12 Apr
2007
12 Apr
'07
3:25 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 11 Apr 2007 at 23:07, Joost van de Griek wrote:
Maybe we are, but I hardly think that's relevant.
On 4/11/07 9:35 PM, Chris M wrote:
Excuse me, but we're talking about two different things, aren't we?
Or is my age showing again? I really don't think it's realistic to
operate a modern computer w/a
non-windowed environment these days. Many will disagree, and that's their
prerogative, someone said something about eye-candy, but I think it comes down
to cheating yourself of functionality.
You give up some functionality, gain other functionality. Like almost
everything, a GUI is a trade-off. Unless I've got my wires crossed (again),
"windowing" and "GUI" have
very little to do with another. That is, you can have text-mode
winodws and windowless graphics, no?
A windowed environment is a GUI, yes?
So what's meant here?
What's meant here is that the Chris M has a point: you *do* cheat yourself of some
functionality when using a non-windowed environment "these days". However, you
also cheat yourself of functionality exactly by using a windows environment. There
are things that are much more efficient if you don't have to wrestle the
point-and-click interface. Look at *real* power users, even on windowed systems.
They hardly touch the mouse. It's all keyboard shortcuts, and it's *way* faster.
The downside is having to master all those cryptic gestures and key combinations.
,xtG
tsooJ
12 Apr
12 Apr
4:15 a.m.
A windowed environment is a GUI, yes?
Not necessarily. NetBSD - and presumably others - ships with
window(1), which provides a text-mode windowing environment. Nothing
graphical about it any more than any text "terminal" necessarily is.
What's meant here is that the Chris M has a point:
you *do* cheat
yourself of some functionality when using a non-windowed environment
"these days".
I'm not sure "cheat" is really an appropriate word, but yes, you lose
some functionality when you drop windowing.
Sometimes that functionality is irrelevant, or worth losing to get some
other benefit. Sometimes it's not.
However, you also cheat yourself of functionality
exactly by using a
windows environment. There are things that are much more efficient
if you don't have to wrestle the point-and-click interface.
Windowing environments don't necessarily mean point-and-click. In my
own X-based environment, for example, I can work productively for hours
- and not just all in the same window, either - without touching the
mouse. As you yourself said,
Look at *real* power users, even on windowed systems.
They hardly
touch the mouse.
It's not GUI environments that lose the functionality you're talking
about; it's about a particular subclass of GUI environments that are
designed - misdesigned, arguably - so as to compel their users to
switch between keyboard and mouse comparatively frequently (on a
timescale of seconds to minutes).
It's all keyboard shortcuts, and it's *way*
faster. The downside is
having to master all those cryptic gestures and key combinations.
Sounds to me as though you're talking about primarily point-and-click
windowing environments with keyboard "shortcuts" grafted on, rather
than environments designed from the ground up to be keyboard-driven.
(That one particularly dominant windowing environment is an especially
egregious example of this doesn't help....)
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
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10:58 a.m.
At 02:25 AM 4/12/2007, jvdg at sparcpark.net wrote:
Look at *real* power users, even on windowed systems.
They hardly touch the mouse. It's all keyboard shortcuts, and it's *way* faster.
The downside is having to master all those cryptic gestures and key combinations.
Is there a wiki where we can enter FAQs and question myths?
I quote my response from several years ago.
- John
At 11:10 PM 5/22/01 -0400, Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
In his interview in ``Programmers at Work,'' he
stated he didn't care for
mice at all, as it forces you to relocate your hands from the keyboard to
the mouse, and that most navigation could be done faster via the keyboard
than with a mouse [3]. And his current work he mentions his dislike of the
mouse.
[3] In my experience, that's true once you learn how to navigate a
document via the keyboard. But there are some things I like using
a mouse for though.
It's interesting to note that another Apple-raised interface
theorist, Bruce Tognazzini, http://www.asktog.com/ believes
(and claims to have tested and proved) that keyboard-based,
chording shortcut users engage in a momentary lapse of consciousness
in which they recall and then position their hands for the
keystroke, and that although they *think* they're faster
than a mouse, they're not.
See his 1991 book "Tog on Interface", where he claims in the 80s
Apple performed $50M in tests that showed that people consistently
reported believing that keyboarding (using shortcuts, etc.) was faster
than mousing, yet the stopwatch consistently showed that mousing was
faster than keyboarding.
His explanation for this is that deciding among abstract symbols is
a high-level cognitive function, and that this decision is not only
boring, but that the user experiences near-amnesia in the approximately
two seconds needed to remember the chord keystroke. On the other hand,
Tog also argues that two-handed chords (think the handy cut-and-paste
CTRL/C /V) result in solid productivity gains.
Around page 180, where in fact he discusses Raskin's Cat interface and
the decision to use a single dedicated key for operations such as "Find",
Tog admits was actually fifty times faster than the Mac's mouse-move.
This reminds me of the old joke about voice interface word processors:
"Up, up, up, left, left, left, left, no right, stop, yes, right
there ... delete that word." Or the other half of the joke, where
people poke their head over a cubicle wall and shout a command
like "format c: yes i am sure".
- John
1:18 p.m.
It's interesting to note that another Apple-raised
interface
theorist, Bruce Tognazzini, http://www.asktog.com/ believes (and
claims to have tested and proved) that keyboard-based, chording
shortcut users engage in a momentary lapse of consciousness in which
they recall and then position their hands for the keystroke, and that
although they *think* they're faster than a mouse, they're not.
I suspect that this is true only when the keyboard gesture is
relatively unfamiliar. Use the same gesture for the same function
frequently and for a few years and I believe this aspect will
completely disappear - I have certainly found this true for myself;
when I create a new gesture for my own use, it takes a lot of use, but
after it's had that "a lot of use", it becomes as reflexive, as
subconscious, as deeply wired into my fingers, so to speak, as, say,
the locations of the letters. In my favourite text editor, I no longer
think about the keystrokes for performing routine functions; my
consciousness decides to, say, delete-word backward, or save-file, and
my fingers find the appropriate buttons without any further conscious
action - just as I decide to type, say, "decide", and my fingers find
the appropriate buttons in the appropriate order without further
intervention from my conscious.
Unless the studies in question specifically included people who had had
years of experience with the gesture in question, in which case I would
very much like to see a reference, because I want to read up on it.
See his 1991 book "Tog on Interface", where
he claims in the 80s
Apple performed $50M in tests that showed that people consistently
reported believing that keyboarding (using shortcuts, etc.) was
faster than mousing, yet the stopwatch consistently showed that
mousing was faster than keyboarding.
In the 80s? Then I feel quite sure none of the subjects had the years
of experience I wrote of above. (Not that this is necessarily a
problem with the study for the purposes for which it was done, which
was presumably for mass-market users, most of which will be new to the
system. Just that it invalidates the results when applied to people
who *have* had that experience - that it's really measuring the effect
of inexperience with inherently meaningless keyboard gestures versus
the inherent meaningfulness of mouse genstures.)
His explanation for this is that deciding among
abstract symbols is a
high-level cognitive function, and that this decision is not only
boring, but that the user experiences near-amnesia in the
approximately two seconds needed to remember the chord keystroke.
*Two seconds*? Just to remember the keystroke?? *Definitely*
unpracticed users! Even when using Windows (which I occasionally do at
work), I can windows-R-return and get a command window up faster than
the time it's supposed to take me to merely remember how to do it.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
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X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
2:21 p.m.
At 12:18 PM 4/12/2007, der Mouse wrote:
*Two seconds*? Just to remember the keystroke??
*Definitely*
unpracticed users! Even when using Windows (which I occasionally do at
work), I can windows-R-return and get a command window up faster than
the time it's supposed to take me to merely remember how to do it.
No doubt there will be a standard distribution of experience
and elapsed times, as well as many other subtle differences.
I don't think it takes years to learn and rely on chords and
function key shortcuts. Months or weeks, maybe, if you used
them all day. I'd also argue that there's an angle of physical-based
memory involved, too. My fingers remember CTRL/X CTRL/C CTRL/V because
I'm cutting, copying and pasting while typing, but I also have
a gestural memory corresponding to the location of various
pop-up contextual menus within other apps.
I would hope there have been more studies since Apple's.
- John
4:47 p.m.
At 12:18 PM 4/12/2007, der Mouse wrote:
Two seconds is hogwash - when you use an editor daily, it gets
into your blood, and you have a hard time NOT using those keystrokes
automatically when you are in another environment.
And where is the mention of users time taken to determine which of
a zillion little icons to click on (I often have to "hover" over
them until the description pops up) - or the time wasted when you
"miss" a section on a drop-down menu (or closely spaced icons) and
have to recover from it.
It's been my observation that such "studies" are typically performed
by a group of GUI supportors with some of them taking the mouse, and
the others taking a list of command-keys which they have to keep
looking at (hence the two seconds). Often the task measured is some
lookup function, not involving extensive keyboard entry (where letting
go and re-acquiring the mouse gets tedious). Not surprisingly, the
results show that the mouse is vastly superiour and we should all
immediately remove the cursor and control keys from our keyboards.
In case you guys haven't figured it out yet - pretty much anything can
be measured in such a way that it appears to be superiour to anything
else.
Dave
Dilbert: Our products are killing people.
Pointy haired guy: No, upper management will not like thats
let me think....
Pointy haired guy: There's been a decline in unsatisfied customers!
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html
*Two seconds*? Just to remember the keystroke??
*Definitely*
unpracticed users! Even when using Windows (which I occasionally do at
work), I can windows-R-return and get a command window up faster than
the time it's supposed to take me to merely remember how to do it.
No doubt there will be a standard distribution of experience
and elapsed times, as well as many other subtle differences.
I don't think it takes years to learn and rely on chords and
function key shortcuts. Months or weeks, maybe, if you used
them all day. I'd also argue that there's an angle of physical-based
memory involved, too. My fingers remember CTRL/X CTRL/C CTRL/V because
I'm cutting, copying and pasting while typing, but I also have
a gestural memory corresponding to the location of various
pop-up contextual menus within other apps.
I would hope there have been more studies since Apple's.
4:05 p.m.
At 03:47 PM 4/12/2007, Dave Dunfield wrote:
In case you guys haven't figured it out yet -
pretty much anything can
be measured in such a way that it appears to be superiour to anything else.
All we need to do is find an alternative study that watched
20-year 'vi' and Emacs users? Computer-human interaction has
been studied for quite a while; I don't know enough about it
to quote chapter and verse, though.
I question Tog's "$50 million dollar study" just as much.
That's a lot of lettuce.
- John
4:24 p.m.
I question Tog's "$50 million dollar
study" just as much.
That's a lot of lettuce.
On the other hand, Apple doesn't exactly do cost-economical anything.
--
----------------------------------- personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ ---
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- If there was a hole, I would jump into it. -- Gackt Camui ------------------
9:38 p.m.
> > I question Tog's "$50 million
dollar study" just as much.
> > That's a lot of lettuce.
> On the other hand, Apple doesn't exactly do
cost-economical anything.
Except mouse buttons :)
Nothing economical about that one either. The mouse costs twice as much and
until recently had half the buttons.
--
----------------------------------- personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ ---
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- This message will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim. -- M:I ----
13 Apr
13 Apr
5:08 a.m.
On Friday 13 April 2007 02:38:07 Cameron Kaiser wrote:
Except mouse buttons :)
Nothing economical about that one either. The mouse costs twice as much and
until recently had half the buttons.
The expensive bit is knowing which button to leave off...
Gordon
I question
Tog's "$50 million dollar study" just as much.
That's a lot of lettuce.
On the other hand, Apple doesn't exactly do cost-economical anything. 
12 Apr
12 Apr
4:46 p.m.
--- John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> wrote:
At 11:10 PM 5/22/01 -0400, Sean 'Captain
Napalm'
Conner wrote:
This is precisely the reason I prefer using a laptop
with a trackpad thing. Although your hand indeed has
to leave the k/b, it don't have to go far. If you have
a prehensile enough thumb LOL, it doesn't have to
leave at all...
____________________________________________________________________________________
Be a PS3 game guru.
Get your game face on with the latest PS3 news and previews at Yahoo! Games.
http://videogames.yahoo.com/platform?platform=120121
In his interview in ``Programmers at
Work,'' he
stated he didn't care for
mice at all, as it forces you to relocate your
hands from the keyboard to
the mouse, and that most navigation could be done
faster via the keyboard
>than with a mouse [3]. 
5:25 p.m.
On 12 Apr 2007 at 13:46, Chris M wrote:
This is precisely the reason I prefer using a laptop
with a trackpad thing. Although your hand indeed has
to leave the k/b, it don't have to go far. If you have
a prehensile enough thumb LOL, it doesn't have to
leave at all...
Anything that has you leave the home key position is not desirable.
That was the attraction of Wordstar (at least to those of us who
learned to type on an Underwood).
Cheers,
Chuck
16 Apr
16 Apr
5:16 a.m.
On Thu, 2007-04-12 at 09:58 -0500, John Foust wrote:
See his 1991 book "Tog on Interface", where
he claims in the 80s
Apple performed $50M in tests that showed that people consistently
reported believing that keyboarding (using shortcuts, etc.) was faster
than mousing, yet the stopwatch consistently showed that mousing was
faster than keyboarding.
Sorry, John, that's simply not true. Casual observation will show
that; there's no need for a $50M study to determine it. In point of
fact, job sites where typing output needs to be maximized tend to use
old copies of WordStar for their text editing, as ALL commands in WS can
be accomplished by the standard typewriter keys, plus the control key.
People can then type without breaking their concentration by either
trying to find the correct shift state (Shift, Control, and Alt)
function key, or taking hands off the keyboard to reach for the mouse,
move the pointer up to the proper pull-down menu, open it, find the
correct selection, and select it.
I note that this is a classic example of buying results. "Hey, we
have 50 Million, and we want to prove that a mouse system is faster than
a keyboard system. Who wants to help?" I'm sure this study, if
published at all, was published in The Journal of Irreproducible
Results. What are the methods? I would be willing to bet that it has
not been peer-reviewed. The phrases "media buy," "bollocks" and
"Public
Relations" come to mind immediately.
Scientists and researchers have recently shown themselves to be
whores for their funding. There is no clearer proof of this than the
relatively small number of scientists protesting the furor over the
imaginary link between planetary temperature cycles and alleged human
effects. While a simple logical case can be made for a human cause of
the current warming trend, even a cursory examination of the data
already collected indicates STRONG support for the idea that humans play
no, or close to no, role in the current warming. Scientists have
discovered that panic induces increased funding, so, strangely enough,
all of their recent releases are panic-inducing. Those who don't "play
along" lose their funding.
Peace,
Warren E. Wolfe
wizard at voyager.net
8:44 a.m.
At 04:16 AM 4/16/2007, Warren Wolfe wrote:
On Thu, 2007-04-12 at 09:58 -0500, John Foust wrote:
The study of computer-human interaction is an old one; I'm not adept
in its studies and research. Instead of relying on my gut as a standard
of reference, I quoted the one reference to a study that I knew offhand.
I suggest sigchi.org as a starting point if we want to examine
the field to find other relevant studies.
A very casual search there found another study abstract:
Graphical versus Character-Based Word Processors: An Analysis of User
Performance It's All about Choice
/ d'Ydewalle, Gery / Leemans, Jurgen / Van Rensbergen, Johan Behaviour
and Information Technology 1995 v.14 n.4 p.208-214
Abstract: The study investigates how experienced computer users take
advantage of the availability of graphic user interfaces in a word
processing task. Performance time and actions were compared in three
groups of subjects working respectively with WordPerfect 5.1, WordPerfect
for Windows, or WordPerfect V2.00 for the Macintosh. The three groups
did not differ in efficiency: they performed the word processing task
at the same speed. Very few WordPerfect 5.1 users worked with the
pull-down menus; the great majority preferred using the function key
shortcuts. No significant difference in menu use was noted between
the two graphical user interface word processors (Windows and Macintosh).
Windows users did not apply shortcuts to move text, but used menus or
the button bar instead. There was no difference in the use of the mouse
between the Windows and Macintosh groups. While better task satisfaction
is often reported with the availability of graphical user interfaces,
our findings are in agreement with other studies suggesting that experienced
users don't perform more efficiently with such a computer environment.
which might also point out that it's reasonable that we might expect
expert users to behave differently than newbies, and that there are other
dimensions we might want to consider such as "task satisfaction".
See his 1991 book "Tog on Interface",
where he claims in the 80s
Sorry, John, that's simply not true. Casual observation will show
that; there's no need for a $50M study to determine it. While a simple logical case can be made for a human
cause of
the current warming trend, even a cursory examination of the data
already collected indicates STRONG support for the idea that humans play
no, or close to no, role in the current warming. Scientists have
discovered that panic induces increased funding, so, strangely enough,
all of their recent releases are panic-inducing. Those who don't "play
along" lose their funding.
And now you're trolling and have wandering off topic.
- John
12 Apr
12 Apr
11:51 a.m.
On 12 Apr 2007 at 9:25, jvdg at sparcpark.net wrote:
What's meant here is that the Chris M has a point:
you *do* cheat yourself of some
functionality when using a non-windowed environment "these days". However, you
also cheat yourself of functionality exactly by using a windows environment. There
are things that are much more efficient if you don't have to wrestle the
point-and-click interface.
My point was that graphical capabilities are perhaps sufficient, but
not necessary for a windowed environment. Similarly, a windowed
environment does not require graphics. I have a copy of Mewel
(including source code) here that illustrates that quite nicely.
If I look at the screen I'm working with now under MS Windows, one
thing that strikes me is that, with the exception of a few icons,
it's almost entirely text. By and large, the graphics aspect is
being wasted on me at this time.
On the other hand, when I'm working on musical scores, the complexity
of the notation demands that I always keep the screen as a single
window. Windowing is pretty much wasted there, although graphics is
not. In fact, music programs that have modal command entry, using
windowing to display sub-menus are incredibly annoying and slow to
use.
Whether windowing serves games, I can't say. I've not played one
since the days of SIMCGA (when I got my fill).
To some, windowing implies only a message-passing event-based
operating system interface, with keystrokes, mouse movements, etc.
going to the window currently holding the focus.
When we carelessly say "windowing is the same as GUI", we're simply
displaying fuzzy thinking and can easily fall into the trap of
thinking that there's only one way to accomplish a task. Judging
from the number of repetitive stress injuries and
eyestrain that
industry endures, perhaps graphical message-passing windows
aren't
the best way.
Canon Cat owners are invited to comment.
Cheers,
Chuck
12:46 p.m.
On 4/12/07, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
My point was that graphical capabilities are perhaps
sufficient, but
not necessary for a windowed environment. Similarly, a windowed
environment does not require graphics. I have a copy of Mewel
(including source code) here that illustrates that quite nicely.
I think perhaps the terminology that folks are dancing around is that
"WIMP != windows"... the now-deprecated term for MS Windows, classic
MacOS, AmigaOS, and their ilk was, at the time they were new, "WIMP"
for Windows, Icons, Menus and Pulldowns (or was it "Pop-ups" or
"Pointers"?) There were plenty of text-box-based windowish
applications for DOS, or for dumb terminals off of DEC machines, but
they typically lacked attached menu bars, pop-up or drop-down ,menus,
or even a pointing device. That, I think is more the defining
characteristic than the window itself, but over time, the window is
what people fixate on, not the setting of the window.
So to be clear, I am agreeing with the position that one can have
Windows outside of a GUI (and that one can have a GUI that lacks
windows, such as a CAD program), but in the mind of the masses, GUIs
== windows.
-ethan
13 Apr
13 Apr
6:15 a.m.
On 13/04/2007 04:13, Ensor wrote:
No. "W"indows, "I"cons, "M"enus, "P"ointer
The mouse *is* the pointer (though it could be any other pointing
device, of course).
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
...."WIMP" for Windows, Icons, Menus and Pulldowns (or was it
"Pop-ups" or "Pointers"?)....
"W"indows, "I"cons, "M"ouse, "P"ointer 
10:43 a.m.
On Friday 13 April 2007 03:15, Pete Turnbull wrote:
On 13/04/2007 04:13, Ensor wrote:
No. "W"indows, "I"cons, "M"enus, "P"ointer
The mouse *is* the pointer (though it could be any other pointing
device, of course).
I'm reading "A History of Modern Computing", 2nd Edition, Paul Ceruzzi,
Curator of Aerospace Electronics and Computing at the National Air and Space
Museum.
Page 261 - "Apple, not Xerox, brought the concept of windows, icons, a mouse,
and pull-down menus (the WIMP interface) to a mass market..."
Regards,
Lyle
--
Lyle Bickley
Bickley Consulting West Inc.
Mountain View, CA
http://bickleywest.com
"Black holes are where God is dividing by zero"
...."WIMP" for Windows, Icons, Menus and Pulldowns (or was it
"Pop-ups" or "Pointers"?)....
"W"indows, "I"cons, "M"ouse, "P"ointer 
14 Apr
14 Apr
4:27 a.m.
Lyle Bickley wrote:
<snip>
Page 261 - "Apple, not Xerox, brought the concept of windows, icons, a mouse,
and pull-down menus (the WIMP interface) to a mass market..."
Regards,
Lyle
The qualifying portion of that sentence is "mass market". WIMP existed
years before apple saw the inside of that garage.
It's the same as stating Henry Ford invented the automobile. ( bad car
analogy)
Jim.
26 Apr
26 Apr
4:48 p.m.
New subject: "A History of Modern Computing", Paul Ceruzzi from Re: *nix on "classic" systems
>I'm reading "A History of Modern
Computing", 2nd Edition, Paul Ceruzzi,
Great book. Highly recommended. My review is at
http://www.dacs.org/archive/0411/feature2.htm.
Jim
12 Apr
12 Apr
1:48 p.m.
Rumor has it that jvdg at sparcpark.net may have mentioned these words:
A windowed environment is a GUI, yes?
No.
Ontopically, on my Tandy Color Computer 3, there's an operating system
called OS-9 (and a still updated open-source version, NitrOS-9) which has
access to multiple text windows (and multiple pages of these, which you can
select with the 'Clear' key) but does not have any graphical anything built
into the OS.
Offtopically, on Linux, if you build the right libraries (JPEG/GIF/PNG,
etc.), you can build a graphical browser called links that when called with
the -g option, will give you a full graphical user interface (mouse
pointer, displays pictures, etc...) but is not windowed. No tabbed
browsing, no popups - it basically takes over the framebuffer & shows
graphics, but it doesn't rely on X and you can't even run more than one
instance of it (at least on my machine, it b0rks if you try to alt-Fx into
a different text window and you have to kill -9 the process)
You can quite easily have one or the other without lumping them together.
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Profile, don't speculate."
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | Daniel J. Bernstein
zmerch at 30below.com |
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ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
cclist＠sydex.com -
chrism3667＠yahoo.com -
classiccmp＠memory-alpha.org.uk -
dave06a＠dunfield.com -
davis＠saw.net -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
gordon＠gjcp.net -
jfoust＠threedee.com -
julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk -
jvdg＠sparcpark.net -
lbickley＠bickleywest.com -
mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA -
pete＠dunnington.plus.com -
scheefj＠netscape.net -
spectre＠floodgap.com -
wizard＠voyager.net -
zmerch-cctalk＠30below.com