Re: [tlug] Desktop Wars Query

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

Josh Glover writes:

 > I've never quite understood what the benefit of icons is...

A certain spatial arrangement of objects can be quite mnemonic.  There
are days when my workflow seems to be building up a collection of
objects one by one, and then burying them.  Finally, there's an
integration stage, when various groups need to be opened
simultaneously.  Emacs's deque discipline is not terribly intuitive on
days like that.  Random access via tabs helps, but isn't qute enough.

If I have to manage several projects that way, it's useful to lasso
the project *with the spatial structure*, move it en bloc to a new
folder, and then if I go back to it later, the spatial arrangement is
preserved (on the Mac, anyway).  This has the same satisfying finality
of just sweeping *everything* off the desk, without screwing up future
work.

There two big problems with the metaphor.  The first is that app and
installer writers all seem to think that they are the most important
thing in the world.  When I installed the Epson PA 970 drivers to my
Mac, they put no less than 6 icons on my desktop, not including the
one I actually found useful enough to put in the dock (the TWAIN
skin)!  The desktop should be the user's space, it's not for the
janitor to sit on or store his rags and buckets.  (Most Un*x desktops
are much better about this.)

The second is that way too little thought has been put into working
with icons from the keyboard.  Even the Mac's "quick clear" keystrokes
have no useful followup; you *have* to use the mouse.  Some Motif
applications are quite clever about constructing tab groups, but that
does require a lot of thought and/or talent.  It's easier to have the
user do it, and that is most natural with the mouse.  But once that
has been done, it ought to be possible to TAB through the groups or
within a group.  But AFAIK nobody's thought much about this, probably
because the Motif way is just too clunky.