Skip to content
The table

The shelf

Some interactions ship as one gesture but are two acts bonded together. Right-click is a pick that summons a choice; cut is a copy and then a delete, so tightly bound they share a key. They were tiles on the 2021 table. On this one they come off it and sit here, written in the table’s own elements.

→the first summons the second·one, then the other, as one act⊕merged into one motion

  1. S1

    Right-click

    12PkPicksummons15ChChoose

    The click summons the menu; the menu supplies the verb.

    Specimen № S1 — operate freely

    Right-click the word, the picture, the link — and the nothing.

    Fig. S1 — Right-click

    000 readings · idle

    Anatomy of Right-click

    1. 01Point
      You
      Puts the pointer on a thing.
      It
      Knows the noun before any verb is chosen.
    2. 02Ask
      You
      Presses the secondary button.
      It
      Opens the verbs that fit this noun, and only those.
    3. 03Choose
      You
      Picks one.
      It
      Applies it to the thing under the pointer.
    4. 04Dismiss
      You
      Clicks elsewhere, or presses Escape.
      It
      Closes the menu with nothing changed.

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

    Lineage

    The Alto's mouse had three buttons, and Smalltalk at Xerox PARC gave one of them pop-up menus in the 1970s. Windows 95 made the right-click context menu universal.

    Descends from
    Right-click
    Gave rise to

    Under delegation

    Mutates

    1. Survives
    2. Mutates
    3. Dissolves

    The context menu was the first interface to ask "what can this thing do?" and answer with a list. A model can answer with more than a list: actions composed for this object, in this situation. The risk is the opportunity's twin. A menu was honest because it was finite, and generated verbs have to show where they came from.

    Becomes

  2. S2

    Cut

    22CoCopythen24DeDelete

    Two verbs bound so tightly they ship as one key.

  3. S3

    Highlight

    20SeSelectthen34AtAnnotate

    The selection is the annotation.

  4. S4

    Crop

    20SeSelectthen24DeDelete

    Keep the inside, delete the rest.

  5. S5

    Screenshot

    20SeSelectthen22CoCopy

    A copy of what you can see, not of what is there.

  6. S6

    Multi-line Edit

    20SeSelectthen8TType

    One selection, many carets, the same words.

  7. S7

    Retype

    16FiFill inthen28CmCompare

    Verification by repetition: type it twice and let the machine compare.

  8. S8

    Sort

    15ChChoosesummons9CCommand

    Pick a key, and the verb puts everything in its order.

  9. S9

    Pull to refresh

    10SScrollsummons9CCommand

    Scroll past the top, and the overscroll becomes a verb.