On Thu, Mar 29, 2001 at 12:30:06PM +0300, danielv at netvision.net.il wrote:
> Kevin Fisher <kgf at golden.net> wrote:
> > Well I don't have any screenshots handy (yet) but...
> [Pen based PDA env]
> Sounds very cool. I'd love to see it.

Well I'm deep in the guts of coding it up right now...no screenshots
yet!  Hopefully soon though...I've got lots of motivation to make it
work since the Agenda Computing PDA apps on iPaq-Linux really stink.

> 
> > In addition to the other suggestions (such as the Lucy font), you'll probably want to stick with 
> > flop-out scrollbars to save space on the screen.  Or, if you prefer inboard, using the narrow & hidden
> > scrollbar options will save a fair amount of space.
> In my experience, the scrollers tends to flop out of the screen.
> Inboard, narrow, hidden works pretty well.

That too... for me, when I touch a scrollable pane, the scrollbar just won't
flop out.  I think it has something to do with the fact that there's
no such thing as a mouse coordinate until you touch somewhere on the
iPaq, at which point it also counts as a mouse-click.  

Things are different with my Wacom tablet of course, since the
'touch' doesn't necessarily happen when I move the stylus
(ie you can move the pointer around with the stylus WITHOUT generating a click).

> 
> [Bobs browser]
> Yup, that concept seems better for tiny screens, but I couldn't find the
> Class Categories, and the hierarchy tree get too big to.
> 
> I think maybe I was looking for the wrong thing in a PDA - it just isn't
> a desktop, and not useful for the same things...
> 
> Daniel
> 

Nope it's not a desktop, and that's what intregues me.  I think that
palmtop devices _can_ be quite useful if we don't force bad metaphors
onto them.

Perhaps I've been spending too much time on Ted Nelson's
web site, but I've really begun to question the paradigms and
metaphors we take for granted on our typical desktop PC.

I've got a number of different ideas on the subject and I figured that
the iPaq would be a great place to experiment with them.  I don't
think the usual Morphic or MVC interface makes sense on a palmtop
device.  Rather, I think that a unique interface tailored for the device
would work better...something of a totally keyboard-free pen-based
'mini-browser'.  I'd like to view the handheld as a container of Objects
that I can use/manipulate/connect just using my stylus....something
like "I want to connect my AddressBook object to the InfraRed object".
This way the PDA could be completely utilitarian as opposed to just being
a program launcher.

Anyway I've got my own pink and blue plane ideas.  My current PDA Browser
is a bit of a compromise between a standard PDA app and some of my crazier
'new' ideas (I call it a 'green' plane for some reason).