Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!watmath!watcgl!drforsey
From: drforsey@watcgl.waterloo.edu (David Forsey)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc
Subject: Re: Help with double-click recognition.
Message-ID: <12164@watcgl.waterloo.edu>
Date: 3 Nov 89 22:20:16 GMT
References: <603@granite.dec.com> <1922@bacchus.dec.com> <1490@esquire.UUCP> <6564@ficc.uu.net> <17943@bellcore.bellcore.com> <6594@ficc.uu.net> <3400@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <6647@ficc.uu.net> <3581@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> <6685@ficc.uu.net> <3598@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Reply-To: drforsey@watcgl.waterloo.edu (David Forsey)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 27

>For people how haven't seen them in action, Pie Menus allow you to
>select an action by moving the mouse to the proper up/down/left/right
>pie slice. You can select an item without waiting for the menu to appear,
>because you move in a direction that is consistant.
>
>If you move to a slice, and click again, you can go to the next menu
>before the first one appears. This can be nested so that you can click
>ahead several menus.

Just as a note, the "click-ahead" technique on radial selection
menus was used by Terry Higgins at the National Film Board in
Montreal.  He demo'd production level cel-animation software with these
menus at SIGGRAPH'87.  I believe Don Hopkins was already working on his pies
at that point, though had not yet published.  Certainly Ben Schneiderman
saw the menus, and talked with Terry at length at that time about the
click-ahead scheme.

Once you use 'em, you never go back. Linear menus are just too much
of a pain.  I don't even read the menu items any more - 80% of my selections
are done through muscle memory, especially when using a scheme where
you don't have to click on a menu item to get to a sub-menu.

Clicking just slows you down, even with click-ahead.

Dave Forsey
Computer Graphics Laboratory
University of Waterloo.