HC Interface
Volume Number: 6
Issue Number: 7
Column Tag: HyperChat™
Interfacing To The Future 
By Fred Stauder, HyperChat Editor
on HyperChat
InterFacing to the Future
SIGCHI
Many people talk about and praise the Macintosh graphic interface. Well I have
news for them, the Macintosh has a great TOTAL interface, the graphic part is only a
small portion. There was an interesting panel, at SIGCHI (Association of Computing
Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction) at the end of April
in Austin Texas; it consisted of Tom Erickson / Apple, Tony Hoeber/Sun, Ted
Wilson/HP, and Bill Parkhurst/NeXT. The title of the panel was “My user interface is
best because...”. All the panelists except for Tom talked about features and flexibility,
Tom in turn talked about the total user experience and how at Apple it is important to
have a central goal of making the every part of the task of using a computer simple.
From unpacking the machine to plugging in the cables. His presentation was warmly
received by the audience.
Anyone that is involved in human interface should attend SIGCHI. Some of the
topics covered were:
- New Directions in Theory for Human-Computer Interaction
-Tools for Collaborative Work
-New Paradigms for Programming
-Interacting with Computer Advisors
-Performing Prediction: Predicting Performance
-User InterFace Management Systems
-Pointing and Painting
-Notation for Specification
-Design as Organizational Activity
-User Interface System Evaluations
-Gesture and Language
-Issues in Interface Design Methods
-Hypermedia Systems
-Innovations in Graphical Interface Design
-Tools and Environments for Interface Design
-Using Auditory Output
-Innovative Designs for Information Systems
-Interfaces to Mathematical Systems
It would take a whole issue of MacTutor to cover parts of the conference so I
won’t. However the proceedings are available from the ACM. I will encourage you to go
to next years CHI conference April 1-5 in Seattle, Washington. The theme is
EMPOWERING PEOPLE. The question asked is “How can interactive systems and
interfaces empower individual and group creativity, productivity, and satisfaction
while fostering innovation and cooperation?” If you are interested in submitting a
paper, panel, tutorial, interactive poster, workshop, video, lab review,
demonstration, or exhibit please send me an AppleLink as I am on the committee.
Spring Developers Conference
The Apple Spring Developers Conference brought a lot of new innovative tools for
us to work with. I will be discussing the new features in the finder etc later in a full
article. One of the most exciting things that was announced at the conference was the
development of AppleScript.
AppleScript is the second major step to integrate user tasks across applications.
The first step was the clipboard with cut, copy, and paste. What is AppleScript?
AppleScript is a system wide scripting language that is a superset and subset of
Hypertalk. It will allow the user to create their own interprocess communications in a
relatively simple manner. A number of programmers don’t like Hypertalk, but we
must not forget that it is designed so that the user can do simple tasks simply. Many
people have done complex tasks with Hypertalk, and it is very difficult to write.
Apple has many layers of IAC (Interapplication Communication Architecture). It
is basically a framework for applications to exchange commands and data, both locally
and over networks.
- PPC (Program to Program Communications) is a low level tool with a consistent
programming interface.
- Event Manager PPC a high level tool.
- AppleEvents is an Apple defined protocol of standard messages that applications
can send to other applications.
- AppleScript utilizing AppleEvents
- Live Copy/Paste allows links between documents
- Clipboard works like usual.
The overall architecture allows the user an easy to use method to talk to other
applications, yet allows the programmer the flexibility and power to do sophisticated
fast IAC.
I suggest that you start experimenting with scripting in your applications and
analysing what syntax you need. Wingz has already incorporated a scripting language
into their spreadsheet, look at their implementation. we will bring you examples and
an article on AppleScript in later issues so stay tuned.
Send articles ideas, comments etc to Applelink: STAUDER
end HyperChat