Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 15 Jul 1996 12:55:58 -0500 (EST)
From:      John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu>
To:        Sean Kelly <kelly@fsl.noaa.gov>
Cc:        freebsd-chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD keyboard
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.94.960715124555.5534F-100000@Fieber-John.campusview.indiana.edu>
In-Reply-To: <199607150113.BAA18233@gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sun, 14 Jul 1996, Sean Kelly wrote:

> Except that road signs usually aren't lined up in a perfect, uniform
> row in a toolbar, with all the same widths, heights, and all the same
> colors. 

Depends on where you drive.  Shall I send out some photos of
real road signs?  :-)

Around here there are a couple places that have uniform rows of
6-8 rectangular white signs with black two digit highway numbers
and arrows.  They are impossible to use unless you have the good
fortune to hit a red light so you can stop and study them for a
while. At the other end, you can have 6-8 signs with different
shapes and colors for the type of road (state highway, US
interstate, turnpike, etc.) it is a simple matter to pick out the
one you are after with a glance.

> Warning, entering Edward Tufte mode:
> 
> At each workstation are two powerful information processing units: the
> brain and the computer.  Yet all communication between these two units
> must pass through the low-bandwidth computer monitor.  Making
> efficient use of monitor space is therefore paramount; destroy all
> icons as they waste precious screen real estate!

Hmm... I wouldn't associate Tufte with such a wholesale disposal
of a visual communication tool.  Then again, I've only read one
of his books and it had almost nothing about computer interfaces. 

-john

== jfieber@indiana.edu ===========================================
== http://fallout.campusview.indiana.edu/~jfieber ================




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.3.94.960715124555.5534F-100000>