Re: [9fans] sam chatter

[John Murdie <john@cs.york.ac.uk>]

On Sat 2003-07-05 at 14:34 Dan Cross wrote:
>Perhaps this will seem sacreligous, but I'd like to see the following
>changes in sam, myself:
>
>        (1) Dragging below the boundary of the current window should
>            cause the window to scroll, selecting new text as it
>...
>        - Dan C.



On Sun, 2003-07-06 at 04:15, boyd, rounin wrote:
> no, i don't want to pull on the edge of a transperant object.
>
> that's what 'resize' is for.
>

I would like this feature (Ok, so I'm lazy for not having tried to code
it myself.) I fail to see, however, (if this is what Boyd is referring
to) how resize can be used conveniently to select a part of the document
being worked on that is taller than the display. ("sacreligious" and
"transparent", btw).

That said, I don't want to give the impression that I think direct
manipulation is _the answer_ to user interface problems. While it is
convenient for small and simple tasks, and an easy concept for a novice
to grasp, I believe that direct manipulation fails to take advantage of
the concept of _language_, and misses the riches that this idea offers
for communication with a computer. (Hence the sam command language, of
course.) I think that the Bruce Tognazzini's (http://www.asktog.com)
saying "power tools for power fools" is missing the point; why do so
many self-appointed HCI gurus apparently want to reduce us all to the
lowest common denominator?

John A. Murdie