> Personally I see a merging of normal app windows and a zui: some kind of new > window manager. Have you seen Eagle Mode[1]?
[1] http://eaglemode.sourceforge.net/ On Dec 17, 5:14 pm, Donn <donn.in...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wednesday 16 December 2009 07:03:19 David Roberts wrote:> It involves > scaling an image to various resolutions, and partitioning > > them into fixed-size tiles. It's roughly the same technique used by > > Google Maps/Earth. > > Thanks. That gives me something to go on. Wikipedia didn't like my search > terms. > > > > ZUIs are useful for particular types of data - images & mapping > > > especially - but I'd hate to have to navigate my desktop using its > > > approach. > > Ever since Corel Draw in the 90's zoomed into my life I have been in love with > the idea of an endless canvas that makes me feel like a satellite on a bungee > cord. I think it would fit the desktop very well. > > Personally I see a merging of normal app windows and a zui: some kind of new > window manager. > If I planned it out it would look something like this: > Your apps all run as they do now*, but they live on this endless plain. > Perhaps it can be divided up into 'zones' or 'galaxies' or something. I would > have a 'hyperspace' or 'hyperlink' or 'jump' facility (like alt-tab, I guess) > to make transits from one custom-defined area to another quick. > > I would have a home position for the view -- like Inkscape does in terms of > show all, zoom to selected, zoom to last, etc. > > I would have rules about traversing. Things like file-managers need some kind > of static display - like the bread crumbs and up, back, home etc. > > Each app would only be active when 'locked-in', beyond that it's a bitmap of > the last paint. You could drag apps around when you zoom out, and you can > resize them at any time too. > (Just imagine OOCalc in a zui! Super/Capslock and mouse wheel for scroll/pan) > > The other cool idea I had was to (handwavium here) graphically convey the > notion of pipes and import/export between apps. Also between any nodes across > the Universe of the zui. Perhaps a special 'node view' that overlays and shows > all the conduits between them -- sharp where your mouse is, faded away from > that so the whole thing is not too complex. > Imagine the flow from Inkscape to Gimp and back. Instead of File -> Export and > then File -> Import, you connect pipes along the side of each app. > Inkscape, [save selected as png (properties preset)] goes to Gimp [import to > layers by names (a script perhaps)] Now as you work in Inkscape and hit a > hotkey, all your selected vectors are sent to Gimp which reacts as if you were > there and places the new pngs into layers. > This can work both ways and between multiple programs. Mix-in Blender and > Scribus and Lyx and some grep and a loop or two and some imagemagick... > > Ah, I better stop. I can ramble on sometimes :) > > *I have many issues with the endless variety of re-invented wheels afa gui > toolkits go. This is another whole can of shai-Hulud... > > I wrote some stuff about this a while back, if anyone wants to be put to > sleep:http://otherwise.relics.co.za/wiki/Particles/DreamDesignApp/ > :) > > \d > > -- > \/\/ave: donn.in...@googlewave.com > home:http://otherwise.relics.co.za/ > 2D vector animation :https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/things/ > Font manager :https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/fontypython/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list