UI freedom (was: UI: Being Pollitically Correct)

[Francois-Rene Rideau]

Poor you ! You'll be suffering my "freedom" motto on UI's too :)


> Below the set of UI modules, talked about last time, are the device 
> drivers.  These drivers are a set of objects representing the availible 
> video hardware.
   Why support only video interfaces ? What if the system is not used with a
screen, or used by the blind ?
   I agree we shall support such video interface, because they are common,
cheap, handy, well known, and knwon to most current computer users and
programmers, including ourselves.
   But we're not interfacing just the hardware. As a programmer, I hate
to say "draw a window", "show such object at such position", "put a
button here". What I want is say "here, let the user choose an arbitrary
object of such type/fulfilling such conditions". That some textual no-edit
input is used, or a textual editable screen, or a window-based interface, or
a voice-based interface, or a pre-programmed script, or whatever be
actually used, I just don't care.
   What *I* want is an proper object to continue computations.
I'll say to the interface "hello, that's me, could you please give me
an object with such properties ?", and the interface would do something,
and say "oh, yes, here it is !". I, or a standard library, or the user,
or a combination of those, would then invoke standard and/or programmer/user
configurable *constructors* that manage to create such an object from more
basic objects like keyboard and screen, or a script file, or a joystick,
or whatever.
   As the caller is recognizable, I could do both caller and callee specific
configuration (e.g. the user wants a window with a blue border, and the
program uses a flashing red background because it's an alarm).


>  (Ignoring audio stuffs at the moment, since they're a 
> rather different type of device.)
   Again, why focus only on screens ? U.I. stuff, like any object in the
system, should always be actually dependant only on stuff it really
should depend on. If you just wanna input a natural number below 1000,
don't ask "draw this and that", just ask a natural number below 1000);
if you want to use vietnamese words, let the U.I choose some audio device
and/or use some text device with a vietnamese character encoding; that the
device itself would go through multiple other modules, you don't care, and
this won't affect data throughput, as all calls to will be inlined as needed.


> Anyone have any suggestions on how to expand this model to be more 
> pollitically correct?  =)
   I completely agree on what you say about the video-specific part of
the UI. We shall provide such video drivers (or use existing ones, e.g.
X-Window, Windows, MacOS). But in no way should our U.I. be video
specific. The same program, unless it needs video animation (e.g. video
games) or other interface specific stuff, should run on any computer
running our system. And even if the actual hardware does not exist, the
user should be able to virtualize it (e.g. redirecting to /dev/null) so
as to run any program, even if the program requires specialized hardware.


--    ,        	                                ,           _ v    ~  ^  --
-- Fare -- rideau@clipper.ens.fr -- Francois-Rene Rideau -- +)ang-Vu Ban --
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