Beep strangenesses ( was Re: [squeak-dev] issue allocating more memory for the image)

Chris Muller asqueaker at gmail.com
Sat May 24 22:10:04 UTC 2014


Let's bloviate about the characteristics of this sort of UI element, a
beep, and see if we can identify anything interesting:

  - Beep is a way to get the users attention assuming their speakers
are turned on and not muted.
  - Beep accesses a different sense than the screen so, for example,
if you want to be elsewhere in the same room, not actively looking at
the screen, but want software to pre-empt your attention ASAP.  But I
think this should be application-specific, not deep in the system.
  - Beep does not need any particular graphical or framework
dependency.  That's nice.
  - Beeps are not informative, but are "irregular" which, to me, would
be an indication of something _wrong_, something negative not
positive.
  - Beeps can be less-intrusive than a modal pop-up, because while it
may cause the user to pause and wonder what the beep is about, it
doesn't require any action to get rid of it like modal pops do -- the
sound is just there and gone.
  - However, it's VERY intrusive, IMO, to arbitrarily introduce
noise-pollution into the users environment.  Unacceptably so.

So, overall, I can't think of any good reason base Squeak should ever
beep at the user.  If it were anything, it would be something related
to mis-use of low-level gestures -- like a key combination that's
common in the outside world but different or not accepted in Squeak.


On Sat, May 24, 2014 at 3:38 PM, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> wrote:
>
> On 22-05-2014, at 3:47 PM, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> wrote:
>> It’s something to do with SoundService default etc.
>
> I’m still trying to puzzle out why on earth we ended up with the system beep being involved in a complex services regime. The beep is supposed to be a trivially simple way to get a noise out of the system when you need to have some alert that doesn’t rely upon anything complex. That’s why it is a primitive; that way if you need something more complex because a noise isn’t appropriate (or possible?) you can make it flash a light or set off some dynamite, or (rather mundanely) write to a console.
>
> Did anyone come up with an especially good reason for the complication? I’m willing to be persuaded if there is a good argument.
>
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Strange OpCodes: FSE: Fake Serious Error
>
>
>


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