Organica

I have for many years been designing a new-concept computer interface I call Organica. Eventually, I wish to replace the current action-centered interfaces (Windows, Apple, Android, Linux) with a document or object-centered interface. With such an interface, one works on one's document (whether it's an email, novel, painting, photo, song or video) with total freedom to include one kind of item in any other. No user would ever have to "buy an app" with a learning curve of its own; instead, one might choose to "buy an enhancement" that will be applicable to any kind of object.

In any case, I am gathering my components, notes, and whatnot here as I work on this project, piece by piece.

Organica: Premise

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 8/2/2018		Page Views: 865
Topics: #Organica
What Organica will be, look like, and do.

The basic premise of Organica, and how it differs from all other shells, is that instead of being bottom-up (starting an app to work on a document) it is top-down (start with the document and do things to it). This is a much more natural way to work. When people begin a project, they say, "Today I am going to write my novel, or plan my vacation, or update my contacts." No one ever gets up n the morning saying, "Today I am going to use Microsoft Word! or Excel! or Outlook!"

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Organica: OrganicaLib

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 1/21/2022		Page Views: 736
Topics: #Organica #VisualBasic #VB.NET #ClassLibrary
Creating Organica's general toolkit.

However, inevitably, it turns out that assorted classes in the understructure may just be missing a method that would make your coding so much simpler and clearer. Take, for example, the Fileinfo class. An object of that class can give you its FullName (pathname), its Name (the base name plus the Extension) and just the Extension. But for some odd reason, they omitted a BaseName property. Now, sure, you can derive the base name from the existing methods plus existing String methods. But if your code is going to need the base name a lot, you're soon gonna wish for an easier way to get it. And that's where Class Extensions come in.

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Organica: Shell

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 6/22/2021		Page Views: 930
Topics: #Organica
Creating Organica's visual structure.

In computing, a shell is a computer program which exposes an operating system's services to a human user or other program. In general, operating system shells use either a command-line interface or graphical user interface, depending on a computer's role and particular operation. It is named a shell because it is the outermost layer around the operating system.

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Organica Core

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 6/7/2018		Page Views: 851
Topics: #Computers #Programming #Organica
How the basic components of Organica work.

I remember when a computer interface was white letters on a black background. Nowadays, user interfaces must include color, graphics, explanations, instructions, links, and more. And anyone trying to invent a new operating system would have to incorporate support for all of these data types. Or…one might make use of the already-existing-and-portable technology of web browsers to handle all output and user input.

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Organica Audio

By: Paul S. Cilwa	Posted: 11/17/2017		Page Views: 828
Topics: #Computers #Programming #Projects #WebAudioAPI #JavaScript #MusicPlayer #Cross-fadingMusicPlayer
A project demonstrating how to use the Web Audio API (JavaScript) to create a cross-fading music player.

I've been trying to improve my JavaScript skills. This is a language I've not much experience with, but it's the third leg of the Web Design Stool. (The other two are, of course, HTML and CSS.) I have always learned better by experimenting on a real project than by following tutorials from beginning to end. And the project I decided to work on is a web-based (in other words, JavaScript) music player. There's a (relatively) new application programming interface out there called the Web Audio API. This API is supported by all modern browsers and can be used to provide far more sophisticated control of the playing of music and sounds than the HTML5 audio tag can manage. Now, there are a zillion music players out there. But most of them do not incorporate the ability to cross-fade from one track to the next, and that's a feature I require (probably because I was once a radio disk jockey).

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