Docks (was: Re: How to remove things from task bar

[Liam Proven]

On Wed, 4 May 2022 at 14:51, Peter Flynn <peter at silmaril.ie> wrote:
>
> Oooh, yes, I'd forgotten about physical docks. Wonderful devices. People
> used to have one on their desk in front of a monitor, so they could sit
> their laptop onto it and use it as a desktop. I remember HP laptops
> would have a long receptacle on the underside which provided some
> massively parallel connectivity.

That bit wasn't me, flor clarity. :-)
>
> I knew macOS but not NeXT. I only ever saw them, never used one: working
> in a university they were way out of my price bracket.

I have it running in the Previous emulator now.

https://previous.unixdude.net/

This also looks very promising:

https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace

> > It is some of the only prior art of any kind for the Win95 UI, along
> > with the RISC OS "icon bar".
>
> Sorry: confused. What did Win95 call it? I thought it was "toolbar".

Toolbars are inside apps' windows and allow you to access functions
within that app.

The *taskbar* is the main UI for the OS in Win95 and later.

The taskbar is obviously inspired by toolbars but it is a different thing.
>
> I assume that was why Linux UIs all avoided the term in favour of panel etc.

Again: panels are different.

But yes, that's why the different name, I think.

> > GNOME 3 & 40+ calls this a Dash.
>
> Oooh, yet another.

Same reason, though.

> > Unity called it the Launcher.
>
> What I said. It sure sounds like novelty-hunting.

It was, I think, to avoid getting sued.

Remember the vital historical context at the time.

https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_linux_desktop_fail/

> It's what some versions of enlightenment call the panel, but I believe
> it is being superseded as it was essentially an in-joke.

Aha!

> To me, a "panel" is a much larger control surface, specifically one
> whose proportions are much closer to square, not the elongated shape of
> the toolbar.

We are specifically talking about parts of a desktop GUI here. Not
other GUIs, not other types of apps.

A dock floats next to a screen edge. It may be attached to it (no gap)
or not, but it does extend the whole length of that screen edge.

A panel is a control that extends the whole edge, either from L to R
or from top to bottom. This is the terminology used within Ubuntu's
own extension to provide one, I believe.


> A dock floats? How? The only ones I have seen have been bound to the
> bottom edge of the screen (optionally to a different edge). Do you mean
> it can be clicked loose and sit anywhere on the screen?

It means it lies along 1 edge of the screen, either with a gap or not
(that's mainly cosmetic), but it does not extend from corner to
corner. Beyond the ends of the dock, you can see the wallpaper. This
is called floating. Some may have a gap between their long edge and
the edge of the screen (in which, again, you can see wallpaper) and
some may not. Some (e.g. Deeping Linux and Ubuntu DDE)  have the
choice.

Whereas a panel is the whole edge of the screen.

> The real distinction is that it contains ONE ROW ONLY of icons. I think
> this is why my brain rejects "panel".

Depends on whether it's horizontal or vertical. The Windows original
could be resized freely and the number of rows (or columns) changed
dynamically. In Xfce, it's an option you must change manually. In KDE
it autoscales as the GUI sees fit depending on how full it is. In LXDE
and LXDE it is automatic but fixed at start time.

MATE and Cinnamon, AFAICT, only allow 1 row/column.

> Most docks seem to expand to fit the number of icons added, so
> eventually they will reach the full width of the screen.

Some will, some try hard to scale their contents to keep  a little
free space. MacOS shrinks its icons; Unity narrowed them by putting
them on edge.

Both tried _not_ to take 100% of that screen edge.
>
> Excellent summary, thanks.

Jolly good. Glad it worked. :-)

> > A distinguishing feature between early taskbars and docks was that the
> > taskbar contained a _menu_ for launching apps but _not_ icons for
> > launching them.
>
> Yes. This always struck me as wholly perverse, and very poor usability.

It was clean and fitted with the original design. Bear in mind that
there wasn't much prior art.

NeXT used the dock as both launcher and switcher.

Acorn, in RISC OS, used it as a switcher but it also held drive icons
and things. It was _not_ a launcher but it could contain special magic
folders that popped open to themselves become launchers.

RISC OS gets unfairly overlooked. It is a truly pioneering GUI.

DR GEM was very derivative of Classic MacOS, as was AmigaOS.

Acorn and NeXT did their own things and I think both influenced MS in
the pioneering work that went into Windows Chicago.

Since then nobody much has come up with anything genuinely new. The
closest was iOS -- visibly adapted from the Mac OS X "Dashboard":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashboard_(macOS)

Android aped iOS, changing course very fast from its original plan to
mimic Blackberry.

Not much trace of the early screenshots left now. :-(

https://www.engadget.com/2007-11-12-googles-android-os-early-look-sdk-now-available.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-day-google-had-to-start-over-on-android/282479/

https://www.osnews.com/story/25264/did-android-really-look-like-blackberry-before-the-iphone/

> > The dock is _both_ a launcher _and_ a switcher and contains icons for
> > both inactive, not-yet-running apps _and_ icons for open apps allowing
> > you to both launch and switch with the same action.
>
> Much more useful.

Arguably so but very confusing to those who came from an older era
where you launched 1 app and it took over your whole computer until
you quit it.

> > But in Win98 MS blurred the lines by adding the "quick launch toolbar"
> > After Windows Vista, MS deprecated the quick launch bar and allowed
> > apps to be "pinned" to replicate the Dock functionality.
>
> By way of trying to make amends :-)

Maybe.

My cynical take is that Apple added Windows-derived features, such as
a safe mode, fast user switching, even an alt-tab switcher, that were
not in Classic MacOS and weren't in early versions of OS X. Eventually
MS felt safe to copy bits of Apple's UI as Apple was copying bits of
Windows' UI.

> > Docks have a launcher icon that  _becomes_ the switcher button if the
> > app is already running.
> >
> > It's an important functional distinction that GNOME 3 preserves.
>
> I don't think I've used GNOME3 yet. Last time I looked, it required too
> much learning for a change at the time. I need to revisit.

GNOME 3.40 was going to be called GNOME 4, but they decided it would
break to many things so now they dropped the major version and it's
just GNOME 40.

Current is GNOME 42.

This is what Sun did with Java:

Java 1, 1.x, 2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6
... which became Java 6 and led to Java 7, 8, 9 etc.

SunOS was their old Unix. SunOS had versions  1, 2, 3, 4... then SunOS
5 became Solaris 2, and SunOS 4 was renamed Solaris 1.

Solaris went 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6...

and then that became 6, 7, 8, 9...

> I still prefer enlightenment's minimal approach, but it's unusable at
> the moment because it won't handle two screens with one portrait and the
> other landscape.

I did not know that. Yes, that would be a deal-breaker for me, too.

> Thanks for the definitions.

My pleasure.

-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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