From: mxr@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Martin Reddy)
Subject: Re: TECH: Virtual Unix FS?
Date: November 17, 1995
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh


From: mxr@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Martin Reddy)

> Something similar was made for Jurassic Park, when the little girl was
> hacking the unix system. It was not the find command's output though,
> but pretty much a 3D hierarchical file menu. I think it's availble a
> SGI's ftp site.

Yes, the program is called "fsn" (pronounced fusion, seemingly). It scans
your directory structure and then lets you zoom about a 3D environment
representing your file space. You can find the program in the directory:

	ftp://ftp.sgi.com/sgi/fsn

> Doing such thing would not be a major hassle, but you would have to
> navigate into a bunch of room (e.g. it would take time) just to get to
> a document.

This is what I found: the interface was a nice 3D gimmick (I don't mean
this in a demeaning manner), but as a useful tool, I could access and
interrogate my files far quicker with a straight command-line or GUI
paradigm. Although, perhaps, this is also a call for further investigation
into good mechanisms to present 3D spaces and enable efficient navigation
within them?

Martin.


+============================================================================+
| Martin Reddy                                    Dept. of Computer Science  |
|                                                 University of Edinburgh    |
| e-mail : mxr@dcs.ed.ac.uk                       Mayfield Road, EH9 3JZ     |
| http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/mxr/               Tel : (0131) 650 5164      |
+============================================================================+