
Looking Glass, a revolutionary window manager revealed in 2006 - pierlooqup
I recently redescovered the keynote video in which Looking Glass was announced and realized it’s now 12 years old.
I remember watching this video in awe and still today I findit quite remarkable although a bit gimmicky.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;JXv8VlpoK_g<p>I wonder what was the motivation behind this project and why it never really took off. Also what are the people behind it up to nowadays - does anyone here know the backstory to this?
======
simias
When 3D acceleration became mainstream and people started developing
3D-accelerated desktop it was very trendy to have a bunch of pointless 3D
stuff going on. I think it was around that time that compiz and its 3D burning
cubes and other mostly (but not entirely) useless eye candy were released:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QokOwvPxrE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QokOwvPxrE)

I think there were two reasons for this:

\- It looked cool, even if sometimes very impractical. Now it's a bit mundane
but at the time it was like breaking the 3rd wall, we were so used to the
flatness of the desktop that it was really weird to view it as a 3D object.

\- Apple and Microsoft were in no rush to bring these features to their
commercial OSs (and proably for good reasons, MS tried to have the 3D carousel
in Vista but even that wasn't very useful). That meant that people in the
Linux world in particular could show off "hey, can your Windows XP do _that_?"

But of course eventually we realized that 90% of these features were counter-
productive so we only kept the bits that made sense (ability to scale down
windows in real time easily to make thumbnails or previews, faster rendering,
a bit of transparency etc...).

~~~
ascagnel_
The only good implementation of a 3D desktop effect (outside of straight-up
window rendering) is Expose, which Apple demoed in 2002/2003 for 10.3.

I remember, circa 2005, there being compiz extensions that enabled something
similar.

~~~
michaelmrose
It could expose all the windows in the current monitor, on all monitors of the
current workspace, or all windows period.

Virtual desktops which I believe linux supported long before spaces acquired a
nice visual metaphor with compiz which allowed you to zoom out to see them all
and drag windows between one and the other.

Windows could be set to have a small amount of resistance when passing other
windows to make it easy to stick them side be size.

The effects for windows creation and destruction were quite cool and super
configurable.

------
javipas
I remember testing it on my Ubuntu partition soon after I learned about the
project. I recorded a little video showing some of its capabilities. It became
my most viewed video ever on YouTube with over 500K

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjQ4Nza34ak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjQ4Nza34ak)

Some good quality images of it running with my blog in the old days:

[https://www.javipas.com/wp-content/lg1.jpg](https://www.javipas.com/wp-
content/lg1.jpg)

[https://www.javipas.com/wp-content/lg2.jpg](https://www.javipas.com/wp-
content/lg2.jpg)

[https://www.javipas.com/wp-content/lg3.jpg](https://www.javipas.com/wp-
content/lg3.jpg)

[https://www.javipas.com/wp-content/lg4.jpg](https://www.javipas.com/wp-
content/lg4.jpg)

~~~
anthk
Hey, I know you from the OSX articles in magazines, you sure would like that
ala Exposé ;)

------
the_other
Windows, and the walls they rest in, are basically 2D at their principle point
of consumption (indoors, looking out).

Desks provide much more _creative_ value across the first two dimensions than
the 3rd: you want the stuff you're working on within sight, touch and arm's
reach. "Piling up" is a "storage" or "attention reducing" strategy because you
can't work with the piled items or the content with your hands. You largely
don't care what they even are unless you're working on them... so pushing
virtual representations of work surfaces deeper down an imaginary z-axis makes
little sense.

The demos in the video look fun and exciting, and probably justified the
applause at the time. I think the desktop metaphor could be worked over.
Tablets and phones dropped it from the get-go. But I'm yet to be convinced
that visually arranging data across a projected third dimension except when
you want to draw the user through (like in a game) adds much to the
experience.

The flipping and "piling" you get in Windows and macOS seem like decent uses
of 3D. Those effects basically just add+hide 2D surface. It's the vanishing-
point stuff that seems gimmicky to me.

~~~
et1337
Note: most games are also 2D with a bit of 3D visuals thrown on top. True 3D
controls are super tough for new players.

~~~
chongli
Not to mention disorienting. I loved the Descent [1] series but damn was it
ever difficult to wrap your head around, at least at the beginning.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(1995_video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_\(1995_video_game\))

------
coldtea
Hardly revolutionary.

I was following this back then -- Apple had just come out with 3D
manipulations in the desktop (e.g. turning a widget window around in dashboard
around to view their configuration on the "other side").

Some engineer at Sun, in their spare time, put together a quick demo with 3D
windows (using Java/OpenGL bindings IIRC). Basically a quick play on the idea
of windows being objects rendered in a 3D space by a compositor (which OS X
had introduced to the mainstream a while before).

OS X still rendered them as 2D projection, except for the occasional effect
like the flip-around in 3D space, while this demo had them floating by default
(but still only shown the same effects, flip around to write notes etc).

The Looking Glass demo was very basic, it got some talk in forums at the time,
and it was even presented a few months later in a SUN "keynote". For a while
they pretended like they had something there, instead of just a half-arsed
demo.

There was never any big project around it, nor much thought. The highlight was
...turning a window around to write notes, configure, etc (e.g. a copy of what
Apple had done commercially and already shipped with minor changes).

Even the very concept of Windows in 3D space is not that novel, Microsoft had
done something similar before Apple, as well as others.

It didn't went anywhere, because (at least as implemented this far) it doesn't
solve any problem better than the regular desktop.

In short: Looking Glass never went anywhere because it was a proof of concept
by 1-2 Sun employees, when window compositing became possible in
XWindows/Java.

------
Fnoord
This was just part of Sun's JDS (Java Desktop System). The motivation behind
it I can only speculate: to get attention for Sun's JDS, demo Java + 3D while
at the same time differentiate from default Linux desktop, and to demo the
successor of CDE; basically it all boils down to stock price of SUNW/JAVA.

Remember, Sun didn't do well after the dotcom boom and Sun wasn't cheap but
Sun did invest a lot in desktop UNIX (Gnome HIG, documentation,
internationalisation, and a major contributor with LOC). Sun GPLed this and
many other things (among which Java itself and Solaris) right before they were
sold out (to Oracle). We can only thank Jonathan Schwartz & Co for that
because Oracle would've kept it proprietary (speculation though).

It isn't _very_ innovative. It was one of the many window managers which did
this. 3dwm, 3d desktop [1] [2] (from around 2002 IIRC), Beryl, Compiz, and
Enlightenment (E17 & onward) are some other examples though not all of these
were 3D accelerated.

As you said, the problem with this is its gimmicky; not productive. In gaming
nice 3D effects can add something to the experience (immersion) but on a
desktop it shouldn't be very noisy or abundant. So after the initial wow-
effect was over these effects didn't get a long lasting stay in products.

[1]
[http://linuxreviews.org/features/3ddesktop/](http://linuxreviews.org/features/3ddesktop/)

[2] [http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/](http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/)

~~~
nona
Just a small nitpick: Solaris wasn't GPLed, but remains CDDL

~~~
monocasa
The source was reclosed back in 2010 when Oracle bought Sun.

~~~
binarycrusader
This is only partially accurate. Parts of Solaris continued to be published
under the CDDL and other licenses after that. But yes, the kernel and parts of
the system libraries were no longer published. Remember that unlike Linux,
Solaris is more than just a kernel.

~~~
monocasa
Looking at their source code dump for 11.4, nearly everything that isn't GPL
is missing. It's less open than macos.

~~~
binarycrusader
Then you're probably looking in the wrong place for the non-GPL items. Those
are typically on github, for example:

[https://github.com/oracle/solaris-ips](https://github.com/oracle/solaris-ips)

~~~
monocasa
That's the only Solaris item on Oracle's github, and it's just the package
manager. Where's the rest of the OS?

------
maxharris
I helped build this thing back in 1998-1999:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20000822012848/http://www.oreali...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000822012848/http://www.oreality.com:80/software/newshot1.jpg)
[https://web.archive.org/web/20000822013028/http://www.oreali...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000822013028/http://www.oreality.com:80/software/newshot2.jpg)
[https://web.archive.org/web/20000822013204/http://www.oreali...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000822013204/http://www.oreality.com:80/software/newshot3.jpg)

Source code:
([https://web.archive.org/web/20000131021557/http://www.oreali...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000131021557/http://www.oreality.com:80/software/download.html))

~~~
pierlooqup
Oh wow! Any insights for the curious? I’d love to know more than what’s
already on wikipedia from a first hand source! Cheers

~~~
maxharris
Someone put Synapse on Wikipedia? Do you have a link?

My friend Nick McKinney and I borrowed $25k from a chiropractor and spent a
year trying to get Linux users to replace X with Synapse (which was a paid
offering that wasn't compatible with anything.) We had no idea what we were
doing, no idea how to get customers, etc. So we gave up and released it as
open source.

It was a lot of fun! I have tons of stories, but I gotta go because I am
trying to prepare for a talk (currently posted on
[http://js.la/](http://js.la/))

~~~
pierlooqup
Good luck then!

------
arendtio
I have no idea, but I guess that it was built because it was technically
feasible.

Xgl [1] was released in the same year and had quite similar capabilities [2].
Xgl, in turn, lead to Compiz/Beryl which is the technical ancestor of the most
popular window managers we run on Linux desktops nowadays (e.g., Kwin in KDE).

So to some extent, we still use the tech which was developed back then, the
effects are just a lot more subtle.

[1]: [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xgl)

[2]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CgqWlX_GsI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CgqWlX_GsI)

~~~
nailer
Likewise re: subtlety, the Windows Vista/7 Win+Tab animation used a 3D card
stack, the Windows 10 ones uses a simple zoom-out. Both are 3D, but people
seem to prefer the ones which don't scream "3D!" as much.

There's acryllic everywhere too, which is blurry transparency, but you might
not notice it either.

That said: I miss Compiz wobbly windows. They were cool.

~~~
moviuro
> I miss Compiz wobbly windows. They were cool.

Last I checked, Kwin still had that functionnality.

~~~
crazyloglad
wobbly windows is so 2006. Enjoy clothy windows.
[https://videopress.com/v/zmiBKUyQ](https://videopress.com/v/zmiBKUyQ)

~~~
alxlaz
For bonus points, Arcan & Durden are a lot more hackable than Xorg & Beryl :-)

~~~
crazyloglad
at the very least, they'll have to work -hard- to get it as easy to hack as
[https://github.com/letoram/durden/blob/master/durden/tools/f...](https://github.com/letoram/durden/blob/master/durden/tools/flair/cloth.lua)
:-)

~~~
exikyut
Is this using LuaJIT or just plain Lua?

Because I get the impression this (not-C, not-Rust, not-stereotypically-fast)
code is what's running at 60(?)fps, doing the actual deformation animation.

Nice.

~~~
crazyloglad
Both are supported, but it's not particularly heavy - it's only running at a
monotonic clock of 25Hz (decoupled from display updates and deliberately
chosen to not be evenly divisible with 60Hz to pinpoint animation issues).

Alas, the improvement that should really be made is to encode both n and n+1
in the same update and interpolate in the vertex shader, not hard here but I
was lazy..

------
leonroy
I remember this coming out my first year of college and taking the boot disk
for a spin.

At the time it was pretty cutting edge and the demos made it seem very
polished and useful. In actuality the live version was rough round the edges,
fonts and rendering looked soft. It was definitely a proof of concept and
didn't really have much breadth beyond the few use cases presented in the
video above.

That said yes, it was _very_ cool but even back in 2006 I and my classmates
were questioning quite what you'd do with such a product. It seemed like a
solution in search of a problem.

Also OS X 10.4 Tiger was when Apple's Mac platform became very solid indeed
and started making inroads in academia and enterprise. Most of our professors
for example switched from Linux to Mac around then.

I think Looking Glass failed then not just due to legal pressure from Apple
but competitive pressure too. I also doubt Sun - which if memory serves had
financial issues and was suffering diminishing sales of their SPARC platform -
had the clout or will to invest in this particular project.

------
michaelmrose
Anyone remember Bumptop

description from wikipedia

BumpTop was a skeuomorphic desktop environment app that simulates the normal
behavior and physical properties of a real-world desk and enhances it with
automatic tools to organize its contents. It is aimed at stylus interaction,
making it more suitable for tablet computers and handheld PCs. It was created
at the University of Toronto as Anand Agarawala's master's thesis. Anand
Agarawala also gave a presentation at the TED conference about his idea. The
1.0 version was released on April 8, 2009, along with a fully featured pro
version as a paid upgrade.[1] On April 30, 2010 the author announced that
BumpTop was being discontinued and that they were taking the software "in an
exciting new direction."[2] Two days later, it was announced that the company
had been acquired by Google. On January 5, 2011, Google released a sneak
preview video of Android 3.0 Honeycomb[3] showing a 3D desktop with features
purportedly taken from BumpTop.[4][5]

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ)

~~~
Carl_Platt
Yeah, awesome stuff - I used some of Anand's ideas in my own research at the
time.

------
bunderbunder
I remember being wowed by this at the time, but, looking back on it now, I
think I was maybe just captivated by the fact that they were throwing a bunch
of technology at it, not what it was accomplishing.

I see two ideas for how it might be useful that are practical: Putting windows
"out of the way" when they're not being used, and attaching notes to files.

For the first, I'm not sure the 3D works well with how I like to work, because
I like to use up all my screen real estate, and a bunch of floating tilted
windows are still in the way (because they take up a bunch of space - maybe
15-20% of the real estate of the full window, in the examples from the demo)
using this approach. On OS X, by contrast, I have several options, all of
which really do get the window completely out of the way - I can hide it, I
can minimize it, or I can stick it on its own desktop. Throw a window tiling
tool like Spectacle in there, and I get a pretty large amount of power, while
still keeping things simple.

Adding notes to files by writing on the back of the window feels odd to me,
UX-wise. To view the notes, do I have to open the file and then flip the
window around? How do I know _that_ a file has a note, without doing that? I
think I'd rather just have a "notes" bit of metadata that is viewable in the
file manager.

In general, I think that 3D is maybe just awkward for organization. Evidence:
Out in the real world, we have invented all sorts of objects for 2d-izing - or
even linearizing - things for organizational purposes. Shelves and file
cabinets, for example.

~~~
jethro_tell
3D might have been a solution to limited pixel space. Now, pixels are cheap
and abundant, so you can lay everything out and switch back and forth with a
flick of your eyes.

~~~
bunderbunder
I guess. . . but even around that time, when I was doing a lot of work on a
pretty pixel-limited laptop screen, I typically made real estate by just
having several different virtual terminal sessions (plus one for X). A flick
of an F-key to switch VT's wasn't as quick as a flick of the eyes, but it was
close enough.

And _way_ better than anything that involves reaching for the mouse, which
would seem to be an essential part of doing it in a 3D DE.

------
axilmar
Nothing of value was lost. None of what this WM offers seems to be really
useful.

~~~
swerner
I agree. This was a nice technical exercise/demo, but did not offer any
notable usability improvements over other window managers.

------
hardwaresofton
I'm still waiting for VR pixel density to get high enough to have an
_actually_ 3D window manager.

No more buying monitors, just buy one headset and I'm done.

~~~
diggan
Is there any modern prototypes/demos/products doing a code explorer/editor in
a VR environment? The vision of 360 navigation and lots of screen space, with
added Z depth, is very enticing, but have yet to found anything in this
direction.

~~~
jerf
I recall some tentative stabs at it, but I think the hardware's unreadiness
really puts a damper on development efforts. There isn't much point jumping
out years in advance, with the way display managers have gone over the past
decade it's pretty much a trivial problem now. (Or at least, trivial as such
problems go. Still a lot of coding and I'm sure a lot of fresh new corner
cases, but nothing fundamentally unknown or impossible.) We _know_ that if the
hardware was there, we could create such a desktop environment now. Anything
you did now would run the risk of being completely obsolete before the
hardware got there.

~~~
mncharity
> the hardware's unreadiness really puts a damper on development efforts

And regrettably it means that now, when COTS hardware _components_ are
arguably sufficient for HMDs to start competing with screens, there's no code,
no widespread perception of need, and thus no clear market to target. And thus
no hardware for sale. Bootstrap deadlock.

Given the effect Minority Report's UI footage seemed to have on popular
imagination, perhaps it might be helpful to have some nice demos? So say
software devs can have a "I want that!" moment. And industry can have a "oh,
well that, that we can build for you now" head-out-of- err, heads-up moment.

Sent from my Lenovo Explorer WMR HMD running on an old laptop's integrated
graphics. Simple custom stack. (But only briefly, so I could say that.)

~~~
jerf
"Given the effect Minority Report's UI footage seemed to have on popular
imagination, perhaps it might be helpful to have some nice demos?"

Well, I think that might be a more minor contributor to the problem, but
definitely a contributor. The Minority Report interface is utter garbage and I
seriously doubt anything we build is going to look like that in the end. Vague
gestures that even strong AI is unlikely to be able to correctly determine the
target for reliably, arms held in positions that are completely impossible to
be held in for any period of time, the entire "interface" is a usability
nightmare. Screens far more separated than they should be... just because I
_can_ spread my workspace out over 210 degrees doesn't mean that's actually
going to be a good idea.

But it's not as _cool_ if you have anything conventional in it.

I'm playing the recent Switch The World Ends With You re-release. It has a
mode where you nominally point the controller at the screen to control a
cursor. But there's no optical component to it; it just centers when you hit a
button and uses the accelerometer. So of course I don't sit there like a dope
trying to point at the screen. The controller just sits in my hand where ever
it is comfortable, and I twitch in the appropriate manner. It may be "pointed"
60 degrees off the actual screen, but it works fine. I have some similar
stories for the Wii, where I still may have had to point the remote at the
screen, but I certainly didn't play the games like the commercials. I played
them in a much less awesome manner... but a much more _comfortable_ one.

The first Wii Golf was the funniest... eventually I settled on holding the
remote pointing straight up, and wiggling it back and then forward again for
my stroke. It was not exactly a realistic interpretation of how one swings a
golf club. Exquisite control compared to trying to do it the "right" way,
though. The second Wii Golf got smart enough that didn't work anymore.

What's a real pity is that there probably _is_ a really cool demo waiting for
this. It just involves thinking a bit more creatively.

~~~
mncharity
I'm sorry, I was unclear.

I agree the Minority Report UI was poor. But seeing it, seemed to get people
talking. People who normally wouldn't think about possibilities for future
UIs. It seemed to fire imagination, to create anticipation. It had random TV
news people talking about UI design. My impression is an "Iron Man" UI was
similar. So UI demos, at least in blockbuster movies, can create popular
interest.

There currently seems an absence of anticipation for VR/AR "office work"
screen-replacement UIs. And there is currently a failure to market VR hardware
with tradeoffs made with that focus, rather than for gaming. I was speculating
that we might get such hardware sooner, by creating a perception of a market
worth attending to, by increasing popular anticipation, by making demos.

Because waiting to get it as a side-effect of gaming tech has already cost a
year or few, and seems likely to cost more than a couple more. I'd rather not
lose a decade unnecessarily waiting. I can't spare one, and it's not clear
society can either.

Regards controllers, oh yes. Remember skeuomorphic design for user interfaces?
Things should look like their physical counterparts? A calendar app should
have a worn leather border? To ease on-boarding of all the new users not yet
trained on phones? I suggest VR is in its skeuomorphic design phase. In
contrast, my own interest is in expert UIs for all-day every-day use. So as
you say, they are minimum-viable-twitch ergonomics. And any resemblance to the
physical world, with its many and unmotivated constraints, is a design smell.
But people are focused on gaming, training, CAD, and tours, and Reality is
even part of the name. While aphysical UIs seem clearly the way to go, for
much non-novice use.

------
readitone
This is cool for animation demo. From UX stand point is almost a joke. Apple
intentionally is using animations only when user attention is low. My problem
with window managers are not animations. My problem is that this is old
paradigm and desktop needs to be reinvented by extending and changing user
experience. 3d interaction with information objects in virtual space is
future. But the big companies don't care anymore. They are focused in cashing
the cow and capitalizing on old ideas of Apple and S.Jobs. There is a big room
for innovation but centralized investment in R&D and testing are needed. I
have tinkered with this and generated some ideas, but after estimation the
result is that this is too big for small dev teams. So we will wait GUI to
become cool again and wait for someone with imagination and skill to penetrate
the walls of reason and get the blessing from excel gods.:)

~~~
aaaaaaaaaab
>3d interaction with information objects in virtual space is future

[citation needed]

~~~
Impossible
[http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...](http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/)

To be fair this doesn't necessarily mean AR/VR is the future. It could mean a
physical designed for computing like Dynamicland or a single device that has
intelligent real-time understanding of the physical world that isn't and hmd
or a phone.

------
joezydeco
Ah, Sun and their prototype user interfaces.

How about Starfire (1993)? This was Bruce Tognazzini's big project. See how
many modern UI elements you can pick out of this concept video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJNxgZyVo0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJNxgZyVo0)

~~~
bhauer
I remember that and feel it still shows several elements we're missing today:

1\. Very large form factor concave displays. (We're getting closer, but the HD
era really slowed display innovation.)

2\. Good gesture input.

3\. Seamless integration of drafting/drawing surface and display.

4\. Personal application omnipresence across all input devices (personally, I
think this is the most significant element often seen in science fiction that
is missing from modern computing.)

~~~
mncharity
> 3\. Seamless integration of drafting/drawing surface and display.

A current analog is pairing an art display tablet with normal screens. But
people arrange them variously, and not-infrequently on separate and movable
arms. So seamless physical integration might not be the right thing. Another
analog is the new Lenovo Yoga Book C930 (2-in-1 with keyboard replaced by an
e-ink touch/pen screen).

------
david_draco
According to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass),
it was killed by Apple (thanks software patents). It is open source though.

That page lists some descendants.

~~~
pierlooqup
Oh thanks. I should’ve googled cause this part of the Wikipedia article has
all the answers:

After unveiling the prototype, Steve Jobs called Schwartz's office and told
him that Apple would sue Sun if they moved forward to commercialize it. Jobs
claimed that the project is infringing Apple's IP.[3] Regardless of the
threat, Sun determined that the project was not a priority and decided not to
put more resource to develop it further into product quality.

~~~
pierlooqup
Still I wonder what Sun thought they were going to do with this... I find it
fascinating they’d pursue a heavyweight UX project such as a window manager
with no clear stake in the game... a last chance at pushing for Solaris
adoption?!

~~~
easytiger
>I find it fascinating they’d pursue a heavyweight UX project such as a window
manager with no clear stake in the game... a last chance at pushing for
Solaris adoption?!

Not sure. But around that time Sun had invested heavily in the Gnome project
and made a lot of commits that enabled lots of more "boring" things to be
added. eg. i18n, accessibility etc. This was because with Linux based Java
Desktop (i.e. their polished gnome implementation) they had won various
corporate & government contracts in different industries which required these
changes, benefiting the gnome project immensely.

Whether the very popular compositing WMs (e.g. Metacity/Compiz) indicated a
necessary investment in that area (hacker prelude to new industry), I don't
know.

------
rikkus
In 1997 my Comp Sci undergrad dissertation was on the '3D desktop'. The C++
code I wrote for my demo did software 2D on svgalib on the Linux console
(there was some way to get a high res mode, I don't remember what exactly).

I didn't have video or semi-transparency, but I'd gone for a similar idea of
clearing windows out of the way - sitting at angles on the sides of the
screen.

I realised too late that what I really wanted wasn't 3D, but documents as
first class citizens, with modular tools working on documents rather than
monolithic applications.

If you clicked on a file icon it would graphically 'open' the file and bring
it to the foreground for viewing, then you'd bring tools to it - for example,
you'd have application-agnostic text tools for text editing.

I started adding things like 'filters' \- where you'd drop a file on a filter
icon and it would be animated going through the filter and dropping onto the
'desktop' underneath - e.g. you would be able to apply troff+pic and get a
diagram.

It was all naive and probably based on ideas that others were having and I'd
seen around (e.g. articles about OS/2), but it was enjoyable discovering more
and more ideas as I dug further. My real inspiration was, I believe, TkDesk,
which wowed me when I saw I could edit the functionality of my desktop /on the
fly/.

What we have in modern desktop environments is great, so I'm a bit sad that
the idea of a powerful desktop environment seems to never have taken off as
far as some of us hoped was possible. Maybe it just doesn't work!

Anyway, back to the command line...

~~~
finchisko
so basically OLE in Windows or OpenDoc in Mac. Both platforms for some reasons
abandon that concept.

------
gyre007
Makes me wonder about what happened to compiz [1]

[1] [http://www.compiz.org/](http://www.compiz.org/)

~~~
romanovcode
14 y/olds grew up.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Where "growing up" of course means becoming cynical and bitter, and pretending
that hating fun is "mature"? And before you tell me that it was impractical...
sure, a bit, but I really doubt the wm is a significant limiting factor in
anyone's workflow, and it's still every bit as useful as whatever Windows uses
these days.

~~~
bitwize
Fun doesn't belong in a window manager for daily use, I'm sorry. Cute UI
animations have a very strong "Pepsi taste test" effect: when you are just
trying them out they look interesting and cool, but over the long term, over
daily use, they are distracting and present other disadvantages: all
compositing WMs, including those on macOS and Windows, introduce latency that
straightforward tiling or stacking WMs lack.

~~~
EthanHeilman
I put goofy things on my terminal backgrounds and desktop. For me they don't
seem to get old. I like charm in my life and my UI. As long as it doesn't
compromise the utility.

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JustSomeNobody
I remember this. It has cool visuals, but I remember thinking something along
the lines of this is the window manager that would be developed if you went
and got some devs from the demo scene and said, build a window manager. Looks
great, I really would not like to use it in real life.

~~~
stallmanite
Now I really want to see what the output of a demo competition focused on
window managers would look like.

~~~
exikyut
Lots and lots of transition animations, and potentially very poor UI/UX model.

Demos are not (largely) interactive, so the demoscene is not known for
collective skill designing GUIs.

The most similar/related type of things I can think of that _are_ interactive
are crack/keygen programs that include chiptunes and maybe a cute graphic
effect somewhere.

For some time I've actually wanted to go track down such programs to
analyze/compare/study the progression of design. Kind of difficult to do so
though, for obvious reasons (unfortunately).

But my impression from the one or two programs I do very vaguely remember
using, half for entertainment purposes was that the UI design was sort of at
the "48%-50%" mark - good enough, but flitting just below the halfway mark
instead of just above it. Not remarkable; maybe a few rough edges.

Thanks for your comment. It prompted some mental gears to spin and for me to
realize the above.

\--

I do think I understand the spirit of what you're getting at, though, and
there are a few things that my brain has decided is relevant, although I can't
describe the working-out process that led me to list these. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

\- SymbOS
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SymbOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SymbOS)):
preemptive multitasking, windowed GUI, storage on devices up to 128GB, runs on
home computers using the Z80 (starting at 4MHz) with up to (_ _up to_ _) 1MB
of RAM. (I found this rambling but very interesting demo of what it can do
with one of the more capable machines it supports:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-oBNh0UkQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-oBNh0UkQc))

\- kOS
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTrOg19gzP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTrOg19gzP4)):
limited-access OS and brutalist GUI using the K functional programming
language (hmm, I should watch this video again)

\- KolibriOS/MenuetOS: you're likely already familiar with this; it's a pure-
assembly-language GUI that runs on 32/64-bit x86 PCs

\- AtheOS: Amiga/C64/etc inspired kernel + GUI + application suite, written
(for x86) by one person over circa 10 years before it became boring; a small
team picked it up a few years later and branded their continuation of the OS
as Syllable, although the Syllable website seems to have died at some point

\- Contiki: runs a GUI on a Commodore 64 within 30KB of RAM

\- There is of course TempleOS, FWIW

------
Udik
> why it never really took off.

It seems since 2006 the world has gone exactly in the opposite direction:
simpler UIs based on windows that fill the screen, one at a time or, in some
cases, docked. The idea of having multiple windows open on the same screen
space was fancy but often confusing for a lot of people. I have relatives who
have had their first approach with computers at the age of 80 and can use
quite proficiently an Android phone; others that are still struggling, after
twenty years, with the concept of "windows (partially) hidden behind other
windows" :).

Relevant quote (in the first 20 seconds):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep_kaY4K5a8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep_kaY4K5a8)

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rurban
I'm a bit older and remember this and much more getting demo'd at Xerox Parc
in the mid 80ies, when powerful graphic cards were bring developed (for VR)
being used for the 3D window managers being developed at Parc (WIMP GUI) in
the 70ies. They were definitely not gimmicks but functional for certain use
cases, eg. keyboard less interaction, information overload, voice control and
such. I remember 6 different window manager styles there, where only 2 made it
into production 30 years later, compiz and looking glass.

tldr: The revolution happened at Parc in the 70ies.

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franze
there is a great article by Jonathan Schwartz - ex CEO of sun about Looking
Glas, that Steve Jobs threatened to sue him over this.

[https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-
arti...](https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-artists-copy-
great-artists-steal/)

Steve didn't, but Jonathan killed the project non the less, because he listend
to consultants instead of listenting to devs.

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jeewes
Zoowm did some more recent push on this space. Personally felt that the idea
of inifinite desktop really made sense. Similarly as in physical world, when
you need more space on the table, you spread your stuff on a broader area.

Would have liked to see this thing fly.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcrp54A-GX8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcrp54A-GX8)

~~~
mncharity
tl;dr: An integrated workspace and window manager, emphasizing zooming and
panning.

Might be helpful in current, resolution-limited, VR.

------
solarkraft
It is so satisfying to look at. They got animations exactly right. I'm not
sure I want full 3D applications (or notes on the back of windows), but the
hint of 3D space for window management seems just right.

This is not difficult to do with today's technology. Maybe a similar WM will
come along again.

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RIMR
For anyone interested, here's a Live CD:
[https://sourceforge.net/projects/lg3d-livecd/files/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/lg3d-livecd/files/)

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TrainedMonkey
Whoa this is cool, I wonder if this is the inspiration for Looking Glass
technology featured in Prey.

[http://prey.wikia.com/wiki/Looking_Glass](http://prey.wikia.com/wiki/Looking_Glass)

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agumonkey
I loved the demo, but I think that 3D interfaces very rarely bring any value
to your brain. After all your visual system is built around the idea of
turning n-dimensional noise into a non 3d abstraction.

~~~
crazyloglad
I agree that the looking glass style 3D is fun and gimicky and hard to see
added benefit.

At the same time, speaking from personal experience - 3D in VR can give a much
stronger sense of overview of many datasources etc. while at the same time can
reduce semantic noise.

I get quite a few productive hours out of a successor to this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Js7Y1H5D8cY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Js7Y1H5D8cY)

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program_whiz
LOL Remember the 3d UI from jurassic park? "Oh its a linux system!" And then
she proceeds to use a 3d RTS-style interface to manage the park :)

~~~
acuozzo
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_(file_manager)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_\(file_manager\))

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pankajdoharey
I think i disliked it then because it was written in Java, and if i remember
it performed poorly on most machines compared to Compiz Fusion.

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Zelmor
>I wonder why it never really took off

Because it's useless garbage that nobody needs and that doesn't fix any
problems.

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dmead
I sent away for the demo cd. it's probably still in a stack someplace. very
sad this didn't take off more.

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AdmiralAsshat
Seems more gimmicky than useful. I don't need to play Morrowind just to
interact with my filesystem.

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cjjp
Thank you for this. I don't have anything insightful to add, but it sure
brought back memories.

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ericfrederich
I wish something would have came from Sun's Project Wonderland.

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bitL
So that's where OS X got its 3D app dock from...

~~~
ascagnel_
The app dock was included with the first releases of OS X; the 3D effect isn't
really a 3D effect (they just replaced the backdrop image in horizontal
modes).

