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From: sarathy@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Rajiv Sarathy)
Date: Wed, 18-Jan-89 12:52:19 EST
Message-ID: <1989Jan18.125219.19180@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu>
Organization: University of Toronto Computing Services
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc,comp.sys.next,comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.amiga,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: What are menus?
References: <3234@sugar.uu.net> <12907@steinmetz.ge.com> <10867@s.ms.uky.edu> <5666@cbmvax.UUCP> <12@netserv2.its.rpi.edu> <15452@mimsy.UUCP>
Reply-To: sarathy@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca (Rajiv Sarathy)
Keywords: menu metaphors, pull down menus, pie menus

In article <15452@mimsy.UUCP> don@brillig.umd.edu.UUCP (Don Hopkins) writes:
>Using linear pull down menus is like having to climb ladders to get
>where you're going.  There's a more natural metaphore for round pie
>menus, though.  I think of pie menus as rooms with doors leading off
>in different directions.  Navigating a tree of nested pie menus is
>like running around a building or an adventure game.  You can learn
>how to get to a certian selection, by remembering a spatial path from
>room to room.  Then you just move the mouse along that path, clicking
>through each door, and you're there.  
>
>	-Don

Actually, this has been done by XEROX.  It's called ROOMS, I think.
I've never actually seen it, but the guy who wrote it (I forget his name) was
up here, at the U of Toronto to give a talk on it.  He showed some 35mm slides
and it looks pretty cool.

From what I understand, it's available only on the Interlisp machine as of a
few months ago with plans on porting it to SUN workstations (and now maybe even
NeXT?).

It is almost exactly what Don wants to see in menus.  You go from room to room,
where each room has a different "desktop".  Actually, each room has a different
environment:  different wallpaper, even!

When you want to take stuff from your graphics room to your wordprocessing room,
you hold down a certain key.

To move from room to room, you click on the appropriate door.  Each room leads
to zero or more rooms, and a "backdoor" to get you back to the room where you
came from.

The system can also create a map, I think, showing all the rooms and how they're
connected.

It's much more impressive and natural than the Mac desktop, and probably even
nextstep (I've never used nextstep, only seen a demo at the university's
computer shop).

--Raj

-- 
 _____________________________________________________________________________
| Disclaimer:  I'm just an undergrad.                                         |
| All views and opinions are therefore my own.                                |
|                                                                             |
| Rajiv Partha Sarathy                   sarathy@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca         |
|_____________________________________________________________________________|