From:  David Tolpin <dat@infos.msk.su>
Subject: Re: Why 3 button mice in Oberon?
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 17:00:11 GMT
Reply-To: dat@infos.msk.su
Organization: InfoSoft (Echo2News)

In a msg on <Sep 27 14:27>, smith@ctron.com  of 66:66/0.999  writes:

 > interface design, Motif, Mac and Open Look.  That qualifies me to a 
 > few opinions about user interface design, I think, and in that 
 > opinion, interclicking is one of a number of user-interface ideas 
 > Wirth imbedded in the Oberon System that is really, really, poor.
 > 

 > Ulrich may be right that it can be learned, the main point from a 
 > user- nterface perspective is: it shouldn't have to be.  

>From this point of view the worst examples  of user interface is a pencil,
very long time must be spent before one starts to use it intuitively.

 > There are 
 > two reasons. Firstly, it is non-intuitive.  The only similar idea 
 > to be found outside of computer science is "chording" in music.  
 > Few people find that an easy idea to handle (and the exceptions 
 > merely prove the rule).  

Several examples of doing two actions concurrently:

car driving,
tailoring,
most of arts, including pictures, sculptures etc,
mixing milk and tea at breakfast,
and many other things.

And difference between pressing, clicking and double-clicking is like staccato. 
That is not easier than chording.

 > Secondly, it presumes a degree of manual dexterity that many people may 
 > not have.  

Why? I didn't read about the evidence (at least patterns desciption) that many 
people cannot move their fingers separately.

 > It used to be people objected to the mouse on the grounds of having to 
 > remove their hands from the keyboard.  These complaints, in my 
 > experience, have dropped off dramatically (though they are still heard now 
 > and again), but have been replaced by what amounts to complaints about 
 > an over-reliance on hand-eye coordination.  

It is not over-reliance, the mode life requires often much more sofisticated 
things to do.

 > In short, many people 
 > just feel clumsy with the mouse, but are confident of their ability 
 > to eventually hunt-and-peck even the obtuse command.  To add to the 
 > mouse a sophisticated repertoire of two and three finger operations 
 > compounds this problem.

I don't think that presshing Ctrl-Shift-F12 to print a document is easier than 
to press two buttons on the mouse. By the way, don't you think it is wise to 
make cancelling a command a bit more difficult than invoking (in Oberon 
cancelling is the only case of using three-buttons combination.)

 > The Oberon system's interface is an experts design - like a Unix 
 > shell, it is very powerful but it relies on many non-intuitive 
 > concepts, and so is a big pain to learn.  

The concepts are non-intuitive for one that already learned other ways of using 
mouse. And the opposite would be if Oberon System apper first. 

 > It is, in fact, built on 
 > a weird, mouse-driven command line paradigm, combining the worst 
 > features of both.  

Command line paradigm is not the same as calling command with parameters. Which 
worst features of those two paradigm are inherited by Oberon? And which best 
are forgotten?

 > It requires a new user to internalize a 
 > considerable number of concepts and "finger macros" - far more than 
 > we now know is needed.  None of this would be objectionable if 
 > this interface was even a little bit standard - but nothing else is 
 > even remotely similar, Wirth ignored virtually _all_ prior art but 
 > his own.  

Well, actually this is the heart of your article. The most significant problem 
with Oberon is not that it is built upon one or another paradigm, and is not 
that double-clicking is easier than pressing two buttons, but just that Oberon 
does not follow accepted traditions in user-interface.

 > You cannot use Mac or Open Look or Motif concepts in the 
 > Oberon system - nor can you use anything you learn in Oberon in any 
 > of the others.  From a simple cost- effectiveness point of view, 
 > Oberon looses.

>From a simple cost-effectiveness point of view Oberon looses, as well as 
everything that isn't made looking at the simple cost-effectiveness. What is 
done is that an alternative approach is offered. And it is sientifically 
incorrect to judge it from the point of view of Motif and OpenLook trained u

ser. 

---
 * Origin: David Tolpin from Northern Hills, dat@infos.msk.su (66:66/0.7)