Binary Bonsai

A couple of years ago, by way of Brian (who seems to always be reading some great books), I read the phenomenal, The Humane Interface by the late, great Jef Raskin, one of the creators of the Apple Macintosh. It is a absolutely wonderful book, and for anyone meddling with user interface design it is a must read.

One of the things the book dealt with, which I at first had a bit of trouble getting my head around, was a suggested method of operating the computer through quickly written commands. One of the examples from the book was, say you’re writing something and you need to do a quick calculation on a few numbers. On most normal OS’s today you need to switch out of the application you’re working in (unless of course you do most of your work in a calculator application, in which case this does not apply to your… you loon!). But with the system Raskin suggested, you would hit a ‘command key’, write for instance CAL and then the calculation and finally press enter. Voila, the calculation would be inserted right where you need it. A small example of course; wait for it.