Projectg Seagull was: OpenClassroom

[Michael A Hamblin <michaelh@utdallas.edu>]

I've just found out about Porject Seagull, which is a project to build a
text-based GUI on top of FreeDOS. I can't tell you how much of a dream
of mine this has been over the years :) Initial information and
screenshots are available on http://www.freedos.org/ ... it is very
Q/QuickBasicish, but at 132x50 I don't think I'd care too much :)
Unfortunatly I can't find any contact information on the web page for the
people developing it, but hopefully that will change.

It does seem to be lacking a word processor though it does come with a
notepad style text editor. I downloaded the pine source the other day to
examine pico and see if it was worth pursuing forking UW's code to give
pico a more word-processor feel. It looks like it would be worht a go if
there is sufficient interest in a text-based wp. The next big question is
when am I going to have time to work on it :) Hopefully I can get some of
the members of the LUG@UTD interested in it.

So! Is there interest in a curses based word processor for use in
seul-edu?

On Thu, 5 Aug 1999, Michael A Hamblin wrote:

> That aside, the discussion of the 486 machines keeps bringing back visions
> of a 386 running in 132x50 text mode (in the style of the old Cubic
> Player) running a text-based GUI in which multiple resizable text-based
> windows can coexist on a desktop, using GPM as an interface and having the
> options of using curses or direct to frame-buffer device for rendering the
> screen. This just feels sooo much cleaner than X on these types of
> machines, one reason I keep having flash-backs to the DOS days. Text-mode
> stuff feels very clean compared to GUIs, probably in part due to the
> higher refresh rates and less visual distractions.
> 
> Then in that vain, simple word processors and spreadsheet applications
> that are text based could be developed (in color, not just gray text on
> black). I imagine developing a simple word processor w/o tons of bells and
> whistles would be relativly easy. Text editors might be adequate for
> technical people, but the ability to justify, word-wrap, underline,
> bold-face, interface cleanly with the mouse, spell-check, and autosave
> [all in an easy manner, don't tell a 3rd grader to ESC |ispell to run a
> spell check, much less the 3rd grade teacher :) ] are rather important and
> I for one feel that given this type of word processing environment I could
> be more productive than I would be in some incarnation of Word. Too many
> distractions in Word, too much to do. What font do I want? What are my
> margins? What color do I want the text in? Should it be this size or that? 
> Simplicity and elegence have been sacrificed in Word, etc. for an extremly
> large feature set that even power users rarely come close to using all of. 
> 
> It reminds me of the ancients. They used Apple ][s before the invention of
> the abacus quite successfully. The word processors on those machines were
> functional and did the basic things that needed to be done. I wrote
> several stories in those basic word processors when I was in grade school
> and really enjoyed working on the computer, because it enabled me to
> communicate in a manner I hadn't before. I was able to unleash my
> creativity. But Word on the other hand, unless I was typing a paper or
> writing for a class, I don't think I ever used it. I can not think of any
> writing I did for pleasure with it. I might have on occassion, but nothing
> particularly memorable.

--
Michael Hamblin            http://www.utdallas.edu/~michaelh/
michaelh@utdallas.edu      http://www.ductape.net/
UTD Linux User Group       Engineering and Computer Science Support x2997
                           "Two, Four, Six, Eight - SMP is really great!"