[Pipet Devel] window sill

J.W. Bizzaro bizzaro at geoserve.net
Tue Apr 4 06:01:43 EDT 2000


I'm sorry that I've been too quite lately.  I'll get back to some messages
right away.

You may have seen the 'window sill' mentioned on the Loci list.  This is
pretty much a status bar for the windowlets that appear in the workspace. 
Attached is a screenshot of one prototype window sill.

Below is a description of window sill features and functions.  There are 2
basic modes: Shaded and unshaded, which are just like window shading on the
Mac and newer Unix WMs, only the BOTTOM of the window (the status bar) remains
visible.  The status bar is a leeetle bit more informative than the title bar
of a window, right?  Well, in the true nature of Loci (and now VSh), we're
trying to rethink a lot of the 1981 Apple Lisa paradigms that people just
can't see beyond.

I've been thinking this over and over for days now, BTW.  I believe this
design gives us the most features for the least number of buttons present on
the window sill:

-------------------------------------

Unshaded mode:
[OCCUPY]  [VIEW]  [RESIZE]

Shaded mode:
[INFO]  [RESIZE]


INFO
* Visible only when window is shaded
* Button contains a text message for each info item (not context-sensitive
help)
      * Time elapsed while unprocessed
      * Unprocessed/processing/processed
      * Location
      * Help message for window's node (truncated)
      * (others)
* INFO is for what occupies the window pane
* Click button1 or button3 to cycle through messages (in different directions)
* The only button to be horizontally expandable


OCCUPY/UNOCCUPY
* Click button1 to make self window pane occupy parent window
* Click button3 to unoccupy self window pane from parent window
* Window sill also occupies parent's

(When I say 'parent', I mean a node that contains a network of nodes, one of
which being the node in question.)


VIEW
* Click button1 or button3 to cycle through views:
    * GUI view: Gtk (composite) interface
    * Network normal: Network with icons, links and windows
    * Network world: Only links shown but for entire network (no scrolling
      needed).  Single-click in workspace switches view back to network
      normal, focused in area of workspace where clicked (like a zoom feature)
    * Info view (all messages in single view):
          * Time elapsed while unprocessed
          * Unprocessed/processing/processed
          * Location
          * Help message for window's node
          * (others)
    * Context-sensitive help message: for ONE selected node in window's
      workspace, not for the window's node


RESIZE
* Press-drag button1 to resize
* When shaded, only the window sill can be resized, and it's resized
  horizontally
* Double-click to shade
* Double-click again to unshade
* OCCUPY and VIEW buttons not visible when shaded, because these pertain
  only to what occupies the window pane, which will not be shown
* INFO is not visible when window is unshaded

------------------------------

I'd like you to note that NOT A SINGLE WINDOW SILL FEATURE OR FUNCTION CALLS
ON THE MIDDLEWARE/CORE.  THIS IS 100% GUI!  And all of it with no more than 3
buttons visible at once!

Cheers.
Jeff
-- 
                      +----------------------------------+
                      |           J.W. Bizzaro           |
                      |                                  |
                      | http://bioinformatics.org/~jeff/ |
                      |                                  |
                      |        BIOINFORMATICS.ORG        |
                      |           The Open Lab           |
                      |                                  |
                      |    http://bioinformatics.org/    |
                      +----------------------------------+
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: button-test.xpm
Type: image/x-xpixmap
Size: 45105 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://bioinformatics.org/pipermail/pipet-devel/attachments/20000404/93a99487/button-test.xpm


More information about the Pipet-Devel mailing list