Text File

Aucbvax.2187 fa.works utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!works Thu Jul 9 04:13:44 1981 Context Managers >From SHG@MIT-AI Thu Jul 9 04:10:24 1981 It was recently suggested (by Lawrence Butcher@cmu10-a) that in order to manage a "desk" full of icon's what we need is a global context/icon manager that understands how to organize the icons on a desk. Several people have suggested that one needs a hierachical, all-knowing, state preserving "assistant" in order to provide uniform access, continuity across interrupted sessions, and conformity across different users of the same desk.

It probably is my background in workstations (implementing Smalltalk-80, a very distributed control machine) but I have viewed the concept of a global organizer and continuity/conformity enforcer as a mistake.

I see workstation developers and end-users developing zoo of different types of icons. (The reason I say zoo is that I see each icon behaving as an anthropomorphic instance of a real-world tool). Thus secretaries, financial analysts, accountants, managers and stockbrokers are going to run off and create icons that behave like rolloindexes, memo-pads, stock tickers, file cabinets, bookshelves, steno-pads, calculators, and waste baskets (one can even imagine someone implementing the anthropomorphic method for hunting through a waste basket, or even janitors who pick up the trash daily).

Users will create this zoo of icons because they are familiar with how the real-world devices work, and because the human race has spent many years perfecting their functions.

I do not see any reason to pre-constrain the system by having a predefined global conformity rule about an icon's functions and a global conformity manager who uses that rule to organize icons.

I have no strong empirical data to back up these opinions, thus I am quite curious as to what the WorkS community thinks about this subject.

- Steven Gutfreund

ps: I am assuming a currently implementable workstation. I assume that the AI community is still far away from an intelligent assistant that can gracefully learn from a naive user how to manipulate office equipment and then train temporary workers on how to use someone's "desk". Since I am not up-to-date on current research, I could certainly be wrong here.

----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/

This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:

1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.

2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.