Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!crdgw1!crdgw1.ge.com!barnett From: barnett@crdgw1.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett) Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc Subject: Re: Random UI issues Message-ID: <3766@crdgw1.crd.ge.com> Date: 8 Nov 89 17:24:28 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> <18063@bellcore.bellcore.com> Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com Reply-To: barnett@crdgw1.crd.ge.com (Bruce Barnett) Organization: GE Corp. R & D, Schenectady, NY Lines: 85 In-reply-to: sjs@spectral.ctt.bellcore.com (Stan Switzer) In article <18063@bellcore.bellcore.com>, sjs@spectral (Stan Switzer) writes: >Hmmm. A closet SunView user. I confess. I use several window systems, with perhaps most of my experience with SunView. But OpenLook/Xview also supports this. >This is nice. I assume that since a user coming back from coffee will >probably jostle the mouse a bit he won't be confused by an invisible >mode (i.e.: have already pressed the mouse twice, next press selects >sentence). It is a mode - yes it is true. And as Peter pointed out, you see the selection. The only time this is a problem is when the machine is bogged down and you mouse ahead. You can lose track of the number of clicks. I think an important to note is that the multiple-clicks does change the state of the selection service communicating between windows, but this is a passive servant until you ask it something like cut, copy or paste. That is, if you multiple click to select text - it doesn't hurt or change anything. > >> > Any other action, like poping up a menu, really slows down the user >> > (With the exception of Don Hopkins Pie Menus, which can be >> > selected before the menu appears. You can even select an item >> > from a nested menu before it appears!) >> >> I've heard of these. They sound cool. > >Make no mistake: they are. I just started looking at Don Hopkin's PSIberspace - his NeWS window system debugger. Now THAT is something!! I would love to see him use it in action. Let me see if I can summerize it in a few words: It is a purely NeWS based program - written in NeWS, (no compiling, resides 100% in the window server). It has a debugger to NeWS of course. Mouse based. You can display all of the data types. Each type gets a different display. Dictionaries can be opened, classes browsed. You can edit any item. There are special buttons that let you do the C equivalent of x++ or x =* 2; Each item type has it's own editor. You can use the mouse to select/move the structures around dragging objects from one dictionary to another. As PostScript is meta-circular, (you can define PostScript in PostScript). Don has included a NeWS interpreter that can single-step code. His system uses pie menus - of course. His windows also have tabs off them that stick out. You can expose/move windows around by using the tabs. And if that wasn't enough to display the information in a nice table/graph structure - he allows you to view data using the right side of the brain - which lets you see the entire structure at once! Each object is a different shape, with strings being lines and the length of the string corresponding to the size. You can still browse/edit the data using this view. The dictionaries are actually round windows that you can open up! There is no doubt in my mind that NeWS (or X11/NeWS) is the most flexible, powerful window system around. All other window systems look so rigid and boring in comparison. I must thank the Net Gods for people like Don Hopkins and Stan Switzer for showing us what REAL window systems can do. -- Bruce G. Barnett uunet!crdgw1!barnett