[OT] Multi-part text messages on the list are a serious pain.

Darius squeakuser at inglang.com
Fri Mar 14 23:00:52 UTC 2003


Re: Article about "The Post-OOP Paradigm"

> I think that it is important to not generalize about the way "the human mind" 
> thinks....
> Hence, some people think verbally, in terms of words; other people think 
> visually, in terms of pictures. 

I agree.

> The CLI vs. GUI dichotomy that seems so prevalent in discussions like
> these...
> Then, I read a couple of weeks/months ago a paper on an exciting new UI
> paradigm - command-line assisted GUI's. The paper went on describing
> exactly the kind of interface that Emacs and VI people have come to
> love.

Fast input vs. Fast understanding I guess.

> (am I the only one here using pie menus?)

I believe the Alias/Wavefront's Maya 3D modeling/rendering package uses them 
extensively now.


> Marco Paga says 
> -Computer langauges went from machine code to OOP.
> -GUI's went from text-based to 2D.

The problem is that computer languages have not yet gone from OOP text-based to 
2D. 

2D engages more cognitive information processing, information chunking, and 
information juxtaposition. 

Class object browsers give language a 2D illusion but not beyond the method 
level.

Debug call stacks give languages a 2D illusion but not beyond the statement 
level. 

UML give languages more of a 2D representation, but not beyond the method level.

“Traits” goes to the expression level, but doesn’t juxtapose all related 
meaningful data together.

Time & space seem to be the enemy of the user interface. If you have infinite 
amount of ether, you don’t have to make clever shortcuts.

Because of occlusion, 3D is best used for simulations and/or presenting 
information in a narrative format. It takes time when you have to move things 
in & out of the view pane (while walking lets say). The irony of a 3D GUI is 
that you only have one “camera”, one perspective, one focal point, just like 
the movies. That forces a linear “travel” through the 3D space. (Some 
exceptions to this are tools which have multiple view panes are CAD software, 
3D modeling software, and the (unremarkable) movie “Timecode”.) Movies use 
techniques to convey more information from 3D into 2D through cut scenes, head 
shots, perspective, façades, etc. Remember, most movie/TV views or shots are 
only about 10 seconds in duration before you get an entirely new well planned 
view into that 3D world of information. They also use techniques such as color, 
illumination, depth of field, sweaping pan shots, and motion to direct our 
attention within the one scene to convey the extra information. They do this to 
compress a lot of “mentally imagined object” space into a sliver of time. 3D 
GUI’s don’t do any of that yet.

"Envisioning Information", "Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, 
Evidence and Narrative", and "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information " 
by Edward R. Tufte are the seminal works on the subject.

Cheers,
Darius



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