Re: The State Of The Art

[Michael ROGERS <M Rogers cs ucl ac uk>]

>the cylinder is almost DONE.  the sphere would be a little harder.  we
>just need to take the next step and make a window manager that uses this
>as its standard instead of having someone go "hey...you know what I
>think would be cool?" and spending two weeks trying to tweak it.

 To preserve the illusion of space (so that you can remember where your
windows are), movement between areas of the... um... work surface is going to
need to be animated (ie you see the sphere spinning around you rather than
"jumping" from one area to another). I imagine this would place some heavy
demands on your hardware... any thoughts, E users?  ;)

 Also, if you're going to have freedom of movement in three dimensions you
have the possibility of windows ending up upside down (spin 180 degrees
horizontally, then 180 degrees vertically... you're back where you started
but the other way up).

 Just thinking aloud BTW, I don't want to knock the idea, it's very 
interesting. GUIs definitely need to move away from the flat desktop
metaphor, it's just a question of finding a better one...


Michael Rogers