[Sugar-devel] [IAEP] Journal criticism

[Sean DALY]

I, too, encounter difficulty finding elements in the Journal but
haven't found time yet to contribute to a feature discussion.

just 2 cents about hierarchical representation: it certainly has uses.
The coolest one I ever saw was 8 years ago by a company (trying to
remember the name) that provides intranet search to corporations:
users enter text in a Google-like box; the bottom half of the screen
shows hit-parade results (links) by relevancy, but the top half
dynamically generated a hierarchy by type: text file (subclassed by
format upon drilling down), media file, intranet web page, database
result (interrogation by prebuilt connectors), etc.

Clicking on any hierarchy entry regenerated the hit-parade by that type.

Private tagging was possible, tied to the user's profile but exportable.

Viewing rights were handled too; if unavailable to the profile, the
link would be greyed but the info source within the company shown, so
the user could militate for access (as opposed to not knowing its
existence).

Related: I heard Steve Jobs say in 1998 that folders were great for
small numbers of files, but it didn't scale... so he had resorted to
e-mailing files to himself, with different accounts and keywords in
the subject lines... and sort/filter available in mail software.
Today, OSX uses "Spotlight" which indexes not just text, but media
file metadata, a subject dear to my heart (the Ogg container is
well-suited to that).

However, since I find Spotlight windows a pain (the commandline
version is often faster), I continue to use the system I've used these
past ten years: e-mailing documents between my accounts adding as many
keywords as I can and searching in different ways (gmail search is not
bad but could actually be quite a lot better). I think the Journal
will be fine if additional search options are very carefully
selected... and as much metadata as possible is pulled out of media
files. I have found exiftool to be wonderful in this respect

Sean



On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 1:19 PM, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
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> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 06:18:35AM -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote:
>>On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:49 AM, Jonas Smedegaard <dr at jones.dk> wrote:
>>> On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 04:58:17AM -0400, Albert Cahalan wrote:
>>>>Tomeu Vizoso writes:
>>
>>>>> I think it's very important if we want to keep pushing Sugar that
>>>>> we distinguish between design decisions and bugs and unimplemented
>>>>> features. If we bring down good design ideas not by themselves but
>>>>> because of its implementation status, we risk ending up with
>>>>> nothing that brings new value compared to existing desktops.
>>>>
>>>>You say that like it would be a bad thing. The existing desktops are
>>>>at least time-tested. Learning to deal with the common features of
>>>>modern desktop systems is very valuable for children.
>>>
>>> I flat out disagree that Sugar should be a learning experience
>>> towards using alternative user interfaces.
>>>
>>> In that mindset we should mimic Word, Excel and the Windows desktop,
>>> not for the quality of their interface designs, but simply because
>>> they are expremely popular so getting acquainted to them is "very
>>> valuable for children".
>>
>>To the extent that there are common features that are highly
>>unlikely to change across versions or even OSes, definitely.
>>
>>MacOS System 6, MacOS X, OS/2 Warp, and Windows Vista
>>have certain basic features in common. It's a safe bet to say that
>>most of these features will remain in the computers of 2017.
>
> Actually, I am not so sure about that: I suspect user interfaces (as
> well as many other features of our society) do not evolve linear, but
> more and more rapidly transform.
>
> So I am willing to challenge you in that bet. :-D
>
> I suggest, for simplicity sake in our later judgement, that we limit the
> bet to "do all popular computer desktop environments still use (and
> directly expose to the edn user) a hierarchical file system in 2017, as
> they did in 2009?"
>
> And I propose a symbolic item from looser to winner, with a fun
> punishment twist added: One bottle of bewerage of the winner's choosing,
> delivered personally at the winner's door step.
>
> How does that sound?
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
>  - Jonas
>
> - --
> * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
> * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
>
>  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
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