Fractal View Lisp Printer

Computer users must interact with large amounts of information through video displays which are physically limited in size. The authors proposed a fractal-based method for information display control which can simultaneously display the details near user's focus and major landmarks away. This paper describes an application of this method to the Lisp printer. In general, the Lisp printer controls the display of a Lisp object by focusing on the depth of the object and number of siblings at each depth. However, with this method: (1) the total amount changes considerably corresponding to the target object; (2) it also

changes considerably when each threshold is incremented or decremented; (3) it is hard to adjust two thresholds. We implemented a Lisp printer based on our fractal-based method, and showed its effectiveness through the comparative experiment to the traditional printer. We, moreover, extended this printer to a focus-oriented printer which uses another feature of our method, the integration of details and contexts.

• 1.Hideki Koike: An Application of Fractal Theory to Information Display, Fractals: An Interdisciplinary Journal on the Complex Geometry of Nature, Vol.1, No.3, World Scientific, pp.663-670, 1993.