with only occasional user control or none at all, then a pro-UI argument misses the point entirely.
And finally, UIs are not all GUIs, so (in the general case, not necessarily applicable here) a blinkered focus on the graphical regardless of requirements can also entirely miss the point. As has been pointed out many times in the past, graphical input specification typically lacks the power of linguistic specification by a huge margin. So, while I'd have to agree that when a user interface is applicable then it is usually important to keep UI issues in good focus, it is far from true that this always entails a focus on GUI issues. In fact, from a S/E point of view, I'd say that when a GUI is part of the product then the key focus should be on the interface layer between GUI and the core application. Without such a clean separation, graphic and core sides will always severely constrain each other during development of either, and the product will suffer in all areas.
Just how much any of this is relevant to Athena I can't really tell, but if they're really just a high-level abstraction layer as you suggest (and hence potentially very useful) then they should stop calling their product an operating system. And if it is not just an abstraction layer but really an operating system then my original statement still holds, I believe: a focus on GUI issues at this level is a mistake.
Re:Cross-platform-o-rama! (Score:2)
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:2)
- Yes, the project is commercial - but so are many Linux ventures (Loki, Red Hat - need I go on). The
full version for Linux will be freely available for download, so I don't see the project's
commercialisation as being a major factor here. I'm sure that there will be people that will want to
see otherwise, but commercialism != evil corporate domination.
OK. Redhat etc. are corporate, but they return to the community. You do not. Hence the hostility.- Regarding use of the word "Operating System" - the Linux release available for download is in fact
promoted as a Run-Time Environment. The download page is pretty clear on this, to quote the link:
"Athena Run-Time Environment (i386 Preview)". This naming convention only applies to the Linux
release.
How is this even a runtime (not Run-Time, that's not a word) environment. A runtime environment implies its own binary (crossplatform?) format. You seem to be running pure Linux binaries. Oh yeah, with whatever APIs you call to make them AthenaOS binaires. I forgot. Just like my GNOME apps are really binaries for GNOME/OS. Right.- Other platforms are a different matter entirely - the exact reasoning behind all this will
become clear as time moves on.
Ummmmmm. Voodoo. You don't say.- As for open source, the policy on this is pretty clear and you should see somewhere between 25 -
50% of the project's source code available to the public. I've noticed a few people quoting certain
areas of the website and twisting it as if to make out that we have some sort of evil attitude towards
open source. While we don't use the GPL for our product, this does not mean that we hate the idea of
publicly available source code.
If you claim to be open at all what possible reason would you have not to be all open? Because competitors could steal your code? No (if you think this, then you don't know shit about the GPL). Because it is less secure? No (see last parenthetical comment). Because:- Using the GPL would have caused major problems for the project
that would have meant handing over many of our rights over to the Free Software Foundation.
How does using the GPL hand your rights to the FSF?? If you assigned them your copyright also, then it would, but that's not a requirement of the GPL.- It
simply wasn't an option, but that doesn't make it a bad project.
No, non-GPL != bad project. Project that claims to offer a crossplatform, kernel independent, GUI-based OS ( JAVA!!!!! ) but whose features above a WindowManager/Desktop Environment (i.e. GNOME/KDE) are pure vapor, while maintianing closed source == bad project.- Regarding distribution, this is a pretty simple policy that prevents third parties from distributing the
software on CDs or from web-sites without our permission. That's all - a pretty basic expression of
copyright. Although judging from some of the posted remarks, it could also be interpreted as an evil
plot designed to destroy the Linux community from the inside, eating it away like a cancerous cell to
ensure that Microsoft can still reign supreme - because after all, Rocklyte Systems is just another
corporation out to get you all while you're tucked away in your beds. Sheesh.
Redhat does it and is more succesful than you'll ever be. I'm sorry P. Manias, but you really do insult this community, and hence, you will fail (not with a bang...).take this to the extreme ... (Score:2)
Some technical remarks:
- what's the component model?
- what about securtity? I can just see people downloading this nice DML scripit that says it loves you
- what about applications? Surely the demo's look nice but there's more to applications than pretty screenshots. We just saw with mozilla how long it can take to develop a fully featured application (and believe me 2 and a half years is nothing).
- There's all this talk about object orientation, where's the language? At some point they actually recommend ansi C for the job!
Sorry for being so cynical but I really don't see the point of all this. Nor do I see any actual new stuff, just reinventions of the wheel. BTW did anyone notice what the faq says about opensource and what feature of the system is mentioned first? It's sort of conflicting.
Re:it's a window manager (Score:2)
no hope to get rid of that one.
greetings, eMBee.
--
Re:Troll (Score:2)
Of course there's the old saw that a human with a sufficiently large piece of paper and a pencil can do aught a 'puter can, but it's also understood that this is not always practical, or even really possible given the term of years left to a human.
Re:Uhh... head injury evidence abounds (Score:2)
Nor does Netscape for that matter, and they have a lot more money and resources than we.
Anyway, dude, it *does* work.
Relax, open your mind and have some fun ... there is a lot going on here.
Do you realize that you're re-inventing JSP with taglibs
Do you realise that nearly all computer languages in to languages is based on Chomsky's context free grammars. Language P is not. It is probably the worlds first syllabically based, context sensitive grammar. As such, there are things that it can do quite exquisitely simply that are practically impossible in other languages, or quite clumsy.
Online parser is here [civilisation.net].
As for Netscapes cretinisms [tuxedo.org], I will see what I can do about cleaning up the code. Linux port is planned to start in about 6 months, but as they do not support VML yet, we are not concentrating on it as a client at this stage.
Anyone interested in starting a VML project for Netscape?
Do you know anything about XML or do you just like acronyms that start with "X"? They are cool, aren't they...
Well, we know a *little* bit about XML.
Here [civilisation.net] is a bit of fun, as is here [civilisation.net] and here [civilisation.net].
My version of netscape attempts to save to disk a .prx file, but ie will dump out an XML document if you click the links.
Re:OK, this is just crap (Score:2)
Well, maybe, and then maybe not.
Perhaps we are completely crazy ... but check out Language P [civilisation.net] an XML compliant server side scripting language.
Re:OK, this is just crap (Score:2)
I think XML is a great format for word processing and spreadsheet document storage. I can directly access the file's content without having to bring the whole spreadhseet program into memory and deal with the arcana of whatever IPC mechanism the programmer built into it.
What escapes me is why people want to use XML for things that aren't markup. Sure it's easy to parse, but so are non-left-recursive grammars, or "ini" files for that matter. Probably the best example of XML being used in this manner is Apache's configuration files. While that implementation clean enough, it doesn't confer any kind of special benefits that I can see over an INI style file.
This might be a competitor to GNOME/KDE (Score:2)
Re:I like the idea, not the implementation. (Score:2)
ICK.
NO.
Have you ever read HTML e-mail in a text-mode-only mail reader? You're destined for minutes of fun fun fun trying to extract the text you want from the crap Hotmail/etc. wants to put in. What a blast.
What I like about Linux configuration is that I can do it at the console, from my parents' machine several cities away, and not have to worry about blowing a config option or wasting time trying to reproduce XML tags. I type, save, it's done, any mistakes are clearly my fault.
There are already 50 000 different formats for text-based config files in Linux/*NIX. Since XML won't automatically take over every single program and tool, that will give admins and users 50 001 different formats, and that one will be much less readable in the event of a necessary quick fix.
XML's great for some things. It's great if the user/admin will never actually edit the config file, but use a tool instead. Unfortunately, I like to get down and dirty with my config files, and I don't feel like digging through tags 'n crap to dig out the option I want to edit. Not to mention the bloat XML can cause...I can forsee situations where XML tags could bloat a config file by as much as 2x. Again, as long as the user/admin doesn't need to ever touch the actual config file, XML can work. Beyond that, kill it.
For comparison, I also hate Netscape/Mozilla's "prefs.js" file - ugh.
Re:OK, this is just crap (Score:2)
XSLT is a great boon to Web developers and designers because it gives you a layer between what designers can touch and what developers can touch that acts as a sort of neutral zone. It also allows you to port your site between content management systems with fairly little pain.
For info on where this goes in the real world, check out XSP from Cocoon [apache.org]. This is a Java-based system, but there are XSP-based equivalents for other languages, namely Perl's AxKit [axkit.org].
Both of these technologies are Apache-specific, and in their early stages. I think for AxKit, the database interaction is the weakest link, but there's enough good mod_perl/DBI code out there that I don't see that as a big deal.
Re:I like the idea, not the implementation. (Score:2)
What I like about Linux configuration is that I can do it at the console, from my parents' machine several cities away, and not have to worry about blowing a config option or wasting time trying to reproduce XML tags. I type, save, it's done, any mistakes are clearly my fault.
Why can't this be done with XML config files? XML isn't some binary format, it's TEXT!
There are already 50 000 different formats for text-based config files in Linux/*NIX. Since XML won't automatically take over every single program and tool, that will give admins and users 50 001 different formats, and that one will be much less readable in the event of a necessary quick fix.
You're an admin a decade from now and you're used to the new BIND configuration. You find an old Linux 2.0.x box running the old version of BIND. Now you'll have to look up the docs and learn it. Rather than with our theoretical XML translation engine (from XML to format X) taking care of that. (Oh, bind8? Alright..)
I respect that you like the less complicated scenario of native config files, and in some cases they are more suited to the config data at hand (ie no `tags and crap'), but XML does give some order to it that some people will like..
--
while($s ne "just another perl hacker"){ $s.=["a".."z"," "]->[rand 25] }
Two good reasons for GPL'd code... (Score:2)
Security - by having full access to the source code, the userbase may easily see if and where the code may provide a security breach, and actively fix the problem. This is especially important in a server environment (though I tend to think that no sane admin would be running Athena on a server).
The first issue will keep your company chasing new hardware platforms, while the second will keep it from becoming a business platform (though that didn't hurt M$, of course, people are less naive today - or maybe that's wishful thinking)...
Personally, I would love to run Athena - but these two issues make me believe I should, at minimum, take a "wait-and-see" attitude. I am sorry that there is lashback at corporations, but the public is waking up to the fact that corps don't exist for the people, they exist for the $$$.
Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
So.. (Score:2)
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:2)
Re:Are you using FSF code? (Score:2)
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:2)
operating system (OS): The low-level software which handles the interface to peripheral hardware, schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default interface to the
user when no application program is running.
The OS may be split into a kernel which is always present and various system programs which use facilities provided by the kernel to perform higher-level house-keeping tasks, often acting as servers in a client-server relationship.
Some would include a graphical user interface and window system as part of the OS, others would not. The operating system loader, BIOS, or other firmware required at boot time or when installing the operating system would generally not be considered part of the operating system, though this distinction is unclear in the case of a rommable operating system such as RISC OS.
The facilities an operating system provides and its general design philosophy exert an extremely strong influence on programming style and on the technical cultures that grow up around the machines on which it runs.
from the Free Online Dictionary of Computing. So as you can see, the definition of an operating system is different in different contexts, and from a Computer Science perspective, the operating system is the piece of software which provides an interface to applications that is independant of the hardware that it is running on. This is exactly what a kernel does.
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:2)
Re:Fascinating trend in new operating systems. (Score:2)
It is an interesting way to tackle certain problems: rather than writing a whole operating system to abstract away the complexity of working with the hardware, you get another operating system to do the heavy lifting, and all you have to worry about is interfacing with the [hopefully well documented, or better still open source] API. And since Moore's Law is on your side, you can get away with this layered approach without too much of a performance hit, freeing you do work on more interesting high level problems.
This is all assuming, of course, that the underlying OS is more of an assistant than a straightjacket -- we want enough rope to not only hang ourselves, but to do so in a cool variety of ways :) -- and then you get into some other interesting-yet-pointless-and-kinda-boring questions about the difference between one of these "new operating systems" and pre-existing layered techniques like, say, Flash in web browsers or Gnome on top of X-Windows. Yeah, I'll agree that it's a stretch (at best) to call Gnome or Flash an operating system, and yeah I'll agree that there might not be so much difference between those plugin components and this idea.
But so what? If what you're dealing with is some kind of extension to existing tech that makes it in fact something pretty fundamentally a different thing, does that not make it any less interesting? Put another way, if you're into cars (which I'm not, but this is the best example I can think of), is a souped up hotrod any less impressive than a factory built sports car? The Porsche/Linux may be a more impressive machine for being designed so well from the ground up, but at the same time, the rebuilt VW-Bug-with-the-911-engine/Athena goes just as quick, and it's impressive to see what people can do with that platform.
I dunno, it's an interesting but probably unresolvable question. If Athena can be made to run on it's own, as BeOS can, that'll win it some cred points. I'm not sure if that matters though -- if they can accomplish some of their design goals while working inside the sandbox, it's still going to be an interesting achievement. I'm all for seeing people do new & interesting things with too-stale platforms like Windows & Linux...
Re:You're on drugs. Very, very bad drugs. (Score:2)
I'm fundementally against the idea of Java. I don't think that the best way to implement apps is through I virtual machine. I think that API level compatibility is a simpler, faster way of doing things. Of course, I'm a speed freak and despise anything that is less efficient than it could be. While you might want to turn this into a C++ vs. Java debate, I'd say its more of a POSIX vs. Java debate. And from what I've seen so far, POSIX seems to be winning.
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:2)
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:2)
Sell support: Most people except a minimum level of free support for their products, free or not. Also, user groups, email, and the internet are negating much of what profit you might make from software.
Dual-license: Plausible, but it still requires that you make software free to some users.
You still don't answer my question. How can I sell open software without making it free. I want to be able to charge for each copy of the software the user buys, but I want to give them the freedom to modify the software for their needs, and distribute those mods to other users. There doesn't yet exist an OSS solution that does this (OS-X comes close, though) and the GPL certainly doesn't seem to allow this.
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:2)
Re:Troll (Score:2)
Re:it's a window manager (Score:2)
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:2)
Now, Loki obviously doesn't(and in some cases, can't) release source code in a Free manner, Red Hat surely does. Your company will not be doing so. Don't compare yourselves to them.
The full version for Linux will be freely available for download, so I don't see the project's commercialisation as being a major factor here.
I don't expect you do release your source code under a GPL-like license, but I would expect you to at least understand why a lot of people want it. A *lot* of open-source type programmers use commercial software that often costs thousands of dollars - they arn't out for a free lunch, obviously. They want things to be Free(notice the capital "f", which I'm using to refer to free as in freely modifyable, redistributable, etc., etc.). In this case, your project's commercialism *IS* a problem. Since you won't be Freely distributing your source code, that goes against the ethics of many people. Just because you're giving something away without charging for it doesn't mean that's good enough.
I'm sure that there will be people that will want to see otherwise, but commercialism != evil corporate domination.
Personally, I don't equate commercialism with evil corporate domination, and I apologize for those here that do. However, I've grown up in corporate North America. I see it all around me. I've been burned so bad and so often that I never want it to happen again. And it does. Again and again. I'll never use your desktop if I can avoid it, because you have the control. If you end up being sucessful enough to cause me harm, then you very well could. I don't want to be in that position ever again(even though I know I can't avoid it), and if I can use a Free alternative, I will.
Using the GPL would have caused major problems for the project that would have meant handing over many of our rights over to the Free Software Foundation.
Since your problem is with giving rights over to the Free Software Foundation, why don't you take the GPL and modify it accordingly? Use a GPL-like license, which will allow the "people" to take it, modify it, redistribute it, all Freely.
Now, if your problem is with THAT, then leave the FSF out of it. It has no bearing on your comments otherwise.
Now, you talk about evil plots and the like. Come on! Please. Like I said before, I've grown up in this world, and I don't like it. I can lose my house because someone in the bank had a bad day. With a few button presses, I can lose all my credit. They have POWER; unadulterated, unshakeable power. Too many commercial entities these days are nearly beyond control. Any sort of control. They're so close it's not funny. Right now the only things govenments have that corporations don't is armies. How long will it be before that changes? What will happen then? The government will *finally* move to do something to protect its people(using military might, if necessary), and find that there's nothing even IT can do.
But this isn't evil. It's just the way it is. It's the status quo. Your company isn't evil.
But remember this: just because you don't set out to screw people, doesn't mean that people don't get screwed.
Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
OS or not to be OS? (Score:2)
But besides that there is still something which puzzles me. Netware (remember?) also was considered to be a full blown NOS (Network Operating System), it just needed DOS to boot it. After that DOS became obsolete and could even be removed from memory. A proven fact IMO since you could basicly use -any- DOS version around, despite its (lack of) capabilities. Netware could even be made to run under OS/2.
So now I wonder if this is the same for this program. What I've read so far makes me pretty convinved that this is indeed far from being an OS but I still wonder if it is possible that it only needs to 'boot' in order to take control over the system. If that would be the case then they can indeed call this product an OS since the booting procedure of an OS is totally irrelevant to the question if it is indeed a full blown OS.
Re:What I want(ed) for Christmas (Score:2)
Stéphane
Re:So.. (Score:2)
Not only does it look like you can't mirror it, most of the source code isn't available for you to mirror. They claim that they expect (in the future) "40 - 50% of the source code will be available to the public", but they currently claim that only "... as much as 1/3rd of the source code is publicly available...". (emphasis mine)
My expectation is that they hope that by making SOME of the source available they will get people to do free work that will be pretty much only useful with athena -- i.e. most of the 'free' source code will be user contributed, not company contributed. They may simply hope that they've provided enough to seed the field.
`ø,,ø!
Re:Exactly (Score:2)
Re:Cross-platform-o-rama! (Score:2)
You can get the source code to the core java APIs and the platform specific C/C++ code; you just have to sign an agreement stating that you won't release or post the source code in any form.
I was interested in Sun's implementation of the CORBA ORB in JDK 1.3, so I downloaded the source code. Interesting stuff to look at -- mind numbing at times, too. Then again, people looking over some of my code from five years ago would say the same thing.
-----------------
Re:New level of /. cluelessness (Score:2)
Sure, this might look "cool" but as I said there are thousands of worth-while "cool" things around to work on. Would you prefer to spend your free time and fun coding efforts on a project under GPL, or would you rather spend your time enhancing a product for Rocklyte so they can sell the fruits of your (free) labour? I know what my choice would be.
Somehow, unless this company has a huge change of direction in a very big hurry, I can't see it getting very far. Maybe if they had a Windows enhancement that they were trying to sell it would go over better with their "audience". Flogging this thing to the hard-core that is the Linux crowd seems a bit out-of-bounds to me.
As I said, this might be a blinding flash of the obvious....
Yes, XSLT is truly horrible (Score:2)
You can see the SGMLness shining through in the current XML committee strategies - the underlying notion that XML, like SGML, must be a world unto itself with all imaginable functionality fulfilled through an associated standard (like SGML had the truly loathesome DSSSL).
So what you get is a design-by-committee concept of a programming language expressed as XML...notwithstanding the fact that truly good portable cross-platform programming languages already exist - perl, java, php, etc, ETC, ETC. Of course these languages, unlike XSLT, actually implement most of the programming concepts of the 1960s, like object-orientation. Added to which, all of these languages, even in the worst case, provide performance that XSLT will never match, and a higher degree of readability that XML is capable of (try reading any mildly complex XSL template without getting a headache).
I could go on and on...unfortunately the XML standards bodies have run amok, defining standards for any silly design idea their committees can come up with...its SGML all over again.
Re:OK, this is just crap (Score:2)
Who wants this?
Really, when was the last time that a client needed to do reformatting outside of font resizing? Its amusing to take the high road to that place where clients receive display-agnostic content and render it according to stylesheets, but guess what - there's no demand for this functionality, and imagining a perceived demand is what is going to leave us with 100MB browsers.
Are you joking???? (Score:2)
No, it cannot - ever read any moderately complex XSL style sheets? Go to XML.com and check some out and report back to me on their "ease of use".
a separate document that is much easier for programmers and not-such-programmers alike to deal with, without breaking your application.
It seems to me that you are indirectly claiming that XSL is readable. Are we talking about the same standard??
Look, I've worked in the SGML and XML document translation industry for years. DSSSL didn't fly and XSL won't fly, so don't preach to those markets because I know how they work. XSLT was dead on arrival, much like DSSSL. I don't know of anyone doing volume tranformations that is even remotely considering this dud technology.
Re:OK, this is just crap (Score:2)
There is already software to address this, and the best solution is at the OS level anyway - if they can't see small text, then it makes sense to increase the font size of ALL text on their screen, not just their browser. Sorry, web client-based solutions are not the way to go here.
Batch software
Access a database directly, you'll get better performance.
Different departments within an organization who need to access the same data in different ways
People have been dangling this out for years, and still no one can come up with a compelling case where it is worthwhile to implement, or where it is actually needed - Oh, over in accounting they need to see the headline in helvetica, not times! These are non-issues.
Re:font tag considered harmful (Score:2)
HTML has been about presentation since day one.
Or do you associate some semantic meaning with boldface type?
Re:XML-centrism (Score:2)
Sticking with Java for XML is probably your best bet, in any case. Whether by accident or conerted effort, Java has stayed about two paces ahead of the other languages for XML development. Perl handles text wonderfully, but is mostly reliant on expat, which is nonvalidating.
Try JDOM. Sun is planning a similar "official" API, but its unclear when it will be as mature as JDOM.
The implications of "object based" Athena engine. (Score:2)
["Does the Pandora Engine support POSIX compliancy?"]
"No. It's not practical, or even possible to implement most of the POSIX standard" (my bold)
because:
"POSIX was designed for procedural systems, so given that the Pandora Engine is object based..."
Now, it is of course a Good Thing (for easy, modular programming) to have a heavily OOP'd, high-level 'environment', (we can't even say OS anymore[1]) that can easily optimize later whatever tasks it does allow the application to run. However, the fact should worry us that the developers say it is not "possible" to run functions on a low enough level to ensure any kind of guaranteed (or "realtime" [everything2.com]
"Pandora does not use a separate interface for game development (such as a DirectX style API)"..."Currently we are missing 3D support (OpenGL for example)"...Hmmmm...correct me if I'm wrong, but does this mean that their "object based" methods are the only things programmers will have available, without even the Standardizd (eg OpenGL) niceties we can use to get around protected architectures once they're implemented?
Oh well: "there are plenty of existing engines that can be ported when the need for a 3D engine arises."
But I wonder...does "can be ported" mean "We can't exactly use them, because of how commercial we are, and we're not allowed to port GNU stuff, but, we assure you, we'll have really, really similar-sounding naming schemes..."
Anyone see a different take on this?
[1] Athena on BeOs on WIN2K on Linux??? Oh the thngs we do.
Re:New level of /. cluelessness (Score:2)
A lot of people post nonsense comments to go along with stories like this in an attempt to raise their precious Karma.
Most of the people that posted comments to this article probably didn't read the links... it's all about getting your post out early so that you have a better change of being moderated up. And I know what I am talking about here... after I KarmaWhored my first Slashdot account [slashdot.org] up to the maximum of 50, I opened up another account... and did the same in only two months of posting comments.
The facts are: Slashdot is broken. It's moderation system invites users to post assinine comments in a blatant attempt to post something "clever" enough to get moderated up. The only people who really get what Slashdot has become are the bonifide trolls and goats.cx posters.
The content of the stories have become less important to the average Slashdot reader then getting moderated up.
For example: The person who originated this thread, TheAncientHacker, and I recently engaged in a series of posts [slashdot.org] to another Slashdot article. While it was an interesting series of discussions, the truth is, my original comment that started the thread was posted for one reason and one reason only: to get moderated up. I reached that goal. The truth is, I had NO IDEA what I was talking about. Any quick, half-witted comment that makes a jab at Microsoft is destined to be moderated up on Slashdot -- especially if you happen to be one of the first 50 people to get your comment appended to a story.
Why, you may ask, would I do such a thing? Simple. I have a goal of getting as many Slashdot user accounts created as I can, getting them maxed out at 50 karma points and then auctioning them off on ebay. Just to prove a point that the current moderation system in use by Slashdot JUST DOESN'T WORK.
What does operating system mean ? (Score:2)
Sounds fishy... (Score:3)
If it's from X, well, that's cool (BSD-style). If it's from the Linux Kernel, that would probably not be cool (likely just GPLed). I guess we'll see when it comes out, but the reference to 'strict licensing terms' makes me a little leery.
Also, could they pick a new name before it comes out, please? Between MIT's Project Athena, and AtheOS, I'm confused already.
Until then, that's the most kick-ass version of twm I've ever seen, and at the moment it looks like they went through a lot of work to implement essentially a new version of Enlightenment on top of Linux; until they expand their platform support a bit I won't be that impressed.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
O/S requirements - who cares about the GUI? (Score:3)
OK, so there are a few non-GUI aspects to the Athena product, but the overall focus is so strongly tied to their GUI in virtually all areas that it raises the question of whether they are addressing a real requirement. Operating systems do a lot of things and managing graphics visuals and graphic-oriented input is only one of them, and a fairly peripheral task at that, arguably one that should be abstracted out rather than permeating the design.
Without clear separation of concepts you lose traceability of design requirements and hence of product quality --- this applies almost universally. In the fullness of time, the end result for Athena is going to be a fancy GUI system and a poor operating system, I'd venture.
Follow the rules! (Score:3)
It is very important that when you use the word 'operating system', you only refer to versions of unix. You must understand that linux is superior to all other unixes, but that the operating system that was the great pure evil and the companies that were the great satan in the eighties (IBM, HP, Sun and SGI) are now cool. Some people even seem to think Apple is now coolish, because it does something with a free unix.
Examples of things that are NOT and operating system: windows (32 bit patch on a graphical userinterface for an obsolete interrupt handler ripped off from cp/m), the driver software of gamig consoles (no unix shell), NT (a vms rip-off, which wasn't a real OS anyway, because we don't understand how the shell works).
If you don't follow these rules, you are not showing your dedication to linux and open source. Remember how compaq were slagged off for offering the linux binaries for the DEC fortran compiler free for download? "Where are the sources?!!" and "This is a deliberate attempt to torpedo the vastly superior but non commercial gnu f77 project" and "How dare they pollute linux with a compiler for an inferior language"
If you are still reading: I was quite impressed with the athena demo. I hope it will run independant of X11 soon.
The real news (Score:3)
Re:OK, this is just crap (Score:3)
download XML documents, and an associated XSL document would turn it into something displayable on the client side. God forbid a Perl, Java, PHP, or ASP program on the server do this for you
What if the client wants to get the data displayed in a format they can control? Surely you don't suggest implementing everything on the server? Perhaps clients should be spared the processor cycles necessary to change font sizes too, since the site designer obviously knows what's best for everyone.
OK, a little harsh maybe. But you see my point. I think the concept of getting raw data from the server and being able to present it client-specifically is an awesome idea. You can always provide a suggested style for the user to view the data as you intended, but why would you stop those who want it from displaying it in a custom format?
you will see an example where they make a widget resizable by attaching "resize" objects to it. "resize" is an object?! Diagram that, UML-mongers!
Actually, this is a really cool design pattern called Decorator. Read up on it, it's actually a useful idea for some applications.
Re:Oh, the horror... (Score:3)
2. If you say "Open Source", you ought to read the definition at http://www.opensource.org/osd.html. Also, using the GPL does *not* turn over the copyright on your project to the FSF or anyone else. Since I know you're smart enough to read a license and understand it, I can only assume you're lying in a cynical attempt to manipulate the Free Software community.
3. Preventing 3rd party distribution is not how Open Source works. If you're going to be honest, tell us you don't give a shit about Open Source, that you think it's a flawed business model, and that we're all a bunch of commies. But don't lie to us. We hate that.
decorator design pattern (Score:3)
Design Patterns [barnesandnoble.com]
This is the book that helped me move from writing Hello World type of oo applications to truly far reaching, extendable, and maintainable apps. Also, it made my applications more modular and therefore made the workload more easily distributed across a team of people... something that is very important to OSS developers and also something that they don't really teach you in school very well.
-pos
The truth is more important than the facts.
I like the idea, not the implementation. (Score:3)
This Athena OS takes this idea and makes an attempt in doing it. However, it simply is not gonna work because if does not have the 'charisma' to succeed. It is already getting bashed with the first posts on Slashdot.
My major technical qualm is with DML. This effort parallels the XPFE (XML,JS,CSS) GUI framework that is used in Mozilla. It would be so much better to use this Mozilla technology because it has a better chance of succeeding (ask me if you want some reasons).
Anyway, life goes on, and maybe something else that is better will crop up soon.
kernel-independent? (Score:3)
Isn't a kernel defined as any abstract layer immediately above the machine? And an OS is generally defined by its kernel. Assuming it really existed, a kernel-free OS would require all binary software to already be in machine instructions (i.e. no OS, a contradiction) -- or that a copy of the "kernel"/OS be part of every software component(pretty useless).
These guys are playing a simple game of symantics and not calling their kernel what it really is.
Not to be confused with....AtheOS (Score:3)
Is anybody else confused? I am.
Re:Cross-platform-o-rama! (Score:3)
What about Eazel (Score:3)
like SashXB, just worse (Score:3)
Time for a harsh dose of reality..... (Score:4)
1) This document could be used to describe Win32, NeXTStep, BeOS, etc. (except without the B.S. about not having a kernel).
2) API's are not necessarily procedural as they describe. Certainly BeOS is a good example of this, as are the standard Java libraries.
3) OO languages do not "translate" down to procedural code. They can and do compile down to binaries, depending on the implementation. Binaries, btw, are written in the CPU's native instruction set, and there is basically no other way to do it (besides using an interpreter which is -gasp- written in binary). I can only imagine these guys are talking about the Cfront compiler which implemented the original C++, or the various freeware Eiffel and Sather compilers I've seen. Certainly there are other ways to go.
4) They are essentially saying that reference counting is better than automatic memory management. Certainly that is debatable, but guess what? Most OS API's are C or C++, so they already do reference counting to manage their objects. This is not a revolutionary concept.
5) This is an "operating system", but it relies on something else to provide hardware abstraction. Guess what, it's NOT an operating system then.
6) This project does what Taligent, Java, Oberon, Smalltalk, Inferno, etc. have either tried or succeeded in doing. Revolutionary? I don't think so.
But finally, by FAR the clearest indicator that this thing is not going to make it is that they don't have a very clear set of requirements. If you look at their "Goals", they are entirely "OS designer-centric" rather than based on some final result that the end user of the system is going to get. This is a clear sign that this is just an academic exercise with no real purpose. They don't even make a clear case for the problem that's out there which they are trying to solve.
Two points (Score:4)
- What if the client wants to get the data displayed in a format they can control?
... I think the concept of getting raw data from the server and being able to present it client-specifically is an awesome idea.
Yeah, but that's not the concept behind XML/XSL. It is, to some extent, the concept behind XML; the server delivers raw data for whatever purposes the client needs it. However, if I attach an XSL or XSLT document, then I'm telling you how I want it displayed. The issue is "where is the presentation layer"? If I deliver you HTML, that question has been determined: I'm at the presentation stage. If I deliver you some kind of XML, then I have no idea how (or if) the data is to be presented to a human.Your point is quite valid, but the issue of how data is delivered and presented is artificial. It was created by people who forgot that not all clients are web browsers and not all transports are HTTP. (Actually, they probably never knew, because they got out of school in 1996 and went to work at Microsoft.) "Web" designers who use a Model-View-Controller design don't have any problem delivering an "XML version" of their data, where appropriate. The XML+XSL was a clumsy one-size-fits all approach. "It's for browser! It's for middle tiers!" Oh I see... I'm a server and I don't know what I'm serving to or why, I just spray whatever data you want into any socket connection that comes my way. That works great until you start serving data that has some value (like account information or a telnet session or email for a particular recipient). Then the server has to be a little more careful about what data is sends and what it is willing to do on behalf of the client.
- Actually, this is a really cool design pattern called Decorator. Read up on it, it's actually a useful idea for some applications.
No it isn't. Adding a resize object to a widget in order to make it resizable is not a Decorator pattern. A proper use of the Decorator patter would be to create a DecoratedWidget base class that contained a reference ordinary Widget. The DecoratedWidget would pass through ordinary Widget methods and subclasses of DecoratedWidget could add "one-off" methods such as resize() without creating zillions of subclasses of Widget.This design pattern is heavily used in Java, particularly when doing a lot of AWT (GUI) programming (something I avoid, but I've done enough of it...). Decorators are particularly useful when your language doesn't support multiple inheritance (like Java). Java, in particular, supports a mechanism called an "interface" which is like a pure virtual object. You can "implent" as many interfaces as you'd like, but you have to provide method implementations for all of each interface's methods. Often, for an inteface "Foo", there will be a class called "SimpleFoo" that you can use in a Decorator pattern to provide the base functionality for implementations of Foo. Read up on it.
Fascinating trend in new operating systems. (Score:4)
This is definately a sign of the increasing tendencies of software torwards homogeneousness and platform independence. Even Microsoft has caught on with the
100% commercial and NOT open source (Score:4)
Emphasis is theirs.
Cute project, destined for failure. (Score:4)
Comment removed (Score:4)
New level of /. cluelessness (Score:4)
The remaining ones are about whether they should call themselves an OS and whether they should use the name Athena. Is Slashdot now News for Editors?
How about some actual discussion of the technology involved? Are there no nerds left on here?
OK, this is just crap (Score:5)
Have you ever seen one of those situations where someone takes a smattering of technical knowledge and industriously recreates something that already exists... but does it badly? (If you haven't seen this, Microsoft has a whole catalog of products to illustrate this point.)
There is so much cluelessness on the Athena OS site, it's really hard to figure out where to start, but getting down to the core technology: DML is stupid. DML is the "Object Oriented GUI language in XML." Buzzword compliant? You bet? Useful? Not!
XML is a rotten format for programming languages. Anyone who's worked with XSLT knows what I mean. XSLT (related to XSL) is, essentially, a programming language that converts XML documents into other XML documents and XSLT itself is (drum roll please) an XML document. Why? 'Cause XML documents are sooooo late 90's -- and in the late 90's, you could sell shit-on-a-stick if it was XML-compliant. If you've ever seen an XSLT program/document that did anything vaguely complex, you immediately think, "Fuck! I could do this in 10 lines of..." Perl? PHP? Java? Visual Basic? All of the above! There is no language that is not preferable to XSLT.
The idea that spawed XSL/XSLT was that in "the future", browsers wouldn't download HTML, they'd download XML documents, and an associated XSL document would turn it into something displayable on the client side. God forbid a Perl, Java, PHP, or ASP program on the server do this for you -- no, let's make the thin client fat again, by giving it the responsibility of not only rendering, but organizing the data. Proof positive that this was a dumb idea what that Internet Explorer 5.0 proudly featured a robust implementation of this idiocy.
So, already, we have the case that anyone who isn't laboring under the deficits inflicted by a head injury has figured out that you really don't want to force any kind of programming language to look like a valid XML document. So what is the big deal with "Athena OS"? Oh, it's a programming language that is XML-compliant. How clever.
This "XML-compliant" programming language causes you to do really weird things architecturally. If you read the whitepaper, you will see an example where they make a widget resizable by attaching "resize" objects to it. "resize" is an object?! Diagram that, UML-mongers!
Piled on top of basic Bad Technology(tm), are numerous statements that indicate that these guys have never looked at any other system. Their claims about the flexibility of their design are laughable to anyone who has seen Motif widget management or Java AWT LayoutManagers (GridBagLayout is a bear, but it's incredibly powerful). Seriously, they try to sound like they've invented a better mousetrap, but you start to wonder if they've ever seen a real mouse. Like, where did they get this gem:
- XML and HTML standards are defined by their respective organisations and have no direct association with Rocklyte Systems or the DML standard.
It's like they don't even know where HTML and XML come from... but whereever they're from, it's not Rocklyte Systems and we want to remind you of that. This is just laugh-out-loud funny.Cross-platform-o-rama! (Score:5)
- Java
...but six years too late and not nearly as good.it's a window manager (Score:5)
it may become more in the future. but calling a window manager an OS is a major exaggeration.
for it to be an OS it would need to allow me to log into it, and create an environment where i can run programs without them being aware that they are actually on a different system (the linux host).
i have seen nothing of that in the description.
greetings, eMBee.
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