[Lancaster] Re: the kitchen network.

[Martyn Welch]

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On Monday 19 Jul 2004 22:18, Ken Hough wrote:

> > >The UI could be a 'C'/ncurses program. I have used ncurses and would be
> > >happy to have a go at this. An advantage of this approach is that I
> > >could develop the program on a test setup at home.
> >
> > As useful as curses is, especially from a sysadmin perspective,
> > unknowledgeable users will run miles from it. It looks to close to the
> > command prompt and sometimes isn't the most intuative of interfaces.
>
> I don't agree. As always, it's up to the programmer to make good looking
> and intuitive interfaces and that can be done via ncurses. They may look
> a bit chunky cp an X windows app, but can still be OK. I've used ncurses
> to provide a colourful, menu driven (up to 5 levels deep) interface to a
> fairly meaty programme.
>

I agree, from the intuititive standpoint, however to an non geeky user ncurses
my as well be a command prompt. It looks too much like DOS. It will scare
them sensless and it won't get used.

The majority of users are used to pretty mouse pointers, with candy like
graphics and seem to react to non-sweet, sticky, sugary coated interfaces in
roughly the same manner as my girlfriend does on seeing a spider.

>  >If the device is going to have a screen, we may as well use something like
>  >GTK.
>
> ie we use X
> I was working on the idea that avoiding X would make it easier to 'lock'
> the machine into the CD burning programme.
> How do you think we should go?
>

Single application, fullscreened in an X session, no other user interface.
This could be automactically loaded by inittab. Yes this would mean it is
running as root, however there won't be any other applications
reachable/loadable.

Try:

X -ac :1 & xclock -display :1

This will start an X session on a second display (disabling access control so
that I can load an app from the current terminal) thn load the X clock into
it. Now, there's not a lot you can do in that session other than look at the
time and close the session (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace). This run from inittab
(obviously minus disabling access control) would allow us to run a specially
taylored app, fullscreened with little threat of fiddling...

Martyn

- -- 
Martyn Welch (welchm at comp.lancs.ac.uk)

PGP Key : http://ubicomp.lancs.ac.uk/~martyn/pgpkey.html
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