[General] Handles on objects deprecated

Fitts' Law says if it is further away and smaller it will take longer to
get there. And that only works if you can see it, which you can't for LK
handles.

What if the whole object was the target and when you got your mouse
cursor on it, you got a pie menu with up to eight choices, and secondary
menus when more choices are needed. Wouldn't that be quicker to get to
and more learnable for novices so they can become experts more quickly.

Some basic documentation might also be nice, although when the wiki is
available, I expect that questions and answers will quickly satisfy my
needs.

Dick

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Hi, Dick -

>Fitts' Law says if it is further away and smaller it will take longer to
>get there. And that only works if you can see it, which you can't for LK
>handles.
>
>What if the whole object was the target and when you got your mouse
>cursor on it, you got a pie menu with up to eight choices, and secondary
>menus when more choices are needed. Wouldn't that be quicker to get to
>and more learnable for novices so they can become experts more quickly.

You should have quite some fun firing up the latest LK as per my
earlier message.

        http://livelykernel.sunlabs.com/repository/lively-kernel/trunk/source/kernel/index.xhtml
        (click OK in the huge error notices)

You will find a 'use pie menus'  item in the world menu under
'preferences' (if it isn't pretty self-explanatory I want to know).
You know I've been a gesture fan since I put them ("GestureMenus") in
Fabrik about a quarter century ago ;-).  You may want to go into the
'simple example morphs' world to play around with them.

>Some basic documentation might also be nice, although when the wiki is
>available, I expect that questions and answers will quickly satisfy my
>needs.

Also you'll find a 'help' item in the world menu that will offer
'command key help' and take you to text editor help in our TRAC wiki.
It's a start.

Enjoy
        - Dan
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Hi, Dick -

You get it by clicking where there are no objects on the screen, and
with the alt key pressed (on non-Macs, it may require a different
control key).  It looks like...


We are in the process of producing a tutorial entirely in the Lively
Kernel.  It should lead you carefully through each necessary step.  I
wrote this assuming that you already knew some basics.

Back on our original web site...

        http://research.sun.com/projects/lively/

... there is a tab labelled 'Interactive Tutorial'  that should guide
you through some of the basics.  I jumped past these in order to tell
you about our pie menus, and I guess that was a bit premature.  If
you have not tried this, please do.  Your comments will help to guide
us in producing the next version entirely in LK.

<snip>

>I am professionally confused, ignorant, stupid, anxious, and
>prejudiced as I try to use something for the first time. You may
>dismiss any useless questions, but it would be nice to understand
>why I might want to use LK and what your fundamental goals are.
>Again. Do you know about "the curse of knowledge" as an impediment
>to writing introductory material that works for utter novices? I try
>to embody a cheap test of whether directions can possibly be
>misunderstood.

Yes.  We are indeed sorely cursed in this regard.  We take your
critique and cautions as serious exhortation to do the job right, and
get people to a competent and creative point in a simple and direct
manner.

>  Am I demanding a video tutorial as the LK-for-dummies front page?

Perhaps.  We're hoping we can introduce everything from within the
system itself, along the lines of the existing interactive tutorial.
We'll see (and you can be the judge).

By the way, you will find a  link to the Lively Kernel talk@Google
( a demo, not a tutorial)

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGw09RZjQf8

on both our old home page,

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGw09RZjQf8

and the new wiki one

        http://livelykernel.sunlabs.com/

Hope this helps.  We appreciate your patience in debugging our
process of disclosure here.  There is more to come, and I hope that
we can make it much more effective.

        - Dan
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