Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!agate!labrea!Portia!Jessica!rick
From: rick@Jessica.stanford.edu (Rick Wong)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Rooms? (Was: Finder Improvements)
Keywords: Rooms, Xerox
Message-ID: <4151@Portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 17 Nov 88 19:28:41 GMT
References: <813@tank.uchicago.edu> <6217@netnews.upenn.edu>
Sender: news@Portia.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: rick@Jessica.stanford.edu (Rick Wong)
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac
Distribution: na
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 41

In article <6217@netnews.upenn.edu> binder@eniac.seas.upenn.edu.UUCP (Tim Binder) writes:
>With all this talk about Mac interface improvement, I remember reading
>somewhere (InfoWorld?) about Xerox's next step (:-) in user interfaces:
>Rooms, where each "room" is dedicated to a particular project you might
>be working on. Each room seemed to be the equivalent to a Mac MultiFinder
>desktop. Does any have more details or better yet, comments on this
>interface? Could this be the next step in interfaces?

I've seen it, and I was very impressed.  It allows you to build rooms
oriented toward particular tasks that you perform often.  For instance,
you can have:  a publishing room that contains tools for word-processing,
drawing, and page layout; a mail room that contains telecommunications
and text-processing tools; a filing room for your Finder; etc.

You can create "doors" between rooms, so that you can easily switch
between related tasks (imagine several instances of MultiFinder running
under Switcher . . .).

One of my big complaints with MultiFinder is the window cluttering it
creates.  Because of the small screen space, the application I want to
switch to is often buried under some other application's windows.  To
get to the application I want usually takes several clicks (I almost
never use the Apple menu, because of the extra work of having to drag
all the way to the bottom of the menu, and then having to think about
which application I want to choose).

NeXT gets around the window-cluttering problem somewhat by allowing
you to "iconize" an application.  Although this reduces window-clutter,
it doesn't really eliminate the rigamarole you have to go through when
switching tasks (i.e., find current tasks's main menu; choose "iconize",
or "hide", or whatever it's called; find icon for desired task; where
is that darned icon?; etc.).

By the way, Rooms was developed at Xerox AI Systems, not PARC (just
setting the record straight).

Rick "Wild Twinkie Surprise" Wong
Courseware Authoring Tools Project, Stanford University
rick@jessica.stanford.edu

"Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for George Bush"