From: Simon Bell (simonbell_at_mac.com)
Date: Sun Sep 12 2004 - 10:47:03 PDT
On 12 Sep, 2004, at 3:10 am, Jim Witte wrote:
> [long essay]
> Perhaps the best place to end this (very long) essay is where it
> began, and to ask Simon Bell, "Why do you want to run Mail V on your
> desktop?".
Well... erm... [shuffles nervously] I think you're taking my original
statement too literally.
My paper was about running NewtonScript on a desktop machine because my
software development environment is a desktop machine. (It happens to
be a G4 Mac with a lovely widescreen cinema display.) It's hard enough
rewriting the NewtonScript Objects system without porting it to a third
platform as well, so for the time being I'm happy to have NewtonScript
on my desktop. The point I was trying to make was that even though
there's no chance the rewrite approach will deliver as complete Newton
functionality as an emulator in the same time frame, it should still be
possible to accomplish something interesting. Perhaps I should have
phrased that statement as "I want *to be able* to run Mail V on my
desktop". I'd like to have written enough of the OS to get that far.
To respond more generally to your essay: there are things I like about
Newton that I think might work well when scaled up. This is a bit of a
fantasy of mine, but humour me... I'm imagining my cinema display with
a touch-sensitive layer on top; it's angled on my desk to offer a
comfortable writing position; my Mac boots into NewtonOS and it's on
almost immediately; I use the pen to move things around on screen -
much more natural then sliding a box over the desk and watching a
pointer move; with one hand I take notes while with the other I leaf
through a book or answer the phone; I have all the clean, uncluttered
views I have come to appreciate on my portable Newton device.
Okay, as you said, the Newton UI is designed not just for a small
screen but specifically for a B&W LCD and there would have to be UI
changes to handle such a large screen area. Has anybody tried out any
UI ideas for larger or smaller screen sizes than the MP's 480*320
pixels? You don't have to wait for an emulator or a new Newton OS to
see what colour or a different form factor might add to the user
experience.
Simon
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