A surface element can be described or demonstrated in a variety of ways DoingStuff.DonaldNoyes.20140917
--- Concepts
- Superficial
- Superficial gives answers when you the user are on the outside of an application.
- You need to interact with content that is inside the application.
- The element that enables interaction between the inside and outside of an application is most helpfully described as its surface.
- The metaphor of surface leaves open the exact means by which a surface manages interaction between user and application, but it is easy to decide whether an application has a surface.''
- A GUI is evidently a surface, but so is a command-line interface or even a teletype.
--- Facets
- A facet is defined as an element.
- Each facet element has a fixed attribute that is a Boolean value.
- When a simple type is defined, you can prevent derivatives of that type from modifying the value of specified facets
- To prevent modification of a facet, add the fixed attribute to the facet and set its value to true.
- Facets can only appear once in a type definition except for enumeration and pattern facets.
- Enumeration and pattern facets can have multiple entries and are grouped together.
--- Display of multidimensional data
- A surface chart shows a three-dimensional surface that connects a set of data points.
- A surface chart is useful when you want to find optimum combinations between two sets of data.
- As in a topographic map, the colors and patterns in a surface chart indicate areas that contain the same range of values. Unlike other chart types, a surface chart does not use colors to distinguish the data series — colors are used to distinguish the values instead.
- To enhance a surface chart, you can change the colors and use transparency to display color bands that are obscured in the back of the chart.