file extension KMD

What Is the Clicker?

Why another Shell/GUI ?

Currently existing tools are too restrictive. The program designer ties you to the appearance he gave to the application and usually offer little opportunity for inter-application communication (drag&drop or cut&paste is barely the maximum you can expect). Clicker aims at developing a system where you're free to express whatever you like, filtering system messages based on rules like the one you use in your mailbox, merging progress reports in a single "operation under progress" box if you feel so, scripting icons reaction, etc.

That clearly cannot be done by just porting one of the existing Window manager to the newly-generated Clicker system.

Why another File System ?

Once again, existing file system nearly reached the limit of their use. Who knows which file is archived on (which) CD and which file is to be included in the next backup has a good brain, not a good OS. I found myself googling for documents i knew i had somewhere on my HDD because it was too long to locate them. A filesystem with customizable and extensible metadata set could easily solve such problems, quickly giving a view of 'every music file whose author is Cyborg Jeff' and being able to associate a pdf document with a dedicated "comment" tool or something alike. There are more than offset-accessed files. Bring the power of database within the OS, at the service of the user.
Give each program a view of the FS that is limitted to what is has the right to see. Why does your mailer see all your .doc documents and has the right to write to them ? "chroot"ing one program is a patch. Automagically chrooting every program is the solution :)

Why another Operating System ?

Clicker should be flexible enough to fully support the wide range of PC users and utilities. We want it to be a GENERAL operating system, which means that it would be possible to use the SAME system for games, secure networking or user-friendly computing.
Up to now, there are MANY system, which each have their weakest point and their advantage. For example, if you are a beginner, you'll prefer WINxx's GUI and bookshops! If you're an experimented user, you'll beter feel in a Unix-like world. If you're a gamer, you'll buy a PSX, and so on.
I could find MANY other examples. Clicker plans to be a single system for every such applications, being modular enough to change its components when the user changes (or when he switch between activities :)

That's not possible !? You're kidding !

We would like Clicker to allow BOTH of these features, by the way of SESSIONS, which should allow users to "tell" the system what he's going to do. I.e. if you're fed up with your textprocessor and want to play a little, you will turn clicker in the *FAST* mode, which will make it a "mono-application" system, but dramatically faster.
When your game is over, you can then switch back to *MAIN* mode and then go on with your 3D-modeler, or your sound-tracker.

These transitions should be as "fast" as the starting/ending of the X session under Linux or the commutation WIN->DOS. I prefer them to be faster, anyway...
We also hope that the super-user should be able to define some new operating modes with special features, and allow some user to go/don't go to specific modes.

Applications Modularity

We want Clicker to be the most ever modulable system ... In a generic way, it should be possible for a Clicker user to enhance a running application and customize it for its need by linking it to tools or panels. Why the hell is your OS' spell checker available for word processing only ? A Clicker spell checker should be able to learn how to check text edited with your development suite and that lies between /* and */ characters ... And i mean learn, not just have been compiled to do so ...

In order to do so, we plan to make a lot of informations on running application available at a symbolic level (such as if the application can read text files, and if it can, which one is it reading ...), and to extensively use scripting and runtime compiling technologies.

Where Can I Get It ?

Heeey! keep c00l... We're not that kind of company that's able to make an OS in a few years! The idea of making a multi-tasking system appears only in '97! Then we took time to think about HOW we would multitask, how does OTHER system do and WHY that's not always a great idea.
Now, we have a multitasking microkernel, design with ease-of code state of mind. Documentations writing is under heavy achievement (some teacups are already written) so that most people should be able to CODE for Clicker. Everything you could get about Clicker is located on SourceForge Clicker project . There are sources files (could be a bit tricky to compile), binaries demos, miscellaneous tools, etc.

Can I Contribute ?

Well, that would be *great*, moreover if you're experimented with Operating System, because we're quite few to code it, for the moment.
Now the Clicker has a running microkernel, we'll be able to get help from more developers for hardware drivers design and implementation, file system, network stack, etc.
To be part of the Clicker Development team , just send me an e-mail with your sourceforge login and we'll count you in ;) we need mostly coders (C is a must). It also would be great if, in a near future, one of these coders could manage a kind of "doc repository" to centralize every technical papers on the web.