3-D DOCUMENT WORKSPACE WITH FOCUS, IMMEDIATE AND TERTIARY SPACES

A three dimensional document workspace for interacting with large numbers of document objects. A document object may be a document or a document collection. The document workspace is divided hierarchically in terms of interaction rates. A focus space is where direct interaction with a document or document collection occurs. An immediate memory space or desktop is for placing pages or books that are in use, but not currently being interacted with. A tertiary space or bookcase is where many books and pages that are not in use, but which it is desirable to have ready access to. Moving document objects in the document workspace is facilitated by touch-drop and flick gestures. The touch-drop gesture addresses the problem of obscuring distant (hence smaller) document objects by presenting a visual line indicating a destination for a moved document object. Flick gestures are used to quickly move document objects within the document workspace. A user may change their view of the document workspace in order to view different portions of the workspace in more detail.