Xref: utzoo comp.cog-eng:1225 alt.hypertext:319
Path: utzoo!hoptoad!well!shf
From: shf@well.UUCP (Stuart H. Ferguson)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng,alt.hypertext
Subject: Re: Interface to Directory Structure
Keywords: casei,front end
Message-ID: <12628@well.UUCP>
Date: 9 Jul 89 09:22:40 GMT
References: <53795@aerospace.AERO.ORG> <54027@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
Reply-To: shf@well.UUCP (Stuart H. Ferguson)
Organization: The Blue Planet
Lines: 71

(originally on comp.cog-eng)

+-- lubofsky@aero.UUCP (Nick Lubofsky) writes:
| I envision Front End as a tool that is sitting on a computer when an
| arbitrary person walks up to it. I want it to be attractive, obvious,
| and easy to use so that people that are afraid of computers can walk
| up to it and use it (like the computer interfaces they have at some
| malls.) This is seriously lacking in computer/user interfaces I have
| seen.

This sounds nice, but it doesn't seem like a sufficient design goal.  I
want all my systems to be easy to use and powerful, but what is it supposed
to DO?  It soulds a little like this system is meant to "do-anything,"
but do it in a good way.  So what it is it then -- is it a UI toolkit, or
a UIMS, or an operating system shell, or ... ?

| Front End should have both. Also, both the beginning and the advanced
| user should have an interface for finding something.

Ah, but finding what?  Would this be more like a browser or a database
query tool?  What you want to find can profoundly affect how you go about
searching for it.

|  [...] Systems are cluttered with arbitrary folders
| and directories sprawling about in arbitrary ways. A higher level of
| organization would save some frustration.

No doubt.  A "file" is a an extremely poor mechanism for storing anything,
since it needs to be labeled and stored in a known location in order to
be retrieved.  Just managing the keeping track of the files in a large
computer project can easily become a full-time job, even on a home
computer where you're the only one doing it.

I would still argue though, that how you want to look at data depends
on what data you're storing, and that you might want to look at the same
data in many radically different ways.  Could a single front end allow
for them all in a useful way (not files) and still present a consistent
interface to the user?

| An ideal scenario would be: A person with no prior knowledge of
| computers needs to see a diagram or picture of something, say a
| blueprint of a truck or airplane. He should be able to walk up to a
| terminal, and using Front End with no outside help, either locate the
| specific diagram, or perhaps find out that such a picture doesn't
| exist on that system. He should easily be able to browse through
| related things on the system, and find out about related things on
| other systems.

Now this sounds like hypermedia.  What you describe here are "hypergrams,"
"hypermaps," and, of course, "hypertext."  If this is what you're refering
to, then the scope is probably still too large to result in a concrete
design.  Hypermedia is more of a philosophy than a product.

Xanadu appears to be the most ambitious hypermedia system so far, not
because it has anything flashy to show, but because of the epic scale of
the project.  Xanadu is an information system designed to replace 
file-structured data storage altogether, rather treating a whole network
as one giant mass of linked data.

Turing the hypermedia concept into software is a really interesting
problem.  If that's what you're group is doing I'd be curious to hear
more about your specific purpose, and how you plan to procede.

| By the way, does anyone know if the name "Front End" is being used for
| any piece of hardware or software?

Xanadu's FEBE protocol stands for "Front-End Back-End," but I think it's more
of a generic term than a specific piece of software.
-- 
		Stuart Ferguson		(shf@well.UUCP)
		Action by HAVOC