Enlightenment 0.21 Now In Alpha With Better Wayland Support

[raster]

A few releases ago Enlightenment bragged about how certain DE:s suck for requiring GL. Now if i understood correctly, E requires GL?

nope. it doesn't require it. it can composite without gl.

[raster]

Enl menu is slower to use than a whisker menu and requires more mouse moves and mouse moves must be exact to open the child menu you wanted , otherwise you need to start from the root, very unpractical.

As i wrote the code for e's menus... it doesn't require exact moves. if you try it you can open the menu - hover over e.g. "applications" just long enough for it to pop up - it's really short - then move DIAGONALLY to it over other items in the parent. they won't show because the code actually deals with this "fuzzy logic" guessing you are moving to the submenu and not opening more submenus from the parent. we could argue the timeouts etc. are a bit too small but you do not have to be very exact.

the xfce menu requires you to click on a parent category then navigate over and click on a child - it still requires the same exact positioning. yes - the menu items may be bigger because they have 2 lines of text, though that does mean you have to scroll more for large amounts of content, thus taking more time in that way.

but as i said. if you re using that menu so often that an extra 0.5 sec makes a difference to your day or not - then your workflow is limited and e has other ways to save you time like everything and ibar, keyboard shortcuts and much more. we aren't a menu centric wm. it happens to HAVE a menu. it's not built around it assuming everyone will use it all day long. compare evrything vs whisker menu and you'll find e is right up there if not far far far ahead. it can search apps, files, even do quick calculations, search window titles and more. you have a choice as to what to use - use what you prefer. there's more than one choice. the main menu isn't meant to be a desktop control crutch to lean on all day long. its for the odd thing here and there.

Approx seven is the total number of items in a dialog box to not make it too complex, see an example by oracle:

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19455-01/806-2915/6jc3nftnu/index.html

ever heard of the paradox of choice? ANY choice is complex. any choice causes stress. why is 7 such a magic point of complex vs not?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two

i've read many other articles/papers/whatever on this "magic 7". that is where it's related. number of visible items staring at you RIGHt now has very litle to nothign to do with short term memory.

that is actually scientifically studied information. as for that oracle link .. that doesn't back up your statement at all. it does not state anything about limiting number of "things" to 7 or anything of the like. have a read of it. it's CHAPTER 7.... but it doesn't mention a limitation. 7 is the above short term memory number. not the number of things that can be visible before something is too complex. if that were the case no menu would ever have > 7 items in it. os's would avoid it. file mangers would avoid displaying > 7 file icons at a time. your ideas are not based on any factual information.

in fact it even says to use non-resizable dialogs - exactly what e does whenever possible. e uses nested dialogs exactly what you complain about yet oracle recommend it. (nested dialogs would be where one dialog brings up another and another in this case - so settings panel brings up a details settings dialog). we follow the advice on advanced features - we have an advanced button bottom-right in a LOt of dialogs that switches to an advanced mode, but by default its in basic mode as recommended by oracle etc. etc. - so your link to a page justifying good dialog design actually describes what e does. it does not anywhere say "limit number of items to 7" or any words to that effect or even close. did you simply google "dialog 7" and give the first link you got without reading?

but sure - more content is more complexity, but people don't magically go "omg! too much" at 7. 7 (+-2) IS the point at which most people's brains can't remember more things in short term memory. not the point at which to not have more content (icons, menu items, checkboxes, whatever).

In Xfce you have All Settings dialog and when you select a category, it returns back to All settings dialog. All this happen in the same one dialog.

and when you close the settings dialog that appeared in e ... the original settings dialog is still there too where it was. it's another window below the one that popped up on top. how is this any better or worse? it's just different. e uses multiple windows to do the exact same thing. it's ALLOWING access to the parent WHILE the child is still up. this allows you to bring up LOTS of things at once and change several things art the same time without going back and forth and back and forth... each time losing context. you seem to think that there is just one true/right/best way to do things. you don't have to do this, but you CAN. the xfce model means you CANNOT. so explain to me again how what you say is "the one and only true/best way"? why is the whisker menu better than evrything? did you even try evrything? how is the plain old main menu bad if the expected use pattern is "not very often" ?

[Jedipottsy]

I get that Enlightenment is technically very good, and often includes features before the other DE's, but for me its completely unusable. The layout is atrocious, the 'control panel' has a really bad layout with lots of wasted space, yet at the same time feels cramped. The UI looks like it was designed using Photoshop tutorials of 2004. lots of 'flashy' parts but none of it makes consistent sense. There are lots of pointless animations for the sake of animation. UI animation should be subtle and be used to make using the system smooth. The whole system very much feels like someone who doesnt know UI design and animation, and without thinking if something should be done artistically, they included it because they can.

[Scias]

...

Just saying that you are wasting a valuable amount of your time on this notorious Phoronix forums troll.

Anyways I have a question, assuming NVIDIA doesn't retract and maintains its eglstreams Wayland implementation, would E implement it ?

[Gapil301]

As if that meant anything. Do you even know who raster is, by the way?

I don't, who is raster? lel

[PeterKraus]

I don't, who is raster? lel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carsten_Haitzler

[chrisq]

nope. it doesn't require it. it can composite without gl.

raster thank you for enlightenment!
I've been using it for many years, over to periods, one of them being currently, it's great!

Basically E is the only DE that ever let me configure it exactly like I wanted it. Separate and individually controlled desktops on each monitor typically other DEs would choke on. Combine that with all kind of mouse/edge/keyboard bindings you can imagine, and you can truly customize your desktop.

I used some other DEs between e0.16 and 0.18, but as soon as it started stabilizing I was coming right back

[Gapil301]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carsten_Haitzler

mad respect

[raster]

I get that Enlightenment is technically very good, and often includes features before the other DE's, but for me its completely unusable. The layout is atrocious, the 'control panel' has a really bad layout with lots of wasted space, yet at the same time feels cramped. The UI looks like it was designed using Photoshop tutorials of 2004. lots of 'flashy' parts but none of it makes consistent sense. There are lots of pointless animations for the sake of animation. UI animation should be subtle and be used to make using the system smooth. The whole system very much feels like someone who doesnt know UI design and animation, and without thinking if something should be done artistically, they included it because they can.

yes e's look is 3d with gradient and shadows and stuff. that was a design choice. no we don't have a oh-so-trendy flatty look. that's a matter of taste.

yes - control panels are not designed. they are mostly options stuffed in so you have access to the option and they have grown and grown over time and need a revamp. like your home directory fills with junk over time and you have to house-clean and arrange it.

but can you explain where animation or useless or over-much? e doesn't animate that much. a few things are "because we can" but very few. most are there to provide a clicker experience or provide information.

[raster]

Just saying that you are wasting a valuable amount of your time on this notorious Phoronix forums troll.

Anyways I have a question, assuming NVIDIA doesn't retract and maintains its eglstreams Wayland implementation, would E implement it ?

currently on a "wait and see". i've registered my position that i think this is poor forcing compositors (and toolkits) to implement 2 separate paths for the same thing (maintenance, testing etc.). if drivers move to eglstreams etc. as a whole (mesa too etc.) then i guess we'll follow of course. i'd like to see another implementation other than nvidia's drivers working to make this truly worthwhile. that'd justify nvidia's position that they they think eglstreams is how it should all work anyway across the board.

in the end though if neither side budges, we'd have to implement the support. it might take a while until we get to it though. it's a question of time and priorities. i prefer the drm/gbm approach though for reasons outside of gl land - eg a video decode lib (wrapped around hw accel maybe) can provide drm buffers without needing to use egl/gles. same with a 2d accel lib/infra. everyone can use the same low-level buffer api without dragging in egl/gles driver stacks. the egl/gles stack then can adopt/use/wrap/map these buffers for use. that is the model we had until eglstreams.