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Aucbvax.2186 fa.works utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!works Thu Jul 9 04:01:49 1981 Re: Spatial design for a workstation >From cfh@CCA-UNIX Thu Jul 9 03:58:00 1981 In response to your message of Tue Jul 7 22:02:18 1981:

The problem with spatial data organizations is that they are really a class of menus, with the attendant problem that you can not display every possible choice on the screen at once. You can deal with this either by enlarging the data surface (so that the user must move his window over it) or by creating a hierarchy of spaces.

In either case an expert user will find that it takes more time to locate a particular command than to type its name. >From my own brief experience, I think that programmers would find a spatial layout most useful for organizing short-lived objects, like contexts. The feature that programmers using our system like best was the ability to create a number of such contexts and move among them - like having several terminals in your office.

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