From: mathew <mathew@mantis.co.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.human-factors,comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Click to Raise Windows vs. Point to Raise
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 11:15:42 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Mantis Consultants, Cambridge. UK.

mattf@cac.washington.edu (Matthew Freedman) writes:
> We have some public X-Terminals set up in our libraries, which run a
> very limited system with just a couple available applications. When
> the system was set up, many people felt that point-to-raise would be
> easier for brand-new users to grasp. However, we have gotten many
> complaints about this system, mainly because anyone who has used a
> mouse before has done it on a Mac or MS-Windows, both of which are
> click to raise. 
> 
> Before we change the system to match this defacto standard, the
> point-to-raiseists would like to see hard evidence that click-to-raise
> is really better. Does anybody have any? If not, unsubstantiated
> personal opinion would be welcome too.

Well, I can offer you some substantiated personal opinion.

The first time I ever tried to use a Sun workstation, I fired up a shell and
typed ls.  Nothing happened.  I checked the keyboard cable to make sure it was
plugged in, and tried hitting a few more keys.  No response.

I opened another shell, in case there was something wrong with the first one. 
I typed ls.  It worked.  I closed the window of the old 'broken' shell and
typed a cd command at the new one.  It had stopped working.

I reasoned that perhaps there was an obscure bug which meant that only the
second shell opened would work.  Perhaps the first one managed to open a file
and then fell over, but the second shell found the file already open and
hence didn't execute the code that broke the first one.  So I opened another
shell window.

This one also didn't respond.  I decided maybe the machine had a dodgy
keyboard / mouse connection or had crashed, so I waved the mouse around on the
screen for a few seconds.  Seemed to work.

I typed again.  This time, the characters I typed went into my second shell,
not the third one I'd just opened which was on top of it.  I did an ls again,
but couldn't see what was happening because of the most recent 'dead' shell
on top.

[ At this point, I'll cut the story short a little.  I had a whole bunch of
  problems regarding the bizarre behaviour of windows and scroll bars.  But
  eventually... ]

I managed to raise the 'live' shell so it was on top of the 'dead' one.  I
typed a cd command.  The previously 'dead' shell responded, but the 'live'
one on top ignored me.  Unfortunately this meant I still couldn't see what
was going on.

At this point, after some ten minutes of completely frustrating failure to
achieve as much as a change of directory, I gave up completely and asked
someone what the hell was going on.

He explained that keyboard input was being sent to whichever window happened
to have the mouse pointer in it.  He also showed me how to move and resize
windows.  I settled down once more, but I found that my natural tendency was
to move the mouse pointer out of the way so it wouldn't obscure the contents
of the window.  This, of course, meant that I kept activating random windows
and sending them keystrokes.

I logged out and went and found a VT102.

Now, I'm no idiot.  At that time I'd been using computers for ten years, and
was quite happy with a raw C shell prompt.  Hell, I can even use vi.  I'd used
Macs, Windows, GEM, Amigas, Ataris... all without needing to look at the
manuals.  But the practice of raising or activating windows under the mouse
pointer was so damn counter-intuitive for me that I couldn't work out what
was going on, and even when I had it explained to me I found the machine
unusable.

Given that I can't cope with it, I'm not surprised your users are
complaining.


mathew
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