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Element 11

11●›
O
Open

Go into a thing.

double-click · tap · Return

First known

From a history

1981Xerox Star's OPEN function key, one of its generic commands.

See also: Lisa's double-click to open, 1983 (unverified).

April 1981. Gypsy's double-click (1974–75) selected a word; it opened nothing.

Dated by a reputable history or a participant's own account. The source.

  • ReadingValue

Specimen № 11 — operate freely

Click it twice, inside the iris. Then slow down and see.

Fig. 11 — Double Click

000 readings · idle

Anatomy of Double Click

  1. 01First click
    You
    Clicks once.
    It
    Treats it as a click, and starts a short clock.
  2. 02Interval
    You
    Waits, usually less than half a second.
    It
    Holds its judgment until the clock runs out.
  3. 03Second click
    You
    Clicks again, near the same spot.
    It
    Upgrades the meaning: select becomes open.
  4. 04Timeout
    You
    Misses the window.
    It
    Counts two separate clicks. The person merely clicked twice.

Phases light as the specimen above registers them. The dark ones are the ones it can't sense.

Lineage

Tim Mott came up with the double click for the Gypsy editor at Xerox PARC, around 1975, to select a word. Apple's Lisa and Macintosh made it the way to open anything: a second verb for a mouse with one button.

Descends from
Double Click
Gave rise to
  • Triple Clickselect the paragraph

Under delegation

Dissolves

  1. Survives
  2. Mutates
  3. Dissolves

The double click exists because one button had to carry two meanings, told apart by timing alone. Nobody double-clicks a model. When the system can ask what you meant, or infer it, the timing trick isn't needed. The lesson survives it: meaning carried by rhythm is invisible, and invisible meaning leaves people out.

Becomes

Down the Signal column

  1. it reactsPPress
  2. it followsHHold
  3. it targetsOOpen
  4. it remembersScSchedule
  5. it connectsNNotify
  6. it guessesWWake
  7. it actsIInterrupt

Read down and Press gets heavier: each step is the same act, on a machine that keeps track of more.

Bodies

The act stays put while the hardware changes. These are some of the forms Open takes.

  • double-click
  • tap
  • Return

From the 2021 table

This was a tile of its own. On this table it is a form of Open, and its old address lands here.

  • Double ClickIsotopeThe same act in another body.Operate ↑