unity-design team mailing list archive

["frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx" <frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Madbob ;)

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 14:14, Roberto Guido <bob4job@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Tue, 2010-12-14 at 13:02 +0100, frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > any more variations of this [CONTAINER] - [CONTENT] metaphor?
> >
> Lobotomy - http://lobotomy-project.org/
>

i think your concepts are awesome!


> The basic concept: container-less browsing, no folders, only "queries"
> against the store (of course managed and assisted by the user interface,
> not everyone can write SQL or SPARQL every time he needs a
> content ;-) ).
> That has been a "conceptual" project of mine for several years, and had
> many evolutions; not many code has been produced, just some document and
> elucubration now scattered all over the web.
>
> > Which concept can serve these needs?
> >
> I think enforcing "search" against "browsing" could be a good
> compromise: we need files just because we cannot imagine any other form
> of contents aggregation (we need to put the bytes somewhere...), but
> today we already have tools to go after folders.
> Desktop indexing is a reality, but barely used by user applications:
> both Tracker and Nepomuk are available and stable, I can count very
> little project running over them. If massively used and integrated in
> the DE, the user could forget folders and just search what needed from
> time to time instead of browsing his own folder hierarchy.
> For example, the "Save" option can just become "save those contents in a
> directory choosen by software, not by me, and index it so I can retrieve
> it". A Spotlight-like application can completely substitute the file
> manager, and we already have specific examples of folder-less contents
> navigation ( http://live.gnome.org/Soylent ).
>
>
>
> p.s.: I was one of the Itsme developers ;-)
> http://itsme.it/news/2009/02/09/we-doubled-our-tech-force/
>

This was extremely cool:
[image: intro.png]

it's true.. after 25 years we could at least summarize what we've learnt.
I think it's obvious, we've become better at symbolic metaphors, there are
more symbols now, aka icons, and they are more telling than they used to be.
Unfortunately we are still holding on strongly to the metaphorical concepts
"window" and "file", which are very two-dimensional and limited to a very
small set of spacial methods.

Search should get better, as Tracker plugins for Nautilus become stable.
I've been trying these every once in a while, and i'm confident we'll be
presented with outstanding search interfaces soon.

The most intriguing thought you threw at us was imo Hyppocampus¹. The
metaphor you are basing this concept upon is obviously:
* [neuronal network] - [relational memory]

this is not entirely new, since every mammal is born with it, but it
represents an alternative way of going about our problem at hand.
I think this is most interesting and i will meditate over this metaphor
again, since it is a path i have already identified as viable quite some
time ago ;)

Great work, thanks a lot!!!

¹ http://lobotomy-project.org/wiki/Hyppocampus