Summary

This section gathers all of the end-user applications meant to be used through a graphical user interface. The aim is to provide a complete, featureful environment for daily use of a computer.

Description

This environment is an essential part of the project for a number of reasons:

• these applications are to be functional, intuitive demonstration material for the concepts introduced in the system;
• they need to be developed with great care for coherence and usability;
• a strong focus must also be placed on their effectiveness and flexibility, in particular with an explicit support for embedded platforms (performance), and finger-based user interaction (restricted screen sizes)
  

Given these constraints, and the need for this environment to be available and developed along with the other components of the system, it was decided to base these applications on the Gtk+ toolkit. In turn, DeforaOS' own graphical sub-system (GServer, GToolkit in section 2) will be used, optionally through a port of Gtk+ for DeforaOS.

Components

1. libDesktop
2. Browser
3. Panel
4. Phone
5. Surfer
6. Editor
7. Keyboard
8. Mixer
9. Framer
10. Mailer
11. Player
12. Todo
13. XMLEditor
14. Accessories
15. GEDI
16. GPuTTY and successor
    

Global tasks

To achieve this goal, completion of the following tasks is required:

• listing of files through the file browser
• displaying the most common file types through the file browser (text, images)
• displaying the files available directly on the desktop
• launching applications directly on the desktop
• using and monitoring the system through configurable panels
• providing a functional smartphone environment (optional)
• accessing the World Wide Web
• editing text files
• providing means of input relevant to finger and stylus-based user interaction
• setting the sound levels
• improving the usability of multi-tasked desktops
• sending and receiving e-mails
• playing audio and video content
• tracking tasks
• editing XML files
• editing configuration files
• facilitating the development of the complete environment
• connecting to other hosts remotely
  
• integrating the DeforaOS VFS sub-system
• integrating the other concepts introduced by DeforaOS
  

Current status

The first official version of this environment as a whole was released on September 20th 2010, as packaged within the hackable:1 distribution. The aim is to implement a functional, Open Source smartphone. A significant amount of work was already put into the project to achieve this, with about as much left to sufficiently leverage this environment.

Many applications are already usable, though some only partially. Compliance to standards is also not optimal in some areas (file associations, drag & drop...).