From: bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: When is a CLI faster than a GUI?
Date: 28 Sep 92 11:01:47 EDT
Organization: Hayes Microcomputer Products, Norcross, GA

In article <UelNxiW00VAt4Dqmhc@andrew.cmu.edu>, Faisal Nameer Jawdat <fj05+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
> 
> Most of the following is only partially true.  It works for beginning
> users, while it is not true for someone who uses the software on a
> day-to-day basis.  

This is not true. What is cognitively easy for beginning users is also
easy for experienced users. 

I don't see why we have this dogged insistance that graphic user interfaces
are only for "beginners". I'm beginning to feel that you CLI-types think
there's only one kind of computing. There's a lot of different things people
do with computers, some of which may not be expressible with typed commands.

> It assumes that the person remembers commands as words, not character 
> strings. It assumes that users need to go through a
> relatively long length of time to remember a command, which is true
> for new users, but not experienced ones 

You would intuitively think so. But these experienced users aren't as fast
as they think they are. 

> (it takes me a lot less time
> to type 'ESC x bat-ins TAB' than to go to the message window, choose
> select all from the menu, change to the editting window, and finally
> select 'paste excerpt' from the edit menu).  

I'm not entirely sure what that character string is supposed to do. Of course,
using a Macintosh, I've got keyboard shortcuts, too. There's a few I use
intuitively, just like you experienced users. Command-A saves me a
trip to the edit menu for select all. Command-V saves me another trip.
(I think you left out a Copy or Cut there, but that's a on shortcut, too)
I can also have my right hand on the mouse during this, so changing to another
window doesn't take but an instant, since clicking on it will activate it.

If you have to go to the menus, it is actually pretty fast. It just seems
slow. But for frequently used (and repeated) operations, the keyboard 
operations are there. Frankly, the graphic UI user can probably perform
half of this operation in the time it takes you to remember to type ESC
whatever. You're not aware of this time, since you're busy trying to 
remember stuff during it.

> It also assumes that it
> is easy to pick out one icon always, whcih is not true - when you have
> 20 icons in a floder it can be a pain in the arse to find the right
> one, 

How so? 

Isn't it more of a pain when you can't see your files with a CLI? That you
have to do a "dir", then "cd" then "dir" over and over and over to find
the right place? And then if you scroll off the top of the screen you have
to do a "dir | more" or remember a command option in order to limit the
contents of the "dir".

Graphic UI users simply look at the screen. That's seems much simpler way 
to pick one file out of a bunch.


-- 
Bill Coleman, AA4LR                ! CIS: 76067,2327    AppleLink: D1958
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