From: owner-3dui@hitl.washington.edu on behalf of Drew Kessler
[dkessler@eecs.lehigh.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2001 4:09 PM
To: 3dui List
Subject: Re: text/number input in VEs

On Wednesday, September 26, 2001, Doug Bowman wrote:
...
 > What do you think? Is text/
 > number entry an important task for immersive VEs? Why or why not?

Doug,

I don't have any references to pass on, but I do have an opinion as to
the answer to your questions:

It seems to me that text and number entry is an important task if
precision is critical to an application.  The two sub-tasks that I can
think of that requires a user to enter text are annotation and
interactive building of geometry such as signs and buttons (the ones
you can press).  An annotation could easily and quickly be given as an
audio clip to be replayed.  However, if the quality of the audio is
poor or the listener is not fluent in the spoken language,
misunderstandings can occur.  If the annotation is entered as text,
the representation is more precise, and there is less chance of
misunderstanding.

Similarly, if an approximate value is needed, one could easily
implement a 3D dial or valuator that could be manipulated to provide
the value of the number.  Of course, if the value represents a
position, then the interaction could be more direct.  But if the value
of the number needs to be given very precisely, a method to enter the
number directly would be useful.

-Drew

-- 
___________________________________________________________________________
G. Drew Kessler, Ph.D., Assistant Professor         dkessler@cse.lehigh.edu
Computer Science and Engineering Department        Office: 118A Packard Lab
19 Memorial Drive West                              Phone:    (610)758-4818
Lehigh University                                     Fax:    (610)758-6279
Bethlehem, PA, USA 18015               http://www.cse.lehigh.edu/~dkessler/