From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: John Murdie Subject: Re: [9fans] User Interface To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Cc: John Murdie In-Reply-To: <3B7835D4.2050908@xs4all.nl> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/plain; charset=us-ascii Message-Id: Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 14:15:53 +0100 Topicbox-Message-UUID: dbb9926a-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 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