What would be your perfect software environment?
 

Elsewhere I have posted or commented on the ideal hardware for NITs. Now I am thinking about software; mostly because I am nearing completion of a toolkit for making software environments and want ideas/feedback.

What would be your ideal software environment?

I'll tell you what I don't like. When I want to get to a piece of information, say an appointment, contact, mp3, e-book, or a weather report, It's a real pain to go through a menu tree, wait for an app to load, find and load my playlist, book, URL etc., scroll to the right place, etc. Even the iPod sucks at this.

This problem is reduced with apps like the Personal Menu or OMWeather. But the screen is smaller than all my information. We could clutter the screen with lots of info, but what about the pretty background?

My toolkit will create any kind of software environment on any kind of device, but right now I am focusing on the NITs and on the first environment, which I hope will become the default that most people use.

The engine is currently connected to map information to a screen via 3D graphics (openGL), flat graphics (cairo), and pretty text (pango). I think that the ability to render 3D graphics can be used to solve the screen-space issue. For example, instead of a background, a 3D environment -- a scene could be used. (E.g., for fun, birds could fly around in your space)

I'm interested in any ideas and whether you think I should stick with 2D or focus mainly on 3D and what that might look like for you?

In other words, what would it take / how would it work for you to want to switch to using a new software environment and never look back? Let's make the iPod's interface look silly, useless and old.

Re: What would be your perfect software environment?
 

Simple.

NewtonOS 2.X, with a new TCP/IP stack (the existing one is really cr*ppy), some sort of "hook" into "normal" filesystems (NewtonOS uses a Palm-esque database structure, which should be kept as it makes for a fabulously integrated system) and the integration of the community hacks for USB and BT. Better synching tools would help also.

It's never going to happen, but that would really keep me happy for the next twenty years or so and, more importantly, it would effectively make me shut the fcuk up.

Re: What would be your perfect software environment?
 

The toolkit will make any kind of software environment. But I don't know anything about NewtonOS. What was so great about it?

Re: What would be your perfect software environment?
 

So you've made a compiler?

Re: What would be your perfect software environment?
 

Haha! I suppose a compiler COULD make any kind of software environment!

The short story, if you want the technical answer, is that the engine allows you to map data to a model and the model to events that will display, edit, retrieve or use that data. So you can can create a "theme" that maps data for a particular platform or set of preferences.

The scary answer is that data and "objects" are modeled by a sort of hybrid between group theory and number theory (to represent states). Then using, algebraic techniques, the system "solves" your problem.

In practice it isn't all that scary and it will be even less-so as the first "theme" takes shape. Which is why I need feedback / ideas / complaints.

If you want more technical details, see these:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/h7777vq6jqv2555t/

www.cs.vu.nl/CMSGA/slides/long.ppt

If you can't get to that springer article let me know and I'll check to see if I am allowed to post it. These are a little outdated, but mostly valid.

In addition to directly mapping objects to "views" things like GTK+ app windows can also be mapped into the environment providing compatibility with normal applications.

Re: What would be your perfect software environment?
 

You could start here.

Re: What would be your perfect software environment?
 

I wanna talk to my tablet, which means not only issue voice commands, but dictate text. Then all keyboard problems disappear. I wanna listen to my tablet read to me, in a good voice.

Re: What would be your perfect software environment?
 

Karel,
To summarize and comment:
* Object-oriented database for storing documents.
-- This has the advantage that it would be easy to store your things in a "cloud" if you wanted to. (Which I do.) But the disadvantage is that it ignores the fact that a file-system is a powerful and ubiquitous feature of modern computers. I could never settle for just the Newton approach; there has got to be a best-of-both-worlds approach.

* Print, Fax and screen rotate. I'm right there with you brother! I also think that it would be cool to be able to "scan" by zigzaging the N800's camera over a page or photo until the desired resolution has been reached.

* High level of application integration; way more that cut/copy/paste.
-- Can you elaborate on this? The article wasn't very clear about how cut/copy/paste can be improved.

* Lousy widgets that require a lot of interaction for little results.
-- Amen! Care to elaborate?

* Lousy Contacts support
-- Now you have hit my pet peeve! Contact applications should be relegated to the old technology museum. Seriously. I have contacts on the contact app, in NoteCase, on Facebook, Gmail, and others. Instead, there should be a wrapper that displays a picture, or even a Second-Life like model next to any kind of information that comes from a "person" model/type. And that should be integrable with your chats email, VOIP etc. for that person. And it should all be onscreen all the time so that I don't have to load an app, browse, blah blah blah.

There was a lot in the article. Did I miss anything dear to your heart?

Re: What would be your perfect software environment?
 

Geneven,

Mapping voice and speech to events should be doable but not by me. You don't know much about speech recognition do you? I do think that it would be REALLY cool. But it would have to be much better than the crap voice recognition available today I think.

That said. Here is something that I think would be cool. I just say "Art are you going to be going out tonight?" and it automatically looks at my friends/contacts list to determine who I want to talk to and, assuming that Art's inbox allows it from me, patches my voice through to whatever audio stream he can best hear right now. No dialing, waiting for a ring, leaving a message, waiting for a return call. ARRRG!

Re: What would be your perfect software environment?
 

As a legimate owner of a recent version of Dragon NaturallySpealing Pro (and I tried the Windows Vista version, too) I know something about speech recognition. I would guess that I've dictated more than 100 pages of difficult stuff like histories with obscure names in them and got excellent results with DNS Pro. And I've done lots of more casual dictation as well.

You did ask about perfection, right?