Re: New GNU/Hurd project: Crust Display System

[Niels Möller]

Johan Rydberg <johan.rydberg@netinsight.se> writes:

>   http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/crust/

What I think would be terribly useful is a decent frame buffer
device/translator. The goal would be to make sure that ordinary users
should be able to hack away at alternative graphic environments,
without harming other users, and, as far as possible, without shooting
themselves too hard in the feet. After all, that kind of flexibilty is
what the HURD is about.

Does your project include any of that?

Sorry if this sounds like yet another discouragement, but I think we
have quite a lot of competing projects in the `user frendly, "nice to
look at"' niche. GNOME, KDE, GNUStep, Berlin,... Ok, not all of them
are GNU, and most use X, but that's still quite a lot.

Furthermore, I don't believe in creating a "desktop" software that
does everything, from banging the gfx card hardware registers to
look&feel configurability to interprocess communication like drag&drop
and cut&paste.

There ought to be a well-defined interface or boundary between the gfx
backend and the user interface widgetry (and then there's another
boundary between this machinery and applications), so that you can
replace either part without throwing away the rest of the system.

That interface could be protocol (like X), a library (like SVGAlib) or
a frame buffer device (all unices but linux on x86).

My advice is that you should recognize that border, and keep your
project firmly on one side of it.

Happy hacking,
/Niels