Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!steinmetz!vdsvax!barnett
From: barnett@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.news
Subject: Re: is news loosing the battle?
Message-ID: <4777@vdsvax.steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 8 Jul 88 02:37:18 GMT
References: <10250002@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM> <17127@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Reply-To: barnett@steinmetz.ge.com (Bruce G. Barnett)
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 62
In article <10250002@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM> diamant@hpfclp.SDE.HP.COM (John Diamant) writes:
>Non-rectangular windows is "gee whiz," but frankly, I don't care about that
>at all. Other than having round clocks, I just don't see this as a big deal.
Perhaps you should think of objects instead of windows. I can see it
useful to have icons change shape and size according to function.
The fat trashcan on the Mac is an example. There is an lpqtool from
sunspots ( see Chuck Musciano's tooltool) that can be opened to
examine the queue. Perhaps the icon's image could change to a
LaserWriter with the lid open when the queue was jammed. However, this
would be ugly with a rectangular area for an icon.
I would like the L-shape of this icon to have an L-shape clipping area
on the root menu. In fact, with my constant battle of real estate, I
would like a more flexible organization of icons. Icons arranged like
a tree, a Rolodex, or a jigsaw might be useful at times.
The new garden demo has an icon the shape of a flower!
I would like to display a complex system with an assortment of
connectors, dials, pipes, ducts, boxes, etc. (DataViews does this).
Pipes that change color, texture or size can provide better feedback
than simple lines with labels. This seems to be a natural use of NeWS.
(This could be done with X, I am sure. But the effort would be much
higher - I would guess.)
If you look at HyperText systems, or packages like FileVision on the
Mac, combining non-rectangular images can be much more useful.
I don't think the potential of a NeWS environment has been
demonstrated yet. We have been given a taste, but the Real System
hasn't been demonstrated yet.
I have had a couple of ideas that seem possible with NeWS, and
difficult with any other window system. Perhaps some enterprising
developer would like to implement these ideas:
1). Our LaserWriters frequently print screendumps. This is a real
drag. I would like to take any window and print it. Because of the
PostScript model, this should be easy to do, and improve printer
thruput and quality.
2). I often work on several projects at once. With all of the
interruptions I get, I would like to take the current window
environment, and shrink the entire window to a smaller size and
free up my screen for a new environment. When I want to switch
back to the original environment, I would click on the miniature
screen, which would change place with the current screen. This is
something like the Picture in a Picture (PIP) feature of the new TV's.
3). Instead of text scrolling off the top of the window, I would like
to have a "Star Wars"-like display where the text gets smaller the
farther away it is from the immediate area of interest. Looking
at a log file, with the older errors shrinking in size, as an example.
The text would scroll off when it finally became illegible, with a
user-defined lower limit.
We have already seen the pie menus for NeWS. This is one example of
something more radical in user interfaces. I believe this is just the
tip of the iceberg.
--
Bruce G. Barnett
uunet!steinmetz!barnett