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begin on the e17 page. oooh content baby... content. 

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<table class='main'>
<tr>
<td class='main'>
<div class="main">
<h1>Enlightenment DR17</h1>
<table class='main'><tr><td class='main'><div class="main">
<h1>Enlightenment 0.17</h1>
<p>Enlightenment 0.17 is the next generation of UNIX graphical environments. It is not
just a window manager, but it is also a desktop shell. A desktop shell means, a window
manager plus a file manager, plus configuration utilities all in one. They are not
separated as usual. Now, let's take a closer look at all E17 features.</p>
<center><?php img("e-shot-main.png", "E17 Sample");?></center>
<p>Enlightenment is fast. No, really. It's fast. It is known to run on very slow
machines (like 100 Mhz CPU, 64 MB of RAM) well. So you really don't need a modern
desktop to see some eye-candy and to use a modern graphical environment. Even more –
you can control how fast you want it by using it's Performance configuration panel to
change the cache settings and more.</p>
<p>
Enlightenment 0.17 <em>(a.k.a E17)</em> is the next generation of
graphical desktop environment from the Enlightenment project. When
you first run it and get past the initial setup wizard, you should
end up with a desktop not unlike the above. It is a very traditional
UNIX/X11 style desktop style, because that is what E primarily is
and attempts to be, <b>BUT</b> with a bunch of bells, whistles and
modernities that were never there, as well as a different core
design philosophy.
</p>
<p>The high performance does not mean that there is no eye-candy. There is eye-candy that you
have never seen before. Starting from the animated boot screen, to continue with the all
animations and effects that themes could provide, to end up with fancy animated backgrounds.
But not some huge .GIF files, but really nice animations. Every virtual desktop (at the moment
you can have 24) can have it's own background (animated or not), so you can put different
wallpapers on the different virtual desktops. There are a number of effects that can be shown
when you switch from the different virtual desktops. The menus, the borders and all other usual
parts of a normal window manager are animated as well as some of the widgets (the sliders,
for example). Remember that those effects are provided by the theme, so every theme makes E to
look different, with different effects, look and feel and animations.</p>
<blockquote><p><em>
Also be aware that this page is large and is meant to provide a lot of
important information. It is not for the tl;dr; (too long, didn't read)
set of people with minimal attention span. It contains lots of those scary
thing called "text" and "information". It is assumed you can make use of
the education you have been provided with that allows you to read and
comprehend what has been written. If you are after specifics, then skimming
may be a useful thing to try. If someone wishes to make summaries of this page, or translate it, they are more than welcome to, but this is intended
as a very full information source, not a short summary for the impatient.
</em></p></blockquote>
<p>As we already mentioned, E17 provides a file manager as well. Of the time of writing, it is
not completed and is in an active development (as E17 as a whole itself), but after it is finished
it will be a very nice, configurable and eye-candy. Even right now, you can do the basic things
with it – browse, copy, move, delete files. It will provide thumbnails for your pictures and
will be able to open your files with the corresponding application of your choice.</p>
<p>
This information assumes you will download and compile Enlightenment
and its necessities beyond what your current OS does or can provide. If
Enlightenment is provided already as packages, you may want to check them
out first as opposed to compiling it all yourself, but if not, then this
information will help you do that. There are a few things you will need to
use Enlightenment. Firstly you will need to
<?php a("download", "Download");?>
Enlightenment and EFL library components. You will need to provide the
appropriate system dependencies too. The details will be further on.
</p>
<p>E17 is highly configurable. Currently it has a nice configuration panel with dialogs for all
kinds of things. You can change your wallpaper or your theme, your fonts, your screen resolution,
your screen's power settings, your keyboard and mouse settings, the language that Enlightenment
talks to you, and so on. You can contol almost every apsect of what E is doing and how.
It will do what you want it to do.</p>
<hr>
<p>At this moment, E17 is localized in 20 languages, including latin languages like English and
French, cyrillic languages like Russian and Bulgarian and even Korean, Chinese, and Japanese.
Note that you can change the language on the fly without restarting E or your X server.</p>
<h3>Misconceptions and assumptions</h3>
<p>As you already know, Enlightenment 0.17 has lots of features, but one of the most important
is, that you can add and remove functionality by using modules. Modules are small applications that
extend E17. There can be modules tho show you the weather outside, or calendar modules, or
modules to control your volume or whatever you may think. Developing a module is not that hard, so,
if you have programming skills, you are more than welcome to develop and maintain some
modules for the community.</p>
</div>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
Before we go any further, it is time to clean up some common
misconceptions. First, Enlightenment is not new. It is Old.
It predates larger desktop environments like
<a href=http://www.gnome.org>GNOME</a> or
<a href=http://www.xfce.org>XFCE</a>. It is just barely younger than
<a href=http://www.kde.org>KDE</a>. It never started life as an
attempt to "be a full desktop environment". It started life as simply
a window manager with some extras to scratch the itch that that
"everything was gray bevels and UI's had to be plain to be functional
or useful, and that computers/X11 were not capable of more". It
handily proved that to be wrong. It could manage function AND form
more flexibly than anything else, and to this date is still in an
unenviable position of flexibility in both behavior features and in
terms of visuals. In fact its Achilles heel simply may be that it
has too many options and too much flexibility. If you are after a
constrained and simple UI, then Enlightenment (E) is not for you.
It can be configured to be plain and simple, or to be buzzing with
activity and complexity. Its default is somewhere in between to give
you a taste of what it can do on both ends of the spectrum.
</p>
<p>
The default look is not what you are stuck with. Enlightenment was
the first Window Manager (WM) to introduce themes in X11 (pre-packaged
sets of data that you just grab and select, providing you with a vast
new look and feel). Today in Enlightenment, these themes come as "Edje"
files (.edj), and are pre-packaged data files containing all images,
layout, animation etc. that you may need. They never get "unpacked".
They are used "live as-is", and only the data needed from the file is
sourced and decoded, so even if the theme is massive, only the pieces
needed at any one time are decoded into memory, which is normally a
fraction of the actual file size. It is an accepted fact that the
default look will not be for everyone. It tries to strike a balance
of being unique (not mimicking some other desktop look), yet still
stylish. It is meant to echo some of the past from where Enlightenment
comes from, and yet roll in modern effects and feels. It sacrifices some
"usability" for look, yet tries to keep a balance and still be functional.
It will not be for everyone, but it is hoped it keeps you mostly happy
until you find other themes that exactly meet your visual needs. You will
find this as an on-going philosophy in Enlightenment. One size does
<em><b>NOT</b></em> fit all. That's what options are for. Do not have the
misconception that what you see is what you are stuck with. You are
expected to experiment and discover what is good for you. Maybe the default
is fine. Maybe it is not. That's why we pioneered themes and spent immense
amounts of time making them nicely packaged, efficient and powerful
enough to fine-tune almost any aspect of the UI.
</p>
<p>
That leads onto the next thing you may find quickly. Enlightenment has so
many options, because we believe that <b>CHOICE</b> is important. If you
don't believe that your preferences matter, then maybe another project is
better for you, but we firmly believe that they do. We may not have accounted
for every single option out there. We may not have presented it to you in a
way that makes it childs play to find and use, but we have tried. Over time
options will be cleaned up and accessibility to them improved. A lot of them
are there simply because they needed to be and not a lot of time was spent
fine-tuning how to present them in a fool-proof manner. This will improve
over time and with input, suggestions, patches etc. we hope to still offer
all the options you need, but in a much more accessible form.
</p>
<p>
Not everything is perfect, polished and "finished". This is not the end of a road. It is the start of a whole new one. If you find something you think could be better, please don't just complain and vanish.
<?php a("contact", "Contact us");?>
and open up a dialogue. Maybe we agree. Maybe we disagree. Maybe we are
already working on it. Maybe you can help out and provide patches too.
</p>
<hr>
<h3>Philosophy</h3>
<p>
We certain things that are important to us and how we work. They will often show immediately to users, and it is good to explain this here.
</p>
<blockquote><h3>CHOICE IS GOOD</h3>
<p>
A user should be given as much control as is feasible. There is often a trade-off in maintainability by the programmers, current and future development, as well as imply available time. It is always best to make any feature "just work" without options if possible, but the effort may be immense, and so options are provided to allow the fine-tuning to be done by users. Sometimes options are dangerous, but necessary for some people, and sometimes they are so dangerous that they are buried under layers of complex systems to try and keep them from being mis-used, but in the end, choice is good. That means options and configuration is important. We'd love to streamline how they are presented, and make it easier for the "average joe", but never shall we do this at the expense of the power user.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>VANILLA VS. STRAWBERRY VS. CHOCOLATE.</h3>
<p>
Like with choice of options, the actual aesthetics are something that is highly subjective and personal. Otherwise we'd all still be driving black Ford model-T's. Some desktops and OS's provide vanilla looks. Some are strawberry. Some can never be changed. We have chosen chocolate by default. Mostly because it means we stand out by default. You can change this if you want. You can even create your own flavors of look in gory detail if you spend the time on the artwork and layout. Take advantage of the choice.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>EFFICIENCY MATTERS.</h3>
<p>
We want Enlightenment to be as efficient as possible. We don't want to sacrifice looks either, so we have spent a lot of effort making a lot of libraries that help this happen. Our theme files are binary blobs. They may appear opaque at first, but they are dissectable, given tools we provide. The same for our configuration files. We value runtime speed and efficiency over giving the user encouragement to go hack their configuration files with a text editor. We spent a lot of time providing a GUI for almost every option that exists in Enlightenment. It manages this for you. It's to ensure maximum efficiency at runtime. If you need to on the odd occasion dig into the bowels of these files we have tools that can export and import text files that you can edit, so for the real tinkerer, hacker and developer you can do what you need to, <b>BUT</b> the regular user is discouraged from messing at this level, as this is where you can get yourself into more trouble if you get it wrong. We have also chosen a much more process-lean model with fewer processes and more rolled into a single one. This gives better opportunities for efficiency.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>NOT EVERYONE DRIVES A F1.</h3>
<p>
Not just being efficient, but realizing that not everyone has the latest and greatest hardware to run Enlightenment. It's also not just one architecture. They may be stuck on something quite old, or want Enlightenment to work on something quite bizarre. We have gone to a lot of effort to make Enlightenment scale from anything like a 200Mhz ARM phone with 32M RAM all the way up to the latest multi-core, multi-Ghz and 16GB+ desktop beasts with 2 or more screens. We keep in mind the puny end of the spectrum all the way up to the beasty end. When we make decisions they try and ensure every part of this spectrum gets a fair go, and preferably leaves as few people behind as possible. This also means sometimes raising the bar in order not to hold back future things, but also means sometimes holding back until a better way is found.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>EYE CANDY MATTERS.</h3>
<p>
If you want a minimal interfaces, you can configure Enlightenment to be quite minimal, but it takes effort. Enlightenment leans towards providing eye candy where it can, and often comes by default that way. This is how we roll. We always have. Haters gonna hate. That's how we roll.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>WE MAKE LIBRARIES MUCH MORE THAN WM'S.</h3>
<p>
One thing over the years that has happened, is that the project has morphed into a library project much more than a Window Manager or Desktop project. This is why there was no apparent progress in the Window Manager for many years. It was sunk all into building libraries and a toolkit, in order to make the WM and much more besides. A lot of effort was spent in abstractions to ensure we have many years to smooth sailing into the future. When we do things we often go and build libraries first, and then try and make them applicable to much more than just the simple problem being solved in Enlightenment, which adds overhead, but provides valuable resources for developers other than us who wish to re-use that effort in their own creations.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>PORTING MATTERS.</h3>
<p>
We, as a group, primarily work on Linux systems. We have developers who use and focus on others like MacOS-X, Windows, the BSD's even PS3. We care about porting, and that often adds overhead and complexity. Sometimes we shortcut that and do it "the Linux way", and we are always open to ways of making that better and more portable. We welcome patches and input and anyone willing to do the hard yards of supporting their OS.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>WE HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR.</h3>
<p>
We are not always that serious a bunch. Deal with it. We have a sense of Humor. We exercise it regularly. :)
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>THE WORLD IS NOT ENGLISH.</h3>
<p>
Whilst most of our website is in English, as is the default language for Enlightenment (until you change it), as is the common language of communication, we realize and are fully aware that people speak other languages. Many of our developers are not native English speakers. We have tried to support "the rest of the world" as much as we can and hope to continue in future. It is an ongoing process to provide translations and such support. Help out. We do care. We are busy. Very busy. But we care. It should be hopefully evident in the large list of languages Enlightenment is already translated to partially or completely, and the fact we support selection of keyboard layouts and input methods as well. We are all UTF-8 through and through and support right-to-left text too as well as complex composition (if you provide the right dependencies). Many of our developers do not live in their own native languages and countries, so we are fully aware of the challenges people face with another language environment.
</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><h3>OPEN IS BEST.</h3>
<p>
Enlightenment and its libraries are all open source (BSD 2 clause, LGPL or GPL for some binaries only). It is a mix because the person who founded each library chose the license. We respect that choice. We believe open is best because it simply is the best way to propagate knowledge, gain feedback and input and build a community beyond your small borders. It gets your software onto more devices and operating systems. It allows developers to poke and prod and find out what is really happening. It's the most detailed documentation ever made. It simply is better. There are no other political aspirations for this project beyond that. Open is best. This also goes for our communication. Warts and all we discuss in the open.
</p>
</blockquote>
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