The Semantic Line Interface 123
First time accepted submitter yuriyg_ua writes "[The] semantic line interface may combine features of both command line and graphical interface, which would allow even more complex applications than we have seen before."
The idea is that the layer underlying user interfaces should define the semantic relations between data enabling the UI to provide better contextual information. Kind of a modern version of the CLIM presentation system.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In short: slow and annoying for people who know what they're doing. Supposedly useful for people without a clue.
Re: (Score:2)
it is not useful in the least. he gives an example of turning off a monitor and being able to access it in a few clicks. the problem with that is that the user needs to know that they want or need to turn off the monitor.
Total waste of time ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Or like tab completion with modern bash_completions collections.
This is indeed pretty useless. Most attempts to "improve" the CLI with GUI elements have been, other than basic things like paste buffers and scrollbar integratuon. What I'd welcome instead is people approaching GUIs with an eye towards making it so that you don't have to write documentation like "first go to start bar and select control panel and then find the "network and file sharing center" item and double click that and then on the sideb
Re: (Score:2)
so that you don't have to write documentation like "first go to start bar and select control panel and then find the "network and file sharing center" item and double click that and then on the sidebar find "manage wireless networks" and highlight a network and right click and select properties and find Security/Settings/802.1x/blah//blah/bla
I proposed this:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/29001/ [ubuntu.com]
While it is supposed to be for phone support, it can also help "expert users":
The user can also type "tab" "B1" "space" to go item "B1".
If this was ever implemented, I'd probably use it to configure/control all sorts of stuff quickly.
A command explodes into objects (Score:2)
I think there's still a disconnect between GUI and CLI at a more fundamental level - people think of CLI as meaning text and only text, and GUI as only graphics (despite labels, fields, etc. being textual). Most (or every, if possible) UI item should be interactable (is that a word?) by keyboard or GUI, but for an example I'll start with a command line - when you run a command, it should create one or more interactable objects as the output. In a lot of cases (say, "cp" or "rm"), it could be an exit code th
Re: (Score:2)
Smarter people can probably come up with genuinely good ideas. Sadly, I've seen little of this even tried.
Try a modern linux with bash completions installed. Type "ls --" and hit tab. That and more people need to read the bash manpage.
Why you'd want to "arrow through" a large list of commands is beyond me.
Re: (Score:2)
Try a modern linux with bash completions installed. Type "ls --" and hit tab.
Why you'd want to "arrow through" a large list of commands is beyond me.
First, you wouldn't want to do that through a large list, only a small list. Also, a well designed interface would allow you to more powerful search tools that could be much faster (tree that expands as you type, giving you shortcuts to jump to or prune branches). I think that means you've missed the point.
The point is you're still thinking "text and only text" as the output from any command. Text based key completions (tab, arrow key, etc) are terribly old these days. I think you could find something like
Windows 7 search box? (Score:1)
Isn't this similar functionality to the windows 7 "search" box in the start menu?
Re:Windows 7 search box? (Score:5, Informative)
More like 4DOS shell (complete with menu system popping up). Or <Tab> in bash that is probably related to it. Or any autocompletion that relies on a parser instead of a dictionary.
Does Windows 7 search box parse the input to select the context, or use a flat list of "things" to call?
Re: (Score:2)
Or any autocompletion that relies on a parser instead of a dictionary.
I'd toss in a heaping dose of apropos [wikipedia.org] for semantic relationships as well. For example, to get from "pattern" to "grep".
If you could pull all those things together, it would be pretty wicked, I think. Tall order though, and I suspect there are people working on it (recent enhancements to context-sensitive tab completion come to mind).
Re: (Score:2)
No, that's something completely different.
apropos(1) uses the input language (unordered list of English words) completely incompatible with the language used by the interactive shell (shell and program-specific command line arguments). They do not belong together, should never be a part of the same entry, and user interface must never encourage the user to mix them. Interactive help may have command-line interface, even command-line interface with autocompletion, however this has absolutely nothing to do wi
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
it'll find task specific things in the new control panel
It won't find where to shut off that annoying "tap to click" feature on the notebook... it's not in control panel (where it should be) at all. 7's CP is a step backwards from XP IMO.
Embarrassingly, Linux gave me a similar idiocy yesterday when I discovered that you could make the bar at the bottom disappear; it was the one thing I thought Windows had an edge. I discovered it by accident; you should not have to discover features by accident, nor should
Re: (Score:3)
Technically, "Linux" doesn't provide any UI at all.
Were you using Gnome, KDE, XFCE, TWM, or some other desktop/window manager?
It's important that we know where to properly assign the blame and file the bug report.
(I'd guess Gnome. They're rather notorious for completely hiding configuration options...)
Re: (Score:2)
I get sloppy writing about Linux. Actually I should say GNU, but at any rate the desktop is KDE on Ubuntu (kubuntu 11.4).
I tried Gnome about ten years ago and hated it. Maybe I should try it again... but if they like to hide options, maybe not.
Re: (Score:2)
The semantic web just doesn't exist (Score:1, Offtopic)
I remember back in the 90s when I was first learning HTML and there were several articles talking about how the web was not sematic enough and I didn't really get the point. Now I totally get it. While trying to make good examples for climagic [climagic.org] on how to interface with the web, its just so much trouble. Even with all the recent focus on good web standards, web developers do stuff that just hinder people who want to scrape data. We really need some good commands for retrieving data from web documents, espec
Re: (Score:3)
Let's say I find a web page that I like, and maybe it has a form on it somewhere with a dropdown containing a list of countries. I'd like to scrape that list and do some kind of throwaway mashup for myself. It's painful. Or maybe I'd like to sift through a list of articles on a magazine website, and I care only about some paragraphs which talk about a city I've been to. And I'd like to display those paragraphs on a private dashboard. Again,
Re: (Score:3)
There are tools for tagging the content to make it easy to parse - mainly microformats, microdata and RDFa. The problem is that most content producers don't have an incentive to use them.
As an effort from the data consumer end, there's Scraper Wiki [scraperwiki.com], where people can share scrapers, but it's an hack compared to the real solution.
Re: (Score:3)
I think the fact you must rely upon the site to make the 'correct' choices would be the meat of the complaint. If you are constructing *your* server and client, sure you can apply the discipline and make the correct technology choices. In his example, he is wanting to do some sort automation against arbitrary sites he comes across. Because the technology is so open-ended, he has no idea of how one site will behave versus another and rarely get to reuse code. I've been there a few times, using the web dev
Re: (Score:2)
But if the information is there in my machine/browser I ought to have tools to do what I want with it, irrespective of what the content holders designed for me to see. You seem to argue that what the content holder wants should be good enough for me. It usually is, but only because the effort to extract/repurpose the bits I'm interested in is too high. The current web
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to argue that what the content holder wants should be good enough for me.
The content holder thinks that what the content holder provides is good enough. That's what OP means (I think).
Re: (Score:2)
I'd like to scrape that list and do some kind of throwaway mashup for myself. It's painful.
That's not so much a problem with the semantic web, but simply a lack of a more powerful copy&paste in your webbrowser/OS. The information is already there, nicely structured in a list and all, but your browser provides no way to get it out of the dropdown menu easily. If you go low-tech and use Lynx, you can just copy&paste the thing right out of your terminal with little problem. Nice benefit of everything being text in a terminal, even GUI elements.
Now of course when it comes to building more per
Re: (Score:3)
Or maybe I'd like to sift through a list of articles on a magazine website, and I care only about some paragraphs which talk about a city I've been to. And I'd like to display those paragraphs on a private dashboard.
You're not getting it. Ask yourself this: why would the magazine website want to make it easy for you to do that? If you did, you wouldn't see all the advertisements they plaster on their site to pay for it.
Re:The semantic web just doesn't exist (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. My point is it shouldn't be up to them. I have a computer that can spider the articles like a regular user, including the ads if that's what it takes, and I have processing tools on my machine to mine the content. What I don't have (but *should*, IMHO) are tools that make this pipeline so effortless that I can use them regularly during web surfing.
You think those tools should exist? Then write them yourself. There's no economic incentive for others to do it for you, after all.
Re: (Score:2)
it shouldn't be up to them
You do realize that all this requires human effort, and that requires money above and beyond what 99.999% of all web users care about. TANSTAATFL.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that it's a major problem in using computers nowadays. The first one to publish a solution to this problem will have the next Facetwitoogle. I have my own design for this solution, but have to code it in my free time and will take a while to wire all the needed background processing.
The key to get it right is having an interface simple enough that pipes can be buil
Re: (Score:2)
Found your problem. You seem to think that the web is about the data. Didn't flash give you a hint? Didn't the mac web design pros teach you anything? It's about the layout, stupid!
This post optimized for 640 x480 and best viewed with netscape navigator using adobe type I Garamond font.
Re: (Score:2)
Let's say I find a web page that I like, and maybe it has a form on it somewhere with a dropdown containing a list of countries. I'd like to scrape that list and do some kind of throwaway mashup for myself. I
Are you saying you'd like to somehow... combine... other people's data... with other data... generating new data? That's outrageous! And I'm sure it's illegal. Hard-working programmers spent hours of their lives keying in that data, and now you want to just use it as if knowledge were some kind of... shared public resource or something? That must violate about a billionty copyright-patent laws, and if it doesn't, we'll darn sure pass new ones to make sure it does!
Consumers remixing data on their own. What h
Re:The semantic web just doesn't exist (Score:5, Informative)
JSON is a serialization, not a semantic format. You need RDF or something similar, regardless of its encoding - JSON, XML, Turtle [wikipedia.org], etc.
And as far as I know, there isn't a standard format for serializing RDF with JSON, although some work has been done on it.
Re: (Score:2)
But an API is considerably more effort than just sticking e.g. RDFa tags on your HTML templates describing the content, and more useful for the user than an API that you have to specifically code against, since you can use a generic parser.
Re: (Score:2)
XML and RDF are very different things.
XML and JSON are two serialization formats, yes (although the former supports namespaces, which is useful for serializing certain formats, like RDF).
RDF [wikipedia.org] is a completely different beast: it's a way to describe metadata using triples of Subject, Predicate and Object in a standard way. This format can be serialized in different ways: XML, N-Triples, Turtle, etc.
My point is that using "just JSON" (or just XML) is bad because what happens is that each person invents their ow
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah I'd agree with this, made it all the more impressive when I saw this web summarising app [bbc.co.uk] on the BBC the other day.
iPhone only, so I haven't been able to play with it.
Re:The semantic web just doesn't exist (Score:5, Informative)
Web developers don't want you to scrape data. They want you to get the data by manually going to their website with your browser like everyone else. If they wanted you to have a more efficient way of accessing data from their site, they'd publish an API, which is indeed what websites do for things where they want you to automate it. If there's no API, that's because they don't want you to automate anything.
Of course, there's a good reason for this too: if you automate your access to the data, you won't see their advertisements, err, I mean valuable marketing messages.
Re: (Score:2)
I vote with my wallet, and I'm vocal about it every time a distributor/vendor calls to complain we stopped ordering from them. I then tell them that I have no time to fax an order over, or even to reenter it every time I need 200 line items to replenish production stock/kits. A few distributors allow uploads of CSV or XLS files, and that works reasonably well, even though you still have to screen-scrape the entire process to extract the final outcome (what's in stock, what is the pricing, etc). It gets real
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Nice to see more racist support for Ron Paul. I guess Newt and Mitt aren't white enough.
Re: (Score:2)
His proposed G.R.O.P.E. (General Raciness Of Personal Encroachment) act would have revolutionized America to being a mirror culture of Italy - where proud men would be free to stink and indiscriminately slap womens' butts on the streets, and everybody would like it and laugh over pizza dinners.
Re: (Score:3)
would have revolutionized America to being a mirror culture of Italy - where proud men would be free to stink and indiscriminately slap womens' butts on the streets, and everybody would like it and laugh over pizza dinners.
Ok, maybe I'm missing something basic, but wouldn't these proud men, who like slapping womens' butts on the streets, also get mad if another man slapped their wives' butt while she was walking down the street?
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, maybe I'm missing something basic, but wouldn't these proud men, who like slapping womens' butts on the streets, also get mad if another man slapped their wives' butt while she was walking down the street?
If we're talking about the Italian model, these "proud men" aren't married - they still live with their mommas, who clean their rooms, do their laundry, and cook their meals for them.
How did this shit get on the front page? (Score:5, Insightful)
So a guy submits an link to his own blog page featuring a long and dreary essay containing some half-baked ill-defined vague handwavey idea about some kind of "semantic" interface which seems to have no new basis beyond what google's autocomplete or win7's search functions already do, and it gets posted to the front page? If you're going to allow self-publicity like this, it should at least be for good articles rather than shit ones.
Re:How did this shit get on the front page? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe after the fighting in the Stallman article, Slashdot wanted to post something so shitty, its readers would have no choice but to band together against it.
This isn't new. (Score:5, Interesting)
Go back and play Hugo's House of Horrors (or many similiar adventure games of the not-quite-post-text era) and you'll see an interface that looks a lot like what this guy is describing.
Re:This isn't new. (Score:4, Interesting)
Or any of the Lisp machine variants that blurred the line between CLI and GUI and editor; plus the lines between OS and application. I still haven't seen any user interface that comes close to what you had on a Symbolics machine. Ie, click on a word in your command line, get a drop down menu of command options, etc. There was definitely a contextual user interface going on there. Of course these systems were designed for programmers whereas most people make UIs for end users or administrators instead.
This isn't new...Genera. (Score:4, Informative)
Genera [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Yet, a knowledgeable user or an average (I'd hope) administrator would be able to not only leverage but strongly appreciate.
In some ways, I think this is actually what Microsoft attempted to do with PowerShell: some semantic functionality is possible, it's just awkward and kludged. (I believe you can interface GUI with the CLI through eg. a pipe to/from each other, for instance. Correct me if I'm wrong, I've only dabbled with it.)
Re: (Score:3)
Yet, a knowledgeable user or an average (I'd hope) administrator would be able to not only leverage but strongly appreciate.
From an admin's point of view, you do not want any interface that's not (a) absolutely consistent, or (b) tries to second-guess you. Those may be fine for users who need hand holding, but for an admin, it can be downright dangerous.
It reminds me of the joke where a soldier pulls the trigger, and up pops Clippy, saying "It looks like you attempt to shoot a human being. Would you like help with this?"
No, if you know what you're doing, you don't want any help or distractions. You want the machine to obey, a
Re: (Score:2)
AutoCAD has been using this since at least the the late 80's when I first started using it.
Pull down menus at the top, a sidebar menu that is somewhat contextual, and a command line at the bottom. All surrounding the drawing area in the middle.
Of course most of the people I see using AtoCAD these days never used it before it became a Windows based program and are always clicking through menus. While I keep my left hand on the keyboard to type commands, or their shortcuts.
Re: (Score:2)
Pull down menus at the top, a sidebar menu that is somewhat contextual, and a command line at the bottom. All surrounding the drawing area in the middle.
I've seen similar interfaces in a lot of other industry-specific hardware. I've seen lighting controllers (think robotic lights you see at concerts) that have interfaces like this (used more for setup/programming than in a live situation).
I know that I've used command line in some primitive CAD software (ages ago), since it was the only way to ensure (in that software) that lines were drawn at accurate lengths/angles/etc. This was a "CAD-lite" package that was somewhere between something like AutoCAD and
Worst article ever? (Score:5, Informative)
Games matter for humans. Games simulate reality, which is unaccessible for us by some reason. Boys (grown-up and not quite) usually play with gadgets. Girls of any age like behavioral games. Touch interface combines features of both. That's why boys and girls are still playing with it. Paradox is touch interface still does not influence PC world.
The first paragraph is riddled with unfounded assumptions and grammatical mistakes - as is, I assume, the remainder of the article. While I stopped reading after the second paragraph, I did spend a few seconds to scroll down to the bottom of the page to the only screenshot of what Semantic Line Interface might look like:
Example of a Semantic Line Interface [blogspot.com]
Visionary.
Re: (Score:2)
The first paragraph is riddled with unfounded assumptions and grammatical mistakes
The same thing threw me at first -- he's Russian writing ESL.
screenshot of what Semantic Line Interface might look like:
Totally agree with your assessment at first glance. Reading the article explains what he's getting at, though, and it makes some sense.
Mind you, I actually find a lot of what he says to be incorrect, and I suspect a lot of it is long-trodden ground (not my area of expertise), but the quality of presentation i
Re: (Score:2)
That being said, I don't think that it is unreasonable to request that the author have somebody proof read his article before submitting to Slashdot to be read by a large English-speaking audience. Or to include half-decent mockups/illustrations. Presentation is important when disseminating ideas.
I
I find it amazing... (Score:2)
That even though slashdot is the apotheosis of geek sitelization, that this one paragraph hasn't resulted in far dirtier comments about boys and girls enjoying a tactile experience. Is this place just chock full of Sheldon Coopers?
Side note: I don't care if you do or don't like the/any show/character/screen/entertainment media. I just don't care. Don't tell me; I don't care. I put this note in here knowing that some people will have an instant complaint -- guess what...don't care.
Mod up (Score:2)
A moment of person growth, live on Slashdot!
Re: (Score:2)
Combining the CLI with the GUI?
Haven't I been doing this with all the CAD programmes I've ever used? Six. I think I've used six. Maybe seven. One was complete shite. Six. I'm going with six.
Set Datum 0,0,0
Show Layer 12, 15, 35, 60
Zoom 200%
All faster than clicking. Most of the time a quick C&P from previous commands was all that was needed.
The "Zoom Window" command would prompt the user to click two points.
Is it worth read
Command line (Score:1, Interesting)
The command line is not coming back, especially with more applications moving to mobile devices where typing is just a hassle. The CLI will remain a nerd's tool. That's just reality.
Re: (Score:3)
The command line is not coming back, especially with more applications moving to mobile devices where typing is just a hassle.
But whenever we complain about some UI removing menus, desktop launchers and any other easy way of starting an application the fanboys tell us that's OK because we can just type the name of the application on a command line instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
Re: (Score:1)
Who is "we?" Who are the fanboys you're referring to? Do you have a specific example to clarify what you're talking about?
On the other hand (Score:4, Insightful)
In the server case, MS is embracing CLI with more and more Powershell instrumentation. In the *nix world we've had it since the inception of the platform, but MS admins are getting very enthusiastic about a CLI now that they are given it.
For the desktop end-user, the traditional CLI may not usually apply, but in many ways all the search dialogs in various places end up serving the role of a CLI,
Re: (Score:2)
In the server case, MS is embracing CLI with more and more Powershell instrumentation. In the *nix world we've had it since the inception of the platform, but MS admins are getting very enthusiastic about a CLI now that they are given it.
For the desktop end-user, the traditional CLI may not usually apply, but in many ways all the search dialogs in various places end up serving the role of a CLI,
I really like the UNIX-way, where almost everything is CLI-based, and for most of these commands, there is a GUI available as well. That GUI does usually not have all the options or has them in such a way that they still are inaccessible, but it does the job for anyone not familiar with those commands. And that's the way it should be. OSX and Ubuntu do this really well (which are the two systems I use on a regular basis) for OS-stuff.
But take Photoshop (the non-OS-stuff), if I take a selection or apply a co
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Reality check: it never went away.
And I'm not just talking about the fact that power users have continued to prefer it consistently, or even the way Mac power users gravitated towards CLI when OS X introduced it to their world. I'm talking about the stuff my grandparents use. Does that Google search box remind you of anything? Hint: it doesn't involve much clicking on buttons or menus! What about the total redesign of the start menu in Windows 7 to put the emphasis on
Re: (Score:2)
I was going to mention something similar, because even with the move to mobile devices the text has just become dictated. What is interesting with Siri is you do not HAVE to speak it. If it misunderstands the dictation, there is nothing stopping you from tapping the box and typing what you want it to do in natural language, it will react as if you had said it.
Re:Command line (Score:5, Interesting)
The overarching issue isn't really CLI vs GUI, but that the OS provides the user with very little semantic information, instead you simply get pretty pixel graphics. Case in point: Look at your screen right now, how much of the text you see can you select and copy as text? The answer will of course vary depending on what you do, but you can be pretty sure that it will be a good bit lower then 100% (i.e. window titles, menus, etc. can't be selected). There is really no good reason for that being that way, other then that being the way it has always been. The text is available to the OS and the applications, but there are no tools to get it out or at least not easily. Now that's of course just a very basic case, the issues goes of course much deeper when it comes to active parts of the GUI. When your filemanager is displaying a list, can you copy it into a spreadsheet? Can you move the play button of your MP3 player over to your iPhone? etc. Some of those use cases are of course a little far fetched, but essentially what you want is a rich and flexible way to interact with your computer. Neither CLIs nor GUIs really provide that and both of them don't really mix well (i.e. double clicking on the output of 'ls' should allow you to open a file).
Re: (Score:2)
Some of those use cases are of course a little far fetched, but essentially what you want is a rich and flexible way to interact with your computer. Neither CLIs nor GUIs really provide that and both of them don't really mix well (i.e. double clicking on the output of 'ls' should allow you to open a file).
Some simple examples that do stuff like this, although this is clearly not as advanced as what you suggest:
* OSX Finder: drag file into Terminal, and the filename including the path is copied to the terminal
* Ubuntu Nautilus: press CTRL-L and the path turns into an textfield with the complete path, which you can copy and edit
Re: (Score:2)
Those are not only not as advanced. They are not general actions (you can't really drag that file into anything, altough that is getting better with time), and are not scriptable.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The command line is not coming back
Nor is it going away. It is what it is; not useful for most visual-oriented tasks, and filling the space between writing your own code and using a stock gui for data-oriented tasks.
When the stock gui won't do what you need to do, the CLI can often get the job done without writing your own full toolkit.
The CLI will remain a nerd's tool.
You damn skippy it will! Users just give up when the GUI won't do it. Pretty much leaves them either relying on a nerd to help, or up shit c
Re: (Score:1)
Using "nerd" in the pejorative sense is archaic.
The fact that 'nerd' isn't an insult doesn't make people whose talents lean in that direction (or their lives) superior, it just means they're no longer demonized for it.
Users just give up when the GUI won't do it. Pretty much leaves them either relying on a nerd to help, or up shit creek. Must be a horrible way to live -- if you can even call that living. ... Seems being an information tool-maker is up there with having opposable thumbs on the "competitive advantage" scale, right?
Nope, try again... People with practically any ability or profession can look down upon about others that don't share that trait, regardless of what it happens to be. Mature people grasp that individuals find different things natural or pleasurable, and that their strengths and interests are balanced out by weaknesses & boredom with th
Re: (Score:2)
People with practically any ability or profession can look down upon about others that don't share that trait ... Someone that finds a task a dull hassle is preserving/improving their quality of life by asking someone skilled in that field to do so for them, as it means they can focus their energy on something more suited to them.
In the early 90's I was cutting code that not many people wanted while I worked at a coffee shop to pay the bills. My brother was trading commodities with the world at his feet. So
Re: (Score:2)
The command line is not coming back...
I didn't realize it was gone...or optionally: Go tell all the admins!
Re: (Score:2)
If you use google or post on slashdot you are already using a CLI you just don't know it because of the wrapper.
This sounds a familiar (Score:5, Informative)
Think all the autocomplete addons for unix shells.
Or even just a bit of work on top of powershell, I don't know if something Something like posh ( http://http//poshconsole.codeplex.com/ [http] ) implements autocompletes like that, but it wouldn't be hard to do in powershell since a well written cmdlet will expose strongly typed inputs which would allow you to use a fancy widget for input without any issues.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry about the broken link, here is a clickable one http://poshconsole.codeplex.com/ [codeplex.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry about the broken link, here is a clickable one http://poshconsole.codeplex.com/ [codeplex.com]
Let me guess, a copy-paste from Firefox 9, which hides the http:/// [http] part but sticks them in pastes? I hate that too.
I hope windows 8 has vista / 7 start menu search (Score:2)
As that is like this and to take it way is a big loss.
So kinda like... (Score:2)
Not again... (Score:4, Informative)
Googlize Features and Menus (Score:2)
I've proposed something similar for years. Features would have a title and synonyms* and be tracked in a kind of database. One then searches for features similar to using a Google search and the features are then listed in the search results along with parameters, and any links to prerequisites, if needed.
There still may be menus and icons that use (reference) these very same features, but the Google-like approach works better for obscure settings.
* Synonyms may be user-configurable in case I call something
Semantic organization of content (Score:1)
Sorry that it's behind a paywall, but here is my (peer-reviewed) take on it all http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1368052&CFID=76329268&CFTOKEN=39574160 [acm.org]
From the abstract:
This research returns to first principals, and considers the underlying Dexter Model of Hypertext, and how that may be placed within a broader model of docu
I like GnomeDo (Score:2)
I dislike GnomeShell.
Bah dum dum (Score:2)
And Jason Foxx likes pears.
A potential Interface? (Score:1)
Real problem. Bad solution. (Score:5, Insightful)
The article cited offers a crap solution, but there is a problem. It's the "What menu is that in?" problem. This is a real issue with some programs, especially the ones with modal and/or context sensitive toolbars and menus. It's really annoying when you read the manual, it tells you to use the "join" menu item, you can't find the "join" menu item, and the manual doesn't tell you under what circumstances the "join" menu item will be available.
The original Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines insisted that menu items should be greyed out when inapplicable, but they shouldn't disappear. Many GUIs today either make them disappear, or leave them looking normal but inoperative. The right solution today is probably to grey them out, but bring up a tooltip that explains what's needed to make that function usable.
(My current hatred in user interface design is invisible buttons, ones that only appear when moused over. Facebook is notorious for this. Many users don't know that if you hover over an ad, you get the option to make that advertiser go away.)
Re: (Score:2)
That's not enough. Consider Word or Openoffice; an application that has so many functions, both in menus, in dialogs after menus, in buttonbars, etc. I still fight with it, and I still damn Openoffice to hell for being such a loyal follower of the Word way-of-thinking.
Re: (Score:2)
You know what I like (and also the paragon of office-email programs, Outlook, doesn't provide this) ? Auto-completion. I think auto-completion, as used in shells, but now also in emailers like Evolution (where it completes addresses from your address-book), allows you to forego a tiresome process of inspecting dialogs and clicking and typing at the same time. It should be bloody everywhere. Infinite undo is something else that should be bloody everywhere; your desktop environment should provide it. The same
Re: (Score:2)
1. Outlook does autocomplete of addresses - has done for years.
2. Undo cannot be provided by the OS because the concept of application state (and what constitutes a previous state, and how to revert to it) is private and specific to each application.
3. Not sure what your comment is re: fonts, but certainly in Windows every application has access to the same set of system wide fonts. Word doesn't have it's own fonts (although it does have own styles, which are different and by necessity Word specific).
Re: (Score:2)
Eclipse has an excellent solution for this.
Ctrl + 3 pops up a search window that lets you type your way in to every available command in the system. Including what is hidden in the menues and context menues. So instead of trying to remember if the "Override/implement method" is hidden in the Source or Refactor menu or in the context menues somewhere, I just press ctrl + 3 and type 'override'.
I miss that in MS Office and many other applications.
been done - cuiterm (Score:2)
I think cuiterm does that.
http://linux.pte.hu/~pipas/CUI/screenshots/scr-4.png [linux.pte.hu]
http://linux.pte.hu/~pipas/CUI/screenshots.html [linux.pte.hu]
Sadly, when it came out it crashed every now and then and these days it won't even launch.
It's a great concept though
Three User Interfaces... Naturally! (Score:2)
http://abstractionphysics.net/pmwiki/index.php#Primary_computer_user_interfaces [abstractionphysics.net]:
Humanized Enso (Score:2)
It sounds like the article is proposing a solution very similar to Humanized's Enso Launcher.
http://humanized.com/enso/launcher/ [humanized.com]
I tried Enso for a bit. It seems like a nice concept, but one thing that annoyed me to no end was having to type "open" over and over. I want to open something by default.