> From: Suresh Ramasubramanian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: Linux India Help <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: [LIH] Re: Linux for desktop ?? > Date: 30 Jan 2002 11:32:53 +0800 > What, in your opinion, would be a new UI paradigm? A 3-D world? Most of the > desktop environments around (kde and gnome are not just 'window managers') > are going the same old MacOS / Doze route. Because it is what the herd > wants, and is most familiar with.
as far as gui -s go, i think the so-called 'wimp' (short for 'windows, icons, mouse, pointer', i believe) is fairly basic. visual interfaces to the workings of a computer are not practicable without a minimum level of abstraction: things on the screen representing files/functions/locations inside the machine. thus we have icons (in the gui sense of the term). we need some way of interacting with them, and it will generally be agreed that a simulation of the way in which we ordinarily interact with real-life things - pull them, drag them, hit (read 'click') them, open them - is the most intuitive. thus we have the pointer and and something to control it with, the mouse. however, i don't think the relationship between the pointer and the mouse is very intuitive. i still remember the first time a saw a mouse, and found it wonderful and incredible that its horizontal movements corresponded with the other's vertical ones, and it was all very difficult to coordinate. look at the way a new computer-user holds and handles the mouse, and you'll see what i mean. so however innovative a new gui is, i don't think it can bring a paradigm shift. after translucent windows we shall have quivering taskpanes and singing start menus, and then perhaps windows that rotate on their axes and show us their backsides, but the basic idea will be the same. but that is about gui's. other ui-s are coming in, like bluetooth and voice recognition, which i belive will soon be mature enough to enable the creation of household robots. - t. _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ linux-india-help mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-india-help
