Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!watcgl!ksbooth
From: ksbooth@watcgl.waterloo.edu (Kelly Booth)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc
Subject: Re: replacing the desktop metaphor (How about maps?)
Keywords: metaphor, user interfaces, computing environments, maps
Message-ID: <7506@watcgl.waterloo.edu>
Date: 2 Jan 89 14:22:27 GMT
References: <850@mtfmi.att.com> <673@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> <851@mtfmi.att.com> <267@daitc.daitc.mil>
Reply-To: ksbooth@watcgl.waterloo.edu (Kelly Booth)
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 20

In article <267@daitc.daitc.mil> jkrueger@daitc.daitc.mil (Jonathan Krueger) writes:
>See Edward Tufte: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.
>Good displays are well understood, and by Tufte, well described.
>
>It doesn't matter whether they're on screens or paper.

This is probably true in the context JK meant (I presume he was saying
"whether you display information on a screen or on paper you need to
know what you are doing").  But taken literally (as "screens and and
paper are similar media") it is misleading.


Some work done about ten years ago at RAND Corporation investigated the
use of "computer maps" (maps displayed on a display screen --a vector
display in their case).  One of the many issues looked at was how to
capitalize on the fact that a computer map can add or delete
information from the display interactively (which a paper map cannot)
while compensating for the problem of resolution and image quality
(where a good paper map easily beats a screen).  At least one RAND
report was produced on this work (Norm Shapiro was an author).