Aucbvax.2187
fa.works
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!works
Thu Jul  9 04:13:44 1981
Context Managers
>From SHG@MIT-AI Thu Jul  9 04:10:24 1981
It was recently suggested (by Lawrence Butcher@cmu10-a) that
in order to manage a "desk" full of icon's what we need is a
global context/icon manager that understands how to organize
the icons on a desk. Several people have suggested that one
needs a hierachical, all-knowing, state preserving "assistant"
in order to provide uniform access, continuity across
interrupted sessions, and conformity across different users
of the same desk.

It probably is my background in workstations (implementing
Smalltalk-80, a very distributed control machine) but
I have viewed the concept of a global organizer and
continuity/conformity enforcer as a mistake.

I see workstation developers and end-users developing zoo
of different types of icons. (The reason I say zoo is that
I see each icon behaving as an anthropomorphic instance of
a real-world tool).  Thus secretaries, financial analysts,
accountants, managers and stockbrokers are going to run off
and create icons that behave like rolloindexes, memo-pads,
stock tickers, file cabinets, bookshelves, steno-pads,
calculators, and waste baskets (one can even imagine someone
implementing the anthropomorphic method for hunting through
a waste basket, or even janitors who pick up the trash daily).

Users will create this zoo of icons because they are familiar
with how the real-world devices work, and because the human
race has spent many years perfecting their functions.

I do not see any reason to pre-constrain the system by having
a predefined global conformity rule about an icon's functions
and a global conformity manager who uses that rule to organize
icons.

I have no strong empirical data to back up these opinions, thus
I am quite curious as to what the WorkS community thinks about
this subject.

				- Steven Gutfreund


ps: I am assuming a currently implementable workstation. I assume
    that the AI community is still far away from an intelligent
    assistant that can gracefully learn from a naive user how to
    manipulate office equipment and then train temporary workers
    on how to use someone's "desk". Since I am not up-to-date on
    current research, I could certainly be wrong here.



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