cjp@vax135.UUCP (Charles Poirier) (05/18/87)
In article <1800@lsuc.UUCP> jimomura@lsuc.UUCP (Jim Omura) writes: >In article <689@omepd> hah@isum.UUCP (Hans Hansen) writes: >>Will you people who are following up on this topic please edit the >>Newsgroups line and quit cross posting to a lot of very disinterested >>users! >The Net currently doesn't have a 'windows.general' group, and even But it does! Our News spool shows a (rather empty) "comp.windows.misc" group. >if it did, this discussion has the earmarks of a short term discussion >wherein a few standards might be hacked out, but nothing longterm. As I understand Nettiquette, if an appropriate group *already* exists, it should be used regardless of the scale of the discussion. I am redirecting followups to comp.windows.misc. -- Charles Poirier (decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4,attmail)!vax135!cjp "The road to Hell is paved with good opinions."
bryce@COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU (Bryce Nesbitt) (05/19/87)
The idea of selecting multiple files, and then double-clicking the application to act on them is something I've been thinking about quite a bit. I think the idea can be generalised even further. If you view every icon as an object that can be activated, there are only two primitives that you need to do almost everything: - Activating an object (double clicking). This works like it currently does: when you activate a disk/folder, it opens, when you activate a program, it starts running, etc. - Feeding an object (dragging one or more other objects onto it). For disks and folders, it does the same as usual: the objects get stored there. If you feed a program, it starts running with those objects as arguments. The nice thing is a lot of things that are handled in a 'funny' way currently can be incorporated in the general scheme. For instance, to print a file, you move it to the printer icon. It remains unspecified wether this icon represents the device itself (i.e. the OS knows about the printer) or a program that knows how to drive the printer (and that might do spooling, reformatting, etc). -- Jack Jansen, jack@cwi.nl (or jack@mcvax.uucp) The shell is my oyster.
gilbert@aimmi.UUCP (05/22/87)
In article <8705190042.AA14664@cogsci.berkeley.edu> boring!jack@cogsci.berkeley.edu (Jack Jansen) writes: > >If you view every icon as an object that can be activated, there >are only two primitives that you need to do almost everything: > >- Activating an object (double clicking). > >- Feeding an object (dragging one or more other objects onto it). Case 1: there is only feeding - you just drag the double-click onto it! Case 2: you never know EVERYTHING you'll ever want to do with files(objects). The number of operations can then get VERY big - how many folk round here would like a GREP facility on the Mac - or the ability to print an object without opening the damn thing and hanging around for needless user interface start-up operations? The main flaw in the Mac is the lack of good generic operations on objects which test for properties. NB: reliance on gestures for expressing all actions is not a very good idea. Why the hell do you think we developed spoken and written language? Note the major inconsistencies in the meaning of dragging on the Macintosh. -- Gilbert Cockton, Scottish HCI Centre, Ben Line Building, Edinburgh, EH1 1TN JANET: gilbert@uk.ac.hw.aimmi ARPA: gilbert%aimmi.hw.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk UUCP: ..!{backbone}!aimmi.hw.ac.uk!gilbert
oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) (05/27/87)
gilbert@aimmi.UUCP (Gilbert Cockton) writes:
+Case 2: you never know EVERYTHING you'll ever want to do with files(objects).
+ The number of operations can then get VERY big - how many
+ folk round here would like a GREP facility on the Mac - or
+ the ability to print an object without opening it...
Just like to point out that you can easily print an object without going
through a lot of user-interface interactions: just select one, or a group
of objects in the finder, and choose "Print" from the Finder's "File" menu.
It starts up their owning application, and hands them to it along with a
print message. Applications that conform to the Macintosh user interface
guidlines (and more than 95% do) will print the documents and quit without
further interaction from you other than confirming that you want a single
copy of all pages at the same print quality as last time (which you do by
either a single mouse click or a single <return> key press.
--- David Phillip Oster -- "The goal of Computer Science is to
Arpa: oster@lapis.berkeley.edu -- build something that will last at
Uucp: ucbvax!ucblapis!oster -- least until we've finished building it."