Re: [9fans] User Interface

[Eric de Redelijkheid <eric.de.redelijkheid@xs4all.nl>]

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.