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From: larry@ingres.Berkeley.EDU (Larry Rowe)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc
Subject: Re: every icon is an object
Message-ID: <2925@zen.berkeley.edu>
Date: Wed, 24-Jun-87 13:02:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: zen.2925
Posted: Wed Jun 24 13:02:51 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Jun-87 05:28:23 EDT
References: <8705190042.AA14664@cogsci.berkeley.edu> <3956@utai.UUCP> <1205@xanth.UUCP> <1041@apple.UUCP>
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Reply-To: larry@ingres.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Larry Rowe)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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Several comments on the recent discussions:

1. Paul Haberli gave a demo of his pipe-fitting system at Berkeley 18
months ago.  It was very impressive.  A student implemented a (buggy)
version of it in a user-interface class I teach here.  Paul's system
used shared files to communicate which required a kernel modification.
Our system used 4BSD sockets so no kernel mods were required.  We also
used the X windowing system rather than the silicon graphics windowing
system.
   Another student took this package and implemented some simple tools
for accessing a relational database.  I wrote a paper describing the
system.  I will be glad to send a copy of it to anyone who sends email 
to me at Berkeley. Please include your postal address.  The paper includes
screen dumps that I had to cut/paste into the text.  I seemed to have
misplaced/lost my multimedia, wysiwyg document editor....:)
   I'd be glad to send folks the code, but it is not really usable at the
moment.  The student who did the 2nd project has left and we never really 
made it run reliably.  If there is enough interest, I can probably dig up 
the code and send it to folks.  Better yet, if someone wanted to pick it 
up and work on it, I would be thrilled.

2. Interesting comment on the difficulty of publishing user interface papers.
Paul sent his original paper to 3 places before it was finally accepted by
Usenix.  I've sent my paper to 2 conferences that both rejected it (close
votes, but not good enough) and have now sent it to a third.  Neither paper
is very deep technically, and in a sense, communicate an obvious idea once
you've thought about it.  the idea is simple enough that folks can't believe
it's worth publishing.  of course, we still labor with lousy user interfaces
because ....   Sigh!

3. I too strongly support the creation of a user-interface newsgroup.  Is
someone going to do the survey?
	larry