18 Mar
2017
18 Mar
'17
12:17 a.m.
On Mar 17, 2017, at 3:58 PM, Dan Cross
<crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Sorry; I thought that's what you were saying but I was wrong. But I confess
confusion. For instance, you mention Oberon here as not having graphical icons but then in
the next sentence two sentences it didn't meet your definition of what a desktop is.
So that sort of seems like a non sequitur. What, then, is you definition? (And I'm
not asking that to be combative; I'm truly interested.)
Doh! It just strikes me that the term I have been missing is "window manager."
Early Macs, Windows, Oberon, etc., were window managers.
I would definitely call Oberon's graphical
interface a desktop (btw, the graphical sorting demo was *cool*).
Oberon had many cool things!
But I'm clearly using a different definition than
you are.
Yes. My fault. Does "window manager" make more sense? So "desktop"
in my context means something much more dynamic than "window manager." NeWS was
the first example I can think of - an environment that could interpret and modify its
environment in context. I'm pretty sure that predated Windows and (what became)
CORBA.
For me, Irix 5.2 on the Indy (circa 1993?) was the first true "desktop"
environment I had hands on.
--lyndon