
Ask HN: Unusual UIs using computer-computer metaphors, like fake filesystems? - yesenadam
A lot of computer UI things, if not most, use real-world metaphors, like windows, files, folders, buttons, paste etc, but I&#x27;m asking about metaphors between two computer domains, like a folder representing a youtube search (ytfs), or a text file representing a wikipedia page (WikipediaFS) etc.<p>What are some other UI ideas, using system features for unintended purposes, that you&#x27;ve come across or thought of? Using our familiarity with one domain in another, in a surprising&#x2F;neat way, so tools meant for one domain can be used elsewhere? Thank you.<p>(I&#x27;m sure &quot;computer-computer metaphors&quot; isn&#x27;t what these things are called! I&#x27;m not sure what to search to learn more.)<p>Synthetic file systems (deriving from Unix&#x27;s &#x27;everything is a file&#x2F;stream of bytes&#x27;?) are one common example of this, as are virtual memory&#x2F;addresses and virtual machines.<p>Omar Rizwan&#x27;s talk at !!Con 2018, <i>Four fake filesystems!</i>, started me thinking about this.
======
Someone
I think it’s not quite what you’re asking for, but do you know of psDoom
([http://psdoom.sourceforge.net/](http://psdoom.sourceforge.net/))?

~~~
yesenadam
Hehe No! Crazy. That sounds a lil like the Adventure Shell, bash as text
adventure game.[0]

It seems _Doom as a tool for system administration_ [1] inspired psDoom. (And
does explain it a lot better, for people like me that don't know psDoom or
Doom) It says "The _mapping of abstract operations to an intuitive
environment_ is a difficult problem. There are two distinct obstacles.." which
is exactly what I wanted, thanks! Hehe that page is very funny, and brilliant.
I'm finding other leads from comments from its many appearances on HN over the
years.

Edit: Also good is Chao's follow-up 2001 paper _Doom as an Interface for
Process Management_ , reporting user feedback ("0.6% were frightened by its
implications") and the huge response to psDoom. That has a lot of fascinating-
looking references. So thanks very much for that.

[0] [http://nadvsh.sourceforge.net/](http://nadvsh.sourceforge.net/)

[1]
[https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/](https://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/)

