From: ewright@convex.com (Edward V. Wright)
Subject: Re: When is a CLI faster than a GUI?
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 18:34:53 GMT
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.

In <1992Oct1.212710.31862@news.th-darmstadt.de> wallmann@backus.pu.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (Natuerlich!) writes:

>In article <6072.2ac8373c@hayes.com> bcoleman@hayes.com (Bill Coleman) writes:
>>In article <1992Sep28.202604.20391@news.th-darmstadt.de>, wallmann@backus.pu.informatik.th-darmstadt.de (Natuerlich!) writes:

>What guys with what stopwatches ? Since I know that there are studies with
>guys'n girls with stopwatches where it is NOT true (I choose at this point
>to mention, that I did study Software Ergnomics very recently (done since
>July)) the poster above was either merely making something up or extra-
>polating from Apple Newsbulletins or somesuch.

Is "ergnomics"  anything like ergonomics?  How can you spend an
entire semester studying a subject and not even know how to spell
it?  (You've used this spelling several times, so obviously it's
not a typo.)

>>Have you reviewed ALL the studies possible? I find this amazing, since you
>>don't even seem to believe a single study measured them as faster.
>Yes, all studies taken together show that there is NO clear indication. My
>professor did review ALL the relevant studies.

Well, he said he did anyway.  He may even have believed it.  G. Harry 
Stine had an interesting article in Analog last year about why, when 
it comes to technology, what's being taught and developed in academia
is often far behind what industry considers state of the art.


>Take this as flame, if you must, but it isn't intendend as such. Why don't
>you, since you are obviously interested in the subject, pick up a book
>about Software Ergonomy. 

It might be difficult to find such a book.  "Ergonomy" must be another
"Germanglish" word.  You seem to have studied entire fields that no one 
knew existed!


>I wouldn't say that. I would say that the CLI environment lets the expert
>user express his ideas and actions more fluidly (in certain operations)
>than with a GUI, since he is not very dependant on system feedback.

No?  How does he know his fingers pressed the right keys?

>He anticipates results beforehand, and plans ahead (even types ahead), 
>for he has a quite accurate model of the human-machine system in his
>head. (quite the opposite to the novice user)

Quite true, if you delete the word "accurate."  No matter what else
he may have taught you, your professor obviously left out the most
fundamental principle of human engineering: Murphy's Law.  


>When you type a command and press [esc] the shell tries to complete the 
>command. The nice thing is that it does it across paths. You give it a 
>list of paths and it searches for it there. The equivalent on a GUI 
>(in any GUI I know) is 

[long list of nonsense deleted]

Type cmd-f, enter the program name (or some recognizable substring
of the program name), and press return.  The Finder fetches the 
program to you.  Just type cmd-o to launch it. 

Obviously, one book that software ergonomics course didn't survey
was the Macintosh User's Guide.