HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: smr@hitkw14.pki-nbg.philips.de (S.Riehm)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 14 Sep 92 11:30:40 GMT

mellon@ncd.com (Ted Lemon) writes:

>>Most people I point it out to are pleasantly surprised
>>to learn that SHIFT-PGUP does the sensible thing by default in xterm

>SHIFT-*what*??   I see no PGUP key here.  (Actually, I'm being a bit of a
>weenie in complaining about this - if I really wanted a PC-style keyboard,
>I could get one for my terminal, but I prefer the smaller keyboard
>since leaving the home row is to me just as big a pain as reaching for the
>mouse.   Plus, I like having the control key in the place in which God
>intended for it to reside.)

This is an interesting point, what MUST a keyboard have. It is nice to
say "just use the page up key", but if its not there, then what do you
do? type ^[[P~ ( or whatever the sequence is ) really quickly?

I still can't find the Menu and Reset keys on this keyboard, even
though xmodmap insists I have them! And I WISH I had a real compose
key, at the moment I am using the End key ( partly cus I couldn't get
it to work as an End key anyway.. what is it with this keyboard, is it
terminally braindead or is it just being bull-headed? )

Is there a "standard" way to type international characters?

As for where the control key belongs, I find it a godsend that xmodmap
can change this, although ( if I wanted to have a caps_lock ) shifting
the caps_lock key on HP9000-710's seems to be a bit dodgey, you end up having
a control_lock key and a third shift key!! ( boy can THAT be
confusing! ) ( its built into the keyboard somehow that whats labeled
as the caps lock key will always be the only lock key, or you can turn
it off, but thats all )

At least the escape key is in the right place!

Back to the gui's, the only thing that really pisses me off about
gui's, ( besides having to find the rodent every 5 seconds ), is that
they aren't extensible. ( inherently so ). What they don't provide
they CAN'T provide, if there is no feature to give you upside-down
menus, you can't have upside-down menus. FULL STOP. Play with the
resources as much as you like.. unless you play with source ( which is
not really what the author had in mind I am sure ), you wont be able
to do it. ( but this point has been said time and time again so I wont
push it any more. )

( At least with a CLI you could write a "small" program, say bums_up,
and pipe everything through it to get it upside-down. ) ( in fact I
seem to remember some of the guys at Uni doing stupid things like that
with the old t10-m terminals ( no windows on these ) back in the late
80's )

catchya

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Riehm		Configuration Management	   _-_|\ 
smr@pki-nbg.philips.de	Philips Kommunikations Industrie  /     \
Work: +49 911 526 2975	N|rnberg, Germany		  \_.-.*/
Fax:  +49 911 526 2095	"I was there, now I am here!"	       v 
"My company speaks another language, I CAN'T speak on it's behalf"
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:762 comp.human-factors:2184 comp.windows.misc:1412 comp.windows.news:676 comp.windows.x:16524
From: mouse@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 11 Sep 92 02:16:31 GMT
Organization: McGill Research Centre for Intelligent Machines

In article <1992Sep9.043446.17852@wam.umd.edu>, marauder@wam.umd.edu (Joe Jacobson) writes:

> It's obvious you people haven't seen God's gift to GUI's: namely
> NeXTSTEP.

I have seen it.  I've even tried to use it.  I can't *stand* it.  If
that's God's gift to GUIs, I'll take the Devil's instead.

> After using NeXTSTEP, you yawn at Motif, grudgingly use a Mac, and
> look w/ contempt on Windows.

Well yes.  And then I go back to my X setup, which looks nothing like
any of the above, and sigh with relief.

> Simply, NeXTSTEP provides the simplicity of the Mac, over the power
> of UNIX.

The NeXT is not UNIX.  It tries to be, and succeeds often enough to
fool a casual inspection, but as soon as you peek under the hood the
illusion falls apart like the smoke and mirrors it is.

As for providing the simplicity of the Mac, *yes*.  And that is
precisely why I can't stand it: it provides all the simplicity of the
Mac.  I don't *want* simplicity; I want flexibility.  I want easy
access to the power I know is lurking in the background.

> It's not a question of what can you do with NeXTSTEP, but how to go
> about doing it.

I still haven't seen a terminal emulator that really works
white-on-black.  It took what, a year, for Stuart to even approximately
get it right, and it still doesn't do highlighting well.  And none of
the supplied programs even have the foggiest notion that someone might
not happen to like black-on-white.  (WriteNow is a particular
offender.)

> A GUI isn't harmful.  It's simply a tool to ease your use of the
> computer, to improve efficency.  If you find differently, then it's
> probably the case that you have a poorly made GUI.

Right.  And that's why I ported X11R4 to the NeXT: because X improves
my efficiency and pleasure-of-use a lot more than NeXTStep does.

You seem to disagree.  Gee, we must have different tastes.  Ain't
diversity great?

					der Mouse

			    mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:744 comp.windows.misc:1390 comp.windows.news:664 comp.windows.x:16430 comp.human-factors:2160
From: djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 9 Sep 92 21:31:16 GMT
Followup-To: alt.religion.computers
Organization: =CSE Dept., U.C. San Diego

>> because the Mac wasn't designed for *you*, it was designed for people
>> who are not familiar with computers.

But people who are very familiar with computers are often forced to
use them, and are constantly expected to be experts with DOS and Macs.
-- 
Darin Johnson
djohnson@ucsd.edu
    Where am I?  In the village...  What do you want?  Information...
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
From: neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Integrated Systems Laboratory, ETH, Zurich
	<37783@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> <mellon.715986338@pepper>
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 17:27:37 GMT

In article <mellon.715986338@pepper> mellon@ncd.com (Ted Lemon) writes:
>djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson) writes:
>>A nice interface would be to drag the file to the printer icon and drop.
>>It should handle *any* format, including Postscript, or formats for programs
>>you don't have (lots of doc files out there that make assumptions about
>>what wordprocessor you have).
>
>That's an interesting point.   Does the McIntosh finder have any mechanism for
>adding things into which other things can be dropped?   As far as I know, the
>trash can, the desktop, and the folders are all special cases, but if it were
>possible to add a new item into which things could be dropped, your printer
>thingy should be easy to implement.   What happens if you drop something on
>top of an application?

As one of the changes introduced in System 7, if you drop anything on an
application, the application opens it (provided it contains some flags telling
that it is willing to accept the document/folder/disk).

The new printing architecture which is being developed will allow users to drop
documents on printer icons. (The architecture was originally planned for
inclusion in System 7, but postponed). On the other hand, this will not be
document format independent, but will still need the invisible cooperation of
the actual application, as I understood the system.

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher                                   neeri@iis.ethz.ch
   "Have you heard of the new Cambridge compilers ? They distribute
    gear-wear much more evenly"
        -- William Gibson/Bruce Sterling, _The Difference Engine_

Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Keywords: Mac, Window, Throw
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 17:28:47 GMT

In article <smr.715609399@hitkw14> smr@hitkw14.pki-nbg.philips.de (S.Riehm) writes:
> I figure that GUI's are inherently non-extensible, even those
> wonderful window manager that allow you to define your own pop-up
> menus and so on, can you make this menu beep when it pops up? can you
> make this tear off menu always sit at the back of the window stack
> unless called up explicitly? 

Yes. I assume you're not reading this in comp.windows.news, or you'd know
that NeWS can do that.
-- 
Peter da Silva                                               `-_-'
Ferranti Intl. Ctls. Corp.                                    'U` 
Sugar Land, TX  77487-5012
+1 713 274 5180                                   Har du kramat din varg idag?
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.lang.postscript
From: ccjal@cc.newcastle.edu.au (John A Lambert)
Subject: Paper sizes (was Re: GUIs Considered Harmful)
Organization: University of Newcastle, AUSTRALIA
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 00:28:59 GMT

In article <1992Sep9.145109.23196@news.eng.convex.com>, Tom Christiansen <tchrist@convex.COM> writes:
> [many newsgroups deleted]
> 
> From the keyboard of mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew):
> :"Marc VanHeyningen" <mvanheyn@peach.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:
> :> >Mantis doesn't have a Postscript printer at all.  But if you give me the
> :> >actual document, I can probably print it; we can handle a list of document
> :> >formats as long as your arm.
> :> 
> :> Irrelevant.  Many documents, such as TRs, are "published" as Postscript
> :> via FTP.
> :
> :And very irritating it is too.  Even when I had access to a Postscript
> :printer, I used to get godawful results when I printed such "published"
> :documents, as I was using standard A4 paper.  It just demonstrates once again
> :the parochialism of Americans.
> 
> Consider:
> 
>     And very irritating it is too.  Even when I had access to a Postscript
>     printer, I used to get godawful results when I printed such
>     "published" documents, as I was using standard 8.5x11" paper.  
>     It just demonstrates once again the parochialism of Europeans.
> 
> Why is or is this not a symmetric paragraph?
> 
> --tom
-- 
The A and B series of paper sizes are not just `European' but defined by ISO
standards and are used generally throughout the world outside North America.

Until The USA, in particular, joins the rest of the world in its use of weights
and measures, the only way to prepare documents for internationa use is to
assume that the `standard' sheet of paper measures 210 mm by 279 mm; that is,
A4 width and US Letter length. (A4 is 210 mm by 297 mm, US Letter 216 mm by 279
mm.)

John A Lambert
Centre for Literary and Linguistic Computing
The University of Newcastle NSW 2308 Australia
Phone National        (049)21 5750    Fax National       (049) 21 6910
      International +61 49 21 5750        International +61 49 21 6910
VAXPSI  PSI%0505249626002::CCJAL      AARNet  ccjal@cc.newcastle.edu.au

Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news
From: berry@athos.pei.com (Berry Kercheval)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Reply-To: berry@pei.com
Organization: Protocol Engines, Inc., Mt. View, California
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 19:21:22 GMT

>>>>> On 8 Sep 92 11:18:24 GMT, mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew) said:

mathew> "Marc VanHeyningen" <mvanheyn@peach.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:
> Irrelevant.  Many documents, such as TRs, are "published" as Postscript
> via FTP.

mathew> And very irritating it is too.  Even when I had access to a Postscript
mathew> printer, I used to get godawful results when I printed such "published"
mathew> documents, as I was using standard A4 paper.  It just demonstrates once again
mathew> the parochialism of Americans.


Well, I *tried*.  When I had to deliver tutorial materials for a
conference being held in Europe, I discovered that my text processing
tools will create A4 pages quite happily, so I went off in search of
A4 paper.  I must have called every printer and paper-mill in the San
Francisco Bay Area.  The ones that knew what I was asking about said I
couldn't get it; several suggested ordering the paper from Europe (!).
A couple were willing to cut legal size paper (8.5x14 inches) down to
A4 for me, for a fee.
  Then I went and looked at the paper tray on the printer.  Unlike the
old Original Laserwriter Classic trays, you cannot adjust them for A4
paper. 

So my options were to either buy an A4 paper tray, 'manual feed' the A4
paper into the printer a sheet at the time (for over 200 pages) or
punt. Paper trays were not cheap, and I have about zero chance of
convincing the company to buy something only I would use for
'personal' business; and I don't care for hand feeding half a ream to
the printer.

I even called a few places that claimed to print your PostScript for
you; none of them could produce A4 output.

Email to the conference organisers confirmed that the printer would
have no problem with 8.5x11 originals, so that's what I sent.

Sigh.  I tried, I really did...

  --berry, an American trying hard not to be parochial


(P.S.  While typing this, a solution occurred to me. Next time, I can
just print the A4 pages on legal size paper and *then* have it cut
down.  Yeah, that's it!  We even have a legal size paper tray...)


--
Berry Kercheval :: berry@pei.com :: Protocol Engines, Inc.  Mt. View, CA
"Car pool fatigue: it's like shell shock, but you don't get any VA benefits.
They just fill your gas tank and send you back to the front."
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.x
From: twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Keywords: Mac, Window, Throw
Organization: Amherst College, Amherst MA
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1992 00:41:51 GMT

In article <1992Sep8.220848.1039@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu> mouse@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse) writes:

>In article <37783@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>, djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson) writes:
>
>> (A fancy version would just check the first two characters first, and
>> if not postcript, run it through a text to postscript filter.)
>
>The first two characters??  Whatever your chosen "first two characters"
>are, there are plenty of text files that begin with them, and
>PostScript programs that begin with other characters.

Too bad for the hapless user, then.  There is a convention that
machine-generated PostScript files begin with "%!" to indicate its
PostScriptosity.  Even when I'm hacking raw PostScript, I generally
begin my files with "%!" just to make sure that my printer won't choke
on them.

The Unix filter more, I believe, uses a similar heuristic to decide
whether its input is text or not.  Granted, the heuristic is less
arbitrary and more standardized, but it is not an impossible mechanism
to use for PostScript and text.

-- 
____ Tim Pierce                / "I don't know how much support NAMBLA
\  / twpierce@unix.amherst.edu /  has in the gay community."
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /   -- Clayton Cramer, August 1992
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
From: salc@shearson.com (Sal Cataudella)
Subject: Is NeWS dead?
Reply-To: salc@shearson.com
Organization: Lehman Brothers, Inc.
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 20:53:29 GMT

What is Sun's official position on NeWS right now? Is it still alive but unsupported?
Officially dead? Anyone care to speculate?

thanx

--sal

---
 ######################################################
 ######################################################
 ######################################################


Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 22:08:28 GMT

In article <1992Sep3.213159.6398@alphalpha.com> nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) writes:
> 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?

I don't know. Why should they?

The funny thing is, what they don't want or need keeps changing. At least,
they never seem to want to need something until Apple or Microsoft or someone
reinvents it. Then they wonder how they got by without it.
-- 
Peter da Silva                                               `-_-'
Ferranti Intl. Ctls. Corp.                                    'U` 
Sugar Land, TX  77487-5012
+1 713 274 5180                                   Har du kramat din varg idag?
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
From: mellon@ncd.com (Ted Lemon)
Date: 8 Sep 92 21:05:38 GMT
Keywords: Mac, Window, Throw

djohnson@cs.ucsd.edu (Darin Johnson) writes:
>A nice interface would be to drag the file to the printer icon and drop.
>It should handle *any* format, including Postscript, or formats for programs
>you don't have (lots of doc files out there that make assumptions about
>what wordprocessor you have).

That's an interesting point.   Does the McIntosh finder have any mechanism for
adding things into which other things can be dropped?   As far as I know, the
trash can, the desktop, and the folders are all special cases, but if it were
possible to add a new item into which things could be dropped, your printer
thingy should be easy to implement.   What happens if you drop something on
top of an application?

				_MelloN_
--
mellon@ncd.com						uunet!lupine!mellon
Member, League for Programming Freedom | To learn how software patents could
cost you your right to program, contact the LPF - league@prep.ai.mit.edu
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
From: neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Integrated Systems Laboratory, ETH, Zurich
	<YANDROS.92Sep1003712@j-g-ballard.MIT.EDU>
	<NEERI.92Sep1141334@iis.ethz.ch> <185tq8INN3ua@stanley.cis.Brown.EDU>
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 14:09:54 GMT

[Dropped comp.human.factors]
In article <185tq8INN3ua@stanley.cis.Brown.EDU> plutchak@pilsner.geo.brown.edu (Joel Plutchak) writes:
>In article <NEERI.92Sep1141334@iis.ethz.ch> neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher) writes:
>>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 Mac fanatics... er, partisans, say the Mac is the greatest thing
>since sliced pimento loaf *because* it's easy for anybody (even us
>casual users) to use.  If it takes a "power" Mac user to use a Mac
>well, where's the advantage?

This is not what I meant. I meant that it takes a "power" Mac user to use the
Mac in a *power user* way. I know people who use Macs *very* well and are
absolutely no power users.

>   I find that the users I support, most of them fairly experienced
>Mac users, want me to add CLI features to programs I develop for them.
>They like a graphical interface for a lot of tasks, but realize that
>there are some things which are better done through a command line.

Depends a lot on the task to be done.

>Some GUI's support this ability well, where others would force you
>to use the mouse for everything.  As a developer, I know which ones
>*I* would rather use and support.

I have never seen a GUI that "forces" developers to make users use a mouse for
everything. I have seen, however, some user interfaces that make it easier for
lazy developers to write a CLI than others (Note that I consider laziness often
a virtue).

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher                                      neeri@iis.ethz.ch
  "And I won this ribbon in a Degradation Contest at the Teheran
   meeting of Junkies Anonymous" -- William Burroughs, _The Naked Lunch_
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: mouse@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Followup-To: comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Organization: McGill Research Centre for Intelligent Machines
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 92 07:22:59 GMT

In article <NEERI.92Sep3175345@iis.ethz.ch>, neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher) writes:
> From Bruce Tognazzini, _Tog on Interface_:
>   We've done a cool $50 million of R&D on the Apple Human Interface.
>   We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts:
>   - Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than
>      mousing. 
>   - The stopwatch consistently proves that mousing is faster than
>      keyboarding.

>   People new to the mouse find the process of reaching for it every
>   time they want to do anything other than type to be incredibly
>   time-wasting.

Not just people new to the mouse.  I've used machines with mice for at
*least* five years.  And I *still* find having to take a hand off the
keybaord and reach for the mouse every fifteen seconds very (not
"incredibly"; it's all too credible by now) time-wasting.

>   And therein lies the very advantage of the mouse: It is boring to
>   find it because the two-second search does not require high-level
>   cognitive engagement.

Two-second?  Were the experimental subjects totally hopeless at
hand-eye coordination or what?  I can, sometimes, find the mouse, do
whatever it is I want to with it, and get back to the keyboard all
within two seconds.

>   It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to
>   press.

Oh, the subjects were just basically incompetent in general.  If it
takes as long as *one* second to decide which key to press, I consider
myself "idling".  I type well over 100wpm when I don't have to stop and
decide what I want to type next.  If I know what I want to do, and what
key I need to press to do it, it will eat up perhaps .05 second.
Perhaps .1 if the key in question has two or more bucky bits, perhaps
even more if it's complicated (left-alt right-shift keypad-*).  (If I
know what I want to do and just don't remember how to do it, that's
another story.  That state exists, and never lasts for more than a few
repetitions of the task, regardless of whether the "how" is via the
keyboard or mouse.)

When I find a GUI in which I can make a menu selection in .1 second
with the mouse, I'll stop griping about how much it slows me down.  I'm
not exactly holding my breath :-)

> "There once was an Age of Reason, but we've progressed beyond it."

There are times when I rather feel that way too.

					der Mouse

			    mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
From: malcolmp@hydra.maths.unsw.EDU.AU (malcolmp)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: School of Mathematics, UNSW, Sydney, Australia
	<RJC.92Sep8165238@daiches.cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 02:33:09 GMT

In article <RJC.92Sep8165238@daiches.cogsci.ed.ac.uk> rjc@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) writes:
   In article <smr.715609399@hitkw14>, S.Riehm  (s) writes:
   s> I figure that GUI's are inherently non-extensible, even those
   s> wonderful window manager that allow you to define your own pop-up
   s> menus and so on, can you make this menu beep when it pops up?

   Yes. Now, C may not be the ideal configuration language, but it is
   there. X's `mechanism, not policy' slogan does have some advantages. 

For X there's also gwm which uses lisp as its configuration language.  I'm not
saying it's easy to program in, nor that it is the best way to go about
things, but it's the only window mamager I know that allows you to change
things (including bindings, menus, and window borders) at run time.

--
		Malcolm Purvis (malcolmp@hydra.maths.unsw.edu.au)
		School of Mathematics, UNSW, Sydney, Australia.
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors