Re: The State Of The Art

["James M. Cape" <jcape jcinteractive com>]

Michael ROGERS wrote:
> 
> >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).

I think the best way to combat this would be to have the sphere move
around, but you always facing forward. Then have 4 globes (up, down,
left, right) to serve as navigation.

>  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

I cannot help but wonder as to the reasons why the flat desktop metaphor
is so outdated, other than "It's been around for sooo long now" and
"Can't I get a bit more grant money to study the problem?" :-)

The flat, virtual desktop metaphor is perfectly suited to the flat
monitor. "Imagine that your desktop is actually 6' diagonally. You can
only see 19" of it. You slide it around to see other parts of it, and
this thing right here called a pager lets you see what's out of the
primary view.

The multiple desktop metaphor is also well suited -- imagine you have 5
monitors lined up on a conveyor. By clicking this thing that shows you
what's on every monitor, you move the conveyor to the monitor you want.

    Jim Cape
    http://www.jcinteractive.com

    Less is More. Learn it. Use it. Get an X Terminal. :-)