HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
From: mellon@iti.org (Ted Lemon)
Date: 21 Aug 92 15:45:31 GMT
Followup-To: alt.religion.computers

david@twg.com (David Herron) writes:
>This is also not (always) true.  In TOG's book on user interfaces he
>claims they (Apple) studied this and found that users on keyboard driven
>interfaces were generally slower than ones on mouse driven ones.

This is sort of like saying that it's okay to smoke because R.J. Reynolds
Company has done lots of studies that show that there are no provable health
risks associated with smoking.   Granted, R.J. Reynolds is a somewhat
slimier company than Apple, but hopefully you see my point.   I am quite
sure that if I were allowed to do my own study with Mac power users vs.
Emacs power users, the Emacs power users would come out somewhat faster,
and the Mac power users would be using hot keys all over the place.

>In any case ... with a keyboard interface the user generally must
>remember all the options, and getting them wrong means retyping.
Not necessarily.   In Emacs, I can edit what I'm typing in if I make a
mistake.

>Say you are writing an e-mail user interface..  how do you select
>recipients to a message which is being composed?  With a window'd
>interface the program could include an address book where the user
>keeps names & addresses of people s/he communicates with.

I'm sorry, but this is an incredibly bad example.   The domain of all
people I might send EMail to is very, very large; putting it on a
point-and-click menu would be a very bad idea.   I'd much rather be able
to type in the address and use fuzzy pattern matching and/or command
completion against a list of valid addresses I'd used before to correct
any speling erors.

BTW, I'm not saying point and click is a lose.   Some users work better
when they have a list of options in front of them - particularly beginners.
However, I think that your theory that a GUI is always, or even usually,
the right choice is unfounded.

				_MelloN_
--
mellon@ncd.com							uunet!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: marc@vieta.math.uni-sb.de (Marc Conrad)
Subject: Re: Peeve: Numerical error messages
Organization: U of Saarbruecken, Dept. of Computational Linguistics
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 10:40:49 GMT

sourada@iastate.edu (Steven D Ourada) writes:

>In <4318@equinox.unr.edu> malc@pyramid.unr.edu (Malcolm L. Carlock) writes:

>>Peeve #1:  When a program fails with a message like "Error 192", rather
>>	   than a descriptive textual message.

>A Real Hacker doesn't need text messages, or even a number. "E" is good
>enough, as a matter of fact.

Ha ! why do you need an "E" ??  All, what I need is a lack of expected 
output !!
Marc

--
     \   /                     | Marc Conrad, Universitaet des Saarlandes 
      \ Luxemburg              | marc@math.uni-sb.de  phone: 0681 302-2297
France \|   Germany            | these opinions are not necessarily these   
        \x <---- you are here! | of the SIMATH-group (and maybe even not mine).
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
From: cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: WORLDESIGN, Seattle
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 16:57:13 GMT


I find the equation of GUI with duncedness to be laughable.
Design better GUIs.  Fix the network to permit access to
graphical interfaces.  Go the next step to the virtual
interface.

Retreat to line commands?  Preposterous.

Bob
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:503 comp.windows.misc:1183 comp.windows.news:493 comp.windows.x:15515 comp.human-factors:1840
From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 22 Aug 1992 03:39:20 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
NNTP-Posting-Host: gandalf.think.com
Keywords: n

In article <1992Aug21.182548.2932@nntp.uoregon.edu> johnm@cajal.uoregon.edu (John Martin) writes:
>In article <1992Aug20.181915.2357@twg.com>, "David Herron" <david@twg.com> writes:
>>In any case ... with a keyboard interface the user generally must
>>remember all the options, and getting them wrong means retyping.
>
>How does this differ from GUIs? You still need to remember how all of these
>little pictures can interact -- something that I personally have a bit of
>difficulty doing.  I sometimes get them wrong, which means starting over.

Yes, many of the underlying concepts about how objects interact are
independent of the UI style.  But I don't think that's what David was
talking about.  In GUIs, many operations and options are presented
explicitly in menus and dialogues.  In CLIs, the user must remember the
names of operations and options.  Thus, a CLI generally requires you to
remember more things than a GUI.

-- 
Barry Margolin
System Manager, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com          {uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
From: marc@vieta.math.uni-sb.de (Marc Conrad)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
Subject: No error messages (was: Re: Peeve: Numerical error messages)
Date: 17 Aug 92 15:11:36 GMT
Organization: U of Saarbruecken, Dept. of Computational Linguistics

friedman@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Noah Friedman) writes:

>In article <marc.713788849@vieta.math.uni-sb.de> marc@vieta.math.uni-sb.de (Marc Conrad) writes:
>>>>Peeve #1:  When a program fails with a message like "Error 192", rather
>>>>	   than a descriptive textual message.
>>
>>>A Real Hacker doesn't need text messages, or even a number. "E" is good
>>>enough, as a matter of fact.
>>
>>Ha ! why do you need an "E" ??  All, what I need is a lack of expected 
>>output !!

>   Oh come on, even "ed", the mighty Standard Text Editor (tm), is
>gracious enough to notify inexperienced users that there was an error by
>printing a "?".

What I speak about is (at least) my standard Error in writing SIMATH-programms
(SIMATH == the most powerfull, fastest, best, extra-ordinary, free available
Computer Algebra System of the world [this opinion is not necces... (cf.: .sig)])
It's like programming in C, but you have to initialisize your variables by lines
as 
"init( A, B )"
or 
"bind( A, B )"
and a sudden appearance of the prompt after starting the programm  is in 
99 % equivalent to an error message:
**** Error 192: You have to use 'bind' or 'init' ****
(Perhaps one should write this in the handbook :-))
Marc

--
     \   /                     | Marc Conrad, Universitaet des Saarlandes 
      \ Luxemburg              | marc@math.uni-sb.de  phone: 0681 302-2297
France \|   Germany            | these opinions are not necessarily these   
        \x <---- you are here! | of the SIMATH-group (and maybe even not mine).
From: goodsenj@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu (John Goodsen)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: RadSoft Labs, EVB Software Engineering
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 21:47:38 GMT


There is one valid point out of this thread and that is that there are
3 levels of *interface* that "most" software should be developed
towards:



       GUI      CLI       Callable Interface

        |        |          |
        |        |          |
        +--------+----------+
                 |
            
             Application

Desiging in this manner forces you to consider the separation
of UI and application up front and provides you with much more
reuse at a higher level within a product line.

This isn't always make sense, in particular when design
applications which inherently are graphical in nature
such as CAD systems, CASE tools (to some degree), etc...

I won't get into the backend integration design issues at
this point.  That's better left for some newsgroup of the
future like:

   comp.tools.softbench

   (not really a news group :)

jg


-- 
John Goodsen                              Ada Joint Program Office
RadSoft Labs, EVB Software Engineering    PCIS Programme
jgg@evb.com                               goodsenj@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu
800-877-1815
From: johnm@cajal.uoregon.edu (John Martin)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Keywords: n
Date: 19 Aug 92 22:46:53 GMT
Organization: Institute of Neuroscience, University of Oregon

In article <Bt90Dq.35y@oryx.com>, xcpslf@oryx.com writes:

>In article <1992Aug19.192513.28287@news.eng.convex.com>, Tom Christiansen <tchrist@convex.COM> writes:
>|> It has been noted that GUIs make simple things simple, and complex ones
>|> impossible.  Certainly it is worthwhile to make simple things simple.
>|> But too often software is geared to only one level of expertise.  That
>|> which is novice-friendly is too frequently expert-hostile, and vice
>|> versa.  Being needlessly forced to click the mouse over a menu will
>|> slow down the expert user who is more comfortable with a keyboard
>|> interface.
>
>Incorrect.  A well-defined GUI makes simple things simple and speeds up
>specifications for the complex.  

Then I have _never_ seen a well-defined GUI. I have used nearly all of the
major names in the market, in both the UNIX and DOS worlds, and many GUIs
that are implemented in specific products, and in _every_ case, once I
had peaked on the learning curve, the GUI got in the way and reduced my
productivity.

I have a sense that GUI promoters are seeing what they want to see regarding
this style of interface, rather than seeing the reality.  Surely if it could
be done right, someone would have done it by now!

I really believe that products should be two-faced, if they are to use a
GUI at all -- there should be a command-line interface that can be used
rather than the GUI, if desired.

>It seems that this note is from a person who has used UNIX for a long time.
>It omits the fact that the greatest majority of UNIX users have not and
>never will master the ideas behind UNIX.  Probably since they know they'll
>be going to another OS in the next 5-10 years.  They want tools that can
>help them do their jobs quickly and efficiently and that's what GUIs are
>doing (for the most part).

And in my experience, that's what GUIs fail to do.

-- 
John Martin                                        johnm@cajal.uoregon.edu
Institute of Neuroscience,   University of Oregon,    Eugene, OR,    97402
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
From: qpliu@phoenix.princeton.edu (q.p.liu)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Originator: news@nimaster
Reply-To: qpliu@princeton.edu
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 05:19:49 GMT

In article <1992Aug20.181915.2357@twg.com> "David Herron" <david@twg.com> writes:

>Say you are writing an e-mail user interface..  how do you select
>recipients to a message which is being composed?  With a window'd
>interface the program could include an address book where the user
>keeps names & addresses of people s/he communicates with.  ...

"window'd"?  Yuck!  What's wrong with "windowed"?

In any case, in order to do pattern matching, which is desirable with
a large database, a keyboard interface would be better.

Perhaps a better way to illustrate this would be to consider looking
through a (cluttered) filesystem.  There is the Macintosh way of hunting
through lots of little pictures, and the old way of giving arguments to
ls, directory, listfiles, or whatnot.
-- 
qpliu@princeton.edu           Standard opinion: Opinions are delta-correlated.
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
From: markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Hunk)
Subject: Re: Peeve: Numerical error messages
Organization: Computing Services Division, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 01:16:39 GMT

In article <4318@equinox.unr.edu> malc@pyramid.unr.edu (Malcolm L. Carlock) writes:
>  A pox, a pox I say on such error "documentation".

For excellent error documentation, see ftp site

              csd4.csd.uwm.edu::/pub/8051/assem/err.doc
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 03:46:45 -0400 
From: "Jonathan R. Ferro" <jf41+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
	<1992Aug21.051949.19500@Princeton.EDU>

I can sum up my standing complaint with every GUI I've ever tried in
four words: inability to compose functions.  (Anyone who replies "yes,
but it provides a fully-featured scripting language" will only prove my
point.)

I regard the time I spend moving the mouse as wasted time that my
fingers aren't spending on the keyboard.

--
Jon Ferro		MIT Transportation Modelling Research Center (TMRC)
jf41+@andrew.cmu.edu	"We can hack it!"
SGNTR VRS VRSN 3.1B: Strppd nd cmprssd fr qckr trnsmssn! nfct yrs tdy!
From: smoot@roger-rabbit.cs.berkeley.edu (Stephen R Smoot)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Followup-To: alt.religion.computers
Date: 20 Aug 1992 21:26:47 GMT
Organization: UC Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: roger-rabbit.cs.berkeley.edu

All UNIX GUI's have very little excuse not to have a command-line
interface.

That is not to say that virtually any of them do, but they all should.

A spreadsheet program, for example should be able to do:

muyspread < saved_spread_sheet -do "Replace 1,2 with 4.5; Recalc; Save as Foo.spread"

or some such.

These sorts of languages (in this case the -do command is accepting a
language) are called scripting languages, and they are very nice for
connecting programs together.  The require specified grammers, and
responses, but otherwise are not terribly difficult to create.

I think tcl/tk is so popular because it begins to address some of these
problems.  All GUIs using it are configurable as they can reinterprete
specifications on the fly, and via send allow other programs to talk to
them, including regular shells.

It is easier to write a program with only a GUI than not, however, that is
barely an excuse for not doing it.

-s

Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:513 comp.windows.misc:1190 comp.windows.news:497 comp.windows.x:15531 comp.human-factors:1844
From: sfleming@cs.hw.ac.uk (Stewart Fleming)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Keywords: n
Date: 23 Aug 92 09:41:29 GMT
Reply-To: sfleming@cs.hw.ac.uk
Organization: Computer Science Dept, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh


In article <1992Aug21.182548.2932@nntp.uoregon.edu>, johnm@cajal.uoregon.edu (John Martin) writes:

>For some applications, I agree. GUIs are like anything else -- they have
>their place. Unfortunately, nobody seems to have figured out how to do
>them right :-)

Has anyone figured out how to do software right yet ?

>John Martin                                        johnm@cajal.uoregon.edu

STF
--
sfleming@cs.hw.ac.uk                        ...ukc!cs.hw.ac.uk!sfleming
Errata: For "He shows promise as a software engineer",
   read "He is a very promising software engineer."
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:500 comp.windows.misc:1182 comp.windows.news:492 comp.windows.x:15510 comp.human-factors:1837
From: rjc@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 21 Aug 92 14:55:36 GMT
Organization: Human Communication Research Center
In-reply-to: david@twg.com's message of 20 Aug 92 18:21:15 GMT

In article <1992Aug20.181915.2357@twg.com>, David Herron (dh) writes:

dh> This is because there is constantly a representation on the screen
dh> of the current status, while in the CLI model (and to a lesser
dh> extent the CURSES model) the user must be able to visualize a lot
dh> of things.

I think this is rather misleading. People _will_ visulaise internal
state in the system, GUI or not. That's why GUIs with suprising
behaviours, no matter how well signaled on the screen, are so awful. 

People commonly deal with systems where they have to visualise. The
most common case is dealing with other people where, dispite a great
deal of visual communication, the GUI is rather primitive compared to
the system :-).

I think an absolutist statment that GUIs are good or bad is always
naive, it will always depend on the application. 

dh> This is also not (always) true.  In TOG's book on user interfaces he
dh> claims they (Apple) studied this and found that users on keyboard driven
dh> interfaces were generally slower than ones on mouse driven ones.

What kind of task? Simple file shuffling, drawing etc. are wonderful
things for GUIs. manipulating bulk data, sifting, extracting
statistics, normalising and plotting the results more or less demands
a well thought out linguistic interface, because the concepts involved
don't naturally fall into a direct manipulation scheme. 

That's not to say that an input language can't be backed up by useful
mouse input and can't take advantage of a high resolution screen to
display things well.

Besides which this, as stated, certainly confuses two issues. A
keyboard interface does not equate with a command line interface.
A screen editor such as emacs or vi is a direct manipulation interface
for text. The keyboard based interface comes from past hardware, but
persists because moving from keyboard to mouse is annoying.  

--
rjc@cogsci.ed.ac.uk			_O_
					 |<
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
From: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz)
Subject: Fax modern technology?  Not!
Organization: Mount Holyoke College
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 03:10:15 GMT

In article <px+n-s.nagle@netcom.com> nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle) writes:
>[...]  FAX, being a more modern technology than E-mail, seems to
>be provided with more modern user interfaces.

FAX: At it's best a method for taking a non eletronically readable 
document and turn it into a lower quality non electronically readable
document at a distant location.  At it's worst a method for taking an
electronically readable document, waste a piece of dead tree, stick
it into a machine, and end up with a lower quality non electronically
readable document at a distant location.

You call THAT a modern technology?

       ;-)
--
Jurgen Botz                  |   Internet: JBotz@mtholyoke.edu
Academic Systems Consultant  |     Bitnet: JBotz@mhc.bitnet
Mount Holyoke College        |      Voice: (US) 413-538-2375 (daytime)
South Hadley, MA, USA        | Snail Mail: J. Botz, 01075-0629


Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:505 comp.windows.misc:1185 comp.windows.news:495 comp.windows.x:15522 comp.human-factors:1842
From: lwall@netlabs.com (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Keywords: n
Date: 22 Aug 92 20:14:36 GMT
Organization: NetLabs, Inc.

GUIs are great at representing everything except relationships involving
the word "many".

Larry Wall
lwall@netlabs.com
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
From: markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Hunk)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Computing Services Division, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 01:57:50 GMT

In article <1992Aug20.165713.6750@u.washington.edu> cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) writes:
>I find the equation of GUI with duncedness to be laughable.
>Design better GUIs.  Fix the network to permit access to
>graphical interfaces.  Go the next step to the virtual
>interface.

GUI's (with mouses) are laughable in that they were being foisted on a market
at a time when far superior technology was and still is available (light pens)

A Real Video Interface doesn't impose a whole level of indirection between the
hand and the screen with a mouse, but allows direct contact with the screen
either with a keyboard or a light pen, or both.

>Retreat to line commands?  Preposterous.

The only acceptable user interface (the Optimal one) is a direct
brain-to-machine connection.
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
From: zaphod@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (clifford.m.weiss)
Subject: Re: Peeve: Numerical error messages
Organization: AT&T
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 19:51:36 GMT

In article <sourada.713756632@vincent1.iastate.edu> sourada@iastate.edu (Steven D Ourada) writes:
>In <4318@equinox.unr.edu> malc@pyramid.unr.edu (Malcolm L. Carlock) writes:
>
>>Peeve #1:  When a program fails with a message like "Error 192", rather
>>	   than a descriptive textual message.
>
>A Real Hacker doesn't need text messages, or even a number. "E" is good
>enough, as a matter of fact.
>
>>Peeve #2:  When said program does not at least include in its documentation
>>	   a description of what the hell conditions "Error 192" and friends
>>	   are intended to indicate AND getting hold of a human to tell you
>>	   what these messages mean is well-nigh impossible.
>
>It's obvious what error 192 is anyway. But I'm not going to tell you if you
>don't already know...

Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles,
it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor any of the numerous idiot lights
which plague the modern driver.  Rather, if the driver makes a mistake, a giant
'?' lights up in the center of the dashboard.  "The experienced driver",
Thompson says, "will usually know what's wrong."
	-Originally from 4.2 BSD's fortune program.
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
From: edcrwfrd@unlv.edu (Edward Crawford)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: UNLV
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 92 23:00:22 GMT

But you can use GUI's remotely.... Xwindows can do that, and sorta 
similarly, remote machines can be nodes on a network... while
not all machines can do it, it can be done.
From: friedman@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Noah Friedman)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: Peeve: Numerical error messages
Date: 17 Aug 92 04:05:30 GMT
	<marc.713788849@vieta.math.uni-sb.de>
Organization: Free Software Foundation, 675 Mass Ave. Cambridge, MA 02139
In-reply-to: marc@vieta.math.uni-sb.de's message of 14 Aug 92 10:40:49 GMT

In article <marc.713788849@vieta.math.uni-sb.de> marc@vieta.math.uni-sb.de (Marc Conrad) writes:
>>>Peeve #1:  When a program fails with a message like "Error 192", rather
>>>	   than a descriptive textual message.
>
>>A Real Hacker doesn't need text messages, or even a number. "E" is good
>>enough, as a matter of fact.
>
>Ha ! why do you need an "E" ??  All, what I need is a lack of expected 
>output !!

   Oh come on, even "ed", the mighty Standard Text Editor (tm), is
gracious enough to notify inexperienced users that there was an error by
printing a "?".

Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers