[kepler-dev] Bring to Front vs Move to first menu choice

Bertram Ludaescher ludaesch at cs.ucdavis.edu
Wed Dec 21 04:22:53 PST 2005


I just realized that Christopher had already given the perfect example
of why mixing a case-sensitive subsystem with a case-insensitive "user
view" is a bad idea (the MS Windows file system). You get really
bizarre behavior (which I tried to illustrate using the "false choice
box" below: choose between 'FOO' and 'FOO' .. yes, thank you very much ;-)

But luckily the case got resolved and all is well now, right? 
I mean we're back to case-sensitive!? 
A more user-friendly case-insensitivity WHILE SEARCHING for the right
term/variable/actor whatever is desirable. Then the system lets the
user choose between multiple case-sensitive options. Did I get that
right? 


Oh, and with the holidays really upon us, I couldn't help but also
through in some little RECOMMENDED READING OVER THE HOLIDAYS.
Something to warm the heart and soul while sitting around the
fireplace in a cold winter night, under the christmas tree or whatever
you do in those days. You could call it "zooming out" (to the big
picture).  Here it comes:

(1) On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary
transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes,
and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells; by William Martin and
Michael J. Russell, DOI 10.1098/rstb.2002.1183 
(should be available online)(and now, I won't mention Bertrand Russel's writings in this contex


Maybe since we're all so closely related (even to bacteria), we
shouldn't always divorce "computer scientists" from "domain scientist
users" (the supposedly CS-challenged ones) so strictly (referring to
an earlier emaiapparentlyl in this thread). Let taxonomists do those separations
and let's rejoice in the great unity of being!  :-)

(2) Zooming out further, to the REALLY BIG PICTURE:
"The Elegant Universe" and "The Fabric of the Cosmos", both by Brian
Greene make for really good reading too IMHO. It's pretty amazing how
he goes from chicken and egg to Big Bang in no time at all. 
Ptolemy enthusiast will also find many reminiscences to 'wormholes',
cybernetics and other "systems stuff".

(3) A little lighter reading than (1) and (2) is "A short history of
nearly everything" (I think by Bill Bryson) and finally for the
bio-fans

(4) "The Song of the Dodo" (forgot the author's name)

Just in case you're looking for last minute presents :-)

cheers

Bertram

> ------- Additional Comments From cxh at eecs.berkeley.edu  2005-12-18 23:43 -------
> I'm not totally sure that having the type in the combobox be case insensitive
> is the correct behaviour.  For example, one of the lamest parts of Windows
> is that the so-called file system is case insensitive, yet case preserving.
> This causes no end of trouble.  My concern here is that there is a slight chance
> we could be preventing the use of user defined types because "STRING" and
> "string" could mean two different types.  Anyway, I think this a very remote
> possibility, and I myself have had a hard time remembering the capitalization.
>
> Since we've had a combobox here, I've had a much easier time since the choice
> is there.  Now that the editable portion of the combobox is case insensitive
> and auto correcting, this should be even easier to handle.


>>> On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 07:06:46 -0800
>>> Bertram Ludaescher <ludaesch at ucdavis.edu> wrote: 
... 
BL>     "You just entered 'FOO'. The system has two functions with this
BL>     name. Please choose between [ ] FOO and [ ] FOO" 
....


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