Call to arms! A new GUI for Linux

[Yanni Chiu]

Christopher Browne wrote:
> 
> > If you want a real departure from the desktop metaphor,
> > then check out the recently /.-ed release of Croquet at:
> >   www.opencroquet.org
> 
> There are merits to trying to come up with new metaphors, but
> the attempts have been largely unsuccessful.
> 
> I see little likelihood of some "emulating the real world via 3D"
> approach being of much use, because:
> 
>  a) Your screen is only actually able to express two dimensions,
>     directly, and OpenGL doesn't change that.  You can at best
>     get some limited expression of depth.
> 
>  b) Human ability to use 3D is also limited.  Those people that
>     have great depth perception and coordination tend to get
>     paid Big Buck$ to play baseball and such.
> 
>  c) It takes a fair bit of complexity to manipulate computerized 3D
>     interfaces.  The "Doom" interface seems to be one of the better
>     ones, but requires all hands on deck to make it function, and
>     isn't oriented at the "computing purpose" of viewing and
>     manipulating information.

These are all good points, and I too am not entirely convinced
of the merits of 3D visuals. However, you can operate entirely
within the more familiar 2D screen by "zooming" to full screen
once you've successfully navigated to your application (and there
are shortcuts to take you places quickly).

If the general population can be successful with a desktop metaphor,
then why wouldn't they be equally (or more) successful with a 3D
physical world metaphor (once they've learn to move through such
a space). When I was a kid, the fanciest computer game was "pong",
so I might be a lost cause. But almost any of today's kids (anyone
under 25?) can likely "fly" through a 3D space. And I don't think
they're all Big$ atheletes.

Also, 3D is only one major aspect of Croquet. The other is about
enabling the interaction of millions of simultaneous users. It does
this by synchronizing the replication of computations over many
user machines, so no central server is the bottleneck.

> Would-be makers of the "One True New User Interface" should avail
> themselves of Ted Nelson's _Dream Machines_, which explored a whole lot
> of this stuff roughly 30 years ago.

I'm not familiar with Nelson's work, but Croquet is being
spearheaded by Alan Kay (recent ACM Turing award recipient).
About 30 years ago, Kay and co. at Xerox PARC developed
the Smalltalk environment which was Apple's inspiration
for the Mac windowing system. So IMHO, Croquet could be
the next step in UI evolution.

--yanni

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