You just jumped in and said most of the things I was going to say. :(
I would like to mention that my options are limited, as sugar integration goes. I can theoretically change the environment the programs run in to fit in better, but I can't change the windows programs that users will ultimately want to run. They are designed to run in an environment that has a hierarchical filesystem and a stack-of-papers window manager, and for a userbase that mostly knows how to read and expects save/open commands.
Of course, if you're porting an individual program with Wine, you can do a much better job. I don't think there are any technical problems that would limit a Windows program's ability to use sugar features and behave like a regular activity, though the program might need to be modified to change assumptions about its environment.
Vincent Povirk
On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 9:30 AM, Jeremy White jwhite@winehq.org wrote:
Hi Markus,
Judging by the photoshopped image you put an an Windows-like desktop designed for adults into a desktop designed for childs. Now, if you'd at least hide the original (sugar) desktop you'd re-gain precious screen space and wouldn't have to explain the childs when to use which of both desktops.
The photoshopped image is actually not how it works; the actual implementation does run in the whole screen.
For me, I've always considered the strength of Wine to provide a seamless integration into the original operating system / desktop and _not_ to come with it's own taskbar / launch system. For the Windows- like experience, I'd always prefer an hardware emulator.
Actually, it's interesting, because I have long been of the exact same opinion.
I had my mind changed by a somewhat startling event.
But first, let me digress. I sustain that there are two kinds of understanding: intellectual, and emotional. The example I always use is that when my wife and I went to buy luggage years ago, she reported that her friends told her it sucked to have black luggage, because everyone has black luggage. I agreed, so we looked for red or green, but they were out. All they had was black. So I said, what the heck, how bad can it be? And we bought black.
So I intellectually understood the problem.
But it didn't really *smack* me in the face until, tired and grumpy after traveling, I had to stand hyper vigilant in the baggage claim area, watching 5 separate people pick up my suitcase and put it down again.
After that, I *emotionally* understood the problem. I got it in my gut.
So, undigressing. I was discussing all of this with John Gilmore, a very smart man. He and I were talking about Wine, and why Wine was not of more use to the OLPC community.
Hashing through this, I suggested the mock up that is posted as a screen shot on the Sugared Wine Wiki.
John immediately lit up. He exclaimed: "Why hasn't Wine had this all along!?!?!"
Okay, I talked him down, and he did come to understand why a dedicated desktop was a stupid idea for a normal Linux user.
But the key point was that he immediately and *emotionally* was grabbed by the value of Wine.
And I've tried this on a bunch of people since. And it works exactly the same way. That one picture gets people more in their gut than any other explanation of Wine I've ever used.
I hate it - it's the exact same image that competitors like Parallels and VMWare use. And Wine is fundamentally different from and better than PC emulation technology. But the bottom line is that we're human, and our brains work in funny ways.
And the goal of the Sugared Wine project is to show people considering Sugar instead of a Windows XP based system that Wine is a viable option to consider. So getting them in the gut is a really important part of the project.
Once we've hooked them, then we can help work with them to package whatever application they need to run as a proper XO activity bundle.
Cheers,
Jeremy