davet@oakhill.UUCP (David Trissel) (04/18/89)
Here are excerpts from two replies to my posting concerning the Mac multiple window management problem: ------------------ From cs.yale.edu!jona-menachem@cs.utexas.edu Tue Apr 11 15:41:26 1989 From: Menachem Jona <cs.yale.edu!jona-menachem@cs.utexas.edu> Subject: Re: New paradigm needed from Apple Organization: Computer Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-2158 I did some research on this very issue about a year ago in a User-centered interface design course. The approach I took to attacking this issue ... is what I called an Activity Manager. The idea was to group windows (regardless of what application they originated from) together according to what the user was doing with them. For example, if the user were working on a paper that had graphs and graphics to be inserted then the windows from the word processor, graphics program, etc would be grouped together. The user could open/close (perhaps iconify) all these windows with one command. The idea here of course, is to organize the windows along the lines of what the user is doing with them, rather than by application (as multifinder does it). The underlying assumption is that a person can only really concentrate on one task at a time, hence should only see the windows associated with that task while all others are hidden. Along with this idealized system was a dialog which listed all "projects" and their status (suspended, completed, current) which would help remind the user what they were doing. The user could use this dialog to jump between "projects" by clicking on its name. The current project would be suspended, all the windows open for that project would be closed, and the new project's windows would be opened. Another feature allowed the user to ask to be notified of different events (somehwat like the Multifinder notification manager). This served not only the purpose it does in Mulitfinder but also as kind of an alarm clock reminder. If you're interested, the book from which most of these ideas came from is: Norman & Draper, User Centered System Design, Lawerence Earlbaum, 1986 Kemi Jona ARPA: jona@cs.yale.edu BITNET: jona@YALECS.BITNET --------------------------- From rutgers.edu!uucp@cs.utexas.edu Wed Apr 12 09:51:57 1989 From: "David R. Fulmer" <andrew.cmu.edu!df1b+@cs.utexas.edu> Subject: Re: New paradigm needed from Apple Here at CMU we have an experimental system called the Andrew System. The main window manager for it allows windows to be shrunk to their title bars, or hid from view. The title bars contain the machine that the window is from (processes can run on remote workstations), the name of the program running, and a third space reserved for the program (usually something like the filename for editors, etc). Although I personally use X with a window manager that allows inconification of windows, others seem to get along with the title bar scheme. This may be easier to convince Apple to support as it conflicts less with the current interface. ... The Mac screens are much too small to effectively use shrink-to-titlebar. Whenever I have windows open (other than disk directories) I usually like to keep them the full size of the screen (even on Mac IIs larger displays). A stack of full size title bars is not much improvement over keeping the windows open. I agree that iconification is the way to go. I will never accept any window manager under X that doesn't support it! ------------------------------- -- Dave Trissel Motorola Austin ut-sally!cs.utexas.edu!oakhill!davet