peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (01/07/89)
Well, I asked "what in the real world are pull-down menus a metaphor for?". The replies I've received are entertaining, if not definitive. The most common one is desk drawers or filing cabinets, but I see those as serving the same roles as disks. Other replies included secretaries, bookshelves, the computer (a wonderfully recursive metaphor), the restaurant menus from the chinese place across the street (for helping you pull an all-nighter, presumably), and so on. One sick puppy asked why I didn't have parchment scrolls that stretched across my desk. The desktop metaphor is just an analogy. Don't take it too seriously. -- Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva `-_-' Hackercorp. ...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.uu.net 'U`
frank@zen.co.uk (Frank Wales) (01/09/89)
In article <3234@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >Well, I asked "what in the real world are pull-down menus a metaphor for?". >[...] >The desktop metaphor is just an analogy. Don't take it too seriously. Huh? [:-)] Metaphors, by definition, have to be a metaphor *for* something. Similarly with analogies (it has to be an analogy *of* something). The desktop metaphor sure isn't a true representation of any desktop I've seen, but then it does seem more useful the way it is. Maybe it should be the "desktop" metaphor. -- Frank Wales, Systems Manager, [frank@zen.co.uk<->mcvax!zen.co.uk!frank] Zengrange Ltd., Greenfield Rd., Leeds, ENGLAND, LS9 8DB. (+44) 532 489048 x217
casseres@Apple.COM (David Casseres) (01/10/89)
In article <3234@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >The desktop metaphor is just an analogy. Don't take it too seriously. Yes indeed. The best thing about the desktop metaphor is how very little it resembles a desktop. David Casseres
jimm@amiga.UUCP (Jim Mackraz) (01/10/89)
In article <395@internal.Apple.COM> casseres@Apple.COM (David Casseres) writes:
)Yes indeed. The best thing about the desktop metaphor is how very little
)it resembles a desktop.
)
)David Casseres
Even though I don't have my copy of "The Zen of Programming" with me I feel
compelled to paraphrase ...
"The Master led the student to a room with a only a desk in it. On the
desk was a computer which displayed metaphorical desktop.
`Can you tell the difference between the two desktops?' the Master asked.
`Yes, Master, one of the desktops doesn't have a computer on it.'
`No, foolish student, Neither desktop has a computer on it.'"
The student was suddenly enlightened.
jimm
--
Jim Mackraz, I and I Computing "Like you said when we crawled down
{cbmvax,well,oliveb}!amiga!jimm from the trees: We're in transition."
- Gang of Four
Opinions are my own. Comments are not to be taken as Commodore official policy.rjung@castor.usc.edu (Robert allen Jung) (01/11/89)
In article <3234@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >Well, I asked "what in the real world are pull-down menus a metaphor for?". In article <1472@zen.UUCP> frank@zen.co.uk (Frank Wales) writes: > The >desktop metaphor sure isn't a true representation of any desktop I've seen, >but then it does seem more useful the way it is. To address the original question, I always thought drop-down/pull-down/etc. menus were a metaphor for actions you do on a desktop. Suppose you click on a file, then go to your respective menu and choose "Show Info". Isn't this equvalent to grabbing a sheath of papers, then looking at them to see what they're about? Okay, so the menu--action metaphor is a lot closer to the menu's intended function; But since when do metaphors have to be abstract? --R.J. B-) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer: These are my views, and mine alone. # ## # Mailing address: Beats me, just reply to this message # ## # (rjung@nunki.usc.edu?) ## ## ## #### ## ####
shf@well.UUCP (Stuart H. Ferguson) (01/12/89)
In article <3234@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >Well, I asked "what in the real world are pull-down menus a metaphor for?". Well, how about this ... It's not a desktop -- it's a sorcerer's workshop. The menus are the little bags of magic powder that the wizard keeps in bigger bags. Pulling down a menu is opening the bag to see what little bags are inside. Submenus are bags within bags. Selecting an item is taking a pinch of the powder and sprinkling it on the item currently selected in the workshop. So to send objects to alternate dimensions, you first "select" the object and place it on the workbench. Then you open the "File" bag and take out a pinch of the "Delete" powder. You mutter something and sprinkle it on the selected item. Then you mutter something less savory as the powder does something you didn't expect. The problem is that the only way to tell what these mysteriously labeled powders do is to try them, and if you get the incantation wrong, you can send yourself into alternate dimensions. You wonder why people who supposedly want to make computers easier to use would select such a difficult metaphor. ;-) -- Stuart Ferguson (shf@well.UUCP) Action by HAVOC
coy@ssc-vax.UUCP (Stephen B Coy) (01/12/89)
In article <2308@nunki.usc.edu>, rjung@castor.usc.edu (Robert allen Jung) writes: > To address the original question, I always thought drop-down/pull-down/etc. > menus were a metaphor for actions you do on a desktop. > > Suppose you click on a file, then go to your respective menu and choose > "Show Info". Isn't this equvalent to grabbing a sheath of papers, then looking > at them to see what they're about? Can menus be replaced with something closer to the actions they are a metaphor for? When I want to edit a document I pick up a pencil and put it to paper. The metaphorical desktop could have a pencil which could be grabbed by the pointer(ala MacPaint). Clicking this pencil onto a file would then invoke the editor. "Show Info" could be done with a magnifying glass giving you a closer look at the file. Or how about having a Xerox(tm) machine on your desk which when fed a file spits out a duplicate? Taken to an extreme this could get really annoying. > --R.J. > B-) > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Disclaimer: These are my views, and mine alone. > # ## # > Mailing address: Beats me, just reply to this message # ## # > (rjung@nunki.usc.edu?) ## ## ## > #### ## #### Stephen Coy uw-beaver!ssc-vax!coy
hmm@laura.UUCP (Hans-Martin Mosner) (01/13/89)
In article <2470@ssc-vax.UUCP> coy@ssc-vax.UUCP (Stephen B Coy) writes: >Can menus be replaced with something closer to the actions they >are a metaphor for? When I want to edit a document I pick up a >pencil and put it to paper. The metaphorical desktop could have a >pencil which could be grabbed by the pointer(ala MacPaint). >Clicking this pencil onto a file would then invoke the editor. >"Show Info" could be done with a magnifying glass giving you a >closer look at the file. Or how about having a Xerox(tm) machine >on your desk which when fed a file spits out a duplicate? Taken to >an extreme this could get really annoying. This has actually been done. I think it is called 'active agents' or something like that. For example, instead of dragging a file into a trashcan, you would drag an eraser onto a file. Sort of like the difference between postfix and prefix notation... I don't know which I like better, maybe it would be best if both ways of dealing with things were available. Hans-Martin inews fodder inews fodder inews fodder inews fodder inews fodder inews fodder -- Hans-Martin Mosner | Don't tell Borland about Smalltalk - | hmm@unido.{uucp,bitnet} | they might invent Turbo Smalltalk ! | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Disclaimer: Turbo Smalltalk may already be a trademark of Borland...
don@brillig.umd.edu (Don Hopkins) (01/13/89)
Using linear pull down menus is like having to climb ladders to get where you're going. There's a more natural metaphore for round pie menus, though. I think of pie menus as rooms with doors leading off in different directions. Navigating a tree of nested pie menus is like running around a building or an adventure game. You can learn how to get to a certian selection, by remembering a spatial path from room to room. Then you just move the mouse along that path, clicking through each door, and you're there. -Don
david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) (01/14/89)
I just asked a non-expert-computer-user who happens to own a Mac
The view he eventually came up with is something like the "See Also"
tags that are in entries in Encyclopedia's.
But then he's been playing with Hype-Card lately.
--
<-- David Herron; an MMDF guy <david@ms.uky.edu>
<-- ska: David le casse\*' {rutgers,uunet}!ukma!david, david@UKMA.BITNET
<-- Now I know how Zonker felt when he graduated ...
<-- Stop! Wait! I didn't mean to!fnf@estinc.UUCP (Fred Fish) (01/14/89)
In article <849@laura.UUCP> hmm@laura.UUCP (Hans-Martin Mosner) writes: >This has actually been done. I think it is called 'active agents' or something >like that. For example, instead of dragging a file into a trashcan, you >would drag an eraser onto a file. How about an icon of a nuke. You drag it over and drop it on your file and you get a little dissolving mushroom shaped cloud... :-) -Fred -- # Fred Fish, 1835 E. Belmont Drive, Tempe, AZ 85284, USA # asuvax!nud!estinc!fnf
peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (01/15/89)
In article <2470@ssc-vax.UUCP>, coy@ssc-vax.UUCP (Stephen B Coy) writes: > Can menus be replaced with something closer to the actions they > are a metaphor for? When I want to edit a document I pick up a > pencil and put it to paper. ... Have a look at the original mouse-menus-icons user interface... the Xerox Star. It worked much like this. To print a file you dropped it in the printer icon, etc... this feature (a cool one) only survives in the Trashcan. Maybe in browser 3.0... :->. -- Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva `-_-' Hackercorp. ...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.uu.net 'U`
R_Tim_Coslet@cup.portal.com (01/16/89)
In article: <13@estinc.UUCP> fnf@estinc.UUCP (Fred Fish) writes: >In article <849@laura.UUCP> hmm@laura.UUCP (Hans-Martin Mosner) writes: >>This has actually been done. I think it is called 'active agents' or something >>like that. For example, instead of dragging a file into a trashcan, you >>would drag an eraser onto a file. > >How about an icon of a nuke. You drag it over and drop it on your file >and you get a little dissolving mushroom shaped cloud... :-) Might that not be a bit of overkill? What if the blast wipes out a nearby file too? And then there is the fallout.... ... .. . (-: :-) (-: :-) (-: :-) (-: :-) (-: :-) (-: :-) (-: :-) (-: :-) -: :-) (-: :-) R. Tim Coslet Usenet: R_Tim_Coslet@cup.portal.com
anderson@ncrcce.StPaul.NCR.COM (Joel Peter Anderson) (01/17/89)
In article <3284@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >In article <2470@ssc-vax.UUCP>, coy@ssc-vax.UUCP (Stephen B Coy) writes: >> Can menus be replaced with something closer to the actions they >> are a metaphor for?... >Have a look at the original mouse-menus-icons user interface... the Xerox >Star. It worked much like this. To print a file you dropped it in the >printer icon, etc... this feature (a cool one) only survives in the Trashcan. > Don't all desktops do this? ON MY COMMODORE 64 (at home) with the GEOS operating system that is exactly how you print files. . . and it works for any printing application... (think its about time to bring my '64 back to work to replace this junky PC clone... unless I get a SUN...) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- "We know only the strong will survive, But the meek will inherit. So if you've got a coat of arms, oh friend, I suggest we wear it." John Mellencamp. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- anderson@c10sd3.StPaul.NCR.COM |UUCP: {rosevax, crash}!orbit!pnet51!jpa Joel Peter Anderson |ARPA: crash!orbit!pnet51!jpa@nosc.mil NCR Comten / Software engineer |INET: jpa@pnet51.cts.com QLINK: JPA -------------------------------------------------------------------------
bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton) (01/18/89)
In article <13579@cup.portal.com> R_Tim_Coslet@cup.portal.com writes: >In article: <13@estinc.UUCP> fnf@estinc.UUCP (Fred Fish) writes: >> >>How about an icon of a nuke. You drag it over and drop it on your file >>and you get a little dissolving mushroom shaped cloud... :-) > >Might that not be a bit of overkill? What if the blast wipes out a nearby >file too? And then there is the fallout.... ... .. . The fallout is already here...check the coverage of that Newsgroups line. --Blair "I don't want this stuff upwind of ME...!"
sarathy@gpu.utcs.toronto.edu (Rajiv Sarathy) (01/18/89)
In article <15452@mimsy.UUCP> don@brillig.umd.edu.UUCP (Don Hopkins) writes: >Using linear pull down menus is like having to climb ladders to get >where you're going. There's a more natural metaphore for round pie >menus, though. I think of pie menus as rooms with doors leading off >in different directions. Navigating a tree of nested pie menus is >like running around a building or an adventure game. You can learn >how to get to a certian selection, by remembering a spatial path from >room to room. Then you just move the mouse along that path, clicking >through each door, and you're there. > > -Don Actually, this has been done by XEROX. It's called ROOMS, I think. I've never actually seen it, but the guy who wrote it (I forget his name) was up here, at the U of Toronto to give a talk on it. He showed some 35mm slides and it looks pretty cool. From what I understand, it's available only on the Interlisp machine as of a few months ago with plans on porting it to SUN workstations (and now maybe even NeXT?). It is almost exactly what Don wants to see in menus. You go from room to room, where each room has a different "desktop". Actually, each room has a different environment: different wallpaper, even! When you want to take stuff from your graphics room to your wordprocessing room, you hold down a certain key. To move from room to room, you click on the appropriate door. Each room leads to zero or more rooms, and a "backdoor" to get you back to the room where you came from. The system can also create a map, I think, showing all the rooms and how they're connected. It's much more impressive and natural than the Mac desktop, and probably even nextstep (I've never used nextstep, only seen a demo at the university's computer shop). --Raj -- _____________________________________________________________________________ | Disclaimer: I'm just an undergrad. | | All views and opinions are therefore my own. | | | | Rajiv Partha Sarathy sarathy@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca | |_____________________________________________________________________________|
mullins@pitt.UUCP (Paul M. Mullins) (01/20/89)
> > Actually, this has been done by XEROX. It's called ROOMS, I think. > I've never actually seen it, but the guy who wrote it (I forget his name) was > up here, at the U of Toronto to give a talk on it. He showed some 35mm slides > and it looks pretty cool. > > --Raj %A S.K. Card %A D.A. Henderson %T A Multiple Virtual-Workspace Interface to Support User Task Switching %B CHI'87 Conf on Human Factors in Com Syst, Toronto %I ACM/SIGCHI %D Apr 6-9, 1987 %A D.A. Henderson %A S.K. Card %T Rooms: The Use of Multiple Virtual Workspaces to Reduce Space Contention in a Window-Based Graphical User Interface %J ACM TOG %V 5 %N 3 %D July, 1986 %P 211-243
don@brillig.umd.edu (Don Hopkins) (01/21/89)
>>Using linear pull down menus is like having to climb ladders to get >>where you're going. There's a more natural metaphore for round pie >>menus, though. I think of pie menus as rooms with doors leading off >>in different directions. >>[...] >> -Don >Actually, this has been done by XEROX. It's called ROOMS, I think. >I've never actually seen it, but the guy who wrote it (I forget his name) was >up here, at the U of Toronto to give a talk on it. He showed some 35mm slides >and it looks pretty cool. >[...] >It is almost exactly what Don wants to see in menus. You go from >room to room, where each room has a different "desktop". Actually, >each room has a different environment: different wallpaper, even! >[...] >--Raj I've heard about Rooms, and I like the idea a lot. But what I'm talking about is pie menus. i.e. not full screen desktop layouts, but circular pop-up menus, as a metaphore for rooms. I think that the two metaphores are well matched and could be combined synergistically. In the pie menu "room" metaphore, a "room" is a menu, and a "door" is a menu item. You point to an object on the screen and click to pop up a pie menu of items relating to that object. The pie menu pops up with the cursor in the middle of the room, with the doors arranged in a circle around the cursor, all leading off in different directions. You go through a door by moving the cursor in its direction and clicking. Going through a door either completes the selection, causing some action to be performed on the object, or leads you to another room, popping up another pie submenu. The important difference between pop-up pie menus and pull-down linear menus is that pie menus are based on direction, and linear menus are based on distance. With pie menus, the cursor motion necessary to make a selection is always small, and the area of the wedge shaped selection targets is large. You can indicate a direction without looking at the screen, and you get more and more angular precision as you move the cursor out further. Furthermore, they're non-proprietary, so nobody will sue you for implementing them! Here are a couple of references to work we've done with pie menus. If you use the NeWS window system, I'd be glad to send you my public domain implementation of pie menus, and a window manager designed to use them efficiently, written in object oriented PostScript. -Don Directional Selection is Easy as Pie Menus! By Don Hopkins ;login: The USENIX Association Newsletter Volume 12, Number 5; September/October 1987; Page 31 Summary of the Work-in-Progress talk given at the 1987 Summer Usenix Conference in Phoenix. A Comparative Analysis of Pie Menu Performance By Jack Callahan, Don Hopkins, Mark Weiser, and Ben Shneiderman Proc. CHI'88 conference, Washington D.C.: available from ACM, NY.
bph@buengc.BU.EDU (Blair P. Houghton) (01/24/89)
In article <15562@mimsy.UUCP> don@brillig.umd.edu.UUCP (Don Hopkins) writes: >>>Using linear pull down menus is like having to climb ladders to get >>>where you're going. There's a more natural metaphore for round pie >>>menus, though. I think of pie menus as rooms with doors leading off >>>in different directions. >>>[...] >>> -Don > >>Actually, this has been done by XEROX. It's called ROOMS, I think. >>I've never actually seen it, but the guy who wrote it (I forget his name) was I was walking up the stairs from the Xerox room the other day; it's something I do eight or twelve times a day, now that the li'l stoonts need lots of handouts for their li'l edification. Ennyhoo (Is there _anyone_ more pleased that Pogo is back in the papers than me?), I was flipping my keys for the eight or twelfth time that day, and I realized: Pulldown menus are a ring of keys. You pull them out of your pocket, and select the the one that opens your next venue, or activates your next tool. I need a carrot. --Blair "Munch, Munch."
jtn@potomac.ads.com (John T. Nelson) (01/30/89)
I guess the discussion of alternate desktop metaphors (or perhaps I should just say "alternate metaphors") leads to the rhetorical question... is NeXT sufficiently modular that we can port the interface of our choosing to it? The Xerox ROOMS metaphor sounds pretty cool (Don Hopkins first described his ideas to me for an alternate menuing interface a couple years ago and were probably independent of Xerox). -- John T. Nelson UUCP: sun!sundc!potomac!jtn Advanced Decision Systems Internet: jtn@potomac.ads.com 1500 Wilson Blvd #512; Arlington, VA 22209-2401 (703) 243-1611 "The only thing more useless than a Faberge' egg is a coffee table picture book about Faberge' eggs"
glasscoc@cica.indiana.edu (John Glasscock) (02/05/89)
You people who are cross-posting to comp.sys.next and all the other groups probably ought to re-think it. Post ONLY to the single group that pertains to your subject. Type Pnews, or whatever command is resident to your system to originate an article. If you are following up an article, amend the newsgroups header to the single group that is most appropriate. When all else fails, reread the files in the newusers and important newsgroups talking about etiquette. I got chewed out for this once, too, so I thought you may want a gentle reminder. John Glasscock Indiana University glasscoc@cica.cica.indiana.edu Bloomington, Indiana