Many long years ago, I learned how to manipulate information on a GUI
window and transfer the results directly (without cut-&-paste) to any
window on the screen. Thus, for example, one can draw a box around a
mathematical expression and have the answer appearing at the cursor on
the press of a key. That was done with an Atari ST where the information
was transferred through the input-output buffer (iorec). One person used
the technique to convert on-screen data directly into bar graphs!
I also used the iorec for transfering information from my "Fleabyte"
calculators to any editor or wordprocessor by simple point-&-click. See
illustration and caption in
http://www.fleabyte.org/archives-round_one.html#Good uses for BASIC
I wonder whether this might be a useful technique for use in an OHS. It
would permit immediate, on-the-spot evaluation of information; most
obviously numerical information.
Some time ago, I mentioned on this forum the Be operating system (BeOS).
Direct transfer of information is a design feature of that OS. For
example, they have a demo where a ball bouncing around in a chamber can
bounce directly through an exit into a chamber shown in another window -
back and forth.
Just a thought ...
Henry
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0.0 : Tue Aug 21 2001 - 17:57:55 PDT