Re: GWP and 'the foot'

["J. Patrick Narkinsky" <patrick narkinsky ml org>]

On Sat, 31 Oct 1998, sungod wrote:

> on another topic, what is the differentiation you make, patrick? i
> personally would _like_ to see a pie menu implementation for gnome, as
> it's a thoroughly researched system with high marks for efficiency.
> perhaps this could be a gnome-library option: menus as menubars, pies,
> right-clickable, etc. etc. etc., user choose... 

Conceivably, this could happen.  But -- I have a hard time visualizing
pie-menus working well in a rectangular world that we live in.  In any
case, there is the question of Who Bells The Cat.

> but this is getting into
> feature requests again so i only mention it as an aside. what i _really_
> want to know is, what makes pie-menus "too crazy" but a foot menu "not
> too crazy?" this, too, is an important differentiation. what
> characteristics of a design idea do you look at to make this decision?

Hmm...   A valid question -- and one I don't have a good answer for.  

I guess it has to be something of an intuitive call: certain changes to
the functionality of the system are simply implementation issues (e.g. the
foot).  Others are fundamental revampings of the way every GUI I've ever
used work -- that is the pie.  

We've got 20 years of baggage with pull-down menus of some kind.  I don't
think that we can abandon them easily.  Furthermore, we have JUST
gotten all the mothers in the world used to pull-down.  If we ask them
to change, they'll just go run doze.  

So, I guess I need to requalify my original statement.  UI differentiation
is good.  However, we should limit ourselves to changes which an AVERAGE
doze user could feel comfortable with in a matter of minutes, possibly
with minimal instruction.

Hence, adding a pull-down menu that has all the system level functions on
it is acceptable -- especially given the Mac precedent.  Changing the way
menus work entirely is not.

Patrick

--
J. Patrick Narkinsky
patrick@narkinsky.ml.org

"It is so stupid of modern society to have given up believing in the
devil when he is the only explanation for it."  -- Ronald Knox