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RSI, WIMPs and Pipes; What Next?
Tetard asks: "Long live the pipe! Since the `|' was invented by Doug McIlroy in 1973, has there ever been a more effective way of reusing tools and connecting data ? The mouse is a device of the Beatles era; Rather than try and provoke nostalgia in the older ones among us, I'm asking myself, as are others: when we don't try to reinvent the wheel, or at least improve it, why must we try and copy it every time ? Xerox PARC exposed us to WIMPs and we haven't done better: some innovation, some plastic surgery -- but no "paradigm shift" -- where's the
creative destruction that will take us further ? Graphical component programming is turning us into click-happy bonobos^H^H^Hchimpanzees, as we fail to find new ways to manage and connect richer data streams. My web designer friends are damaged for life because of mice, and yet we persist... Where do we go from here ? If we ever invent the graphical pipe, let if have keyboard shortcuts." Yes, you've probably seen a similar question to this run by Ask Slashdot before, but this time I'm wondering if maybe we need new input devices before the WIMP paradigm is replaced with something better. Might any of you have ideas on what form these input devices might take?
For those interested, here are the previous stories that have handled this type of question:
So what it will take to break us out of the WIMP box (or prison, depending on your bias), maybe new input devices would do it, but quite frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if a 3D interface might be another route (it would possibly spark interest in designing a new input device that would work better with 3D interfaces, or maybe data-gloves could serve this purpose?). Going on a limb, maybe this guy might just be the ticket.
With a sub-$100 webcam watching you, look at the point of the screen where you would click, and blink.
Are there lots of problems to doing this? Yes. Should that stop me from throwing out the idea? No.
What do Weakly Interactive Massive Particles have to do with pipes?
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Natural Language Processing has my vote. Some of these folks are working on it already. Wouldn't it be nice to say "move this thing over here", or some other combination of speech and gesturing, rather than all these inane menus and clicks? Someone still needs to develop the pipe infrastructure, tho. Just *don't* make it so narrow as to become worthless.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
We're still using *wheels* on our vehicles! I've got a nearly brand new car, and it's using 5,000 year old technology to get around? From Detroit to Stuttgart, automakers are clearly devoid of imagination!
Get over it -- sometimes it makes sense to stick with what works. A love of change for the sake of change is the one thing that unites geeks and fresh-out-of-school MBA's.
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
This is exactly the topic of the new Slash site that I just set up at http://nooface.net. The goal of the site is to promote out-of-the-box thinking about truly next-generation user interfaces that are designed for new types of users and computing devices, and go beyond the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointing Device) method that most current interfaces are based on.
Nooface
In Search of the Post-PC Interface
Nooface
In Search of the Post-PC Interface
IBM has been working on eye-tracking movement. Supposedly it can tell what part of the screen your eyes are focused on. Would be cool for first person shooters, but for an OS I think moving a mouse is just as simple.
I saw this on TechTv, i think it was fresh gear, but I'm not sure, anyone have a link?
So far, we're pointing at things on a screen, moving them around, and typing messages. Datagloves and other visual manipulations will be important for all sorts of specialized tasks, but the way we tend to communicate is through speech and body language.
Speech recognition is only useful for very limited functionality, mainly because computers haven't been fast enough or with large enough databases to really make use of syntax and context. Continuous speech recognition today typically uses waveform profiles with no contextual or grammatical analysis.
But with faster processors and larger memories, I expect speech recognition to go to the next quantum level within 5-10 years. Once we add contextual and grammatical constructs to speech recognition, computers will start to be able to really understand what we're saying. To go from that to understanding what we *mean* is another step, but that's coming too.
I also expect computers to have video cameras and to be responsive to our body language and facial expressions. They will be able to judge whether what they're doing is interesting or useful, and will ask for guidance or attempt to correct based on that feedback.
In other words, I expect interaction with computers to become more like interaction with people!
Reading this story was like reading a story on IE-XP: do you think you could have made some more words into links?
Furthurmore, it wasn't PARC that introduced us to GUIs, it was Douglas C. Engelbart.
However, this IS a good question - is the "Desktop" metaphor the height of the GUI? I've read about some folks playing around with REAL uses for 3-D on the desktop: modeling files as a sort of "billboard" shaped like a U, with your point of view being at the bottom of the U. The part you are focusing on is at the bend of the U, closest to you and in highest res, the other parts are on the sides of the U and are show receding into the distance in decreasing res. You scroll data along the U, bringing interesting bits close but still having some awareness of the other parts.
Now, why doesn't somebody make THAT into a UI?
Simple: the same reason KDE and (to a lesser extent) Gnome look like Windows - if you make a radically different desktop interface, Joe Bloggs and his family will have their heads explode when they see it. Their tiny little minds are burned like a PROM to only accept the Windows(tm) way, and anything else will cause catastrophic cranial overpressure failure.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I'm serious.
No, really.
Nothing gives me hand pain as quickly as using mice, especially ones with that wheely thing. Keeping my hands in good form over the "home row" of my keyboard -- and away from the mouse -- has virtually eliminated pain from my computing life. I spend half of my waking hours in Emacs, and I have come to love (and depend on) its there's-a-key-for-everything nature.
Dump the mice. Keep Emacs.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
Maybe you just want to read Jef Raskin's "the humane interface"?
This seems a bit like asking what it would take to replace the current way of driving a car (steering wheel, gas and pedal brakes, etc.) with something better. But the interface between humans and automobiles is pretty much a solved problem, and nobody seems to spend much time speculating on what a paradigm change in automobile control would be like.
There's a curious assumption which I've seen repeatedly-- namely, that a paradigm shift in human/computer interaction would be a good thing. Why, exactly? I see no reason to pursue a paradigm change for its own sake; I view it as a problem which has basically been solved for now, much as the problem of steering cars is a solved problem.
Add a touch screeen so that when it comes to window selection less fine manipulation, you can use the large muscles of the arm and shoulder, then use the mouse for the finer that you cannot get with a touch screen.
The more important aspect is the comfort and the breaks. No matter what mechanism is used, trauma can accumulate over time. You need time to allow the body to recover from that trauma.
Fight Spammers!
Use the right tool for the right job. That's the UNIX/Linux philosophy. If you think that the WIMP interface is cramping your style with respect to whatever task you are trying to accomplish, then you are using the wrong tool.
With regards to the command line or WIMP interfaces being old, and not particularly forward looking, you are also missing a fundamental point: A graphical "pipe" isn't innovative either. You're simply shoehorning two paradigms together, and even worse, two totally incompatible paradigms at that. The pipe is a useful metaphor and operator for stream-oriented I/O. The WIMP is useful for (obviously) visually oriented information, and its designed for a completely different purpose than the pipe. The WIMP is designed to allow humans to manipulate data and abstract objects in a visual manner. The pipe is designed to allow users to allow the computer to do the same, without intervention.
If you want an innovative computing interface, worrying about streams, or visual representations of data is a waste of time. You're going to have to come up with something totally new. One good example is the use of sound to communicate the health and performance of networks or systems.
The real problem with computer software advancement is that its all very firmly based in 2D land. WIMP environments are about as eficient as you can get. Even assuming that you can wrap your work habits around something as 'next-gen' as 'The Brain', you're still stuck in 2D land.
The real advance that will open innovation (real innovation and not some corporation's twisted idea of it) is the beginning of a 3D workstation environment.
We already have the primatives for this kind of environment in games like Unreal, Q3A, and Black and White. Assuming that we implement a 'graphical pipe' that will work for a truly 3D application system, ie: Allow 3D applications to pass information back and forth between each other semi-effortlessly, this will ignite a new 'interface revolution' similiar to what we experienced as a result of Xerox's early WIMP system and the first versions of Apple's MacOS.
Once programs and applications can truly be represented as 'objects' in a 3D environment, we'll end up with something like the 'God' interface in Black and White, where processes are represented by animated people and files are represented as other objects. Tasks best handled in 2-D such as composition, coding, or painting will still be easy to handle, but tasks best performed in 3-D such as file management, database management, and even some advanced programming tasks like linking and compiling files, will take place in a representational environment. Imagine opening up your HDD and pouring objects into it, then sorting them into containers based on type, as you would sort files into directories.
Eventually, I see us moving into something like Stephenson's 'Street' metaphor for shared environments.
Along with these advances, will come new interfaces. I think that eye-tracking cameras have the biggest potential, but we keep coming back to the data-glove in one form or the other. I know CADesigners who still have an old Nintendo powerglove hacked for basic 3D manipution tasks. We're also probably going to see a renaissance of 'body tracker' devices that will track human motion via sonar or laser. Any one of these has the potential to vastly reduce RSI injuries.
The real trick in jumping from 2D to 3D is reverse compatibility. All the shells I've seen that attempt 3D interaction do it badly. Even then, they fail completely when faced with most of the tasks we do on a daily basis, like write or paint. I think we're going to have to use 'easels' or something similiar. In Cowboy Bebop, Radical Edward's computing environment is shown as a multitude of 2D windows hovering around her in 3D space. This wouldn't be that hard to do, really.
Navigation will be the true challenge for any 3D application designer. It will be that itch to scratch that will spawn new, inventive input and coding ideas.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
(WIMP = Weakly interactive massive particle; MACHO = Massive compact halo object)
sulli
RTFJ.
I love when I have to visit 15 Goddamned links just to understand what the fuck this guy's question is!!
How about next time, you make individual letters & punctuation into hyperlinks?! THAT WOULD RULE!!11!!
There are several programs out there that make use of graphical pipes - Maya, Eddie, Shake, grphedit (DirectShow graph editor) to name but a few.
The nice thing about graphical pipes is the ability to easily and transparently connect several forms of data to one node. With command line pipes, you've effectively only got one input and output.
What would be needed would be graphical terminal programs (built into the OS, or at least window manager) for connecting these things together, Oh, and a standardized way of defining input and output types - I dunno - would MIME work there?
I expect somebody can point us at a project that has already done this?
IMHO it's not mice that cause hand funkiness, it's switching back and forth between keyboard and mouse. Mostly-mouse user interfaces are just as pleasant as mostly-keyboard, at least as long as you're not using those screwy Apple hockey puck mice.
I do have a serious ergonomic bone to pick wrt emacs, anything that makes me use CTRL, ALT, and/or ESC frequently is going to give me hand cramps real quick becuase of the distance those keys are from the alphanumeric ones (i mean finger distance, not whole-arm-movement distance). Vim with appropriate settings and nedit get my vote for Things That Just Let You Type. But to each his own, the whole point of ergonomics is after all that "one size fits all" is a steaming load of livestock byproduct.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I have seen (and maybe somebody else can provide links) some innovations in the research of data representations. Basic approach is to display data in more than 3 dimensions, using colors, forms and relative position to enrich the data and provide a better decision making process (first usage is in risk management for Financial Institutions, analysis of brokerage data, etc.) One very impressive example was done by SGI and it consisted of a wheel with different rings that you could turn and move freely that would directly indicate the performance of of certain stocks. It could be used for long-term analysis or day trading. I believe, if I am not mistaken, that it is (was?) in use by Morgan Stanley. ...
The point is, once you have a different representation of data a different GUI approach (using the data) has to follow. I see data representation of large streams paving the way for true "Cyberspace" GUIs, allowing the user to walk through the data, adding movement, position etc. to the user experience.
Just my 0000010 cents
To improve on the classic WIMP interfaces, I immediately would exclude anything that had to be physically connected to the user. That eliminates data gloves as a significant mainstream input device.
Gloves work well technically (at least from what I've seen of them), but are fairly inconvenient to use. I suspect that some basic speech recognition will be mainstream in the not-too-distant future, because processing power is cheap enough to handle simple speech without impacting performance. Maybe eye tracking will be used some as well, but eyes tend to wander.
So I think the biggest trend in interface design over the next few years is going to be a return to simplicity. Fewer clicks, fewer mouse movements, and greater use of predictive interfaces - where the interface guesses what you'll do next based on experience and learning, and has it ready for you just in case. The Mac-style version of the UI (but not necessarily the Mac itself) will probably be the dominant strain overall - Microsoft is converging in that direction now as well as evidenced by the Luna interface in XP. I think mainstream mice return to two buttons (from the currently popular multi-buttoned models), or maybe even one. And mouse gestures will be used more instead of clicking in some cases.
Mice themselves I can see working by gyro rather than by ball or light sensor, which would allow a mouse to be held and moved within 3 dimensions (even if it only tracks in two), rather than skated over a desk in two dimensions. It's potentially a more natural hand motion. Keyboards probably won't change much due to inertia. They haven't really changed in basic layout for over a hundred years.
Of course, I may just be blowing smoke, since my intuition is no better than anyone else's. But the Slashdot crowd is very different from the "mainstream" - we are typically more forgiving of a complex interface and would trade off in favor of power over simplicity. So we may not be the best people to forecast.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
In the introduction to "Learning Perl", Larry Wall observes:
"What nobody noticed in all the excitement was that the computer reductionists were still busily trying to smush your minds flat, albeit on a slightly higher plane of existance. The decree, therefore, went out (I'm sure you've heard of it) that computer incantations were only allowed to perform one miracle apiece, "Do one thing and do it well" was the rallying cry. and with one stroke, shell programmers were condemned to a life of muttering and counting beads on strings, (which in these latter days have come to be known as pipelines)."
And while Perl has not made many contributions to user interface design-- it is half line noise, after all-- it does share a "everything but the kitchen sink" approach to product design.
From a programming point of veiw, the small program does have numeous advantages. The code base is small, it is easy to test and debug, and the "do one thing" edict tends to focus the design.
With large monolithic applications, the APIs and coding peculiarities differ from application to application-- so instead of writing a spell checker pipe based app to work with dozens of other apps, one has to write additional application specific glue code to work with each monolithic application.
Or take multimedia frameworks. Xine, Alsaplayer, OMS, VideoLan, and Ogle each might have a different plugin architecture. A creator of a audio or video codec would have to write hundreds of lines of extra code to support each multimedia framework...
If only they made standard keyboards with that little nub for pointing.
:-).
They do. I have two; one at home, and one at the office. It's called a 'Trackpoint' keyboard; it's very expensive ($160, according to epinions, although someone's selling one for $70 on half.com). I got mine for $115 or so a long time ago.
I'm eagerly awaiting the gesture-sensitive keyboard from FingerWorks; of course, at that price I'll wait for a review, since I've used a membrane keyboard in the past; this isn't a membrane keyboard, but it does look faintly like one, and that makes me a little bit uncomfortable
http://www.fingerworks.com/products_frame.html
-Billy
Since the `|' was invented by Doug McIlroy in 1973, has there ever been a more effective way of reusing tools and connecting data ?
..well, text processing in general. Sed, awk, grep, and cut are all hackish workarounds for a problem that should have been solved a while ago. If I need to find out my IP address, there's no way I should have to cut text out of iconfigs output. I should simply ask ifconfig to output the first entry in the field `IP Address' for the first record in the set. This won't change because the command line afficionadoes (who seem to hate all non structured document format) are so familiar and have invested so much wasted time in text processing they cannot see it for the nasty hack it is. Thank god the rest of us do.
Yes there has. Pipes only offer a very limited flow of information between applications and has a horrible tendency not to seperate content from presentation, so you end with nasty hacks like
Most Unix users think all graphical programs are limited in UI because all they've been exposed to are poor graphical apps (notice the same people who complain about GUIs are fine using ncurses - perhaps its not GUIs, but slow and unresponsive apps that are the problem. So much of the Unix world remains stuck in the mistaken idea that Unix philosophy (small apps that work together) is somehow magically limited to command line apps. It isn't - the way ifconfig communicates with grep via pipes is much more limited and hackish than the way khtml communicates with konq via kparts.
As a carpal-tunnel sufferer, I would be ecstatic to see WIMP (or at least the P) go away. Face it, our current input devices are less than ergonomic by their very nature. A fundamental shift in computer interaction would probably be towards an interface more suited to the human than the machine. Our current system of sitting motionless, staring at a screen, twitching a mouse, and banging on a keyboard are as archaic (and potentially painful) as the lawn sickle.
I firmly believe that my grandkids won't be using a keyboard and mouse like I do. They also will probably never know the term "RSI", and they'll wonder why Grandpa's wrists make those funny noises.
This
What we need is an interface that operates like a little joystick that you put in your mouth, perhaps in the shape of one of those baby sucker things. Click by biting down, maybe have a few extra "mouse-buttons" added to the keyboard, which could be operated by two hands.
Telephone conversations may be impeded, but think of all the geek-girls you could get when they find out how much exercise your tongue gets.
In highschool some friends and I created a device for around $30 from parts we found in electronics magazines that fed rough brainwave patterns into the serial port which we were able to adapt into a mouse driver and play Doom with. It took a lot of work to train both the user and the system to each other but it was doable. Was pretty cool. I think keyboarding would take a lot of training to be good at though. You have to train every single new action you add for every single user. At least we did.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The mouse is a device of the Beatles era
And the steering wheel is a relic of the Jazz age. I don't plan on giving up either of them any time soon.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
That sort of thing will be the wave of the future, and it will mean that apps will have to be smarter and communicate a lot more than they do today. My personal agent should reside on my local machine, not the network, and should watch out for my personal privacy. It should divulge only what is necessary to others in order to perform the commands that I give it. It should be flexible and configurable, but I should never have to configure it; it should learn what I like by how I interact with it.
Several large companies have been working toward this holy grail for years, but thus far not even common voice recognition much less NLP has emerged from their research. Sure there are some voice recognition packages out there, but there's very little integration, and AFAIK nothing at all in the NLP arena. We could start working toward the level of integration that would be a necessary foundation for a lot of this stuff, but I don't know that you could get the necessary level of cooperation in ANY software development community.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
No, I'm serious. Computers should be working for us, not against us. Today, we don't give a computer a task and ask it to complete it, we instead worry about interfacing with it. The interface should be natural and change depending on what you are doing. Let's go through this using Star Trek (TNG) as our baseline:
Computers should have voice recognition for general tasks such as environment management and collabertion. The crew uses this to dim the lights for example.
Computers should have keypad interfaces for general reading and writing. You'll notice the workstation on Picard's desk for exactly this purpose.
Computers should have remote/networked interfaces for passing sneaker-net info. This means datapads and remote voice uplinks. (Hold on captain, I'll email the info to your chair! Yeah, right.)
Computers should be able to present information in the most efficient way possible. This doesn't mean the prettiest, but instead it means dynamic graphical/audio interfaces. These interfaces must be easy to create and use. This means that the readouts might one moment be tracking the progress of Warp plasma then next moment display starcharts of the ship's course.
All of this makes the Star Trek interface very useful and is quite possible with current technology. However, there is one thing that really makes it easy to use:
Computers must be able to automatically analyze, process, and display any information. Filters should be able to be applied automatically. Artifical intelligence should be able to translate speech from any language to any language and add new patterns without reprogramming. Answers to theoriretcal questions should be able to be answered given a current set of information on a subject. Information should be able to be retrieved and stored no matter what the format and new formats should be able to be analyzed and added to the database.
This is much more difficult due to the fact that computers today have a very monolithic nature. Pipes are a good example of dynamic linkage of programs, yet at the same time are very primitive. They require a great deal of operator understanding of the information in order to use.
What if we could build layers of software on top of layers of software, which are then again used to build greater layers of software? This would require that we accept standard functionality at each level of the layering process and then allow people to write ever simpler code due to this great deal of layering. Why should anyone be required to rewrite a quicksort once it has been written?
The first and best key we have today is the Java class file format. Class files are allowed to layer on top of others by nature. The computer can pull apart the structure and investigate the usefullness of a class for a specific function. With enough layers, the computer can make extremely intelligent decisions automatically. Witness JINI.
So here is my challenge to every programmer/newbie/manager/hardware designer in existance. Stop trying to focus on how we can optimize or tweak each individual computer function so that you gain temporary marketshare, outperform your competitor, or push your political agenda. Instead, begin pushing for hard standards in the industry. Don't worry if they have the "highest performance" or if they have the "coolest widgets". Instead worry if they have the best design, if they are technically "right" for the task at hand. Stop worrying about making languages that allow you to produce specific functionality in fewer lines of code, and worry about producing the highest level of quality.
Many people will find this a hard pill to swallow, but the end result will most certainly be worth it.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I'll avoid the theoretical for a moment and just speak to this:
My web designer friends are damaged for life because of mice, and yet we persist... Where do we go from here ?
Just thought I'd mention that when I started showing symptoms of RSI I went out and bought a couple of trackballs and a couple of Wacom Stylus tablets.
For design work, the Wacom products spoil me rotten, and though it hurts me to say so I've had nothing but luck with the Microsoft thumb-controlled track pads.
Though if you have political problems with them try the Kensington (which are excellent) or Logitech versions. I might try the new Logitech units myself actually.
It really changed the way i work, any desktop I loose to the tablets is mitigated by not halving to mouse around. So anyway, no more pain for me.
let if have keyboard shortcuts
At least in MS Office apps. Just record a macro that types the word "if", and assign a keyboard shortcut to it.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Pipes seem necessarily linked to the command line.
It's not even so much the command line as it is the pervasiveness of ASCII text for information storage throughout the system. Almost every program currently available for MacOS or Windows would have to be changed to start storing their files as ASCII text rather than as custom binary formats.
As XML conversion continues, this may become more feasible. However, few programs will use XML as their native format for efficiency reasons. Programs will need to have options for XML input and output.
This leaves aside the fact that pipes are a programmer-only feature, which no one else wants or could possibly use.
Tim
No, I think we should do it the traditional way, by clicking the mouse.
A speech interface would be nice, but only if it was supplemented with a standard mouse and keyboard (and maybe a touch screen) and would accept natural language commands. As far as the user interface goes it should have a complete abstraction from applications and the file system leaving the user to only be concerned with documents.
The reason they should also have mouse and keyboards are for security so passwords etc wouldn't have to be spoken (see the recent user friendly strip series for a humerous take on that), and so things you're doing could be kept somewhat private. Imagine starting up a long build or whatever on your machine and figuring you'd take a short break while everything compiles and telling your computer 'open mozilla. go to hot asian chicks dot com. click hot and horney', you might get more than a few head turns from local cube dwellers unless you bookmarked it and renamed it to something like 'intranet' but the renaming process would also have to be vocalized.
It should also accept natural language commands for complicated to speak text. The main example for this is programming. If I wanted to do:
for (int i = 1; i = 10; i++)
cout << i << endl;
I would like to just say 'for loop. local integer i from zero to ten step one begin. print i and end line. end loop'. instead of having to articulate each puntuation symbol as 'for open parenthesis int i equals 1 semicolon i less than equal ten semicolon i plus plus close parethesis. enter. c out less than less than i less than less than end l', not to mention if I had to put spaces in there too.
The next thing we would need is an abstraction from the use of applications and the file system which would go in very well with a speech interface. The user would only be concerned with documents and data. The user would just ask the computer to start a new report on photosynthesis and the computer could ask the user what to call it and they could just respond with a natural name like 'biology 101 mid-term'. Later the user would just ask the computer to open the biology 101 mid-term without having to care if it was opened with word or starwriter or kword, etc, it would just be there and they could work on it.
The abstraction from the file system would be a natural extension of this because the user doesn't need to know where anything is because the computer takes care of it for them. The user just needs to remember documents/files as he would anything else 'I was writing that letter to Bob', 'I was working on the bio mid-term', etc. This also furthers the use of a computer as a tool, because it would actually help you get things done and be easy to use by anyone because speech is a natural interface for us, but keyboards and mice are not.
The best example I can think of having something like a touch screen is for web browsing or editing documents/preparing presentations, drawing (but maybe a graphic tablet would better for that), etc. so instead of telling the computer to open the 'Read more' link, I could point and it would open whatever I pointed to.
Microsoft is trying to do this with things like the My Documents folder and automatically naming documents with the first line of the document, but it's still somewhat cludgy because it relies on keyboard and mouse interaction. They are kind of on the right track in terms of abstraction from applications and the file system, but still needs a ways to go. This is why they have the Documents folder in the start menu and New Office Document and Open Office Document on the start menu instead of the programs menu. This is also why they have extension associations with applications so the user can just click on a document and it will spawn the right application (or maybe they just stole it from macs).
These ideas are nothing new, I've seem them all somewhere else before, but I just thought I'd post them here for discussion because I think they're good ideas. It should also be noted that this type of interface is for the 'average' user not the average slashdot reader since we all like our keyboards and CLIs.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
And I can tell my project - GO, FIX YOURSELF!!
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Yeah, we can see that you have the typical Microsoft attitude. It will NEVER be anything, until someone implements it. Then, it's just a matter of throwing money around until the innovation becomes a Microsoft monopoly.
I think our whole UI is restricted by the fact that there is only one pointer on the screen at one time. Almost every sci-fi (film|TV show) I've seen has a touch-screen where you can manipulate multiple things on the screen at once. We have yet to be able to do this with X.
You will notice, however, that no one has ever written a script to connect khtml to, say, wget. Is this a limitation of scripting? Is it because there's no graphical way (a la the java beanbox) to tie components together? Without being a coder? While it's true that text processing is an ugly hack to handle formatted output, that doesn't mean that the pipe and command-line idea is the wrong one; something like XML-formatted output would help the problem nicely.
I think the posted question more-or-less assumes the component model, because otherwise it doesn't make any sense; the question is, how do we make stitching components together as common as stitching command-line programs together?
-_Quinn
Reality Maintenance Group, Silver City Construction Co., Ltd.
But I think you're right; what I really want to see is a 3D device, not everybody trying to improve on the 2D paradigm. Of course, that means existing drivers and existing operating systems would need to be abandoned.
I've thought about this myself. By tracking both ends of the wand in 3 dimensions, it is possible to implement a joystick with 5 degrees of freedom (unfortunatly detecting rotations about the axis of the wand seems difficult to me). Be great for games, not sure how usefull it would be for office work.
I see where he's going with this...he wants an interface where stuff blows up! Oh, wait, it's already been done
But what happens the first time someone mistypes "/dev/nil" as their stdout sink?
Firstly.. I don't think that 'all graphical programs are limited in UI'.
In general, they are.
If I take a windows PC, and a Linux PC, and I want to do something 'innovative'.. like have my IP address automatically posted to a web page, and have my incoming ICQ messages automatically logged to a file, as well as copied & zipped to another file, then ftp'd to a remote host...
These sort of tasks are very difficult to automate in Windows, and very straightforward to automate in unix. That's why people think this way.
And on your point about the unix philosophy being 'mistaken'. You seem to think ifconfig should output exactly what you want... like a single ip address, for instance. The problem is.. that philosophy requires the designer of ifconfig to determine exactly what kinds of output every potential user might want, and forsake the rest.
That's not the unix way; the unix way is to make the program output as much information as you could reasonably want, and let OTHER tools sort it out, so the user can always get what they want.
This seems a bit like asking what it would take to replace the current way of driving a car (steering wheel, gas and pedal brakes, etc.) with something better. But the interface between humans and automobiles is pretty much a solved problem, and nobody seems to spend much time speculating on what a paradigm change in automobile control would be like.
Oh yeah? Two words: cruise control. It completely redefined the "car interface". How about two more: intermittent wipers. True, the inventor got shafted by Detroit and had to fight tooth and nail for years to get his due, but he too changed the "car interface" dramatically.
There's a curious assumption which I've seen repeatedly-- namely, that a paradigm shift in human/computer interaction would be a good thing. Why, exactly?
Simple: because the quantum increase in computer access that was engendered by the WIMP interface isn't by any stretch of the imagination the endpoint of interface evolution. Want an example? Don Hopkins has been pushing his concept of Pie Menus for about 15 years now, and has implemented them everywhere he can find an amenable display system (starting with (*shudder*) X10 and including MS-Windows!). If you think you know how user interfaces should work and you haven't read any of Don's exhortations on the human-factors improvements inherent in non-linear menus, you need to get with the program.
http://www.acm.org/uist
I attended UIST 94 (in Marina del Rey), and a lot of the work was cutting edge (for that time, and some even for now!). Somebody did some presentation there that was similar to the visual pipe concept. I'll have to drag the proceedings out of storage, though...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
You will notice, however, that no one has ever written a script to connect khtml to, say, wget.
These connects aren't limited to scripts, they'll work in most interpreted or compiled langauges with KDE bindings. But yes, one can embed for example, a netscape plugin viewer kpart inside khtml.
Oh fine, I'll refute this. Voyager is a piss-poor choice for holding up any sort of technology. In their world you could retake the ship just by rerouting the EPS conduits through the deflector dish in order to create a Tachyon pulse. Besides this being just STUPID (tachyons travel backwards through time and thus aren't very useful for the types of things Voyager uses them for), it is also not very realistic.
In TNG (which was why I mentioned that series in specific), the computer was locked out on several occasions. "Rascals" and "Brothers" come to mind. I'd say those are pretty secure instances. Oh, and there was an episode of TNG where they saw a tachyon anomoly and Picard remarked something to the effect of, "I thought tachyons couldn't exist in normal space time" denoting that they had no control of tachyons much less pulses and beams. So please crawl back into your hole. Thank you.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Like many of my friends, I started getting RSI a few years ago, and it got worse and worse. I found out what to do though. You can reduce the RSI (like carpal tunnel syndrome) you're getting by some very simple procedures. The R in RSI stands for repetitive and that's what you get it from - having your hand on the mouse for hours and clicking it. I have a ball mouse at home and a Microsoft one at work so I use different muscles at home and work. I also switch-hit, switching the mouse from left hand to right every half hour. This way, you can stay at the computer like normal, except you're not hurting yourself as much. Switch-hitting every half hour gives your hand half an hour of rest while you keep working. Of course, resting, hand exercises and other things are good too.
Programming guru Jamie Zawinski, the guy who wrote the original Netscape for UNIX has a great page on RSI. Check it out, and other pages on RSI. I really think there should be OSHA regulations at least *informing* young guys that prolonged use of mice and keyboards can damage their wrists and leave them so they can't type.
JWZ's RSI page is:
http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/wrists.html
But what really sucks is that Slashcode's inane . link exposer for people who are too stupid to look at the bottom of their browser's window to see the URL that they're clicking on has basically ruined this joke.
Jordan Bettis
``Wherever you go, there's another stupid sigfile quote.''Until my computer scans my brain and knows what to do, nothing is going to matter. Speech interfaces will change things for certain applications, but because computers are still oriented around words, it will be cumbersome to work with a computer in applications where a mouth just is not fast or versatile enough (I can speak one word at a time, but I can idepedently operate at least four keyboard+mouse buttons simultaneously.). Speaking to a computer is also useless for much of the computer using community, as many people become hoarse from talking over extended periods. It would also make offices intolerable, as the noise would become a terrible racket, and phone calls impossible.
Others have mentioned eye motion tracking. A cute concept, but worthless for anyone who regularly moves his head while using a computer (As I do endlessly, moving back and forth between books, a phone, and several PCs at once, typing nonstop.).
Touchscreens have been around for decades, anyone familiar with one already knows why we don't use them.
To advance at a higher level, computers must become able to interperet thought. It sounds mad, but it is an imperative.
Alias|Wavefront has been using their version, called "marking menus" in PowerAnimator and Maya for a couple of years. They fruiggin' rock!
By customizing the Marking Menus a little but, you can drive PowerAnimator with a 3 button mouse and the Control, Shift and Alt keys. Way cool.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I think there are a lot of ways that today's GUI software could be made more hackable. For instance, every window and dialog box that an application ever pops up could be a fill-in-the-blanks XML file, sort of like the way CGI and JavaScript fill in the blanks in HTML. If the user wants to change the way a window looks, s/he should just be able to edit the XML file, and the software's behavior should change appropriately. A cool way to implement this in a GUI system would be to have an Edit Source command that you could do on any window, sort of like the way web browsers have View Source.
For instance, suppose you have a program that always pops up an annoying dialog box saying "Warning: By erasing this file, you will be eliminating all its data, and you won't be able to use it any more. Do you really want to do this? [No](default)[Yes]" It would be nice to be able to change the default to Yes, and maybe to go further and make it not pop up at all. And you should be able to do this with
Of course, if it's open source C code or something, you could recompile it with your changes. But there are a lot of practical problems with that: (1) it's too hard for non-programmers, (2) it's time-consuming, (3) you have to maintain your own fork, and reconcile it with new releases of the official fork.
Find free books.
The problem with the Star Trek paradigm is that is fake! As in Hollywood fake. Dramatic licence is used all over to make the show flow smoothly.
Many people have tried to build systems like Star Trek, and in fact you can get a lot closer than you many be aware. The problem is that in real life, that interface *sucks*!
In real life it is painfully annoying and insanely slow to tell a room/computer to do something.
We just don't realize how good a user interface a lightswitch is.
The Star Trek data pads are touch sensitive; we have had touch sensitive technology as long as the mouse; but the mouse is what we use because of its acceleration property.
I have built and analyzed [CMU,MIT, Microsoft et al] many systems designed to solve the exact problem you are talking about.
And although the technology isnt up to the task, you can evaluate it as if it is by using humans to "Wizard of Oz" the test. Turns out [in my and others opinions] that the whole idea is dysfunctional and annoying.
The problem with the Star Trek paradigm is that is fake! As in Hollywood fake. Dramatic licence is used all over to make the show flow smoothly.
I won't refute that. It is merely a paradigm that people can identify with, that's why I used it.
Many people have tried to build systems like Star Trek, and in fact you can get a lot closer than you many be aware.
Lemme see, flip phones (communicators), horseshoe bridge design (used on some aircraft carriers), the biobed design was studied by the military, phasers (tazers and other non-lethal weapons), etc. Star Trek mythology has had a large impact on civilization and technology as a whole. Only a fool would deny that.
In real life it is painfully annoying and insanely slow to tell a room/computer to do something.
We just don't realize how good a user interface a lightswitch is.
The idea behind what I am proposing (and what you actually see on Trek) is that the interface is multifaceted so that you can use what's convienient. Which is more convienient when you walk into a dark room carrying groceries, saying "computer: lights!" or fumbling for a light switch? That's not to say that some of the current attempts are really not good interfaces, but given enough technology and design and it could probably work quite naturally.
The Star Trek data pads are touch sensitive; we have had touch sensitive technology as long as the mouse; but the mouse is what we use because of its acceleration property.
Most laptops use touchpads, I once had a remote control that had a touch LCD, most fast food restaurants use touch screen registers, etc. Having actually used touchscreen cash registers, I can personally say that not only are they a good interface, but they are FAST and generally have a lower rate of error than key or touch-key (these things are a joke) registers. Part of what makes them so nice is that the interface is specialized and reconfigures on the fly. Now that's not to say that touch screens are optimal for all situations, but they definitely are useful.
To be perfectly honest, you make some good arguments, but they are based on current emerging technologies. Natural voice recognition (much less speach) and touch screens are in use in many industrial areas, but as of yet are extremely specialized and need time to mature. One day the technology will be there, and then we will be able to have a much more realistic conversation on these pieces.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Perhaps, but there's a reason why this "hackish" communication is popular and effective. Ifconfig's text output is its API (the output half, anyway). Since I already type ifconfig to learn about interfaces on the machine, I don't have to learn a new API to stick data into a shell pipeline. Khtml may have this wonderful relationship with konq, but I feel left out. I read and write ASCII, not binary. Suppose I want to try using khtml for something - can I invoke it with different arguments in a few seconds and see what it does? And if I invest enough time to understand and use the interface, how do I troubleshoot it when it breaks? If a complex shell pipeline starting with ifconfig is malfunctioning, I could start by trying a plain 'ifconfig'. How will I isolate some K-component from its friends and see what it's putting out?
I think a lot of the power of Unix is the overlap between the machine-readable and the human-readable. When you can read and write a language yourself, it's easier to write code that reads and writes that language. And it's easier to debug.
You make good points, but I think the layering you describe is not what the OP wants. All these layers of crud supporting Java on Unix are just to give it the abilities of BASIC on a VIC20 - input, output, RAM access. We have a good degree of code reuse for GENERIC purposes, as you illustrate. But we are not yet good at reusing task-oriented code.
I'll try to explain. How do you find out the temperature in a city? To start with, we still don't have a standard way of coding cities. I encountered this when trying to (automatically) draw a world map showing the hosts in a certain network. The location information for each host was free form. It took a large amount of effort and special casing to get a program that could locate 90% of the hosts on the map.
On every project I've seen, we reinvent the wheel. Not the OS or GUI, a higher-level wheel. What kind of contact info do you ask from a user? How do you validate it? I think MS is aiming at that problem with Passport. And SOAP may be the first step towards getting computers to talk on a high level without the explicit intervention of programmers. In fact SOAP may be the real answer to the OP's request. The only place I've seen real reusability (in the high-level sense) is CPAN.
People would get horrible damage to their eyes, perhaps drying their eyeballs out trying to control their blinking ;-)
Either that or the engineers who build life imitate Star Trek, but anyhow, let's see what they use...
Very good NLP, and buttons.
Physical buttons in TOS; touch panels subsequently. They have pointers but seem to only use them for signatures.
Hmmm... Of course they don't seem to have taken account of the fact that you can't use an upright touch panel for more than a few minutes before your arms felel like they're going to drop off.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
They already did. :-)
At least one UI research lab has been playing with new ways to visualise large amounts of data more efficiently than we currently do. One of their "pet examples" was visualising a directory tree in pseudo-3D.
Essentially, you draw the root at the left of the screen, the next level down is drawn to the right of it, and so on. To draw each level, you form a "ring" of the available entries in 3D, around an imaginary axis running left-to-right across the screen. So, the "nearest" entry to you in the ring is the current directory at that level, and those with similar names are "nearer" to you than those without (which are still visible, but on the "far side" of the ring, and so much smaller).
The result is that you can usually choose any given directory at a particular level within a matter of a couple of clicks. Even if you miss the first time, the ring will rotate around so the entry you clicked (which is presumably at least near the one you wanted) is closest to you, and hence it, and the entries near it (presumably including the one you wanted) are more prominent and easier to select. Two clicks instead of having to scroll up and down dozens of entries as we do now is a serious improvement. (Scroll bars, as often implemented today with buttons at opposite ends, must be one of the worst pieces of UI in history, BTW. Bravo to those who've put the buttons altogether.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It surprises me that I haven't seen anyone mention some of the best user interfaces known to man:
When it comes to ability to transfer information easily and efficiently, few interfaces beat these old staples, even today. Why?
When someone comes along with a computer interface that meets these basic requirements, they'll be in with a chance of beating technology that's been around since before anyone knew what the word "computer" meant.
I think the truly key thing here is adaptability; given that, the rest will follow. The interface of the future will adapt to its user like nothing any computer does today. For example, instead of a keyboard with fixed keys, there might be touch-sensitive panels, where the "keys" change to match what I'm doing (or aren't keys at all, for example, if I want to draw a diagram or I'm playing a game). Instead of fixed commands, there might be natural language interfaces, and some easy means of resolving ambiguities.
I don't think anyone can predict the physical nature of UI of the future, but I think we can predict some of its basic properties. First among them will be adaptability, and from that base will come ease of use and everything else that follows.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Maybe nobody realizes this, but there is a board specifically for discussing UI issues. There's been some really good stuff there, but like most slash sites (other than this one) the traffic seems a tad slow. Go liven it up.
Constitutionally Correct
So that's why Intel is planning on doing away with serial ports--to avoid competition from inexpensive devices.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I'd agree with you, but there are several other
languages out there that might be a better example
than Spanish. The benefit you point out is actually
not uncommon -- many languages have a regularized
pronunciation/spelling parallel. The disadvantage
that Spanish, German, and many other European
languages have is genders -- nouns all have one of
two (or 3, for German) genders tied to them, making
them harder to remember and also creating different
conjugation rules. The genderlessness of nouns in
English is a big plus. Instead of a European
language, I would like to suggest either Korean or
Japanese as admirable languages. The main thing
about Korean is it's alphabet, which is rather
well designed. The main thing about Japanese is
that it also is very regular, and pretty
position-independent (thanks to positional tags,
which Latin used, although Latin is far too
complex). Sadly, the Japanese writing system is
too complex (2 alphabets, one huge set of
chinese-derived glyphs) to be directly used. I
suppose the language I would choose for the world
would probably be Japanese, with its written form
simplified to purely hiragana (discarding katakana
and kanji).
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Next time, though, perhaps you could wish that fewer, rather than less, people would redact text the way the submitter did.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Command line pipes have had multiple inputs and outputs for years. I remember using them in the zsh round about 1990, but even the bourne shell has them in a less sophisticated way.
The problem is that you then have to program every possible output into each and every possible program. ls has a whole wack of options, but it doesn't have enough options to list only the files owned by me sorted by the group printing only the group and filename. Even if you added that functionallity to ls, then I can think of a new problem, and before you know it, ls is a 50mb binary, with so many options that no-one can remember how to solve their problems anyway.
The article you reference speaks only of carpal tunnel syndrome, not RSI in general. And the blurb talks about "computer use" in general, and fails distinguish between different input devices, which are the real issue here. I don't think that I'm the only person who finds that while the keyboard is harmless, excessive mouse use will cause problems.
I'm also not certain that a study in which "only" 10 percent of computer users get carpal proves that computer use doesn't cause it. Without knowing what percentage of people in the control group (you know, people who don't use computers for prolonged periods) had problems, you can't really draw any conclusions from that 10 percent.
You *still* don't understand. The sorting and tweaking of LS should be handles outside of ls - if anythbing, ls would have less options, because it won't deal with presentation issues itself.