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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: Usability and open source
From:       "Tomas Furmonavicius" <f1926 () kaunas ! aiva ! lt>
Date:       2000-01-31 12:25:42
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On Sun, Jan 30, 2000 at 09:35:38PM -0000, Ben Last wrote:
<...>
> * getting away from the lousy Start menu idea (sorry KDE, but copying that
> idea of MS's was a Bad Idea, imvvho) and using a circular menu - when you
> invoke it with the mouse (anywhere on the screen), the options pop up around
> the mouse position, like numbers around the edge of a clockface.  Now you
> have a whole two dimensions to arrange items in rather than the single
> dimension of a popup or pulldown menu, and you can exploit humans'
> positional memory much better.

Well, it's a common mistake to think that "start" menu is invention of
MS. Idea to use menus to group applications and to start them is very
common in X window managers (and I strongly believe, that twm is older
than Win95). And there's nothing wrong with this idea, if these menus
are kept relatively small and well organized.

Circular menus are hard to implement. How do you imagine menu item
text in such menus? Text is one dimensional object which is hard to fit
properly in polar structure of circular menus.

Tomas

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