HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mouse@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 3 Sep 92 22:04:51 GMT
Organization: McGill Research Centre for Intelligent Machines

In article <RJC.92Aug28171240@daiches.cogsci.ed.ac.uk>, rjc@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Caley) writes:
> In article <1992Aug28.132640.15662@crd.ge.com>, Pete Halverson (ph) writes:
>> The thing about having a 3d look to a button is that, [...]
> [...] I don't expect to push pictures of buttons any more than I
> expect to smoke pictures of pipes.

> xcal, for example, has a button which is a picture of a mouse with a
> button highlighted.  _That_ is, to me, a good cue.

Until you use a machine with a trackball, or a tablet-and-puck, or a
retinal tracker, instead of a mouse...or if, as I suspect, xcal doesn't
bother to check and blindly assumes a three-button mouse, you use it
with a mouse with other than three buttons.

> Of course, that 2-second delay to learn which is a button may be of
> importance in a shop or at a demo for a suit who signs the cheque to
> buy the chrome that some poor underling has to work around.

I like it...I like it.  Something tells me I'd get along with you.

					der Mouse

			    mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: fwp@CC.MsState.Edu (Frank Peters)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Computing Center, Mississippi State University
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 00:23:25 GMT

In article <YANDROS.92Aug30173448@j-g-ballard.MIT.EDU> yandros@Athena.MIT.EDU (Chad Phillip Brown) says:
: 
:   From: lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin)
: > I think the difference is that the OPEN LOOK UI was designed.  Very
: > carefully.  By people with experience.  And _then_ implemented.  Motif
: > was implemented without any real specification, as I understand it,
: > and it shows.
: 
: Not that I'm registering a preference but it's my understanding that
: the Motif UI was designed pretty carefully to comply with things like
: IBM's CUA, etc.

But how was IBM's CUA designed?  It has always been my subjective
impression (I have no 'evidence' to back it up) that Open Look was
designed to be used and Motif was designed to look like another,
existing interface.

: Personally, I despise OpenLook, just by taste, and find Motif to be
: too underpowered, overburdened, and undercustomizable to be useable on
: a real machine (maybe my desktop Alpha-connection machine will solve
: this ;-).  NeXTStep is very pretty, and has a nice fel, but isn't
: customizable enough; and System 7 is similar.  Never used NeWS.  All
: in all, I have to agree with you here:

NeXT Step is nice.  So is pre system 7 Mac interface (but, of course,
there were those lawsuits).  OpenLook is okay.  Motif is horrid...a lot
of chrome and it STILL doesn't seem intuitive...which is what I thought
the chrome was supposed to buy you.

Neither chrome nor customizability is important to me.  Consistency and
predictability matter more.

I think that we all agree that there is a lot of work left to be done.
--
Frank Peters  -  UNIX Systems Programmer  -  Mississippi State University
Internet: fwp@CC.MsState.Edu  -  Phone: (601)325-7030  -  FAX: (601)325-8921
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: jimc@tau-ceti.isc-br.com (Jim Cathey)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 27 Aug 92 02:46:45 GMT
Organization: ISC - Bunker Ramo, Spokane, WA

In article <1992Aug26.175124.19683@twg.com> david@twg.com (David Herron) writes:
>How does the user tell the difference between a button and a text entry 
>box?  They both look *the* *same* (a box with text inside).  But on Motif 

'Cause a button has prominently rounded edges, and a TE box is squared.
Works for me...

-- 
+----------------+
! II      CCCCCC !  Jim Cathey
! II  SSSSCC     !  ISC-Bunker Ramo
! II      CC     !  TAF-C8;  Spokane, WA  99220
! IISSSS  CC     !  UUCP: uunet!isc-br!jimc (jimc@isc-br.isc-br.com)
! II      CCCCCC !  (509) 927-5757
+----------------+
			"PC's --- the junk bonds of the computer industry"
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:646 comp.human-factors:2004 comp.windows.misc:1294 comp.windows.news:596 comp.windows.x:16050
From: lwv26@cas.org (Larry W. Virden)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 2 Sep 92 16:15:45 GMT
Reply-To: lvirden@cas.org (Larry W. Virden)
Followup-To: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
Organization: Nedriv Software and Shoe Shiners, Uninc.

In article <1992Sep1.185607.26628@nntp.uoregon.edu> johnm@cajal.uoregon.edu (John Martin) writes:
:
:This is exactly the type of user that GUIs are perfect for! I don't think that
:anyone is arguing otherwise.  BUT -- among proficient users, a good CLI is
:still better and more productive then a GUI.
:

Hmm.  I use codecenter and xcodecenter both at different times - that 
gives me experience under a CLI and GUI.  And I find the GUI codecenter much
easier to use than the CLI - and I am a long time Unix user, fall under
the proficient user category, and type quite fast.  

I also find that having a virtual desktop, with lots of xterms, gives me
the best of both worlds - cause I find somethings easier to do with the
GUI (like tracking lots of mail boxes for incoming mail, watching log/info
files for new information, etc) and I find other things easier with a CUI
(like vi, ksh, etc.)

I don't know why folks have to take an either/or angle.  Let's make the
user more proficient by giving them access to both environments and
when it makes more sense to use shell, a CUI, a mouse, voice input, a
blink of the eye, a sneeze/hiccup/burp/whatever then use it.  And make
as many of the other accesses available as possible, for those with
other priorities...
-- 
Larry W. Virden                 UUCP: osu-cis!chemabs!lvirden
Same Mbox: BITNET: lvirden@cas  INET: lvirden@cas.org
Personal: 674 Falls Place,   Reynoldsburg, OH 43068-1614
America Online: lvirden@aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Alfalfa Software, Inc.
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 92 01:15:11 GMT

lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin) writes:
: I think the difference is that the OPEN LOOK UI was designed.  Very carefully.
: By people with experience.  And _then_ implemented.  Motif was implemented
: without any real specification, as I understand it, and it shows.
There was a specification for the L&F before the toolkit was written.
It is not as detailed as the OL one, but it exists and it details things
to the level that you are discussing.  The OL stuff was designed more
carefully in advance, however some of that design (scroll bars for instance)
seems to have been done explicitly to avoid looking like the Mac.  You win
some, you lose some.

-- 
						nazgul@alfalfa.com

I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:641 comp.windows.misc:1288 comp.windows.news:591 comp.windows.x:16030 comp.human-factors:1997
From: peirce@outpost.SF-Bay.org (Michael Peirce)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 2 Sep 92 05:07:35 GMT
Reply-To: peirce@outpost.SF-Bay.org (Michael Peirce)
Organization: Peirce Software
X-Mailer: uAccess - Macintosh Release: 1.6v1


In article <1992Sep1.185034.26473@nntp.uoregon.edu> (alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors), johnm@cajal.uoregon.edu (John Martin) writes:
> In article <1992Aug31.145609.17818@dcatlas.dot.gov>, joet@dcatlas.dot.gov (Joe Trott) writes:
> 
> >Whose desk is clean enough, 100% (or close) of the time in order to use a
> >Rat?
> 
> Not mine, ever. I always have to shift piles of stuff around just to move
> the rodent to a button and click!!

I don't know.  I have about as messy a desk as anyone can have.  I
have a little mouse pad (about 7 x 8) and even most of that is often
covered up with clutter.

I do keep the mouse "turned up", meaning that a little wrist movement
gives me a lot of mouse movement on screen.  The faster you flick
the mouse, the faster it moves around the screen.  One quick, though
very small, flick will move it all the way across the screen.  I also
automatically will move the mouse, pick it up, then move it again,
though I only noticed this after looking at how I actually use the mouse.

I'd say my mouse doesn't move more than about two inches in any direction,
my arm doesn't really move just my hand - and yes, I have a large screen
area, one 16" monitor plus a portrait monitor.

It's all standard Apple Macintosh equipment.

--  Michael Peirce      --   peirce@outpost.SF-Bay.org
--  Peirce Software     --   Suite 301, 719 Hibiscus Place
--                      --   San Jose, California USA 95117
--  Makers of...        --   voice: (408) 244-6554 fax: (408) 244-6882
--            SMOOTHIE  --   AppleLink: peirce & America Online: AFC Peirce
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Integrated Systems Laboratory, ETH, Zurich
	<1992Aug29.232924.10887@sq.sq.com>
	<YANDROS.92Aug30173448@j-g-ballard.MIT.EDU> <Btv1sC.79B@mtholyoke.edu>
	<YANDROS.92Sep1003712@j-g-ballard.MIT.EDU>
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 13:13:34 GMT

In article <YANDROS.92Sep1003712@j-g-ballard.MIT.EDU> yandros@Athena.MIT.EDU (Chad Phillip Brown) writes:
>While I won't argue with this point, the major fault I find with the
>Mac interface is the way this GUI is locked in to the system,
>immovable.  I have seen *ONE* decently designed application; a graphic
>FTP client with a small window at the bottom where the actually
>protocol commands were shown.  If I felt like using a mouse, I could
>simply select files and click buttons, but I still had the option of
>getting things done at full speed by using the keyboard.  I see no
>reason why the Mac GUI souldn't accomodate this in everything.

Because there *is* no reason. The Mac GUI doesn't get in the way of a
programmer wanting to do this. Two further examples of combined GUI/command
line programs are the MPW Shell (A development environment) and the A/UX shell
(a Un*x shell), which are command line oriented but allow the use to specify
command line options with a dialog instead.

>As an
>example, a freind and I spent several minutes the other day sitting at
>a Mac II running System 7 trying to find out how to do some
>straightforward manipulations from the keyboard, and managed to find a
>suggested binding that required use of keys on boths sides of the
>keyboard IN CONJUNCTION WITH the mouse...

And what "straightforward manipulations" would that be ?

>Whenever I try to use a Mac for any serious task for any
>significant period of time, I find myself very frustrated at being
>slowed down by the user interface.  (Does anyone know why there isn't a
>magic key sequence to get to the menubar, for instance?)

There is one. It is not very difficult to write an extension for the Mac to do
this; I wrote one myself a few years ago. If you have normal command of your
hands, however, you will be hopelessly slower that by using the mouse.

There are also extensions to assign menu selections and mouse
clicks to any desired key combination (QuicKeys, for example).

>I guess my
>main complaint is that Apple sems to have sacrificed the
>medium-to-high level user in favor of the the 'casual user', without
>(IMHO) real justification.

The medium and high level user usually knows how to extend the user interface
to his/her liking. 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.

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher                                      neeri@iis.ethz.ch
 `We say "gestalt" when things combine to act in ways we can't explain'
                             -- Marvin Minsky, _The Society Of Mind_
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: n
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1992 17:26:01 GMT

In article <1992Aug25.014057.29946@wl.com> schuette@wl.com (Wade Schuette) writes:
> Amen to that.  I bought my first mac in 1984, and have been extolling the
> virtues up till system 7.  I'm overwhelmed and lost by the new screens,
> color 3-D-looking icons, and other totally irrelevant clutter that violates
> all the rules.

I believe the technical term is "angry fruit salad".

And it's a pity... finally the O/S is beginning to catch up to the '80s, the
window system takes a dive back into the '60s. No, not mainframes and card
punches, I mean psychedelics and black light discos ...

(then there's the question of WHY IT TAKES SO MUCH GODDAMN MEMORY... but that's
 apparently considered normal these days... I understand WNT will require 8 MB)
-- 
Peter da Silva                                               `-_-'
$ EDIT/TECO LOVE                                              'U` 
%TECO-W-OLDJOKE Not war?                        Have you hugged your wolf today?
Ferranti Intl. Ctls. Corp.      Sugar Land, TX  77487-5012       +1 713 274 5180
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x
From: neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Integrated Systems Laboratory, ETH, Zurich
	<1992Aug28.113502.24092@walter.cray.com>
	<1992Aug28.184236.7300@erg.sri.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 13:01:52 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.184236.7300@erg.sri.com> zwicky@erg.sri.com (Elizabeth Zwicky) writes:
>Under UNIX, if I could do something once, I could
>do it again; on the Mac, it might have been blind luck. (Throwing
>things away requires getting the mouse itself, not just the icon
>you're dragging, onto the trash can. This is not true for putting
>things into folders.)

Your last sentence is actually wrong, as putting things into folders also
requires getting the mouse onto the folder icon. But you might say that this
further illustrates your point :-)

Matthias
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:667 comp.human-factors:2043
From: rv@cs.brown.edu (rodrigo vanegas)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 3 Sep 92 17:56:02
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Brown University
	<NEERI.92Sep3175345@iis.ethz.ch> <185mepINNr6k@early-bird.think.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cslab7a.cs.brown.edu
In-reply-to: barmar@think.com's message of 3 Sep 1992 18:44:41 GMT

In article <185mepINNr6k@early-bird.think.com>, barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:

> The issue for user interface designers is what they should be optimizing:
> absolute productivity or user satisfaction.  If a user is 10% more
> productive but enjoys the process 20% less, is that a good tradeoff?

Ask the user's manager.  On second thought, *don't* ask the user's
manager.

rodrigo vanegas
rv@cs.brown.edu
Xref: sparky alt.religion.computers:580 comp.windows.misc:1218 comp.windows.news:535 comp.windows.x:15763 comp.human-factors:1917
From: fetrow@biostat.washington.edu (David Fetrow)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 28 Aug 92 00:10:57 GMT
Organization: Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Univ. of Wash.

In article <1992Aug26.175124.19683@twg.com> david@twg.com (David Herron) writes:
>[Peter da Silva rants about the amount of memory required by modern
>GUIsh systems...]
>
>So why not spend some of this new `power' on making the user interface nicer?
>
>Lots of people point at 3d borders on widgets and try to make fun of them.
>Look at it from the other slant for a moment.. throw away the 3d borders
>and use a Mac (pre System 7) or something written with Athena Widgets.
>How does the user tell the difference between a button and a text entry 
>box?  They both look *the* *same* (a box with text inside).  But on Motif 
>(for instance) the button looks like a button because it's raised, while 
>text entry areas look like text entry because they're sunken.  Yeah it takes
>more code & CPU power to do this.  So what?  It isn't a lot and advantages
>come from it.
>
>I could go on, but there's work to do...

 I believe part of Peters point is that, while you need more than 64K
to pull this kind of stuff off we shouldn't need 4MB+. PC-geos, for
example, demonstrates this (it runs OK on my 640K PC) and they could get
smaller if they had to. Size and program (as opposed to developer) efficiency
is almost a non-consideration these days....even in operating systems!


-- 
 - dave fetrow-					fetrow@biostat.washington.edu

 "Never underestimate the ability of large potential profits to
  make technically inferior technology into a workable standard."
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: spc@pineal.sci.fau.edu (Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Florida Atlantic University, but who cares?
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 21:46:58 GMT

In article <Btv1sC.79B@mtholyoke.edu> jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz) writes:
>In article <YANDROS.92Aug30173448@j-g-ballard.MIT.EDU> yandros@Athena.MIT.EDU (Chad Phillip Brown) writes:
>>Not that I'm registering a preference but it's my understanding that
>>the Motif UI was designed pretty carefully to comply with things like
>>IBM's CUA, etc.
>
>IBM's what?
>
>>Personally, I despise OpenLook, just by taste, and find Motif to be
>>too underpowered, overburdened, and undercustomizable to be useable on
>>a real machine (maybe my desktop Alpha-connection machine will solve
>>this ;-).  NeXTStep is very pretty, and has a nice fel, but isn't
>>customizable enough; and System 7 is similar.  Never used NeWS.
>
>I've never quite been able to figure out what exactly NeWS is... I
>know it stands for Network Extensible Windowing System and that it's
>based on Postscript, but I don't think I've ever seen a machine
>running it by itself.  

  Well, the SGI machine I'm sitting in front of used to run NeWS, and was
one of the best looking, quick and easy to use GUI's I've ever used.  and
the fact that it was running Postscript in the background (to manage the
display) meant you had quite an oportunity to personalize it (assuming
you knew Postscript 8-).

  Unfortunately, SGI pretty much dropped NeWS and went to X (icky icky).
I still miss NeWS very much 8-(

  -spc (still kinda upset over the loss of NeWS)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
From: preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com (Scott E. Preece)
Date: 24 Aug 92 22:07:06 GMT
Followup-To: alt.religion.computers
Distribution: comp
Organization: Motorola MCG, Urbana Design Center

In article <mellon.714411931@pepper> mellon@iti.org (Ted Lemon) 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.
|
|   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.
---
I'm sorry, but your objection is unconvincing.  Leaving aside, for the
moment, the fact that some aspects of sending mail are clearly and
obviously not CLI suitable (like composing the text of the message
itself), your counter-example of providing a pattern and then selecting
the desired instance is much more GUI-like than CLI-like.  CLI
interfaces do not naturally handle interactive construction of commands.
You're much better off, for the given case, having a text field you type
names into and having the system either verify them or suggest
alternatives for those that don't match.  That's still GUI-ish, even if
it's not *just* selecting things from a list.

--
scott preece
motorola/mcg urbana design center	1101 e. university, urbana, il   61801
uucp:	uunet!uiucuxc!udc!preece,	 arpa:	preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com
phone:	217-384-8589			  fax:	217-384-8550
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors
From: jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Mount Holyoke College
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 18:24:12 GMT

In article <YANDROS.92Aug30173448@j-g-ballard.MIT.EDU> yandros@Athena.MIT.EDU (Chad Phillip Brown) writes:
>Not that I'm registering a preference but it's my understanding that
>the Motif UI was designed pretty carefully to comply with things like
>IBM's CUA, etc.

IBM's what?

>Personally, I despise OpenLook, just by taste, and find Motif to be
>too underpowered, overburdened, and undercustomizable to be useable on
>a real machine (maybe my desktop Alpha-connection machine will solve
>this ;-).  NeXTStep is very pretty, and has a nice fel, but isn't
>customizable enough; and System 7 is similar.  Never used NeWS.

I've never quite been able to figure out what exactly NeWS is... I
know it stands for Network Extensible Windowing System and that it's
based on Postscript, but I don't think I've ever seen a machine
running it by itself.  But that brings me to a GUI you forgot to
mention... "Open Windows".  Barf!!!  This has got to be the worst of
the bunch!  It takes the "3-D feel" to absolutely arbitrary extremes,
violates every rule in the book, and is a bear to boot (it's slow on a
Sparchstation 2, a mid-20s Specmarks machine... I have no idea how
they managed that.)  What's worst, I bet the people who wrote it a
proud of themselves and that they thought: ``We can do a better job
than all those so called Human Factors people.''

>All in all, I have to agree with you here:
>
>> I don't think _any_ of them are at the point at which I'd say `If
>> computer development stopped here it'd be OK'.
>
Me three!  We're not even close!
--
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
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors