[Nautilus-list] Re: Feature request: mouse gestures in Nautilus

[Mike Bennett <mike stressbunny com>]

On Thu, May 10, 2001 at 02:43:39PM -0700, Jim Gettys wrote:
> What do you mean by "multi-scalar windows"?

The current UI allows us to resize windows. The act of resizing 
smaller means an application has less screen space in which to display
information, i.e. the information space is clipped. An example
is when a stock market application is resized smaller you can no longer 
view as many ticker symbols or when a web browser is resized
smaller you can no longer view as much of a web page.

If you have a multi-scalar UI then you have the extra ability to
"scale" an application, e.g. when you rescale the stock market application,
to take less screen space, the application changes size but information
viewable remains the same, except its all smaller. Or when you rescale
the web browser, to take less screen space, all the text and graphics
still appear but the fonts are smaller, the images in the web page
the scaled downwards, the application menu buttons are smaller, etc.

So resizing reduces or increases the size of the information space
viewable while scaling reduces or increases the size of the information
CONTAINED in the information space with no loss of information (except
for text and image degradation due to scaling algorithms).

Mike

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