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From: gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: What are menus?
Message-ID: <76000328@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 12 Jan 89 01:49:00 GMT
References: <3234@sugar.uu.net>
Lines: 26
Nf-ID: #R:sugar.uu.net:3234:p.cs.uiuc.edu:76000328:000:1209
Nf-From: p.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Jan 11 19:49:00 1989


/* Written  8:47 am  Jan  7, 1989 by peter@sugar.uu.net in p.cs.uiuc.edu:comp.sys.mac */
/* ---------- "What are menus?" ---------- */
Well, I asked "what in the real world are pull-down menus a metaphor for?". The
replies I've received are entertaining, if not definitive. The most common
one is desk drawers or filing cabinets, but I see those as serving the same
roles as disks. Other replies included secretaries, bookshelves, the computer
(a wonderfully recursive metaphor), the restaurant menus from the chinese place
across the street (for helping you pull an all-nighter, presumably), and so on.
One sick puppy asked why I didn't have parchment scrolls that stretched across
my desk.

The desktop metaphor is just an analogy. Don't take it too seriously.
-- 
Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva  `-_-'  Hackercorp.
...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.uu.net      'U`
/* End of text from p.cs.uiuc.edu:comp.sys.mac */


This is ridiculous.  Pull-down menus are metaphors for verbs.  Nothing
more, nothing less.


Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois
1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801      
ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies