Re: [Usability] spatial desktop

[Ritesh Khadgaray <khadgaray gmail com>]

On Thu, 2006-08-24 at 19:11 +0200, Daniel Borgmann wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On 8/22/06, Calum Benson <Calum Benson sun com> wrote:
> > To be honest, I'm also not clear what 'spatial' means for other
> > applications anyway.  E.g. Daniel Borgmann writes about your scratchpad
> > example:
> >
> >         In true spatial philosophy, it is not possible to create a new
> >         document from inside a scratchpad window, instead you will have
> >         to create a new document using your file manager and then open
> >         it.
> >
> > which I'd say, in itself at least, isn't much to do with spatial UIs
> > (and as an aside, it would probably drive me mad!)  Without having used
> > it, it sounds to me more like it's just a document-driven rather than an
> > application-driven UI, which always sounds like a great idea until you
> > try to design a whole desktop around it :)
> 
> What spatial means to me can basically be summed up as "object
> oriented". It means that each window of the application represents a
> unique object with persistent (spatial-) state. This can be an
> application object, a document object, a project object or something
> else. The current release of Scratchpad is purely document oriented
> indeed, for the next release (and this was my initial plan as well),
> I'm working on the project oriented interface which will be used when
> Scratchpad is launched independently. I have written some details
> about it[1] on my blog and would very much like to hear usability
> related critique about this plan.

sounds interesting. waiting for release :P

> 
> The reason why I don't allow new documents from within a document
> window is more related to the spatial interface than part of it. The
> point is that it's not possible to have a direct window<->object
> mapping, when the object doesn't even exist yet. I could offer a new
> document interface that would require the name and location of the
> document beforehand, but that appeared like a rather crude method to
> me compared to using the file manager directly. Scratchpad has an
> "Open Folder" option to access the document's folder, so it flows
> nicely. I doubt that it would drive you mad. :-)
> 
> In general, I don't think spatial interfaces are the right choice for
> every application yet (my chess viewer doesn't use a spatial interface
agreed. 

> for example), but I strongly believe that it (or rather object
> orientation in general) is a worthwhile idea to pursue, mainly because
> it makes interfaces more consistent and their behaviour more reliable.
> It's just important to remember that object orientation doesn't have
> to mean document orientation and that a document UI isn't always the
> best choice. Then maybe most of the obligatory flaming about this
> topic could be avoided.

i was reading through http://live.gnome.org/ThreePointZero
hence, a flicker of idea with regard to data oriented desktop.

on a side-note, what i understood is people care about there
documents/data and not about which application they use.


> 
> Daniel
> 
> [1] http://dborg.wordpress.com/2006/03/25/what-the-f-is-scratchpad/
-- 
Ritesh Khadgaray
LinuX N Stuff
Ph: +919822394463
Eat Right, Exercise, Die Anyway.