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Subject:What moves on screen? From:Michael LaTorra <mikel -at- ACCUGRAPH -dot- COM> Date:Sat, 25 Jun 1994 10:34:33 MDT
....... Epigraph ...................
When Hui Neng (Sixth Patriarch of Ch'an [Zen] Buddhism; 7th Century A.D.)
visited a monastery while in disguise, he saw two monks arguing about
a banner streaming in the wind. One monk insisted that the wind was
moving, but the other claimed that the banner was moving. Hui Neng
said "Neither the wind nor the banner moves; it is your minds that move".
-- The Altar Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (from *Ch'an and Zen
Teaching* vol. 3, trans. and ed. by Lu K'uan Yu)
....... Introduction ................
Computers display information on monitor screens. On the screen one
or more windows allow users to see and interact with the data displayed.
In a class titled Text Editors, Prof. J. Mack Adams of
New Mexico State University posed the following philosophical
question to his students:
....... The Question ...............
Is a computer window unmoving while data scrolls behind it,
or does the window move across files of unmoving data?
...... The Issues ..................
Opinions among the students were divided, just as the class itself
was, between Tech Writing students and Computer Science students.
All of the Tech Writers thought that the window was fixed and
the data moved, while the CS students believed the opposite.
Is this division of opinion significant? Do Tech Writers and
Programmers have fundamentally different points of view regarding
the data-display metaphor of today's computers? And how may the
advent of multi-window computing have affected these points of view?
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
I will compile responses into a summary and post it at the
appropriate time.
Live long & prosper,
Mike LaTorra
Documentation Supervisor
Accugraph Inc.
mikel -at- huey -dot- accugraph -dot- com
......................................................................
The opinions expressed are my own, and not necessarily those of my
company -- but they probably should be.
......................................................................
