[IxDA Discuss] RE : Re: Bumptop

[Jim Drew]

>From: "Alain D. M. G. Vaillancourt" <ndgmtlcd at yahoo.com>
>
>This all means that I'm very enthusiastic about Bumptop, even if they
>don't realise they're way off track with those "tidy piles" which are
>way too tidy, in my view, and those "messy piles" which aren't messy
>enough.  They just come a tiny bit close to the crucial topics of pile
>annotation and item annotation at the end when they mention the
>capacity to "fold" documents.  They still have a long way to go there
>but they're on the right track.

Actually, I think they may be on the wrong track in some ways.  They are anally replicating the desktop metaphor without seeming to analyze why we do things as we do on the desktop and to physical items.

They allow "folding corners" because we sometimes fold corners.  But why do we do that?  We do it because (a) we don't have a better way to apply a mark and (b) because there are physical properties associated with it such as texture and visibility from a distance.  They can solve (a) and they can't help with (b), which removes a lot of the purpose of doing it in the first place.

Similar arguments arise for "messy piles" and "sticking things to the wall"  and "throw and bump" and "crumple before discarding".  They aren't doing these things to actually solve problems; they are doing them to replicate the physical world even when that isn't helpful, a cross between "kewl" and "physical is always best".

Which doesn't mean there isn't value in what they've developed, techniques that can be applied to solve real issues.  But the bulk of this adds nothing and eats processor cycles.

-- Jim