From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3) In-Reply-To: References: <13426df10702260708i7be0cd7bs49f7eda72c6935ea@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: <807375EC-A1F8-4C53-A3D3-177087930410@telus.net> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Paul Lalonde Subject: Re: [9fans] interesting potential targets for plan 9 and/or inferno Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 09:28:07 -0800 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Topicbox-Message-UUID: 14e1e0f8-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Preaching to the choir (I hope): The fundamental issue with the GUI isn't one of prettiness. It's one of naive/novice use. Like the rest of Plan9, the GUI assumes an expert user. But ever since the original Mac, the marketing message has been that GUIs are designed for instantaneous ease-of-use, and any training required is strictly application-centric instead of interaction-centric. Rio, sam and acme defy this; in exchange for more usable screen real-estate and fewer interaction events (both of which are good for expert users) the ease of initial use has been sacrificed. For people who drive ed, vi, and/or emacs, and had little experience with GUIs, the jump was easy. Add to the system that you *really* have to be comfortable with the command-line to be productive, and I think the pool of possible users of the P9 GUI is pretty small. I do a fair bit of remote interaction (code reviews, design, debugging) using skype and VNC. It's interesting that the older folks (who grew up without GUIs) I do this with have little trouble taking the 1-minute "point to move the cursor, chord like this to cut- and-paste, click like this to execute a shell command" and being reasonably useful with it. The younger, just as smart crew however, throw up their hands and say "whatever man, that's whacked". It makes me sad, but I don't expect to see any innovation in GUIs oriented to expert users. There's just too much resistance to change and too little attention payed to the load that the novice parts of the current interfaces incurs on user interaction. Paul On 26-Feb-07, at 4:03 PM, Eric Van Hensbergen wrote: > On 2/26/07, ron minnich wrote: >> On 2/26/07, erik quanstrom wrote: >> > plan 9 is having trouble keeping the converted. why would >> > adding one more layer of goo to the gnu goo stack convert >> > the hardened of heart? >> >> Because the first thing that most people say when I show them rio is >> 'yuck'. And, in most cases, they don't stop saying 'yuck'.Acme does >> not help. >> >> Sorry, but most people hate the Plan 9 GUI. It is off-putting enough >> that they are not that interested in seeing the beauty of it all. >> > > Regardless, neither rio or acme will work well on a cell phone. > Probably be best off with mux. However, I think we can all agree -- > while the underlying infrastructure of the Plan 9 GUI continues to be > innovative and interesting, the GUI itself has never been a focus nor > a strength of the system. I'm not saying we should merge Qt and Gtk > or any of the Linux variants -- I continue to think we need to focus > on our strengths rather than getting bogged down in eye candy. > > -eric - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin) iD8DBQFF4xiTpJeHo/Fbu1wRAg5eAJ91Nx36zvl2j1SnZCN6l20YouLjzQCeOMVV c3yGON3zW4GxT/jE9QtB1xg= =Pcha - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin) iD8DBQFF4xinpJeHo/Fbu1wRAvKoAJwMHdwR89h2rJRP3t8pefG6NZYqdQCgmWMf 3qHkNF5P4QyBnVr6r3XQw6w= =2xrB -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----