Eidola Notation Gallery

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Discussion

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When I program using objects I lose track of what does what, what the precise genealogy is and even where my data is. (I never have scoping problems, though...bizarre.) My solution was to draw the objects as real graphic images (e.g. a fish, or speech box, or whatever was easy to remember) on a piece of paper.

Take an object and it is represented by a graphic. It could be any kind of graphic, but the programmer has to have a choice. Suppose it's a fish. Roll the mouse over the fish's head and a thought balloon (like in the comics) pops up and shows a small picture of the parent objects. Click on the thought balloon and you get a detailed view which can be viewed or edited and will have its own parent object thought balloon. Click on the tail of the fish and you get a thought balloon with an image of the data about the child objects etc. Click on the belly of the fish and you get a speech box with the meta-data and variables passed and expected, and also a thought box with the code, click on either and you can view details and edit. If the programmer has an object that goes around cleaning up allocated memory after the original object that requested has gone then the programmer can change the graphic from a fish to a raccoon (it'd be a possum here but our possums are more like your raccoons than your opossums). Or any other graphic that was available, obviously with the option to include new ones. Fire engines, rubbish trucks, prostitutes, priests, candles, swords anything that you can think of.

The limits are endless. Drag and drop inheritance. Scroll through the generations with the mouse wheel. The other mouse button would become invaluable (and most likely assignable, click the wheel button to change the assignation). Really the options are endless, and the potential is way beyond my vision!

So, how about it? Can pictorial names work? Are some pictorial metaphors more likely to succeed than other? What will it take to make a smooth user interface for these ideas?