Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!shadooby!terminator!citi.umich.edu!dpg From: dpg@citi.umich.edu (David Gorgen) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: talk, beeps (was Re: (none)) Keywords: sound localization Message-ID: <1989Dec13.221405.3283@terminator.cc.umich.edu> Date: 13 Dec 89 22:14:05 GMT References: <8912131434.AA19336@crdgw1.ge.com> Sender: news@terminator.cc.umich.edu Reply-To: dpg@citi.umich.edu (David Gorgen) Followup-To: comp.windows.x Organization: Hewlett-Packard Company Lines: 42 In article bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) writes: > I generally keep my console window iconified and often fail to > notice when someone wants to talk to me. There are already too > many applications that beep at me besides "talk". > > Hmmm, perhaps we need an X protocol extension for stereo workstation > speakers? Or for quadrophonic, so we could locate the beep in the > plane of the window? Or maybe DTMF (i.e. Touch-Tone(tm)) encodings, > controllable from the resource database? > > (only .5 :-) My Master's thesis, done in 1977 at MIT's Architecture Machine Group, involved getting sound images to emanate from any particular spot on a 6x8 foot rear-projection video screen in a "Media Room", using four speakers mounted at the corners of the screen. One of my conclusions was that this "quadraphonic" technique cannot deliver good enough cues to allow people to localize the sound very well, unless a visual reinforcing cue is also provided. Headphones and some fancy signal processing might do much better, but have the disadvantage that the sound image would be relative to your head position, not to the outside world. They are also physically awkward. You could have the icon flash while beeping, but this is really a regression to a "visual bell"; these are not very popular. The people at the Media Lab (the descendant of the Architecture Machine Group) would probably tell you today that the "talk" icon should actually TALK to you, telling you to look at it. This would mean we should be talking about a speech output extension to X. Have we gone far enough overboard yet? -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Gorgen / GTD-East (formerly Apollo Computer), Hewlett-Packard Company located at: University of Michigan, CITI dpg@citi.umich.edu (Center for Information Technology Integration) 313-998-7482 or -7479 -- Dave Gorgen / GTD-East (formerly Apollo Computer), Hewlett-Packard Company located at: University of Michigan, CITI dpg@citi.umich.edu (Center for Information Technology Integration) 313-998-7482 or -7479