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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>My strong sense is that the canonical UI for
choosing points in a metric space (time, as typically viewed, being a
one dimensional Euclidean metric space) has not yet been built. Using a pointer
like a mouse together with timing delays between mouseup and mousedown together
with 3D accelerometer data probably would give us the ability to choose any date
or real number (bounded above and below by some number), any of a finite number
of words from a vocabulary, any coordinate from a 2D, 3D or 4D space, or any
node (like a URL) from within the topology of a finite directed graph more
quickly than equivalent data could be entered from a keyboard. This includes
pretty much all input widgets. What all these spaces share in common vis a vis
the human is the conceptual pegs that people assign as landmarks in those
navigational realms. In the case of time we have seconds, minutes, days, months,
millenia as pegs; in the real numbers, we have powers of ten; in color
space we have trichromatic and opponent processes overlaid with cultural
nomenclature; in the daily drive to work each day, we have traffic signals, cows
etc.; on the globe we have latitude and longitude as well as the more salient
pegs of nations, provinces, cities. There is a lot of data that can be leveraged
from the speed, acceleration, and position of a mousedrag, even without
accelerometers around. The way to choose the feedback relevant to optimizing a
user's input may ultimately have a universal solution that works across input
domains, but which researchers just haven't started yet to look for.
Standardization may be premature.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>DD</FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=mjs@apple.com href="mailto:mjs@apple.com">Maciej Stachowiak</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=pkasting@google.com
href="mailto:pkasting@google.com">Peter Kasting</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=whatwg@lists.whatwg.org
href="mailto:whatwg@lists.whatwg.org">whatwg@lists.whatwg.org</A> ; <A
title=bzbarsky@mit.edu href="mailto:bzbarsky@mit.edu">Boris Zbarsky</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, March 31, 2009 3:58
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [whatwg] Input type for
phone numbers</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><BR>
<DIV>
<DIV>On Mar 31, 2009, at 10:25 AM, Peter Kasting wrote:</DIV><BR
class=Apple-interchange-newline>
<BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 10:22 AM, Boris Zbarsky <SPAN
dir=ltr><<A
href="mailto:bzbarsky@mit.edu">bzbarsky@mit.edu</A>></SPAN> wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<DIV class=im>I agree that entering a week is pretty rare, though.
;)</DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>As someone working on supporting new input types in WebKit: Supporting
any one form of "date" is nontrivial, but supporting the rest after you
support the first _is_ trivial. So while I'm on the "week is not that
useful" bandwagon, it'll be simple to support once "date" is
supported.</DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><BR></DIV>
<DIV>It depends on the quality of implementation you want to deliver. With a
nice visual date picker, the UI for picking a month or a week is probably
quite different from the UI for picking a day, which in turn would be
different from the UI for picking a time, or a date and time together. For
instance, a day picker would probably only show you month or possibly a 2 or 3
months at a time, whereas that would not make sense for a month picker. Just
having a type-in box with no visual picker would result in a control that
would likely not be usable for the kinds of sites where you enter dates.</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>Regards,</DIV>
<DIV>Maciej</DIV>
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