anyone got a bitmap or gif of the rio remote? i really don't want to download and lineup all those little gifs in the button guide. i figured it was about time someone ported the remote to omniremote for palmos.

How about the one in Charcoalgray99's web interface???

Just take a screenshot of the button guide. Alt-printscreen on win, Shift-command-4 on a mac, god only knows on XWindows.

-Mike

god only knows on XWindows.

In typical user-friendly X-windows style, it's:

import -w root screenshot.png 

.

X windows Slogans:
One thousand monkeys. One thousand MicroVAXes. One thousand years. X windows.
The environment of today... tomorrow! X windows.
Hindenburg. Titanic. Edsel. X windows.
If it works, it isn't X windows.
Incompatibility. Shoddiness. Uselessness. X windows.
To err is X windows.
X windows. Elevating brain damage to an art form.
X windows. Accept any substitute.
X windows. If it's broke, don't fix it.
X windows. If it ain't broke, fix it.
X windows. Form follows malfunction.
X windows. The Cutting Edge of Obsolescence.
X windows. The trailing edge of software technology.
X windows. Armageddon never looked so good.
X windows. Japan's secret weapon.
X windows. You'll envy the dead.
X windows. Making the world safe for competing window systems.
X windows. Let it get in YOUR way.
X windows. The problem for your problem.
X windows. If it starts working, we'll fix it. Pronto.
X windows. It could be worse, but it'll take time.
X windows. Simplicity made complex.
X windows. The greatest productivity aid since typhoid.
X windows. Flakey and built to stay that way.
X windows. Something you can be ashamed of.
X windows. 30% more entropy than the leading window system.
X windows. The first fully modular software disaster.
X windows. Rome was destroyed in a day.
X windows. Warn your friends about it.
X windows. Climbing to new depths. Sinking to new heights.
X windows. An accident that couldn't wait to happen.
X windows. Don't wait for the movie.
X windows. Never use it after a big meal.
X windows. Need we say less?
X windows. Plumbing the depths of human incompetence.
X windows. It'll make your day.
X windows. Don't get frustrated without it.
X windows. Power tools for power losers.
X windows. A software disaster of Biblical proportions.
X windows. Never had it. Never will.
X windows. The software with no visible means of support.
X windows. More than just a generation behind.
X windows. The ultimate bottleneck.
X windows. Flawed beyond belief.
X windows. The only thing you have to fear.
X windows. Somewhere between chaos and insanity.
X windows. On autopilot to oblivion.
X windows. The joke that kills.
X windows. A disgrace you can be proud of.
X windows. A mistake carried out to perfection.
X windows. Belongs more to the problem set than the solution set.
X windows. Ignorance is our most important resource.
X windows. Complex nonsolutions to simple nonproblems.
X windows. Built to fall apart.
X windows. Nullifying centuries of progress.
X windows. Falling to new depths of inefficiency.
X windows. The last thing you need.
X windows. The defacto substandard.
X windows. We will dump no core before its time.
X windows. One good crash deserves another.
X windows. A bad idea whose time has come. And gone.
X windows. We make excuses.
X windows. It didn't even look good on paper.
X windows. You laugh now, but you'll be laughing harder later!
X windows. A new concept in abuser interfaces.
X windows. How can something get so bad, so quickly?
X windows. It could happen to you.
X windows. The art of incompetence.
X windows. You have nothing to lose but your lunch.
X windows. When uselessness just isn't enough.
X windows. More than a mere hindrance. It's a whole new barrier!
X windows. When you can't afford to be right.
X windows. And you thought we couldn't make it worse.
X windows. You'd better sit down.
X windows. Don't laugh. It could be YOUR thesis project.
X windows. Why do it right when you can do it wrong?
X windows. Live the nightmare.
X windows. Our bugs run faster.
X windows. When it absolutely, positively HAS to crash overnight.
X windows. There ARE no rules.
X windows. You'll wish we were kidding.
X windows. Everything you never wanted in a window system. And more.
X windows. Dissatisfaction guaranteed.
X windows. There's got to be a better way.
X windows. The next best thing to keypunching.
X windows. Leave the thrashing to us.
X windows. We wrote the book on core dumps.
X windows. Even your dog won't like it.
X windows. More than enough rope.
X windows. Garbage at your fingertips.

Tell us how you really feel.

X windows Slogans:

ROFL Some of those are just beautiful.

Dude, OW!

    

 The X Consortium requests that the following names  be  used

     when referring to this software:



                                  X

                           X Window System

                             X Version 11

                     X Window System, Version 11

                                 X11

/Michael

Tell that to the hundreds of people who wrote the fortunes...

Oh yeah, and in your profile, where it says "Linux, Paintball" don't you mean "GNU/Linux, Paintball?"

4 U

Wrong remote. That is the famous "stun/kill" remote.

email me if you want the original vector artwork.

Tony - do you want to make this a download on riocar.org?

Hmmm. I don't find import on any of my systems. It's likely to be Gnome-specific or something. The real X way is:

xwd -root | xpr > screenshot.ps

Or you can leave out the `-root' and interactively select the individual window you want to capture.

Thanks, Bitt, your addendum shores up my indictment of "The X Window System, Version 11."

Ok how about this one.

oops... look at the next post

The implementation on Irix is just brilliant, though. SO easy to work with. Okay, there are some wonderfully esoteric flags/options, but hey...that's why we love Unix, right?

It's still better than pretty much any GUI system out there, though, at least in terms of features.

I always hated that red mouse cursor, though.

This one, (I had uploaded the wrong file)
Darn.. its alittle sideways but it's there

It's still better than pretty much any GUI system out there, though, at least in terms of features.

You're joking, right?

Show me one better.

Well let me first backtrack and understand your "more features" argument. Mind putting a sharper point on that? I don't want to make a case only to find out you weren't saying what I thought you were.

good cover yn0t_

The big one for me is the ability to remotely display windows. And VNC doesn't count, as that's not really the same thing. There are a number of other things as well. Extensibility, platform agnosticism, avoidance of integration into the OS, etc.

I will freely admit that there are a huge number of problems with X, from inconsistency (Xaw, Xm, Gtk, etc.) to usability (xwd | xpr), ugliness (bitmap-only font renderers) and any number of other things. But as far as being able to actually do just about anything, nothing else comes close (except, possibly, NeWS, which I haven't used in so long, I couldn't make a reasonable comparison).

people who wrote the fortunes...

Hmmm, maybe a bug report against the fortune package.... Nah, I ain't that religious about it.

And about GNU/Linux - I'm not a disciple of Stallman. Besides, the name would get ridiculously long if every involved party was to be recognized in the name. I can like and respect them anyway...

/Michael

Extensibility, platform agnosticism, avoidance of integration into the OS, etc.

Hmm. I for one think GUI integration into the OS is what could actually make Linux a viable option on the desktop. Apple and Microsoft GUI's are integrated into the OS, and they work. They're simple, they do what users want.

X is a big fat pig, and it, along with the many incompatible GUI layers on top of it (some of which you've mentioned) are the main reason why *NIX will never be able to make inroads on the desktop.

Really! It's not like anyone's pressing AT&T/SCO/whoever owns Unix these days to call it BSD/SVR4 just because it incorporates some BSD utilities and ideas.

It's likely to be Gnome-specific or something

import is part of the imagemagick package - lots of nice converters etc.

/Michael

I didn't know that ``making inroads on the desktop'' was what made something better.

I don't think that X is much more of a pig than MS Windows' GUI is. And I have the option of not running it.

Also, there are multiple depths of OS integration. There's MS Windows' and MacOS 9's idea, where it's pretty much one-and-the-same. There's MacOS X's, where it's the only one, but it's not 100% required to make the OS run. There's X's, where it's related to the OS no more than any hardware accessing application. And there's XFree86's, where you can have some hardware drivers in the kernel closely related to the GUI. I think that the correct approach is the middle ground where MacOS X and XFree86 are. (Not that their approaches are very similar -- convergent evolution, I suppose.)

I didn't know that ``making inroads on the desktop'' was what made something better.

Seems to me they're very related. Sure, marketing is involved, but the GUI is central to the user experience, and there is NO consistency in *IX user interfaces.

Which is better, Chevy or Ford?

Which is better, Chevy or Ford?

Coke.

Beta was better than VHS, yet failed to make inroads on the desktop (or the equivalent).

I'm talking about technical abilities here, not what folks like to use. It's certainly much easier to use Windows than Unix. It's much easier to use a factory CD player than an empeg. Yet neither of us choose the easier thing. Why?

Which is better, Chevy or Ford?

Coke.

At least we can agree on one thing.

If you port it let us know. It might be amusing to control the empeg from the Treo.

I'm talking about technical abilities here, not what folks like to use. It's certainly much easier to use Windows than Unix. It's much easier to use a factory CD player than an empeg. Yet neither of us choose the easier thing. Why?

I'm still waiting for the part where you tell me what "features" X has that make it a better GUI for a desktop operating system. The features you mentioned make it great for a server.

I think that Windows is a great desktop OS and an terrible server OS, just as I think the reverse is true for UNIX. But I think UNIX (especially Linux) has the potential to be both, and I think X, and the absence of one true standard GUI, together keep that from happening.

Stun/Kill Remote? why did the visual button have stun/kill printed under it on that remote?

I'm still waiting for the part where you tell me what "features" X has that make it a better GUI for a desktop operating system.[/list]I never said it was. I could come up with a few ancillary things, mostly customability related (for me it's things like being able to focus without clicking, focus without raising, and even click without raising, some of which you can do with MS Windows, but not without sacrificing stability, IME).

I think that X has a greater feature set than MS Windows' GUI. Note that X doesn't include Xm, Xaw, Gtk, etc. The fact that they failed to specify a solid consistent user interface is both a shortcoming and a feature IMO. But there are a lot of inconsistencies within MS Windows, too, even in MS apps, not to mention absurd skinnable and UI-non-compliant applications like WinAmp, RealOne, and Trillian (the UI is absurd, not necessarily the app itself).

The thing is, X has all the features that MS Windows' GUI has, plus more. It's the application developers combined with the lack of a consistent UI spec that have ``ruined'' it, IMO.

Because we'd spent the whole afternoon at the whiteboard discussing the button layout. I guess the whiteboard markers had got to us by that point .

Is "white board" equivalent to a dry erase board?

Yes. Even in the US. I hear whiteboard much more often than dry-erase board, and I'm only one state away from you.

i'm definately interested in this too if you manage to get it.

The thing is, X has all the features that MS Windows' GUI has, plus more. It's the application developers combined with the lack of a consistent UI spec that have ``ruined'' it, IMO.

Okay I wasn't saying that X itself is responsible. I'm saying the net result is that if someone puts me in front of a box and says "this is a UNIX box" and asks me to run an application I've never seen before, I have very few things I can be confident in when I go to use it. With Windows, unless the developers have specifically disabled standard controls, or replaced them with non-standard counerparts, I have no such problems.

To be clear, here are a few things that are inconsistent across UNIX GUI's:

1) Does TAB work to get between fields on a form?
1a) Is the TAB order consistent?
2) Will keyboard shortcuts work in standard controls? (combo boxes, text boxes, etc.) i.e. Can I press "Up" and "Down" to scroll through a combo/listbox? It's ironic that on an OS that sprang from the command line, often keys don't work for these simple widgets.
3) Do menus have alt-key shortcuts? 99% of the time they do on Windows, with X11 apps it's closer to 60%.
4) The hotkeys that switch between windows, minimize them, etc., IF PRESENT, always seem to be different.
5) The very functionality of minimizing a window differs. Some window managers "iconify", some have a taskbar that it minimizes to like Windows.

I could go on. I realize that some of these are due to programmers who choose not to set these things up right, but why does it seem to work more often in Windows apps than it does on X-based apps?

Again, I think X Windows is the defacto substandard. It's what's there, and it's too late to change it.

I understand that X is just one layer, and the widget libs and intermediate layers are really where the ball has been dropped. But I think specifying one and only one GUI is what made Windows successful on the desktop, and easy to use for your average user.

Trillian and WinAMP are cases where they throw ease-of-use out in favor of customization. My point is that by default, Windows gives you consistency, it's up to you to defeat that consistency by downloading the Britney Spears WinAMP skin. Although I'm sure you'd know where to click on her...

My point is that on UNIX, you have to work to make it standard, and on Windows, you have to work to make it customizable. I can see why each can be seen as both a strength and a weakness, but I think it's easier to make things customizable in Windows than it is to make them standard on UNIX.

Fair enough. While I agree with all of your points, I do so less than you do. We have slightly different priorities when it comes to GUI criteria.

Oh, and:

someone puts me in front of a box and says "this is a UNIX box" and asks me to run an application I've never seen before

Shades of Jurassic Park (the movie)! I'm sure we both giggled at that scene.

email me if you want the original vector artwork.
Tony - do you want to make this a download on riocar.org?

Hmm, should we just have a big zip file of a whole bunch of original empeg vector artwork? Original empeg logo, remotes, user manual, etc.?

We could put it in the downloads section (heck you can do that part without my intervention), and then I could link it from the FAQ.

That would rock.

Definitely! Stick the CAD files in there too.