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GOOEY
Very GUI ideas. Maybe you should skip this if you're not me.
General Crit: How come these WIMPs don't incorp.
standard unix concepts. e.g. hierarchies, like
hierarchial directories => imply hierarchial windows?
A use: Marginal notes attached to particular points in a document.
How about filters and pipes for windows? Like why can't I look at
Terminal though a filter that changes the type face?
Playing with all these GUI things
what goes on here? No real new ideas since the Xerox Star interface.
Why not a *real* Unix windowing system, where windows can be
manipulated unix style, where you can build new things out of the
already existing pieces.
For example, as far as I can tell, they neglected to put in This is a
a way to change the typeface on the Terminal program on the NeXTStep 1.0
NeXt. Weird: what are standardized interfaces for except to problem, only.
do this kind of thing? What I'd like to have is a filter I
can put on the output of a window that modifies it into
something I can stand to look at... Maybe it would look like
a real "filter", a transluscent window you put over another
window.
Also, how about sub-windows, in analogy to sub-directories? Then you
could do hypertextual style things like attach marginal notations to
a document, written in little windows attached to a specific point in
the main text.
More GUI: OBERON interface has some neat features.
Non-overlapping windows. (i.e. "tiled" windows).
All text is editiable text.
In fact, it sounds a lot like Gnu Emacs.
And still more (3/96):
one thing I actually
like about Microsoft
Windows is that they've One thing I dislike: these
provide keyboard are clearly thought of as
alternates for *almost* alternates. Some commands are so
every command. awkward I don't bother with them...
like trying to manipulate sub-windows
Strange that X never seems from the keyboard, that's hopeless.
to be configured anyway like
this. You think that the
Unix hackers would understand
the need for something as simple
as a keyboard command to switch
to another window.
Motif, in particular has mnemonic keys
for options on a menu pad, but no way
to select that menu pad from the keyboard.
Use a mouse to click on File, *then* you
can hit "S" to save? Gee thanks, that helps
a lot.
I wonder how hard it would be to
take X and try to make it useful
from my point of view. Incorporate
the best features of Emacs, Wordstar,
Microsoft Word... try to show that
a GUI need not be a WIMP.
(5/23/96)
It's obvious to me that instead of the
Windows-style restriction of the mnemonic keys
to a letter that must be in the command name
is silly.
Far better to make the command name a single
arbitrary keystroke, with a label attached
to it to give beginners and the slow-witted
something obvious to click on.
A common interface might look like:
(F)-File (E)-Edit (V)-View note the similarity
(S)-Save to the old Wordstar?
(A)-Save As:
Advantages: even in complex menus "hotkey conflicts"
are almost never a problem.
Localization could be limited to changing the labels,
leaving the key strokes alone... skills are then I can use
portable among locales. Word for Windows
in Japanese
without any
difficulty
because they left
the shortcuts
alone.
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