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GUI Software

Jef Raskin Gets $2 Million To Develop RCHI 361

Posted by timothy from the fill-in-the-blank dept.
Dr Twox writes "The Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces has received a $2 million dollar boost from a multi-national corporation to further develop Jef Raskin's RCHI project, a radical new and simple to way interact with computers. Co-creator of the Macintosh and author of The Humane Interface, Raskin hopes to have RCHI finished within 18 months. "When you actually try it," says Jef. "It actually does what we say. We've got the goods." It's built with Python and SDL, so how long before someone ports this to *nix?"
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Jef Raskin Gets $2 Million To Develop RCHI More

Jef Raskin Gets $2 Million To Develop RCHI

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  • Hm,dropalofthextraletersandwecouldimediatelycompre sfilesanaditionaltentotwentypercent(dospacescounta sleters?)
    • Good grief, my handwriting must be terrible. I was able to read that. Even with the spelling errors.

    • Re:Imagine (Score:3, Funny)

      by psetzer ( 714543 )
      That's an English version old German technique where, if you're writing some article, and are over the word-count, just take out spaces until it fits (aka Shaffungvonneuwurden or something along those lines)

  • Wait... (Score:5, Funny)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:18AM (#11480145)
    ...he got funding from a multinational corporation?

    Aren't we supposed to, like, hate that, or something?
    • Well if Jef wants to take over the world, it's a good place to start

  • Uhh... non-problem? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:19AM (#11480161)
    "It's built with Python and SDL, so how long before someone ports this to *nix?"

    Umm... correct me if I'm wrong... but wouldn't it more or less run out of the box?

    Or are you really asking how long before people take it, strip it down, and glue bits piecemeal into things like Gnome or KDE, and gut it so the old-timers don't raise heck over the changes (cf. Nautilus spatial interface instead of browsers)?

    No, I don't have any love for the want-better-but-hate-change crowd.

    • Requires a Hardware Patch (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JonTurner ( 178845 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:27AM (#11481043) Journal
      >>Umm... correct me if I'm wrong... but wouldn't it more or less run out of the box?

      Nope. Not until you glue on a LEAP(tm) key and install a SwyftCard.

  • radical, but not new (Score:5, Informative)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:21AM (#11480177)
    Jeff has been promoting these extremely simple interfaces since the late 1970s. The original MacIntosh computer, before Steve Jobs co-opted it and jammed it full of Xerox GUI technology, was supposed to be like this. Then Jeff partnered with the Cannon [ copier ] company with the CAT-PC. This PC had no explicit operating system. It came up in a text edit mode. The disk was one giant piece of text you could search and edit. You could highlight sections and execute them as computation.
    • "It came up in a text edit mode. The disk was one giant piece of text you could search and edit. You could highlight sections and execute them as computation."

      Well, it'd certainly go a long way to simplifying that irritating process of having to find a vulnerability before being able to execute arbitrary code, eh?
      • Bad guess. The system allowed to interpret arbitrary text as names of system commands, not as executable code. In that sense it was not different to a CLI except for that it was in-place execution rather than a one-dimensional text stream.

    • remove the OS and Applications (Score:4, Interesting)

      by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:57AM (#11480648)
      As I recall from years ago, Jeff used to claim that the division between "Operating System", "Application" and "Content" was big learning barrier and slowed down computer use. So he would essentially abolish the first two items, or at least keep them largely invisible from the user.

      I wonder if something like Google Desktop is along these lines. You'd use that to immediately find some information to act on, without having to muck around some cluttered file system.

      Likewise MicroSoft's attempt to webify the desktop and access it through the browser is another attempt at hiding barriers. (I will make no comments on whether I think It is working adequately.)
      • Indeed, all document-oriented UIs aimed (with various levels of success) at hiding the application "behind" the document.

        And of course the OS is something you don't see too much even in conventional designs. Not even if you are using the command line; what you see there is the shell. The OS structures shine through only indirectly (e.g. the file system through the way you access files; indeed this might be the only OS-level part you usually see).

      • Re:remove the OS and Applications (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Total_Wimp ( 564548 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @01:01PM (#11482347)
        As I recall from years ago, Jeff used to claim that the division between "Operating System", "Application" and "Content" was big learning barrier and slowed down computer use. So he would essentially abolish the first two items, or at least keep them largely invisible from the user.

        Actually, I've seen more confusion over the last two items.

        I've been asked on several occasions to help people find their missing documents. Naturally I've asked them "where did you last see it?" A surpisingly common answer is, "it's in Word."

        I would ask them some more questions and they'd show me "exactly where it is" by clicking Open from the File menu of word and showing me "where the doument should be"..." right there in word."

        Sometimes they'd show me the list of recently opened documents hanging right off the file menu "in Word."

        My point is that this guy and a lot of other computer guys don't seem to realise that most users have no problem understanding applications. They click the icon that looks like a letter and lo and behold, they can write a letter.

        Where the problem is for many of them is understanding what happens to their letter when they hit "save". The box that opens up when a user hits "save" doesnt look anything like their desktop or "my documents" to many new computer users. It's obvious to you and me, but to them it's a completly different storage repository. If there was some graphical element that demonstrated more clearly to these users exactly what happens to their document, it would be a godsend for grandmas and other new computer users.

        TW

    • Re:radical, but not new (Score:5, Informative)

      by BMazurek ( 137285 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:59AM (#11480674)
      This is also very similar to a demo I saw on a video for SIGGraph 1993. It was called Pad.

      The demo showed something like an article or a financial statement. There was a dot near the end of a sentence, and when you zoomed in, it was a spreadsheet with the financials. It was totally black and white (monochrome black and green, actually), but it looked really nifty. Everything pixelated like hell, but with some of the scalable interface components that Apple and Microsoft and probably others are working on, you could perhaps even do away with the pixelation.

      I also found a website for Pad++ [umd.edu].

      From the SIGGraph article:

      • We believe that navigation in information spaces is best supported by tapping into our natural spatial and geographic ways of thinking. To this end, we are developing a new computer interface model called Pad.

        The ongoing Pad project uses a spatial metaphor for computer interface design. It provides an intuitive base for the support of such applications as electronic marketplaces, information services, and on-line collaboration. Pad is an infinite two-dimensional information plane that is shared among users, much as a network file system is shared. Objects are organized geographically; every object occupies a well defined region on the Pad surface.

        For navigation, Pad uses "portals" - magnifying glasses that can peer into and roam over different parts of this single infinite shared desktop; links to specific items are established and broken continually as the portal's view changes. Portals can recursively look onto other portals. This paradigm enables the sort of peripheral activity generally found in real phy...

      And so the article continues. Citeseer reference to the article can be found here [psu.edu].

    • Re:radical, but not new (Score:5, Interesting)

      by binaryDigit ( 557647 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:59AM (#11480678)
      Then Jeff partnered with the Cannon [ copier ] company with the CAT-PC.

      Yes, I have one, it's an interesting beast. It wasn't so much that the disk was a giant piece of text, what you did was save the entire state of the computers memory onto the floppy. If you wanted to start a new document, then you would simply plop in a blank floppy. The whole thing was written in Forth and there is an "easter egg" that allows you to get direct access to the Forth interpreter.

      However the most "novel" thing about it was how you navigated. It didn't use a pointing device (i.e. mouse) but used two dedicated keys on the keyboards labeled "JUMP" (you'll have to forgive me, it's been a while since I've had it out and played with it, so this might not be perfectly correct). You would use the jump keys to "hop" around the document/screen.

      There was also an add-in card made for the Apple II that was basically a Cat on a card. If anyone knows of one of these, please let me know. There was also one laptop made, but Jef himself has it and he's not giving it up (or at least wasn't when I asked him about it a few years ago).

    • TM (Score:2)

      by simpl3x ( 238301 )
      Just like a real Turing Machine! Hopefully the giant peice of text wasn't on the slowest component...

      Sometimes I think that Windows runs like this, and it simply gets to the little blue end of the tape... and, like no more memory!

  • check out the Flash demo (Score:5, Informative)

    by file cabinet ( 773149 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:21AM (#11480182) Journal
    check out the Flash demo[8MB]:
    http://www.raskincenter.org/main/img/zoomdemo.swf [raskincenter.org]
    • Haha....impressive 8 meg link.

      Reminds me of a joke

      > Knock Knock!
      >>Who's there?
      >Slashdot

      hahhahahahahahahaha...im done
    • From the flash demo: "The design specification calls for the left mouse button to zoom in and the right to zoom out. Unfortunately, Macromedia's Flash, in which the demo was implemented, does not recognize both mouse buttons so we have to use keyboard buttons, even though they are not nearly as pleasant to use."

      "Co-creator of the Macintosh and author of The Humane Interface, Raskin..."

      Anyone find this funny, considering the Macintosh's infamous one-buttoned mouse? Simple doesn't imply useful. Except pe

      • Raskin likes buttons (Score:4, Informative)

        by jfengel ( 409917 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:30AM (#11481097) Homepage Journal
        I am a big fan of The Humane Interface; I reviewed the book in its early phases.

        Raskin is a big fan of buttons, as long as each button does exactly one thing. He says that the best way to use a computer is to develop habits, so that you can do things without thinking about them.

        That works best when things are incredibly consistent. Modes are the enemy of habits; you have to remember that in this context the right button does X, but in that content the right button does Y.

        He goes for something he calls "quasimodes", where you press and hold a button to temporarily and actively shift into a different mode. You only have one mouse to do a lot of gestures, but you want to press and hold a "zoom in" button rather than clicking into a "zoom in" mode and then clicking out.

        The theory is good, but I was never completely comfortable with the idea. It seems to create rather a proliferation of buttons, and new applications can't add new buttons to your keyboard. His ideas are heavily centered around everything being a word processor or spreadsheet, and I have a hard time adapting his ideas to applications that are basically forms instead. Those cases are heavily modal: typing in one field means something very different from typing in another field.
        • I have a lot of respect for the work Raskin does, but holding down one key while typing a command is *not* a habit I want to get into - I'm almost certain it would lead to some sort of chronic pain.

        • His ideas are heavily centered around everything being a word processor or spreadsheet, and I have a hard time adapting his ideas to applications that are basically forms instead.

          While it wouldn't be ideal for the multitude of things that "computers" tend to be used for at the moment, I don't see this as an entirely unreasonable way to think of things. From everything I've read in The Humane Interface, I quite like Jef Raskin's way of thinking.

          The amount of learning and knowledge required to ca

    • Interesting idea. However, try placing your cursor in a corner and zooming WAY out. Like out to the point where nothing is on screen. Now, move your mouse elsewhere and zoom back in to find whatever you were looking at.

      Yup. Apparently it's that easy to lose your data. I really hope that they cap the zoom-out function, assuming this is what the interface is really like.
      • I was zooming in and out while moving the mouse in circles and I lost the data off screen.

        Also, my keyboard arrow keys are on the right of my keyboard. So I have to reach across by body with my left hand to control the arrow keys while moving the mouse. Bad design.

        Other than that, I'm not impressed by the zoom function. Sure, it's a cool hack for a webpage, but maps.yahoo.com has been doing similar things for years (and better as in the data set changes the closer you get).
    • Mouse cursor and arrow keys? Two hands to do what you can do with one? There is this brand new invention (from about five years ago) called the *scroll wheel*. That would be a lot easier than the arrow key. Granted, that would make it difficult for those that don have a scroll wheel, but why not have both? Not a very auspicious beginning. Of course, I'm cynical about these things. I think he is full of crap and I'd be happy for him to prove me wrong.
    • This demo is about as brilliant as the jump-to-conclusions mat..

      Sorry, but what a horrible, absolutely horrible interface. Users would get so sick of zooming in and out they would rise up and kill their bosses.

      If it had been a dynamically lit 3D forest landscape at nighttime, with mp3 files flying around in the shape of dinosaurs, then maybe it would have grabbed my interest..

  • hopes to have it finished in 18 months.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:24AM (#11480219) Homepage Journal
    yet boosts claims that it really is as good as he claims "when you try it"?

    he's got a crystal ball too, then? maybe that's integrated to the product to make it guess what you want. like clippy on speed.
    • Jef has had a prototype of this for a while - I saw him demo it at Europython [europython.org] in June last year, and I have no idea how old it was then.

      It looked neat enough, but as I didn't have a Mac I couldn't try it out.

      What he's expecting to have finished in 18 months is, I guess, the specific adaptation of the idea to this multinational corproation's software.

  • Improved interface? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wingome ( 794168 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:25AM (#11480225)
    Do this mean that with the new interface, his web site will actually indicate what it is he is talking about doing ?

  • interface gurus? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pgilman ( 96092 ) <never@gMONETa.in minus painter> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:25AM (#11480237) Journal
    i hope the interface they're designing is better than the one on their website...
    • I especially liked the logo, which is hard to read because half of it is hanging upside down.
    • I wouldn't bet on it. Before everything is said and done, they will find that reimplementing their Flash demo in an actual programming language is next to impossible. This will force them to commit a terrible and irreversible act of desperation, namely merging Flash and Python into a powerful but evil synthesis of the two languages called Flash-a-thon. Shortly thereafter, we all die... or something... I missed the last bit of the prophecy 'cause I was watching Sealab...

      --

      Was it the sheep climbing onto the
  • It seems like every other day an article shows up here saying so and so (the co-creator of the Mac) is doing something new.

    Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought it was just Jobs and Woz?
  • I played with the zooming demo, and then remebered seeing it a few months ago, during my previous Jef Raskin fix. I'm interested in helping out, but all I see is the cool use of zoom as a metaphor for organizing data, not much else.

    A sourceforge project might be nice, or at least a Wiki.

    --Mike--

    • I agree. As already stated his web site is not well organized, not good for someone who focuses better interface design. I found a Flash app demonstrating a ZUI and I was underwhelmed - it appeared to be a single large image that you could pan around and zoom in/ zoom out... whoopee. Then I found a page describing some arcane "command language" thing called THE which reminded me of using Emacs or vi, not exactly user friendly.

      Forgive my skepticism, I sure there are some great concepts here. This web site
      • Then I found a page describing some arcane "command language" thing called THE which reminded me of using Emacs or vi, not exactly user friendly.

        Exactly. But why were Emacs and vi not user friendly? It was because they were heavily modal interfaces, which made learning to use them a real pain. Raskin claims to have identified the design errors of those tools and constructed a better interface based on similar principles.

        Emacs and vi are regarded as the most efficient programming environments for people i

  • Why on earth... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hcdejong ( 561314 ) <`hobbes' `at' `xmsnet.nl'> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:32AM (#11480324)
    does one of the masters of UI have such a hopeless website? Everything in some inane monospaced font, and on a single page. A specification that relies on the Find command for navigation. Gah.
    • Actually the very idea of this new interface is using the Find command for navigating the whole operating system - an incremental find, like the one in Firefox. So this webpage is an act of coherence.

      If you don't like find-as-you-type, you'd be better not using the interface described in the article.
  • A straightforward, hierachical system of folders, An easy to use and intuitive task bar, and keyboard shortcuts for those who want them.

    How much more efficient can it get?
    • Welcome to "we don't know because we haven't tried much else as we've been stuck in that mode since the crew at Xerox first spawned it into the world".

      While I'm not a die-hard fan of Raskin, I'm very happy that he's pounding out working examples of alternate approaches, and getting some attention. If enough ideas are flowing between enough people, it's very likely we'll hit on something truly revolutionary and useful in the exchanges.

    • Try explaining to a user how to simply backup their data files. Email, bookmarks, addressbooks and documents are all if different directories; some of which are hidden.
    • Yes, it can get much more efficient than Windows.

      The folder system may be straightforward, but it's not really geared towards making information accessible. Applications like iPhoto and iTunes show that there are ways to order information other than folders.
      Check Bruce Tognazzini's column [asktog.com] for more ideas on improving the UI.
      The task bar can stand improvement as well. Try running more than 5 applications, and the task bar entries become unreadbly narrow. The Start menu isn't great, either.
  • There's no doubt this guy is the man when it comes to UI. He's got the reputation, and he's very insightful.

    Unlike some of the dumber "new UI" things we've seen over the past few years (anyone remember the OpenGL one with the 3D windows).

    I've got a good vibe about this one. It's been a long time since anyone even approached the UI with something "new".

    Desktop
    Window
    Menu
    Bar
    Scroll Bar
    Maximize
    Minimize

    That has been our UI for over a decade. Nobody has successfully thought outside the box in over 10 years.
    • no kidding after playing with the demo of it for a while I keep finding myself trying to use the mouse to pan. the interface is that intuitive!

      change to the innovation that is the scroll wheel on the mouse for the zoom in and out and allow you to click on an item to make it full view and you have something that is really stinking useful!

      double click to open it in it's native editor and it looks like the future of computing.

    • Re:I've got a vibe about this (Score:4, Informative)

      by wazzzup ( 172351 ) <astromac.fastmail@fm> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:32AM (#11481118)
      I've been reading "Revolution in the Valley" from OReilly (a really fun read, I highly recommend it) and really, Jef had very lettle to do with the Macintosh interface. Steve Jobs forced him out very early on into the Macintosh development process - well before they had a working prototype. In fact, Jef's vision of the Macintosh was much more text-based than what we know the Mac to be today. Jef's vision of the Macintosh looked more like the Osborne 1 than the Banana Junior 2000 form factor we're all familiar with. The interface borrowed heavily from the Apple Lisa for which Bill Atkinson developed.

      Jef was a music major by training, so while I still respect him and what he's done, it's not like he was formally educated in the field.

      You can read about this at folklore.org as well but the book is great.

    • Re:I've got a vibe about this (Score:4, Informative)

      by ratboy666 ( 104074 ) <fred_weigel@[ ]mail.com ['hot' in gap]> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:48AM (#11481327) Journal
      Raskin is "the man" for UI?

      In a word; no.

      And, if you don't believe me, check out the Canon Cat. Really.
      Post Mac, and has NOTHING that is on your standard UI list. Big (BIG) flop.

      Check out Raskins ramblings -- boils down to "The UI should be vi; and people will love it". Especially, vi with dedicated function keys.

      In a sense, he *is* right. It would be a better UI. But, he *is* very wrong; people will *not* love it. So its a non-starter.

      Ratboy.

  • THIS is humane? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheConfusedOne ( 442158 ) <the.confused.one ... m ['il.' in gap]> on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:38AM (#11480401) Journal
    From the RCHI installation instructions:
    *HOW TO QUIT RCHI


    Press the Caps Lock key and while you hold it down, type "QUIT". The word "QUIT" will appear in the transparent gray overlay. Release the Caps Lock key and RCHI will close. Saving is automatic. The next time you open RCHI, your text will still be there. To open RCHI, click on run.bat in the reducks folder.


    Holding down the Caps Lock key and typing. I supposed it's touch to top Ctrl+Alt+Del...
    • Holding down the Caps Lock key and typing. I supposed it's touch to top Ctrl+Alt+Del.

      Remember, this is a UI designed for functional idiots for whom typing with CAPSLOCK held down is the most natural thing in the world.

      -Isaac

    • Re:THIS is humane? (Score:4, Informative)

      by pavon ( 30274 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:15AM (#11480894)
      Let me explain how the system works. All interfaces involve a combination of directly modifying document contents, and issuing commands. Consider a word processor. In VI you have to switch between modes to issue commands and edit text. In emacs there is one mode, with shortcut keys to issue commands. However, as the number of commands grows these shortcuts become increasingly archane. In a GUI commands are issued by clicking in a menu or toolbar, but again as the number of commands increases you can end up with a very large menu tree to traverse.

      Raskin's environment involves breaking a program like a wordprocessor apart so that there is no monolithic application - just a document handler and a bunch of small command that operate on the document - ie he is bringing the UNIX philosophy to the GUI world. Since all the commands are issued at the system level (like in unix) as opposed to the application level (like in Word) there will be a large number of commands in a single namespace (like in unix). Therefore shortcut keys are not acceptable, and both emacs-like hyroglyphics and vi-like modal interfaces have their own problems.

      The solution he proposes can be thought of in two ways. One is to look at it a shortcut keys of infinate length. IE addition to the 30-odd single letter shortcuts possible on a keyboard (^c ^x etc) you can also type ^ls or ^repaginate. The Caps Lock key is not really a Caps Lock Key - it is a command key that just happens to be where the caps lock Key is on PC keyboards (BTW as any unix guru will tell you, that is where God intended the control key to be).

      Another way of thinking about it is that holding down the command key brings up a floating command prompt, where you can type your command. Once you release the command key the command is executed.

      This seems a little weird but it isn't that hard to type with your pinky held down (I DO IT ALL THE TIME WHEN TYPING ALL CAPS), and if someone does have difficulty, then special hardware like foot pedal, keyboard with command key under the thumb etc, or in worst case making the command key sticky (toggled) will easily solve the problem.
      • Thanks for the detailed explanation. The idea is definitely intriguing, the implementation is definitely lacking (IMHO of course).

        The whole idea behind the Caps Lock key was because it is in fact awkward to hold down a key while typing for long lengths of time. (Also the shift key had the inadvertant effect of shifting numbers to symbols as well.)

        As for a single command space isn't that just begging for trouble? What about the specialized commands needed for specialized tasks? Why should QUIT save the

        • Re:Thanks, but (Score:4, Insightful)

          by pavon ( 30274 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:33PM (#11481956)
          To answer the specific questions, another feature of this system is that all documents are saved automatically. Think a palm pilot, where you just edit your document and turn it off, then when you turn it back on everything is just like you left it in the real world. There is also global undo (works for any command - if not you are prompted before command is executed) which is saved between power cycles. There is also talk of having an automatic revision history so you can come back to a document at any time later, and revert to a previous version (this isn't infeasable - the VAX had a crude mechanism like this way back when).

          The quit command is to exit the entire environment (ie to lougout). There is not quit command for a document - when you are done editing there is nothing special that you need to do just go on to your next task.

          As to the global namespace, it may or may not be problematic (and actually calling it a global namespace might have been inacurate on my part). I don't know how they are actually implementing it (I am not involved in the project just read his book and have been watching from the sidelines). From what I have seen though, the commands will be able to do different things to different objects. For example, if I select some text and ^copy it will copy the text, if I select 5 whole documents and ^copy it will copy the documents. I can't imagine that they would attempt to write a single command that handles all the possible object that could act on.

          The way I see implementing it is that each document type has a document handler class that provides the direct manipulation interface, as well as a programatic interface to manipulate the data. Then commands are written using this programatic interface. When the user issues a command it is the same as sending a message to a smalltalk object - if the command is recognised for that document it gets executed, otherwise you get an error. With this approach different document types could have commands with the same name, and it would not conflict.

          However, from a user-interface point of view, if two documents types support a simular opperation, it is highly desirable for them to share a command name (so you don't have to remember to use ^find on one document type, ^search in another). From a technical point of view, this can all be done very easily with a late binding language like python, and sharing commands between document types can even make development easier - if the people work together. So the "single" command space creates a social problem not a technological one.

          Which makes me sceptical of Raskins claims that this system will work well with comercial companies. To begin with, they don't like the idea of being demoted to writing commands, as opposed to developing full applications. This is one of the main reasons that OpenDoc died. Secondly, what happens when Alias writes a set of 3D modeling commands whose names conflict with Discrete's set of modeling commands? What if Maya doesn't like the 3D document handler and writes it's own incompatible one, with incompatible tools? You are back to where you started with walled off applications that don't integrate into the rest of the system, and potentially even conflict with one another, defeating most of the purpose of this new architecture.

          To me is seems that this project will only work if it is managed as a coherent whole, like BSD or Squeak, and that means being open source with a strong leader. And now that I've gotten completely off-topic of your question I'll end my post :)
    • With that kind of ease of use I suppose to configure application options you would simply open a debugger and set hex values directly in memory then add 0x005E the instruction pointer. Wow that's whole new interface paradigm. Our inlaws will find computers so much less intimidating once they learn assembly language.
  • The demo is way cool. It'll be interesting to see how this system scales up. Would it work for navigating all the files on a computer (with ~100k files on my system), for instance?

  • Who's zooming who? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @10:42AM (#11480454) Homepage Journal
    Maybe they could make the zooms "snap" between levels of group/detail, rather than wait for the widgets to enlarge. The data is structured, though their cluttered display suggests little of that. We don't need to struggle within all the limits of physical representation to reuse their cues in navigating among their virtual versions. And their "direct manipulation" of objects, rather than the "indirect" manipulation of, say, icons of objects, seems a great loss. No more symlinks? Every object has only a single context? It's like C without pointers. Or electronics without transistors. References are the most revolutionary aspect of the virtual world, and they are largely giving them up. So they can call the icon you select, before pressing the key to delete some disk data associated with the icon in a table in memory, the "object itself". It's not, and they've just thrown out references in the GUI paradigm where it's as fundamentally useful to users as it is in their implementation, to their programmers.

    Those are elementary UI principles. I'm not working on UI fulltime, at some "UI institute", or shilling for corporate donations. Hell, those aren't even my most interesting UI kvetches, even among those I've posted on Slashdot. Give *me* $2M, and I'll amaze the world with a UI paradigm that everyone from ages 10-70 can use, in any language, on any device, from 2-way wrist radio to Discman to ATM to PC to mainframe, in any job from marketer to project manager to programmer to tester, to grocery clerk to CEO to senator. And I talk a better game, too, as well as walk a better paradigm. Fund me!
    • Perhaps links are good for you, but the majority of users have trouble working with any sort of hierarchy. Separating content, naming, and presentation seems like a great idea to a programmer who is used to factoring things, but to a normal person this interface is very, very intuitive. It loses some functionality that you may very well not need, but don't use it if that's the case. For the majority it will work fine and have a much lower cognitive load.
      • ...the Web? Links don't require a hierarchy. They require context. That doesn't require separating content, naming, presentation, as far as the user can tell. It does require a simple way to tell the state of the object in all its references, and to use the references in all their contexts for navigate the rest. The Raskin interface is as intuitive as looking at a newspaper front page - and as useful. Which is to say, not enough to deal with the complexity of actual relationships in our real world, now so i
    • The interface does not get rid of symlinks, they're actually replaced by something better: portals.

      An object *can* be in several places, but in all them you see the real object - updated to the second and fully functional, not just a proxy of the object with its properties crippled. Also the information is browsed visually only when doing visual tasks, otherwise you browse it with incremental text search (like the one found in Firefox).

      This guy Raskin is incredibly insightful on what makes computers a pai
  • ...or is Jef[f] using the zoom like the rest of the world uses hypertext? I'm thinking specifically of the picture of Jef with his book and pipe organ, next to which is information about both, smaller. A link could do the same thing.
    • Does nobody remember microfiche? It's basically same thing. Even vannevar bush expected it to be like this - in 1945. Then Ted Nelson coins the term 'hypertext' in 1969 or so. What you see in jef's demo probably is hypertext, just presented in that specific way to maintain context and to try to be less confusing. In the early days, even going back to bush, hypertext was usually envisioned having two screens - one for the linked-from and one for the linked-to for this reason btw... (Some years ago I whipped
    • ...or is Jef[f] using the zoom like the rest of the world uses hypertext? I'm thinking specifically of the picture of Jef with his book and pipe organ, next to which is information about both, smaller. A link could do the same thing.

      I think that's the point - a demonstration that you can have something roughly equivalent in capability to hypertext, but without the hypertext.

      Personally, I quite liked the zoom thing, and I'd be quite interested to see a real-world implementation. There are problems, such a
  • Note that this is an 8MB Flash so after you click you will be presented with a blank screen for a while.

    Also, when slashdotted, the 'a while' becomes 'ever'.

    -Adam
  • Those interested in zoomable interface might want to have a look at Flexlay [berlios.de], it is basically a collection of OpenGL based layers and objects that can be placed and edited on an almost unlimited large workspace (as much as a float can hold). Its currently mainly usefull as a simple editor for 2d games (SuperTux, netPanzer), but also comes with a drawing component that allows todo simple paint operations (like Gimps brushtool) on an unlimited and non-pixel based canvas. Beside zooming and panning it also has
  • There are articles describing Jef Raskin [wikipedia.org] and The Humane Interface [wikipedia.org] in the Wikipedia.

    T.H.E. was supposed to be released as Open Source, but this really didn't happen as far as I know. That's not important though, as this interface implementation was never finished - the important bit was the system specification.
  • Just goes to show there's people with money who never had the "opportunity" to see a Canon Cat in action, BFD ;-)

  • Doesn't seem that special (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cthefuture ( 665326 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:01AM (#11480716)
    I tried the flash demo. It's like a virtual screen that you can zoom in and out. Virtual screens have been available for years. The zooming thing is kind of interesting but not anything new. I assume the interface is based on a vector drawing back-end (display postscript/PDF?).

    This has several problems. Is this thing suppose to manage all your documents and applications? Does that mean everything is being displayed and active at the same time? The CPU and memory requirements of this must be off the chart. This thing would totally choke based on the pure amount of data I have on my machine. Can this interface handle a terabyte or more of information?

    Spacial interfaces suck anyway. It might seem like it is better for organizing your data because you can group things together and "zoom out" to view everything on a large scale, but in real life you're going to spend too much time zooming in and out trying to find what you are looking for. It is very much like those suck-ass 3D file managers that someone creates every once in a while.

    I suppose you could query for items and they could be marked similar to MapQuest, then you could zoom in on it. That sounds like a very tedious to use interface though.

    Really, the current UI system that most computers use is not a bad design, it just needs refinement. Modern UI's just need to be better about remembering which data items I've been working with recently and which items go with each other. We are already seeing the beginnings of this with things like "favorites" and "home/desktop" in most file dialogs these days. That just needs to be taken to a higher level and cleaned up.

    Sorry if my post is disorganized, I just woke up...
  • ...the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. You know, the one that will create a blackhole into which will swallow the planet [kressworks.com].

  • Raskin's ego gets a little bigger! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's always nice to see Jef Raskin's latest ideas, especially since they're so often pompous and inaccurate.

    I especially love the rather arbitrary and academic distinction that the icons of today are stand-ins for objects rather than objects themselves.

    If I drag a CD to the eject icon, the CD is ejected. If I delete a file using its icon, the file is deleted. If I drag a file somewhere else, the file is (for all intents and purposes) moved.

    I fail to see how the hell it's useful to me to have all my docum
  • Raskin's work is based on Fitt's Law [asktog.com] and Hicks' Law [hockscqc.com].

  • Mr Raskin I presume? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @11:57AM (#11481448)
    I'm sure Mr Raskin is an excellent man. He appears to have a solid reputation, and I certainly wish him no ill.

    However, much to my bemusement I received an e-mail nastigram from him three or four years back requesting an open source project I was (and still am) in charge of change it's name. My project had a resemblance in name to a *patent* he'd registered some years ago. My projects in an entirely different field of computing: he had issue with my software name clashing with the name of an operation within a patent. It was - in my view - utterly groundless.

    So I ignored it. I never heard any more from him. It helped too that I was neither in the same country to him, privy to the same laws as him, and that ignoring such things usually does help them go away when individuals are involved. None the less, Mr Raskin was implying lawyers. I always worry when lawyers are mentioned.

    Still, in the grand scheme of things, having veiled legal threats from a co-creator of the Mac (of which I'm a big fan) is an interesting experience to talk about over a beer.

    I wish him all the best, but I do hope he isn't still firing nastigrams off to open source developers.

  • my world is your world (Score:4, Insightful)

    by l3v1 ( 787564 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:09PM (#11481589)
    In Jef Raskin's world, a world that will undoubtedly become everyone's world someday

    I like good ideas. I like good thinking. I like good implementations.

    I don't like when somebody tells me about something being in its (not so early) infancy that this will be your way of doing things. Let me decide that one. Thanks.

  • Ironic that Archy website so is HUI deficient (Score:3, Insightful)

    by potus98 ( 741836 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:11PM (#11481621) Journal

    Sounds really neat, but how about a FAQ at their website? And what's with the site's layout!?!? As an engineering type I kind-of like it, but as Joe Average (the mode my brain is usually in) I can't find crap.

    It's also funny that after viewing the demo and browsing some of their site, I reviewed the section on downloading and giving "Archy" (formerly "THE") a test drive. There's, like, 140 steps just to download and install this thing on Windows. The entire MS-Office suite of 10+ bloat-ware tools only takes 5 clicks of "Next."

    Don't get me wrong, it's a great idea and I'm going to look for a cheap copy of Raskin's book right now.

  • remember who he is... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mattkime ( 8466 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:24PM (#11481805)
    while jef raskin is known as a leader in human interface ideas, you have to look at what he's done to understand where his interests lie. he left the macintosh team before having a large impact - hell, he didn't like the mouse. his ideas are often interesting and thought provoking, but rarely practical and for better or worse, rarely ship.

    the zooming flash demo is interesting - but why should i have my hands on the keyboard AND the mouse to navigate a document?

  • Jef Raskin is vastly overrated (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rjung2k ( 576317 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @12:39PM (#11482067) Homepage

    Would I be trolling if I say that I think Jef Raskin is totally overrated? He likes to promote himself as the "creator of the Macintosh" and an expert in optimal user interfaces, but let's remember that he opposed the use of GUIs, and believe that the "optimal" user interface involves chording combinations of arcane keystrokes. Just read the description of Raskin's [url=http://www.jagshouse.com/swyft.html]Canon Cat,[/url] then compare it to your favorite user interfaces, and realize how way off-base Raskin is.

    To be fair, Jef does have some nice ideas, such that a computer should turn on instantly, and that commands across different applications should be consistent. But hey, we've already got [url=http://www.apple.com/ibook/]computers that do that.[/url]

    The worship of Jef Raskin as some sort of unparalleled visionary has no basis in reality.

  • But seriously (Score:3, Funny)

    by clf8 ( 93379 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @02:39PM (#11483744)
    "Already a household name for his work on developing the Macintosh computer while one of Apple's first employees, Raskin has recently set his sights on a larger goal."

    Does anyone actually believe outside of the Slashdot world that Jef Raskin is a household name? Or even inside Slashdot, for that matter...

  • Co-creator of the Macintosh? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @05:11PM (#11485501) Homepage Journal
    I like Jef, I really do. But I don't really consider him a co-created of the macintosh. He contributed the name, and I believe the keyboard. The rest of the stuff his team put together was scrapped when Steve took a special interest in the project and tore it away from Jef. Personally I'm surprised that Steve even kept the name "Macintosh", it's my understand that Steve didn't really like Jef Raskin at all.

    Personally I think the Canon Cat was a much more important product for Jef. It's an amazing piece of hardware and software, quite a powerful system for doing professional word processing (students, writers and journalists seemed to be the target audience for the product). It also had a very easy to use FORTH system built-in which allowed you to extend and customized the system, but unlike most other script-extendable applications, it wasn't necessary to be a programmer to find the software useful.

    It also had an extremely low bug count (I believe it was 0 bugs) for a project of it's size in the short amount of time it was written in. (it was written in FORTH, and the devel tools were also written from scratch).

    Of course the CAT simply wasn't marketed very well. Like many interesting and useful products it has gone into obscurity.

  • Simple or just bad? (Score:3, Funny)

    by podperson ( 592944 ) on Wednesday January 26, 2005 @08:46PM (#11487531) Homepage
    I think Raskin should get together with Ted Nelson and build a UI for Xanadu.

  • i appreciate the effort (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nikster ( 462799 ) on Thursday January 27, 2005 @01:16AM (#11489600) Homepage
    i truly appreciate that people are out there are researching radical new ideas on GUI design, and are willing to think outside the box. my hat off to Mr. Raskin for that. i have no problem with him telling me what i should do, either, because an oversized ego is often necessary to change the status quo.

    that said, i also think Raskin is totally off with his direction, just like many others. i wrote my thesis on GUI design - visual programming, so be exact and then went on to work with the best approach i found in this regard [stagecast.com].

    for the thesis, i had the (somewhat tedious) task to look at all other research in this area. what i found was surprisingly bad - there usually was some theory / psychological approach / philosophy, which sounded pretty reasonable. and then there was the implementation (if there was one at all), which was almost always just awful.

    raskin fits in there pretty well: just take a look at the website! it reminds me of man-pages. i consider myself an expert user of man pages (and unix and vi and all that) but man pages are NOT a good way to present information. lots of scrolling and find-commands are not an efficient way to navigate information. to the contrary.
    well, ok, i thought, maybe they slipped on the web page. so i checked the flash demo. i read the intro, which contains sentences like "check the little specks, they hide images and all kinds of cool stuff". ahm. ok?! i am sorry but i don't buy this for one second.
    in the meantime, the desktop interfaces are evolving. latest lovely feature i found in OS X is the search field in every Finder window, which allows you to instantly search the current selected directory. i use it almost every day now. instant search results and content search are immediately useful additions.

    i am betting that i can set up my desktop to do anything i want to do quicker and with less thinking than any command line interface. my apps are in the dock, 1/10th of a second to start. they all have "recent files" lists. most of the time, i never quit them. the computer is on instantly from sleep. if i use an app that is not in the dock, i hit cmd-shift-A in the finder... it's all very, very efficient.

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