Re: Re[2]: [9fans] User Interface

Re: Re[2]: [9fans] User Interface

[anothy]

// I keep hearing this, and it's pithy, no doubt, but I don't really buy it. 
// Talk to a lactation consultant sometime.  People (mothers and infants)
// still have problems.  Newborns have the instinct to suck, but both mother
// and child still need to be taught how to properly latch on (yes, that's
// a technical term).

maybe just further support for the nipple claim? the nipple's intuitive, as
you say most infants have the suck instinct, but maybe it's the breast that's
problematic? if we can't move even _that_ far past the nipple, how do we
expect to come up with an intuitive GUI? ☺

i've tried hard to keep the following consice.

i've shown plan 9 to a number of non-techie (no CS or non-M$/Mac
background) people. results have been, on the whole, favorable. shell stuff
takes a bit of explaining (wildcards and >|< I/O redirection, mainly), but
once that and a few other principles have been learned, most people seem
quite able to build up from there, with only casual coaching. consistant
application of those basic principles is what makes this so.

i'd say that perhaps while the Mac interface was designed to reduce time to
usability, the plan 9 interface reduces time to proficency. the basic principles
take time to learn, but once they are learned, a lot of power can be derived
from them.

i didn't learn plan 9 from the manuals; rather i just mucked around with it.
with my extant unix background, i found it the easiest system to learn i've
found. this was possible only because the basic principles i learned are
consistantly applicable throughout.

when i did sit down and read the manuals cover-to-cover, i still learned
loads of stuff i didn't know, and found loads of stuff i didn't know existed. it
was easy to incorporate because the principles were applied consistantly.

i need a manual for notepad.exe. i don't have a clue what's under the various
top-level menu boxes. hell, if i'd not used M$ before, i wouldn't even know
they're pull downs.

i've found the plan 9 man pages, used in conjunction with lookman, grep,
and acme, the most efficient and comprehensive help system i've used. these
feelings are echoed by many of the above mentioned folks.

i think the ½ required to start the wm was a good idea - it required people to
at least read _something_ before getting started.

lots of  "ordinary human beings" work with it. i don't make the mistake of
thinking that folks who don't understand the system are stupid, but i do tend
to think perhaps they havn't given much time to learning it. please don't make
the mistake of thinking that since you don't understand it, the authors are
stupid. thanks,
-α.

Re: Re[2]: [9fans] User Interface

[Boyd Roberts]

> maybe just further support for the nipple claim? the nipple's intuitive, as
> you say most infants have the suck instinct, but maybe it's the breast that's
> problematic? if we can't move even _that_ far past the nipple, how do we
> expect to come up with an intuitive GUI? ☺

it may well be instinctive but that discounts implementation problems.

> i'd say that perhaps while the Mac interface was designed to reduce time to
> usability, ...

designed to reduce the time before defenestration (sp?) i'd say.

all stolen from PARC and tragically implemented.

Re: Re[2]: [9fans] User Interface

[Boyd Roberts]

> i think the ½ required to start the wm was a good idea - it required people to
> at least read _something_ before getting started.

i don't agree.  that was its name.  and yes, i used a similar brute force approach to
russ' for the v2 pc release.  one problem i had is that i _couldn't_ type ½ so i cheated.

yes, azerty hell.  with some pain i can type qwerty on azerty.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Matthew Hannigan]

anothy@cosym.net wrote in part
> ... 
> i've shown plan 9 to a number of non-techie (no CS or non-M$/Mac
> background) people. results have been, on the whole, favorable.
> ...

yes, "shown" -- the power of a demo is rather underestimated.  I learnt
unix from the ref manuals, but I stuck to ed.  vi baffled me. What the
hell is that column of tildes about?!)  But when I saw some fly through
editing jobs it won me over.

I think a little video or even animated gif of someone doing 
something with acme or sam would go a hell of a long way.

Me, I'm stuck with a mouse which refuses to yield any sort
of middle button click, dammit.

-Matt

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Boyd Roberts]

> What the hell is that column of tildes about?!)

that's nothing.  you should check out how it implements
the ~ command.  it sort of explains why you can't type 10~
well, you can type it, but it doesn't work as you would expect.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Dan Cross]

In article <047001c12b7a$c075e1c0$3cf7c6d4@SOMA> you write:
>> What the hell is that column of tildes about?!)
>
>that's nothing.  you should check out how it implements
>the ~ command.  it sort of explains why you can't type 10~
>well, you can type it, but it doesn't work as you would expect.

What, you mean not everyone wants to toggle the case of a single
letter 10 times in a row, automatically?  You know, if you did
it an odd number of times, the case would actually change.  Isn't
that what you want to do?  :-)

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Boyd Roberts]

> What, you mean not everyone wants to toggle the case of a single
> letter 10 times in a row, automatically?  You know, if you did
> it an odd number of times, the case would actually change.  Isn't
> that what you want to do?  :-)

hang on dan, ~ moves you one char to the right.  think about 10dd

the implementation of ~ was to peek at the character you're sitting
on and then push back on input:

    rCl

where C is the character in the other case.  the count gets lost due
to the 'loop' and the pushback iirc.

what a hideous disaster.  goto fonfon ...

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Boyd Roberts]

> What, you mean not everyone wants to toggle the case of a single
> letter 10 times in a row, automatically?  You know, if you did
> it an odd number of times, the case would actually change.  Isn't
> that what you want to do?  :-)

hang on dan, ~ moves you one char to the right.  think about 10dd

the implementation of ~ was to peek at the character you're sitting
on and then push back on input:

    rCl

where C is the character in the other case.  the count gets lost due
to the 'loop' and the pushback iirc.

what a hideous disaster.  goto fonfon ...

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Boyd Roberts]

> What, you mean not everyone wants to toggle the case of a single
> letter 10 times in a row, automatically?  You know, if you did
> it an odd number of times, the case would actually change.  Isn't
> that what you want to do?  :-)

hang on dan, ~ moves you one char to the right.  think about 10dd

the implementation of ~ was to peek at the character you're sitting
on and then push back on input:

    rCl

where C is the character in the other case.  the count gets lost due
to the 'loop' and the pushback iirc.

what a hideous disaster.  goto fonfon ...

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Dan Cross]

In article <053701c12c10$b0395210$3cf7c6d4@SOMA> you write:
>hang on dan, ~ moves you one char to the right.  think about 10dd
>
>the implementation of ~ was to peek at the character you're sitting
>on and then push back on input:
>
>    rCl
>
>where C is the character in the other case.  the count gets lost due
>to the 'loop' and the pushback iirc.
>
>what a hideous disaster.  goto fonfon ...

Whoops, you are correct, Boyd.  I just logged into a VAX running
4.3BSD, and saw that happen (oddly enough, there's one at CMU you can
login to as guest.  Who knew?).

However, it looks like newer versions of vi fix the problem.  On my
FreeBSD machine at work, 10~ does the right thing [sic], and similarly
on the Sun I'm sending this mail from.

I'll agree though; a purely modal editor is just, well, weird.

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Boyd Roberts]

> Whoops, you are correct, Boyd.  I just logged into a VAX running
> 4.3BSD, and saw that happen (oddly enough, there's one at CMU you can
> login to as guest.  Who knew?).

i was always referring to the original code.  i think i only read
it 'cos i wanted to know why it was so broken.  i don't think i
ever hacked it.  reading the main loop was more than enough.

i see my dumb cable provider managed to send my reply 3 times.

> However, it looks like newer versions of vi fix the problem.

you fix that problem with rm(1).

> I'll agree though; a purely modal editor is just, well, weird.

no, a purely broken editor is, well, a piece of junk.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[David Lukes]

(Yes, I know this is OT,
 but there's a serious underlying point.)

> the implementation of ~ was to peek at the character you're sitting
> on and then push back on input:
> 
>     rCl
> 
> where C is the character in the other case.  the count gets lost due
> to the 'loop' and the pushback iirc.

It's worse than that, Jim:
in later versions they hacked in a fixed length local buffer and ...
(you can guess the rest).

The serious point is that editors shouldn't do stuff like translation:
that's much better left to specialised external utilities and
smooth interfaces to use them from the editor.

Cheers,
	Dave.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Vincent van Gelderen]

Dan Cross wrote:
> In article <047001c12b7a$c075e1c0$3cf7c6d4@SOMA> you write:
> >> What the hell is that column of tildes about?!)
> >
> >that's nothing.  you should check out how it implements
> >the ~ command.  it sort of explains why you can't type 10~
> >well, you can type it, but it doesn't work as you would expect.
> 
> What, you mean not everyone wants to toggle the case of a single
> letter 10 times in a row, automatically?  You know, if you did
> it an odd number of times, the case would actually change.  Isn't
> that what you want to do?  :-)
> 
>    - Dan C.
> 

Oh, but I have to have that functionality, I use it
to benchmark the vi on my system. The mersenne primes
are good for this. Compulsive clickers may like to
visit:

http://drunkmenworkhere.org/43.php?n=7&f=1

OT? Maybe.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Randolph Fritz]

In article <20010814125559.826F319A3E@mail.cse.psu.edu>, rob pike wrote:
>> The editors, sam and acme are virtually unusable.
> 
> Many people disagree, even feel the opposite, that they are among
> the easiest-to-use editors around.
> 
>> Why is it that such a simple task as editing the contents of a textfile 
>> must cause so much pain?
> 
> I don't hear many yelps where I work and essentially everyone uses
> either sam or acme.  I suspect you don't know how to use them.
> 
> A criticism I will accept is that there is inadequate documentation
> explaining how to use them well.  Try reading the associated papers,
> rather than just the man pages.  They help somewhat.
> 

I think a key point has been hit, albeit glancingly: computer
scientists are willing to study a system before using it; most
people--including most software professionals, these days--are not.

The original usability goal of the Mac was 30 minutes from a newbie
sitting down to beginner-level productivity.  (Without, I think,
reference to any manuals, though with quite a lot of text on-screen.)
A much gentler learning curve, yes?

Now there is no requirement that Plan 9 be accessible without
extensive study.  However, I suspect there are good reasons to look at
these issues more closely.  If nothing else, it seems to me there are
interesting design process issues in the area, and working on it might
open up interesting research topics.  I've seen a lot of sneering at
the Mac, but, still--30 minutes to usability?  That's an impressive
design achievement, and it surprises me it doesn't engender more
respect and emulation.

It also seems to me that aiming at a gentler learning curve for
software developers might attract a broader group of software
researchers to Plan 9 and--forgive me if I have this wrong--isn't that
one of the reasons Plan 9 is being published on the internet with
source code?

It would be an interesting research topic for someone who wasn't
busily studying architecture and building science... :-)

Randolph

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[forsyth]

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and furthermore people can and do use it commercially.


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To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] User Interface
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 08:49:13 GMT
Message-ID: <3B7C28BA.B7FA8D2F@null.net>

Eric de Redelijkheid wrote:
> Then why is it for sale? To hurt users? If it is just an excercise in
> building a distributed operating system, why let  it out of the lab?

So that people who can appreciate it have the opportunity to
experiment with it.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[mark powers]

in article <200108161929.UAA31601@localhost.localdomain>,
Steve Kilbane <9fans@cse.psu.edu> sez ... 
>Most of us started with the published papers. (Anyone out there using
>Plan 9 who *didn't* devour all the papers first chance they got?)

as an aside, I suspect there are also at least a few of us who've come
to find rc + sam + 9wm indispensable on Unix even without (yet) having
experienced the full glory of the real thing...

p.s. cheers and hats off to all, from a largely non-technical user (yes,
we exist!).

-- 
-mp ``between thought and expression lies a lifetime''

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

Eric de Redelijkheid wrote:
> Then why is it for sale? To hurt users? If it is just an excercise in
> building a distributed operating system, why let  it out of the lab?

So that people who can appreciate it have the opportunity to
experiment with it.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Boyd Roberts]

From: "Eric de Redelijkheid" <eric.de.redelijkheid@xs4all.nl>

> btw: is there a shutdown command or do I just switch my laptop of?

just switch it off and leave it off.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Boyd Roberts]

what we've got here is failure to communicate [pure research].
some men, you just can't reach...
so, you get what we had last week
which is they way he wants it!
well, he gets it!
n' i don't like it any more than you men.

   -- strother p. martin, _cool hand luke_

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Steve Kilbane]

> More sense than making this piece of crap and then blaming users if they 
> don't appreciate it?

Not so. If it's not appreciated, fine. If you don't like it, fine. If you
disagree with it, then a discussion is always appreciated. Insulting it
because you can't be bothered to think is a different matter.

> I think insults can work out in two way's. Either 
> the software designers come up with something better, or there will be 
> nothing left to insult.

Insults don't help. Destructive criticism isn't useful. Constructive
criticism is.


> I am very willing to learn new things. This OS, however does not invite 
> a me to learn about it.

Why not? What is it that's missing, that would "invite" you to learn?
Most of us started with the published papers. (Anyone out there using
Plan 9 who *didn't* devour all the papers first chance they got?)

> For your information I finally figured how to 
> operate 'acme' and 'sam' and I still think it is stinks.

It's an opinion. Could do with some justification, though.

> My 
> motivation is not to put up with any illconceived idea about how a 
> computer should be operated.

And yet, your first example was notepad?

> These new ideas won't mean a thing if you can't get ordinary human 
> beings to work with it.

Sorry? You apparently have missed the "Research" part of Plan 9's
origins.

> Then why is it for sale? To hurt users? If it is just an excercise in 
> building a distributed operating system, why let  it out of the lab?

Because people in this forum begged them to. Because the papers were
published, demonstrating new ways of assembling and using a system, and
enough people liked those ways enough to want to use them.


> And I don't want to hear excuses like: if a user can't operate our 
> software, we are not to blame; this user must be stupid, or: I can 
> operate this software, so logicly if I can, anyone can.

Then don't hear them. No-one's forcing you to read this, just as no-one's
forcing you to use Plan 9. If it's not for you, fine: go use something
else with our blessing. Maybe you'll find something that suits you. Stay
around and discuss things calmly and rationally, if you like, but please
don't just hang around to whine. It does no-one any good.

steve

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[phaet0n]

I have to admit that reading this newsgroup is
perhaps the most amusing thing one can do on
the internet. Having followed it in silence since
release 3, I've decided to break silence.

Plan 9 is gorgeously designed. It's actually
refreshing. But I've not touched it recently.
More later.

The UI crisis can be traced to the fact that no
developer ships documentation with commerical
end-user software any more. Online help is
appauling. Moreover, developers have no
consistency of metaphor. Apple's success can be
traced to the fact that their UI guidelines were
with development documentation. I've never
encountered an Apple user who didn't have at
least minimal command of a new application,
mainly because developers tried to adhere to
those guidelines. If you expect those guidelines
to be followed by every OS, well you're an idiot.
However, if you expect the UI to be intuitive,
then you're dead right. The installer for Plan 9
is intuitive. In fact, Rio is intuitive. I felt
at ease immediately using them. The only
curiosity was the ESC feature in Rio which
required reading the man page. As you see, I don't
even know what it's called, but I use it...
intuitive. This minimal intuitiveness is all that
is required. The rest falls on the user to gain
acquaintence with the metaphor used by the OS
designer. This is where Plan 9 becomes truly
refreshing. Please read about how it treats
process namespaces, how the snarf buffer works,
how rio can be run within itself, and thus how
hardware devices are multiplexed and treated as
files. The list goes on and on. But it requires a
little work on your part so, please, read the
papers on website.

Intuitiveness is framed by personal experience.
If someone could only get this into the skulls of
the HCI people at schools. We use elevators, hand- 
guns, can openers, etc., not because they're
inherently intuitive, but because we've seen them
being used since we were very little. This is not
some kind of Freudian condition that requires
having intefaces resemble your mother in order to
be intuitive. Although it would explain why
going down is so popular in others OSes.

As for having not used p9 recently that's because
I'm not willing to work in 8bit under my Matrox
MII. I don't know how to write PCI drivers. So
for now, I'm developing a compiler for a (yes, 
another) functional language, since I hate C and
can't get GHC, or nhc to build. I'm working on
BeOS, which is very nice but dying. It works and I
get to use OCaml to develop the compiler. Now all
I have to do is to ask you kind folks where I can
find out about Plan 9's object format so I can
port the Netwide assembler and get it to emit
proper object files. Then hopefully we can all
look forward to a nice compiler in the future
which emits objects for both Plan 9 and ELF.

Thank you. And keep me laughing, or crying.
Thanks to Rob eh, and the gang at Bell Labs.
Your work is greatly appreciated.

ph
--

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Eric de Redelijkheid]

Matt wrote:

>EdR> More sense than making this piece of crap and then blaming users if they
>EdR> don't appreciate it?
>hehe wake up, time to die
>
>
>Eric de Redelijkheid <ericdere@xs4all.nl> University of Bath Computing Services, UK
>
>explains it all
>
>probably a Comp. Sci. student
>
>
>
eh?

don't let the message source from a moderated newsgroup confuse you.

Here's the original header I sent. No organisation.

 From - Wed Aug 15 19:29:43 2001
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
Message-ID: <3B7AB184.3030106@xs4all.nl>
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 19:29:40 +0200
From: Eric de Redelijkheid <ericdere@xs4all.nl>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.3) Gecko/20010801
X-Accept-Language: nl, en-us
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: comp.os.plan9
Subject: Re: [9fans] User Interface
References: <20010814122734.A24734@cackle.proxima.alt.za> <cej-1010814144547.A02246@cejchan.gli.cas.cz> <200108151619.MAA07420@augusta.math.psu.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Eric de Redelijkheid]

Dan Cross wrote:

>In article <3B793F22.5080707@xs4all.nl> you write:
>
>>This procedure is absurd.  [...]
>>
>
>Rather, your behavior is absurd.
>
>Let me get this straight; you use a piece of software, but with
>pre-conceived notions about how it should work.  When it's borne out
>that those notions don't mesh with the reality the software presents,
>you complain about and insult the software?
>
>And this makes sense to you?
>
More sense than making this piece of crap and then blaming users if they 
don't appreciate it? I think insults can work out in two way's. Either 
the software designers come up with something better, or there will be 
nothing left to insult.

>
>
>I mean, not to be rude or anything, but this sounds more like your
>issue than Plan 9's.
>
>All I can really say is, well, if notepad.exe works for you, stick with
>it.  Why you bothering to change?  What's your motivation?  If you're
>not going to attempt to learn a new way of doing things, and it sounds
>like you're not, you should probably just stick with what you know.
>
I am very willing to learn new things. This OS, however does not invite 
a me to learn about it. For your information I finally figured how to 
operate 'acme' and 'sam' and I still think it is stinks. It won't be 
long before I wipe my harddisk. I am thinking of trying beos instead. My 
motivation is not to put up with any illconceived idea about how a 
computer should be operated.

>
>
>On a personal note, I really like Plan 9.  It's a lot like a breath of
>fresh air for me; but then I like to think that I'm able to appreciate
>the new ideas that went into it, which took me quite a long time before
>I was able to do.  Maybe Dennis Ritchie and Rob Pike don't appreciate
>my humor about 1200 baud modems (:-p), but they do know a thing or two
>about how to write operating systems.
>
These new ideas won't mean a thing if you can't get ordinary human 
beings to work with it. And knowing a thing or two about operating 
systems, does not mean they know anything about how someone in the real 
world would want to use a computer.

>
>Hmm, maybe it's that stuff they sell in Amsterdam....
>
You could not point the place on a map if you wanted to. What are your 
hobbies besides computing and shooting strangers of your farm?

>
>
>Oh, one other thing: I don't think the `goal' of Plan 9 was wide-spread
>acceptance.  It was built to meet the needs of the people who built
>it.  There's nothing wrong with that, and it certainly wasn't a waste
>of time.  This can be seen empirically by the fact that they've used it
>for years to get real work done.  To the extent that it's provided a
>new way of looking at things, I think it's been rather successful as a
>research endeavour, too.  Don't make the mistake of assuming that every
>piece of software needs to be written for a mass-audience of millions
>in order to be successful or useful.
>
Then why is it for sale? To hurt users? If it is just an excercise in 
building a distributed operating system, why let  it out of the lab?

>
>
>That's all I'll say on the issue; I have no real desire to participate
>in a flame war over opinions on user interface issues.
>
>	- Dan C.
>
And I don't want to hear excuses like: if a user can't operate our 
software, we are not to blame; this user must be stupid, or: I can 
operate this software, so logicly if I can, anyone can.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Douglas A. Gwyn]

Eric de Redelijkheid wrote:
> >       disk/kfscmd halt
> >       Ctl+Alt+Del
> >       (switch it off)
> This procedure is absurd. What is wrong with a command like ' shutdown'.

All you have to do is put "disk/kfscmd halt" into an rc file "shutdown".
Mine is called "halt", which is about as much an improvement to your
suggestion as your suggestion is to the "hard way".

> Why not a button for a system shutdown?

Why should there be one?  That leads to a myriad of buttons for all
sorts of trivial things, which is *not* good user interface design.

> Or a whole sentence: ' please, shutdown the system for power down'.

"Open the pod bay doors, Hal."

"I'm sorry, I can't do that, Dave.  You didn't say 'please'."

> What is a snarf? Should an ordinairy user like me concern myself with
> words I can't find in the dictionary (if it is a word in a dictionary, I
> have a very cheap one). The fact that it is made by the same people as
> UNIX tells you nothing about interface design. The existence the old
> style man pages are an indication.

UNIX-style man pages, properly used, are a very effective means of
organizing and presenting usage information.

> ... I can not work with sam or acme. In linux, I can hardly work with vi;
> ... I refuse to work with emacs.

Then please go away.  Plan 9, like UNIX, is for tool users, not
barbarians.

> Instinctively I click (left button) this cross, ...

Read the instructions.
There is *no* window manager in general use that is "intuitive"; if
you think there is, it's only because it is similar to some other WM
with which you already have some familiarity.

> Without a good and simple easy to use user interface, plan 9 will never
> be adopted. And the whole effort would have been a pointless exercise.

Adopted by whom?  You don't seem to understand the point of the
exercise.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Fariborz 'Skip' Tavakkolian]

rob was being sarcastic in response to another person's rant. He has
employed a
"disproof by way of an absurd analogy" method to disprove the other
person's assertions :)

At 10:00 AM 8/16/2001 +0900, okamoto@granite.cias.osakafu-u.ac.jp wrote:
>>Japan
>>is out of the question; what fools having such an incomprehensible writing
>>system! 
>
>How incomprehensive is the Japanese writing system?
>
>>Nothing interesting will ever happen there, either.
>
>Well said!!  You must be a god.
>
>Kenji
>
>

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[okamoto]

>Japan
>is out of the question; what fools having such an incomprehensible writing
>system! 

How incomprehensive is the Japanese writing system?

>Nothing interesting will ever happen there, either.

Well said!!  You must be a god.

Kenji

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Micah Stetson]

> user. This is not the case with this GUI as a whole, programs like acme 
> and sam or the man pages. (Please, can't we get rid of those?)

Personally, I find the manual pages better reading
and certainly more helpful than anything I've found in
the Windows help system.  They are also, in my opinion,
easier to use than the GNU Info system.  Hypertext is fine.
But if you are willing to read, and the documentation is
fairly well written, it's just another unnecessary layer
of complexity.  Of course, if you learn to use acme, the
plain old manual pages work almost like hypertext anyway.

But really, after criticizing the majority of the
user interface and telling us that you don't desire
to appreciate anything deeper, what drives you to use
Plan 9?  I mean, if you feel a real urge to use Notepad for
day-to-day text editing, by all means install one of the
"more advanced" operating systems that incorporate that
ground-breaking technology.

For most people, "user friendly" is defined by what
they're accustomed to using.  If you're accustomed to
the user interface philosophy of Windows, Macintosh, CDE,
KDE, GNOME or any of that family, and you're unwilling to
change completely the way you work with your computer,
then Plan 9 will never appeal to you.  However, most
of us on this list feel that a little time invested in
learning to use Plan 9's interfaces is more than payed off
by the productivity gains over less powerful interfaces.
In fact, after a few weeks of using rio, sam and acme,
I began to view many of the interfaces I had thought
friendly as almost user hostile.  But you have a right to
a different opinion.  Use what you want to use.

Micah Stetson

"Calvin, go do something you hate; being miserable builds
character." -- Calvin & Hobbes

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Boyd Roberts]

From: "Micah Stetson" <micah@cnm-vra.com>
> Personally, I find the manual pages better reading
> and certainly more helpful than anything I've found in
> the Windows help system.

yes, they read X, babble, not X  -- every paragraph.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Boyd Roberts]

From: <bwc@borf.com>
> I think the Japanese will emerge triumphant in GUI's.
> They already have Icons for everything!

i don't think so.  they don't know how to code:

    the nail that sticks up will be hammered down

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Boyd Roberts]

From: <anothy@cosym.net>

// ...I have never seen a more awkward user  interface since twm.

yes, twm is my least hated favourite X window 'manager'.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Boyd Roberts]

From: "rob pike" <rob@plan9.bell-labs.com>
> English is so obviously the way to go, so easy to learn a child can pick it
> up.  Why can't everyone just adopt it and be done?  Get with the program,
> people!

but you don't speak english, you're from canada!

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[bwc]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 110 bytes --]

I think the Japanese will emerge triumphant in GUI's.
They already have Icons for everything!

  Brantley

[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 1647 bytes --]

From: "rob pike" <rob@plan9.bell-labs.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] User Interface
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 08:46:38 -0400
Message-ID: <20010815124836.0FFB8199E7@mail.cse.psu.edu>


to: eric.de.redelijkheid@xs4all.nl

I refuse to move to the Netherlands.  Why can't they learn to talk without
those gaggy throat-clearing noises?  The rest of the world lives without
them; why can't they?  What possible benefit can they be?  Forget it.  Japan
is out of the question; what fools having such an incomprehensible writing
system! Nothing interesting will ever happen there, either.

English is so obviously the way to go, so easy to learn a child can pick it
up.  Why can't everyone just adopt it and be done?  Get with the program,
people!

-rob

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Peter Bosch]

> refuse to move to the Netherlands.  Why can't they learn to talk without
> those gaggy throat-clearing noises?  The rest of the world lives without

Gee, I believe that sound also exists in Spanish.

peter.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[William K. Josephson]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2001 at 09:46:06AM +0000, Eric de Redelijkheid wrote:
> I trust that the concepts were well concidered when designing this 
> operating system, however I have never seen a more awkward user 
> interface since twm. The editors, sam and acme are virtually unusable. 
> Why is it that such a simple task as editing the contents of a textfile 
> must cause so much pain? At least some of you must have seen notepad.exe 
> at work during your lifetime? It can´t do much, but it gets the job done 
> in a simple way!

Actually, I think acme is the best new piece of software I've used
since I started using Unix a decade ago.  There are some minor
annoyances and the documentation could be better, however I appreciate
the economy of motion required to use the editor.  Plan 9 is not
especiauuuully kind to those who aren't willing to give new ideas and
new ways of doing things a chance :-)

> btw: is there a shutdown command or do I just switch my laptop of?

 disk/kfscmd halt followed by the Big Red Switch.

  -WJ

	Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
			-- Oscar Wilde

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[rob pike]

to: eric.de.redelijkheid@xs4all.nl

I refuse to move to the Netherlands.  Why can't they learn to talk without
those gaggy throat-clearing noises?  The rest of the world lives without
them; why can't they?  What possible benefit can they be?  Forget it.  Japan
is out of the question; what fools having such an incomprehensible writing
system! Nothing interesting will ever happen there, either.

English is so obviously the way to go, so easy to learn a child can pick it
up.  Why can't everyone just adopt it and be done?  Get with the program,
people!

-rob

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Eric de Redelijkheid]

pac wrote:

>>>On Tue, Aug 14, 2001 at 11:02:47AM +0100, nigel@9fs.org wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>btw: is there a shutdown command or do I just switch my laptop of?
>>>>>>
>>>>I'd just switch it off.
>>>>
>>>Amen.  Lucio.
>>>
>
>I almost certainly missed the joke (again :-), but I would rather do:
>
>	disk/kfscmd halt
>	Ctl+Alt+Del
>	(switch it off)
>
This procedure is absurd. What is wrong with a command like ' shutdown'. 
Why not a button for a system shutdown? Or a whole sentence: ' please, 
shutdown the system for power down'. What is the excuse for making a 
simple task difficult to execute?

>
>
>BTW, I was impressed by the Plan 9's GUI when I first saw it.....no, I'm not a hacker or a programmer, see below. 
>However, I like it for the sake it is minimalistic, yet powerful....no unnecessary bells and whistles (except of being so much colourful).
>Nevertheless, it is not GUI, what is central to this OS.  _It is a clean concept_.
>
>Unfortunately, I am a newbie, thus not being the proper person even for intro. However, here are the reasons that
>convinced me (personally) to prepare to switch to Plan 9:
>
>* clean design, AFAI can tell, no backward compatibility bloat,
>* small graphic lib and windowing sys instead of dinosaur X,
>* unicode,
>* minimalistic, yet powerful GUI (believe me, or not)
>* system-wide snarf buffer (but see sam)
>(yes, and the fact that Plan 9 is being made by the fathers of Unix sounds like warranty, at least to me).
>
What is a snarf? Should an ordinairy user like me concern myself with 
words I can't find in the dictionary (if it is a word in a dictionary, I 
have a very cheap one). The fact that it is made by the same people as 
UNIX tells you nothing about interface design. The existence the old 
style man pages are an indication.

>
>
>Although I am capable of doing some C programming, I would classify myself as a user.  Yes, and I know the OS called "Windoze"
>and it's notepad.exe with its "File is too large to be opened by Notepad..." message. I have 15+ years experience of using
>computers, and I have wasted _A LOT_ of time swithching among OSes:
>
I do not need a manual for notepad.exe. I should not need a manual for a 
simple task as changing the contents of a text file. I can not work with 
sam or acme. In linux, I can hardly work with vi; I only use the very 
basic commands like i-nsert, a-ppend, ESC, w-rite, q-uit. Thank god that 
I can use the backspace key in editing mode, to erase a character. I 
refuse to work with emacs.

>
> HP programmable calculator in early 80's --> Z80 based computer ---> CP/M --> DOS --> Windows, MacOS --> NEXTSTEP -->
>Linux --> (gnu/hurd/mach ... L4Linux on L4Ka .... dreaming of  berlin/hurd/L4 would once become true) --> Plan 9.
>
>Please, delay erasing of Plan 9 from your computer, and try to dive deeper. 
>Good luck, and have a nice day,
>Peter.
>
>--
>Peter A Cejchan
>biologist
>Acad. Sci., Prague, CZ
><cej at cejchan dot gli dot cas dot cz>
>
A user interface is more then just the GUI. Functions of the computer 
and programs should, in my opinion, be instinctively understood by the 
user. This is not the case with this GUI as a whole, programs like acme 
and sam or the man pages. (Please, can't we get rid of those?)

Take the GUI for instance. Click on the desktop with your right 
mouse-button. A pop-up screen apears saying (among others) 'New'. 
 New?... New what? A new file? A new car? A new job? A new wife?
Select this 'new' whatever and the arrow changes to a cross.  
Instinctively I click (left button) this cross, hoping something would 
happen. Unfortunaly the cross changes back to an arrow.
Only by fooling around a bit, I found out I can change this cross into a 
terminal window, by using the left mouse button and dragging this cross 
to a terminal window.
A better aproach in my opinion would be:
- In the pop-up menu say: 'new shell', ' new prompt',  'new window' 
instead of just 'New'
- By selecting this 'New.........' , let a window appear with a standard 
size immediately. Resizing can be done afterwards.

Without a good and simple easy to use user interface, plan 9 will never 
be adopted. And the whole effort would have been a pointless exercise. 
As far as a user is concerned the entire computer is the user interface. 
Only technicly skilled people (those that we call nerds) can appriciate 
what is under the hood.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[andrey mirtchovski]

nah, it's not obligatory for anyone to like shakespeare, however it's
universally accepted that his works are better than, say, vogon poetry.

ditto for p9 editors and GUI :)

andrey

On Tue, 14 Aug 2001 bwc@borf.com wrote:

> This thread reminds me of the comment, that someone who complains
> about Shakespeare is saying a lot . . . about themselves.
> 
>   Brantley Coile
> 

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[bwc]

This thread reminds me of the comment, that someone who complains
about Shakespeare is saying a lot . . . about themselves.

  Brantley Coile

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[anothy]

// ...I have never seen a more awkward user  interface since twm.

i'm not sure how much of this to attribute to lack of familiarity and how
much to simple personal preference. the GUI is definatly stylistically very
different from any i've seen from any other lineage (X, MS, Mac, etc).
but it is, in my mind, what a UI should be: exactly enough to facilitate
you doing your work, without getting in your way or distracting you.

// ...sam and acme are virtually unusable. Why is it that such a simple
// task as editing the contents of a textfile must cause so much pain?

what specifically is your complaint? i've found sam very easy to learn,
and have taught it to several non-Plan9 (even some non-techie) folks,
with good results. acme is a bit more learning, it's true, but you get a
bunch more out of it (IMHO). and _certainly_ either one gives much
more than any Win32 editor i've seen (well, except sam ☺).

// Why is there not just one single command to create a new user...

if this is a big issue, it's quite easy to script. the commands are both
consistant and simple. the seperation comes, basically, from the fact
that you're really doing seperate operations: adding the user to the
auth database, then adding the user to the file server. both arn't
technically required, although normal operation requires them.

again, the point here is that the commands are simple enough so that
if them being seperate is an issue, you can easialy script them into
something appropriate for your site or installation.

// In my opinion every task performed on a computer [...] should be
// done with the aid of a simple, intuitive,  point- and- click, graphical
// user interface.

well, here it just sounds like we're at a philosophical diference. the plan
9 community tends strongly to believe that there are many tasks that
are ill-suited to GUI interaction, and are much more efficiently done
via CLI and scripted interfaces. administrative tasks, as in the examples
provided by other responses, are probably the clearest examples, but
others abound.

i'm also reminded of a quote i read somewhere but can't place:
	"The only 'intuitive' interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned."
-α.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[forsyth]

>>Why is there not just one single command to create a new user, but do I 
>>need first to make the file /adm/users writable, edit this file (with 
>>more luck then wisdom), and type in at least three different commands. 

see kfscmd(8), particularly disk/kfscmd 'newuser fred', or a similar
command in fs(8) for the real file server.

it's true you then need to log in as the user and rc /sys/lib/newuser
because there correctly is no super user.

>>btw: is there a shutdown command or do I just switch my laptop of?

be sure to do disk/kfscmd halt
first

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[James A. Robinson]

> I don't hear many yelps where I work and essentially everyone uses
> either sam or acme.  I suspect you don't know how to use them.
> 
> A criticism I will accept is that there is inadequate documentation
> explaining how to use them well.  Try reading the associated papers,
> rather than just the man pages.  They help somewhat.

Actually, the documentation is far better that most I've seen. I'm am
talking about the associated papers you mention.  That's all I used for
awhile when learning to use sam.

Combine those papers with the man page and tutorial, and the docs cover
everything from concept to execution of command. I'm still working on
internalizing the nuances of addresses in ranges like -0+,+0-, but most
of the other commands (even 't' and 'm') are comfortable.


Jim

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[John Murdie]

On 14 Aug, Eric de Redelijkheid wrote:
> In my opinion every task performed on a computer:
> - installation
> - administration
> - general use (word processing, spreadsheet, mail etc..)
> - programming
> should be done with the aid of a simple, intuitive,  point- and- click,
> graphical user interface.

I recall Brian Kernighan's statement along the lines of: ``The trouble
with WYSIWYG is that What You See Is All That You Get.''

I think that the term WYSIWYG is misused; as far as WYSIWYG goes, it's
fine - _of course_ I want my document preview to be printed as exactly
as I see it on the display - what people usually mean when they say
WYSIWYG is actually `direct manipulation' (Ben Schneiderman, 1983, I
think). This in turn usually means that all grammar more complicated
than `noun-verb' (perhaps modified with adjectives or arguments) has
been removed from the interface.

If you've ever seen, as I have, e.g. a Windows administrator creating
student accounts by printing out the E-mailed list which came from my
University's Administration, and then typing in each student's details
again, then pressing `Create account' and `Ok' buttons (or more!) for
each one, you'll know how bankrupt the idea of (only) direct
manipulation is. Even cutting and pasting by hand wouldn't have saved
them much time. (A Unix or Plan 9 user would pipe the E-mail through
(say) an awk script and finish the student account creation in a matter
of seconds, or minutes if the script didn't pre-exist.) Of course, this
is old hat to most people on this list.

As for intuitive, why, video recorders have exactly the kind of
interface that you describe. Why then are they so difficult to use?

(Ok, some might argue that this is off-topic, but I'd say that it is
connected with the why Plan 9 is as it is.)
-- 

John A. Murdie
Department of Computer Science
University of York
England

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[rob pike]

> The editors, sam and acme are virtually unusable.

Many people disagree, even feel the opposite, that they are among
the easiest-to-use editors around.

> Why is it that such a simple task as editing the contents of a textfile 
> must cause so much pain?

I don't hear many yelps where I work and essentially everyone uses
either sam or acme.  I suspect you don't know how to use them.

A criticism I will accept is that there is inadequate documentation
explaining how to use them well.  Try reading the associated papers,
rather than just the man pages.  They help somewhat.

-rob

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[pac]

>> On Tue, Aug 14, 2001 at 11:02:47AM +0100, nigel@9fs.org wrote:
>> > 
>> > >> btw: is there a shutdown command or do I just switch my laptop of?
>> > 
>> > I'd just switch it off.
>> 
>> Amen.  Lucio.
>> 

I almost certainly missed the joke (again :-), but I would rather do:

	disk/kfscmd halt
	Ctl+Alt+Del
	(switch it off)

BTW, I was impressed by the Plan 9's GUI when I first saw it.....no, I'm not a hacker or a programmer, see below. 
However, I like it for the sake it is minimalistic, yet powerful....no unnecessary bells and whistles (except of being so much colourful).
Nevertheless, it is not GUI, what is central to this OS.  _It is a clean concept_.

Unfortunately, I am a newbie, thus not being the proper person even for intro. However, here are the reasons that
convinced me (personally) to prepare to switch to Plan 9:

* clean design, AFAI can tell, no backward compatibility bloat,
* small graphic lib and windowing sys instead of dinosaur X,
* unicode,
* minimalistic, yet powerful GUI (believe me, or not)
* system-wide snarf buffer (but see sam)
(yes, and the fact that Plan 9 is being made by the fathers of Unix sounds like warranty, at least to me).

Although I am capable of doing some C programming, I would classify myself as a user.  Yes, and I know the OS called "Windoze"
and it's notepad.exe with its "File is too large to be opened by Notepad..." message. I have 15+ years experience of using
computers, and I have wasted _A LOT_ of time swithching among OSes:

 HP programmable calculator in early 80's --> Z80 based computer ---> CP/M --> DOS --> Windows, MacOS --> NEXTSTEP -->
Linux --> (gnu/hurd/mach ... L4Linux on L4Ka .... dreaming of  berlin/hurd/L4 would once become true) --> Plan 9.

Please, delay erasing of Plan 9 from your computer, and try to dive deeper. 
Good luck, and have a nice day,
Peter.

--
Peter A Cejchan
biologist
Acad. Sci., Prague, CZ
<cej at cejchan dot gli dot cas dot cz>

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Lucio De Re]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2001 at 11:02:47AM +0100, nigel@9fs.org wrote:
> 
> >> btw: is there a shutdown command or do I just switch my laptop of?
> 
> I'd just switch it off.

Amen.  Lucio.

Re: [9fans] User Interface

[nigel]

>> btw: is there a shutdown command or do I just switch my laptop of?

I'd just switch it off.

[9fans] User Interface

[Eric de Redelijkheid]

I recently heard about plan9 when I was just browsing the Internet 
looking for some UNIX-related documents.

I saw it was possible to download a copy and since I have an IBM 
Thinkpad 390E which I don't really use anymore, I installed it. The 
installation was very simple; that gave me good hopes about general use.

I trust that the concepts were well concidered when designing this 
operating system, however I have never seen a more awkward user 
interface since twm. The editors, sam and acme are virtually unusable. 
Why is it that such a simple task as editing the contents of a textfile 
must cause so much pain? At least some of you must have seen notepad.exe 
at work during your lifetime? It can´t do much, but it gets the job done 
in a simple way!
Why is there not just one single command to create a new user, but do I 
need first to make the file /adm/users writable, edit this file (with 
more luck then wisdom), and type in at least three different commands. 
When I log on with the new username, I have to give another command to 
get the computer to present me a graphical user environment; which is a 
grey screen.

I don't know for whom the designers created this operating system, but I 
hope that they had human beings in mind.
In my opinion every task performed on a computer:
- installation
- administration
- general use (word processing, spreadsheet, mail etc..)
- programming
should be done with the aid of a simple, intuitive,  point- and- click, 
graphical user interface.

btw: is there a shutdown command or do I just switch my laptop of?