HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: lecom@slhp1.epfl.ch (Claude Lecommandeur)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 26 Aug 92 08:48:37 GMT
Followup-To: alt.religion.computers
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

In article <1992Aug23.020825.3490@uwm.edu>, markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Hunk) writes:
|> In article <1992Aug20.181915.2357@twg.com> "David Herron" <david@twg.com> writes:
|> >To a computer expert (I've been programming for 19.5 years now) this 
|> >visualization is second nature.  In order to design/write/debug software
|> >we must be able to visualize computer processes.  Most people do not have
|> >that sort of background and thus have a hard time with it.
|> 
|> Speak for yourself.  When I write software, I derive it via purely algebraic
                        ---------------------

Does it happen very often ?


|> manipulations with little or no regard to what process is actually going on.
|> 
|> For instance, the Tower of Hanoi solution below is typical of what I do.  I
|> don't even need to bother testing or debugging it, since I already PROVED
|> it will work (under the assumption that long integers are 32 bits, that the
|> parameter N (below) is <= 31, that you're compiling with an ANSI-C compiler,
|> and your system has sufficient memory.).
|> 
|> I haven't the slightest idea what it's actually doing and never even bothered
|> trying to visualize it.  All I know is that it works.
|> 
|> /* Towers of Hanoi solution.  Non-recursive. */
|> #include <stdio.h>
|> 
|> /* Move a stack of N objects from tower A to C, using B */
|> void Hanoi(int N, char A, char B, char C) {
|>    unsigned long X = 0; char D;
|>    while (1) {
|>       if (N&1) D = B, B = C, C = D;
|>       for (; N > 0; N--) X = (X + 1) << 1;
|>       for (; X&1; X >>= 1, N++) D = A, A = B, B = D;
|>       if (X == 0) break;
|>       printf("Move %d from %c to %c.\n", N + 1, A, B);
|>       D = C, C = B, B = A, A = D, X--;
|>    }
|> }
|> 
|> main() { Hanoi(3, 'a', 'b', 'c'); }

    There is nothing to brag about this little piece of shit you call a program.
You are not alone to be aware of programs proofs, but it seems you are one of the
very few that think it can be any good for real software.
    Your post make me think of a my 5 years old child who thinks he knows about
everything, although he knows about nothing.

-- 


                    Claude Lecommandeur
                    Service Informatique Central
                    Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
                    1015 LAUSANNE (SWITZERLAND)
                    E-Mail : lecom@sic.epfl.ch
                    Tel : (41 21) 693-22-97
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: borchert@titania.mathematik.uni-ulm.de (Andreas Borchert)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: University of Ulm, SAI
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 92 15:14:44 GMT

In article <Btv1sC.79B@mtholyoke.edu>, jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz) writes:
> In article <YANDROS.92Aug30173448@j-g-ballard.MIT.EDU> yandros@Athena.MIT.EDU (Chad Phillip Brown) writes:
> I've never quite been able to figure out what exactly NeWS is... I
> know it stands for Network Extensible Windowing System and that it's
> based on Postscript, but I don't think I've ever seen a machine
> running it by itself.  But that brings me to a GUI you forgot to
> mention... "Open Windows".  Barf!!!  This has got to be the worst of
> the bunch!  It takes the "3-D feel" to absolutely arbitrary extremes,
> violates every rule in the book, and is a bear to boot (it's slow on a
> Sparchstation 2, a mid-20s Specmarks machine... I have no idea how
> they managed that.)  What's worst, I bet the people who wrote it a
> proud of themselves and that they thought: ``We can do a better job
> than all those so called Human Factors people.''

OpenWindows 2 and NeWS run pretty well even on my Sun 3/80 (equipped with a
MC68030 processor and 16Mb), a machine which is much slower than a SS2.

OpenWindows supports X11 and NeWS in parallel. NeWS is based on
PostScript and additional concepts (classes, events etc). You are
able to write complete applications in NeWS and you can download them to the
server.

Usually, you've two parts in a NeWS application: the NeWS code which
handles all window operations and events and a conventional program (in
C or other languages). In comparision to X and other windowing systems,
you are not enforced to do the whole event handling on the client side.
For example, moving through menus or filling out forms may be performed
on the server side. And if you've selected a menu point or completed
your form, the server side tells the client side what happened.

This reduces the net load and separates your application from the tool kit.
Further, you are not enforced to use any C libraries (that's fine for people
like me which dislike assembly languages like C).

Because I've a monochrome monitor, I'm not familiar with the OW 3D look,
but I know that it's possible to enforce 2D look even on color displays.
Personally, I prefer Open Look in comparision of Motif because of its
good layout especially for monochrome displays and the lack of
baroque borders.

-- 
_______________________________________________________________________________

Andreas Borchert, University of Ulm, SAI, D-W-7900 Ulm, Germany
Internet: borchert@mathematik.uni-ulm.de
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:683 comp.human-factors:2061 comp.windows.misc:1330 comp.windows.news:624 comp.windows.x:16150
From: nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 3 Sep 92 21:36:48 GMT
Article-I.D.: alphalph.1992Sep3.213648.6456
Organization: Alfalfa Software, Inc.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

johnm@cajal.uoregon.edu (John Martin) writes:
> anyone is arguing otherwise.  BUT -- among proficient users, a good CLI is
> still better and more productive then a GUI.

I just don't believe you can make blanket statements like that without
considering the task.  Take a look at EFIColor's Cachet program and tell
me you could color correct a picture faster with a command interface.
Take a look at any page layout program, fancy word processor, video
editing program or anything like that.  The key element is experimentation.
A GUI with a direct manipulation interface makes experimentation
far faster.  One result of this is that GUIs often *aren't* any faster.
But the result is better.
-- 
						nazgul@alfalfa.com

I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
From: fetrow@carson.u.washington.edu (David Fetrow)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 03:52:41 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.233524.20252@uwm.edu> jgd@csd4.csd.uwm.edu writes:
>From article <1992Aug28.113502.24092@walter.cray.com>, by toma@romulus.cray.com (Thomas Arneberg):
>> 
>> 
>> For a beginner, what good does a man page do if you don't remember whether
>> the command is "rename," "change_name," "move," etc.
>
>That's what the "apropos" command is for.  Of course, it helps if the
>manpages have _useful_ header lines.  :-)
>

 A personal annouyance about GUI's is that work on text interfaces not only
stopped but its going backwards. The thought of vanilla Unix being used as an
example of a text interface is a little revolting. Tcsh and Ksh try but they
just aren't TOPS-20.

 TOPS-20 was pretty nice (you can see something modelled on it by running
"C-Kermit" on a Unix box; only all the commands looked like that). Of course
that was years and years ago......


Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:623 comp.human-factors:1969 comp.windows.misc:1261 comp.windows.news:573 comp.windows.x:15944
From: rjc@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 31 Aug 92 20:14:10 GMT
	<1992Aug28.184236.7300@erg.sri.com>
	<1992Aug31.094759.11659@walter.cray.com>
Organization: Human Communication Research Center
In-reply-to: toma@romulus.cray.com's message of 31 Aug 92 14:47:58 GMT

In article <1992Aug31.094759.11659@walter.cray.com>, Thomas Arneberg (ta) writes:

ta> You can argue about how it was FOR YOU, but all I have to go on is the
ta> people I have worked with. I have helped dozens of people learn the Mac;
ta> many of them had tried and failed to be productive with IBM clones. 

This is somewhat like saying that balancing on one hand is easy
because you have known some people who have managed it after trying
for ages to stand on no hands.

An unbelievably bad CLI is hardly a good basis for comparison and PC
clones are about half a step up from JCL.

--
rjc@cogsci.ed.ac.uk			_O_
					 |<
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: maynard@groo.msc.cornell.edu (Maynard J. Handley)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Cornell-Materials-Science-Center
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 09:01:48 GMT

>One thing I'd like to add, it has struck me in the past that Apple's
>Look-and-Feel copyright suits did massive damage to GUI design.  Not
>that Apple's user interface is the best, but it gets hard to design
>a good GUI if you first have to look around to see what everyone else
>is doing and then come up with something different, just so that it's
>different.  I mean, how many ways are there of designing a resizable
>window frame?  We're running out of them fast.

I think you are omitting one point. Apple would claim that these designers
ARE NOT sitting around thinking of something different, but sitting around
thinking about how to copy the Mac. Apple is not completely satified with
the Mac interface- it changed a bit it System 7, and doubtless it will
change fairly substantially as Apple feels they can get away with
abandoning slower and less powerful platforms. 

I think there is a lot of merit in this point of view. Certainly many Mac
users do not feel that Mac's are perfect, just that they're the best
available right now. I've personally not used WPS but the OS/2 types swear
by it. That looks to me like the kind of thing that, at the very least,
people should be coming up with. Or consider penPoint. Again I've not used
it, but looking at screen shots, it's not particularly a Mac clone.

I see Win3 as having taken essentially no time to bother with coming up
with something better than a Mac. Likewise for OpenLook and Motif. I get
the feeling that all these companies are sitting around writing programs
that emulate calculators- and some get sophisticated and add a paper tape
printout feature, or symbolic variables, but no-one comes up with a
spreadsheet. 

I suspect it may, in fact, have been better for everyone (except maybe
Apple in a few years) if MS had lost their suit against Apple and been
forced to create something truly original and different- and quite possibly
better. The fact that the desktop metaphor came first doesn't mean it's the
one true way.

Maynard Handley
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: rpj@fir.canberra.edu.au (Ross Johnson)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Info Sci & Eng, University of Canberra, AUSTRALIA
Date: 24 Aug 92 01:30:02 GMT


Is there a GUI (I probably really mean desktop window system) that
somehow embodies the notion of pipelines, ala Unix? The sort of thing
I'm thinking of would resemble a "paper spike" (or kebab) that I could
put icons onto and then execute as a pipeline. I could possibly also
save the spike under an icon for later use.

Or is this considered too "low level" and unfriendly in GUI theory?
-- 
+----------------------+---+
| Ross Johnson	       |   | E-Mail: rpj@ise.canberra.edu.au
| Info Sciences and Eng|___|
| University of Canberra   | UUCP  : uunet!munnari!ise.canberra.edu.au!rpj
| PO Box 1                 | JANET : rpj%au.edu.canberra.ise@EAN-RELAY
| Belconnen  ACT    2616   | BITNET: rpj%ise.canberra.edu.au@relay.cs.net
| AUSTRALIA                |
+--------------------------+
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
From: tjm@ecr.mu.oz.au (Trefor_John MORGAN)
Subject: Help for thesis
Organization: Dept. Engineering Computer Resources, Melbourne Uni.
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 09:29:13 GMT


I am currently doing a final year thesis (in Elec Eng) on man-machine
interfaces, I was wondering if anyone could mail me information on the
following areas:

        -history of the development of the original Mac system
                (and the apple machine that preceded the Mac
                 but failed in the market.)
        -your opinions on GUI (what makes a good GUI)
        -speech interfaces : current technology, why there isn't a major
                        commercial speech interface.
        -touch screens, pen based interfaces, gesture recognition
        -anything else of interest/importance.

   Any help would be greatly appreciated,

        Trefor John Morgan.
}:-)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: jimb@occs.cs.oberlin.edu (Jim Blandy)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: I see no organization here.
	<17j149INNi9r@stanley.cis.Brown.EDU> <id.7ERS.1RG@ferranti.com>
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 07:31:22 GMT
X-Posted-From: occs.cs.oberlin.edu
X-Posted-Through: sol.ctr.columbia.edu


In article <id.7ERS.1RG@ferranti.com> peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva) writes:
   > (And don't get me started on the idiocy of insisting on a one-button
   > mouse, when it just forces you into keyboard overload mode--
   > shift-ctrl-click-unshift-drag-doubleclick-unctrl-applekey. :-)

   Oh, I don't disagree with that. It's as bad as Emacs' Control Meta
   Cokebottle keys.

How about the Lisp Machine's modifier keys?  Perhaps I can remember them:

In order of increasing severity:

	shift
	control
	alt?
	meta
	super
	hyper
	Cokebottle

--
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
From: mouse@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: McGill Research Centre for Intelligent Machines
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 92 09:08:26 GMT

In article <p96prmg@fido.asd.sgi.com>, cj@eno.wpd.sgi.com (C.J. Silverio) writes:
> In article <Btv1sC.79B@mtholyoke.edu>, jbotz@mtholyoke.edu writes:
>> I've never quite been able to figure out what exactly NeWS is [...]
> Find one of Silicon Graphics' machines running IRIX 3.*.  NeWS and
> the SGI 4Sight window manager was quite nice.

Well, personally I felt it bordered on intolerable, and if it hadn't
been such a confounded web of undocumented interfaces, I would have
replaced the window manager with something more to my liking.  But
that's neither here nor there.

> I enjoyed using it, and I hated the performance hit my workstation
> took when SGI switched to X (under IRIX 4.*).

I didn't mind the performance hit per se, and really liked having real
X for a change after the weird pseudo-X 3.x provided.  What *I* don't
like is what it did to GL.  I had this video-game program that ran off
GL timers.  Under 3.x it was rock solid and behaved beautifully - it
contains some smart code to attempt to achieve as fast a refresh as
possible while still keeping the refresh rate regular, because it turns
out that a regular refresh seems to be perceptually more important than
a fast refresh.  This code worked fine on 3.x GL.  On 4.x GL, it seems
to oscillate at about 1/4 Hz; the game is just about unplayable as a
result, even when the machine is otherwise unloaded....

					der Mouse

			    mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Integrated Systems Laboratory, ETH, Zurich
	<1992Aug29.232924.10887@sq.sq.com>
	<YANDROS.92Aug30173448@j-g-ballard.MIT.EDU> <Btv1sC.79B@mtholyoke.edu>
	<YANDROS.92Sep1003712@j-g-ballard.MIT.EDU>
	<NEERI.92Sep1141334@iis.ethz.ch>
	<1992Sep1.233227.12778@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au>
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 16:10:39 GMT

In article <1992Sep1.233227.12778@sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au> ghm@ccadfa.cc.adfa.oz.au (Geoff Miller) writes:
>neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher) writes:
>
>>.... The Mac GUI doesn't get in the way of a
>>programmer wanting to do this. Two further examples of combined GUI/command
>>line programs are the MPW Shell (A development environment) and the A/UX shell
>>(a Un*x shell), which are command line oriented but allow the use to specify
>>command line options with a dialog instead.
>
>But these are things you have to buy, not a part of the Mac GUI as such.
>So what you're saying is that after buying a Mac (which is already 
>overpriced for what it provides), if I want an acceptable interface I
>have to buy _more_ software.

The Finder interface *is* acceptable to me most of the time. And before you
demand that Apple include a command line interface, please specify which one:
MS-DOS, sh, ksh, csh, zsh, tcsh, bash, vms or (what most likely would be
Apple's choice) another interface of their own.

>OK, someone working full-time on Mac software development may find it
>worth while to get the MPW Shell, but I question whether even the power
>users would.

I agree. I didn't want suggest that Power users get teh MPW Shell for doing
file operations, merely that the Mac GUI absolutely doesn't prevent CLIs from
being implemented.

>>The medium and high level user usually knows how to extend the user interface
>>to his/her liking. I don't wnat to offend anybody, but I think most of the
>>complaints about the fixed nature of the Mac UI are made by people who are
>>power users of other machines, but casual users of the Mac.
>
>But I thought that the great advantage of the Mac was supposed to be that
>it provided power to the casual user.

Yes. It also provides enuogh power to power users. What it does *not*
necessarily do is to provide pwoer for the class of users I described above,
but this can hardly be attributed to the GUI.

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher                                      neeri@iis.ethz.ch
  "And that's why I am going to turn this world upside down, and make
   of it a fire so *bright* that someone real will notice"
                                -- Vernor Vinge, _Tatja Grimm's World_
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
From: thomas@cavebbs.welly.gen.nz (Thomas Beagle)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: The Cave MegaBBS, Public Access Usenet, Wellington, NZ
Keywords: n
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 92 09:28:17 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.113502.24092@walter.cray.com> toma@romulus.cray.com (Thomas Arneberg) writes:
>
>Try looking at the menus. It's easier to select from a list of multiple 
>choices than to pick a command from out of the air. If you want to do
>things FASTER, then you can start using keyboard shortcuts.

I agree - this is one of the big advantages of GUIS. You can prowl
around the features until you find one that sounds right.

>For a beginner, what good does a man page do if you don't remember whether
>the command is "rename," "change_name," "move," etc.

Too right.

On an AT&T 3b2 I would type 'LINES=27;export LINES'. When it came to an
AIX machine, I didn't have a clue that I should be typing 'stty rows 27'.

This is the sort of thing that GUIS are good at - presenting
information.
-- 
Thomas Beagle    | thomas@datamark.co.nz       | Have you hugged your
Technical Writer | thomas@cavebbs.welly.gen.nz | beagle today?
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
From: jeremy@sw.oz.au (Jeremy Fitzhardinge)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Softway Pty Ltd
Date: 27 Aug 92 13:55:54 GMT
Keywords: n

In <BtKrw1.EEy@mtholyoke.edu> jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz) writes:
>Like Apple's System 7 "requires" 2 MB.  The developers version of NT
>is pretty crammed in 12 MB.  Let's call it 16 MB.  (But then, by the
>time NT is released, 64 Mb DRAMs might be in production.)

More memory is not the answer.  "More memory?" is the question.
The answer is "again? so soon?" [for no obvious improvement over a blit].

I shouldn't need 24MB in my machine to just get things done, but
X and SunOS made me do it.  X11rN++ and Solaris 2.1 will force me to
put at least 32MB or more in, or another OS with another UI.

	J

--
jeremy@sw.oz.au ph:+61 2 698 2322-x122 fax:+61 2 699 9174
The pumpkin.  The sheep.  My brother's wife.
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors
From: jutta@opal.cs.tu-berlin.de (Jutta Degener)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Techn. University of Berlin, Germany
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 19:43:38 GMT

lwall@netlabs.com (Larry Wall) writes:
> GUIs are great at representing everything except relationships involving
> the word "many".

For a counterexample, look at the work of Ben Shneiderman,
Christopher Williamson, and Christopher Ahlberg on "dynamic queries",
taking database query interfaces into a direct manipulation world.

Their sample "dynamic homefinder" application, an interface to a
database of available houses in a given area (with properties such
as price, location, and number of bedrooms), allows the user to
directly manipulate a query's parameters with sliders, while the
matching houses are highlighted on a map at the same time.

The fact that there's a "list widget" and a "button widget" does
not mean you're forbidden to use a bunch of dots.

I would agree that CLIs are easier to _scale_ than GUIs, though.

--Jutta
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:682 comp.windows.misc:1329 comp.windows.news:623 comp.windows.x:16149 comp.human-factors:2060
From: nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 3 Sep 92 21:31:59 GMT
Article-I.D.: alphalph.1992Sep3.213159.6398
Organization: Alfalfa Software, Inc.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4

ghm@ccadfa.cc.adfa.oz.au (Geoff Miller) writes:
> But these are things you have to buy, not a part of the Mac GUI as such.
> So what you're saying is that after buying a Mac (which is already 
> overpriced for what it provides), if I want an acceptable interface I
> have to buy _more_ software.
Yes.  If *you* want an acceptable interface you have to pay extra,
because the Mac wasn't designed for *you*, it was designed for people
who are not familiar with computers.  Why should they have to pay for
things they don't want or need?
-- 
						nazgul@alfalfa.com

I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.unix.misc