Tuomo Valkonen writes that The megafreeze development model is broken<\/a> in GNU\/Linux distributions. He argues for a very long release cycle for an extremely stable base system (in line with Kernel releases) and then separate repositories for applications which are constantly upgraded.<\/p>\n I've often thought that in a world where security updates can be trickled over the Internet as they become available, it's odd that new features come in big chunks with each new release of a distribution. With Ubuntu, I upgrade every 6 months to see new features, why can't the features just appear as they become available like we're used to with Software as a Service?<\/p>\n Sam<\/a> has tried to explain the reasons for the status quo to me on numerous occasions (him knowing a lot more about building Linux distributions than I), but like Valkonen I still remain unconvinced that the Megafreeze is the best approach.<\/p>\n While I was on Tuomo Valkonen's homepage I noticed the Ion window manager<\/a> that he developed. I found the UI ideas very interesting because they're very similar to a lot of things I'm trying to achieve with Webscope<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ion has “tiling workspaces with tabbed frames” and the screen is always filled at any one time, like the multi-level resource tabs I want to create.<\/p>\n Ion also has a “query module” which “implements a line editor similar to mini buffers in many text editors. It is used to implement many different queries with tab-completion support: show manual page, run program, open SSH session, view file, goto named client window or workspace, etc.” which is a similar concept to the Natural Language Command Line<\/a> I am trying to develop.<\/p>\n In a paper entitled Vis\/Vapourware Interface Synthesiser<\/a> Valkonen describes a system for describing user interface semantics and then automatically generating actual interfaces based on user's preferences with the use of stylesheets. This seems very much like a transform view<\/a> in a Model View Controller design pattern and he's essentially talking about doing for the desktop what I want to do for the multimodal web. Starting with a semantic description of a user interface (e.g. using DIAL<\/a>) and then transforming that semantic description into various different presentations using XSL stylesheets.<\/p>\n In his bibliography, he links to papers which use the term “Plasticity” in user interfaces, which I might explore further. User interfaces these days have to go “above the level of a single device” — O'Reilly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Melt the Megafreeze, let it trickle Tuomo Valkonen writes that The megafreeze development model is broken in GNU\/Linux distributions. He argues for a very long release cycle for an extremely stable base system (in line with Kernel releases) and then separate repositories for applications which are constantly upgraded. I've often thought that in a world … Continue reading "Megafreeze" development broken, Abstract User Interfaces<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tola.me.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Abstract User Interfaces: “Plasticity”<\/h2>\n