[lively-kernel] Waving the red flag

[Philip Weaver]

I do read your journals every week or so since April. I hope everyone at HPI
will post to this list about your recent accomplishments.

Zooming in Lively would need more structure to not be cumbersome - e.g.
double-click a morph to zoom to fit, to drill in. Be able to zoom to any
morph from a columnar system browser. But this means that pickup on mouse
down is done / over with / dead / finished, I want single-click "pick up" to
go away - it is often just very annoying. Keep the auto-grouping,
auto-parenting.

I personally think that a polished environment and IDE and more important
than zooming. But a zooming mockup still needs to be drawn. Don't discuss -
don't code - please draw. A picture is worth a thousand words.

If no one is exploring any degree of funding to help propel this project or
derivatives then that is a great tragedy.

Philip

On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 4:00 AM, Jens Lincke
<jens.lincke at hpi.uni-potsdam.de>wrote:

>  Hi Philip and Richard,
>
> apropos Zooming: we build in Mac like simple zooming a while ago....
>
>
> http://www.lively-kernel.org/repository/lively-wiki/documentation/Zooming.xhtml
>
> Best,
>
> Jens
>
> Am 01.07.10 05:12, schrieb Philip Weaver:
>
> Hello Richard,
>
> In April you wrote: "What would it take to make it easy to construct and
> navigate such a zoom world in Lively Kernel?"
>
> I hope you can spend some time to answer this question with a drawing:
>
>    -
>    http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYWzJ6ByFTvFZGhqNmI2cGhfMjc5Z2Q3cjlrZ2Y&hl=en
>    - http://www.lively-kernel.org/repository/lively-wiki/index.xhtml
>
> Thanks,
> Philip Weaver
>
> On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 1:08 PM, Richard Karpinski <
> dickkarpinski at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello Dan and everybody,
>>
>>  Smalltalk is wonderful. Making it work in virtually every browser by
>> coding the base system in Javascript is very clever and could be marvelously
>> useful. Enriching the current code to make Lively Kernel suitable for
>> awesome presentations well beyond what PowerPoint could dream of has much
>> appeal for me. I love neat things that are useful and can be acquired
>> inexpensively in money and time. When such things have unbounded utility,
>> Pavlov sets in and I slather and drool. Keep it up, man. I don't mind that
>> my shirt gets wet.
>>
>>  But wait. How long does it take for someone to be comfortable navigating
>> around in a Lively Kernel world?
>>
>>  I'm sure it's not one of those things that takes weeks to get into, but
>> I worry that it might take an hour or two. What I want is a system that
>> computer experts can become competent with in only a few minutes. It would
>> be truly great if novices could get there even faster. But who knows how to
>> build such a system?
>>
>>  Today, I think no one knows how to do that. However, the late Jef
>> Raskin, father of the Macintosh and author of "The Humane Interface", did.
>> Given a charter to assist in getting around in a patient's chart which was
>> impossible to read when fully displayed and awkward to navigate when
>> magnified to be readable, Jef used zooming to good effect. He wanted to call
>> it a Flying User Interface, not only because he liked flying and it felt
>> like that, but especially so he could call it (phonetically) a Phooey. He
>> was like that.
>>
>>  Anyway, he discussed the system in his book, but he left out some
>> details. When computer experts were trained to use the system. they became
>> comfortable and competent in less than TWO minutes. But when utter novices,
>> who maybe recognized the mouse as a thing to push around, not speak into as
>> Scotty did, they became fully functional with the system in less than ONE
>> minute.
>>
>>  I really like that. I want that. With such a system I could teach a
>> three year old to use it, or a 93 year old, or even a college professor. I
>> am NOT kidding, the first and second examples may have time to spare, but
>> the prof does not.
>>
>>  Why does it work so well? My theory is that for tens of millions of
>> years, our ancestors made it back to the nest, or we would not be here
>> today. Thus the talent for geographic navigation is built into our DNA. We
>> do not forget where the fridge is or where the couch is. Often we can get to
>> such places in the dark. If our computer world is so arranged, people won't
>> get lost so often. If we can follow links by rolling into a thumbnail and
>> can return by recrossing that border it will seem natural to us.
>>
>>  What would it take to make it easy to construct and navigate such a zoom
>> world in Lively Kernel?
>>
>>  Richard
>>
>> --
>> Richard Karpinski, Nitpicker extraordinaire
>>
>> 148 Sequoia Circle,
>> Santa Rosa, CA 95401
>> Home: 707-546-6760
>> http://nitpicker.pbwiki.com/
>>
>>
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