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This reminds me of Jef Raskin’s humane interface: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface Edit: m

by baliex 3y ago

This reminds me of Jef Raskin’s humane interface: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface Edit: more specifically, Archy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_(software) which has its roots in the “Zoomable user interfaces in scaleable vector graphics” paper (which I can’t find a working link for right now)

jonahx 3y ago
First thing I thought of too. For those who don't know, Raskin proposes an alternative the reigning windows and folders paradigm, in which your entire OS is a single sheet, a kind of landscape in which you can zoom out to a map view or zoom down into specific words and images, a kind of google maps for your digital space. It's always stuck with me and I would love to try it. Figma comes to mind as a popular product that's put the idea into practice, but that's a specific use case rather than "your whole digital world".
- lgas 3y ago
  I think Miro would be a few steps closer to "your whole digital world", but of course it's still not that close.
- whartung 3y ago
  Mechanically, eMacs is quite close to THI. On THI the LEAP key was the fundamental navigation mechanic. It worked like a SHIFT or CTRL key, but it performed as an incremental search forward or backwards depending on which LEAP key you pressed. If you pressed (essentially) a META and tapped LEAP, it would search again. Not having used a Canon Cat, I can’t speak to the reality of how well that works. But ^S/^R are pretty close. Of course emacs has all sorts of navigation commands, the Cat had LEAP and PAGE, and part of THI was “one way to do things”. I doubt many rely on incremental search for all navigation in eMacs. The other concept was the modeless operations on selected text. In the Cat the idea was you could type in some simple math, select it, evaluate it, and replace it with the results. Out of the box I’m pretty sure you can select a Lisp expression and replace it with it evaluated result. Either way, you can see how straightforward it is to do whatever you can imagine to a region in eMacs. Pretty sure there’s a way you can adapt eMacs to automatically save and reopen all buffers when you exit and re-enter eMacs. What you lose is the undo history. Anyway, I think that eMacs captures a lot of what THI was trying to do.
richbell 3y ago
I cannot agree more with: > Universal use of text – Raskin argues that graphic icons in software without any accompanying text are often cryptic to users.[11] It's frustrating helping my mother, or anyone else who doesn't innately understand current design trends, and having to explain what a "hamburger" menu is, or that they need to click the magic three dots and then another vague icon with no accompanying text.
- hahn-kev 3y ago
  Totally agree, though I prefer a 3 dots menu over a custom Right click menu every day.
networked 3y ago
It is also related to Ted Nelson's StretchText (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StretchText https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StretchText). Here is the original note describing it: https://i.imgur.com/jOCOQGI.png https://i.imgur.com/jOCOQGI.png. (Reposting from my previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14014349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14014349.)

by baliex 3y ago

jonahx 3y ago

First thing I thought of too. For those who don't know, Raskin proposes an alternative the reigning windows and folders paradigm, in which your entire OS is a single sheet, a kind of landscape in which you can zoom out to a map view or zoom down into specific words and images, a kind of google maps for your digital space. It's always stuck with me and I would love to try it. Figma comes to mind as a popular product that's put the idea into practice, but that's a specific use case rather than "your whole digital world".

lgas 3y ago
I think Miro would be a few steps closer to "your whole digital world", but of course it's still not that close.
whartung 3y ago
Mechanically, eMacs is quite close to THI. On THI the LEAP key was the fundamental navigation mechanic. It worked like a SHIFT or CTRL key, but it performed as an incremental search forward or backwards depending on which LEAP key you pressed. If you pressed (essentially) a META and tapped LEAP, it would search again. Not having used a Canon Cat, I can’t speak to the reality of how well that works. But ^S/^R are pretty close. Of course emacs has all sorts of navigation commands, the Cat had LEAP and PAGE, and part of THI was “one way to do things”. I doubt many rely on incremental search for all navigation in eMacs. The other concept was the modeless operations on selected text. In the Cat the idea was you could type in some simple math, select it, evaluate it, and replace it with the results. Out of the box I’m pretty sure you can select a Lisp expression and replace it with it evaluated result. Either way, you can see how straightforward it is to do whatever you can imagine to a region in eMacs. Pretty sure there’s a way you can adapt eMacs to automatically save and reopen all buffers when you exit and re-enter eMacs. What you lose is the undo history. Anyway, I think that eMacs captures a lot of what THI was trying to do.

richbell 3y ago

I cannot agree more with: > Universal use of text – Raskin argues that graphic icons in software without any accompanying text are often cryptic to users.[11] It's frustrating helping my mother, or anyone else who doesn't innately understand current design trends, and having to explain what a "hamburger" menu is, or that they need to click the magic three dots and then another vague icon with no accompanying text.

hahn-kev 3y ago
Totally agree, though I prefer a 3 dots menu over a custom Right click menu every day.

networked 3y ago

It is also related to Ted Nelson's StretchText (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StretchText https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StretchText). Here is the original note describing it: https://i.imgur.com/jOCOQGI.png https://i.imgur.com/jOCOQGI.png. (Reposting from my previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14014349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14014349.)