On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 2:15 PM, Dale Amon <a...@vnl.com> wrote: > On Wed, Aug 08, 2012 at 01:52:45PM -0400, John Moser wrote: >> I hate Unity but I think I'd have trouble making a decent argument, >> given the above. Really I just want to know why EVERYTHING except >> Windows (which doesn't do anything useful in the first place) puts the >> useful stuff in the top left when it's ergonomically and >> biomechanically [B-B-B-BUZZWORD C-C-C-COMBO!] easier to move your hand >> away and outward from your body. I don't think we can really blame >> Canonical for that. > > I can tell you the historical reasons. All windowing systems > began with their coordinate systems with 0,0 in the upper left > because that is where the scan lines begin. Lines are written > from left to right, top to bottom. > > It was more difficult to correctly set the position of the upper > right corner because there was not always a good way to get that > info. And if your key controls were at (XMAX,0) and you got the > screen size wrong, you were stuffed. >
Hush kids, this is actually interesting. You all can continue your little spat in a minute, the grown-ups are talking about old computers they programmed when Linus was still in diapers. Anyway that's all very fascinating, but how does that translate to the "Activities" menu in Gnome Shell getting up there? Or Canonical deliberately moving the control box to the top-left, Apple style? Your explanation seems satisfactory for Apple, since it's been running MacOS on a top-left control box scheme since inception. While we're reminiscing about the past, you know what's funny? I used Windows 3.0 and DOS and all, and I didn't even know the X worked until Windows 95. Didn't get Windows 95 until 1996 either. I was taught that you double-clicked the "-" button (top left corner in Windows 3.1, drops a menu of sorts when clicked) to close a window and never figured out what the control box did. It was quickly forgotten after I learned to maximize and minimize (and close!) windows years later. > Dale Amon > Who once in a time long ago and far away > worked on a windowing system for a display > graphic terminal output controlled by PDP-11 > assembly code. > > -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
