Re: The State Of The Art

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

>I was thinking that the power of your suggestion lies in the simple
>representation of an extra dimension (I would like to see the third
>dimension accessable, but it's the physical interface that has limitations
>there, I find a joystick terrible for anything other than indicating
>direction). To make it intuative the sliding has to be beleivable,
>what about looking at the _outside_ of a sphere, with ghosts of the other
>windows that are on the other side of the sphere moving behind the ones
>you are looking at.
>
>Graphicaly intensive yes, but these are just ideas, if you don't have the
>hardware, switch it off.
>
>And maybee middle clicking or something will allow you to move in towards
>the centre of the sphere where your your information links are held
>in something like ``the brain''s but in 3D, and when you've chosen
>something you spring back to the surface and the link is serviced by
>an app where you were.

 I like this idea  - combining a Brain-like information map with a
traditional window-based GUI in the same space. We could turn your idea
inside out and go back inside the sphere again - windows are mapped on the
inner surface of the sphere, and the space inside contains information nodes
and links. When you follow a link, the entire network moves around you so 
that the new node is at the centre. You always stay at the center of the 
sphere, but you can rotate the surface and the network independently of each
other to bring windows and nodes into view.

 The network could represent the filesystem, with the current directory at
the centre, the immediate parent and child directories visible, and the rest
of the filesystem rotated out of clear view beyond the surface of the
sphere. Alternatively, it could represent something like the Gnome desktop -
a collection of shortcuts to applications, directories and URLs. However,
there are not always clear links between these, so it might be best to keep
them as free-floating icons.

 Maybe this would all be too cluttered?


Michael Rogers