Re: Word Processors and GUIs (fwd)

[Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>]

Forwarded message:

> From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@invweb.net>
> Date: Tue, 30 Dec 97 03:40:31 -0600
> Subject: Re: Word Processors and GUIs

> While some standardization is good it is not the be all to end all. While
> standardization of cut, paste, open, close, print makes perfect sense most
> commands do not fall into this catagory.

Perhaps not, but 90% of what people *do* does fall into those operations.
Ever hear of macro's? Ever use a Sun where the menu pull-down pops up under
the pointer when you click a button? Both of these will increase the use of
a GUI to way more than a straight CLI interface (and I type at nearly 80
words a minute with a slightly crippled L. hand). I suggest you get a GUI
macro utility and something like PopUpMenu on the Amiga that makes the
menu's appear both at the command bar *and* under the mouse. Using this
technique I can execute a file save via GUI in about 1/3 the time I can in
the CLI.

> The inherent benefit of this
> standardization decrease the more specialized an application becomes. With
> a program like Autocad or MathCad or even Lotus 1-2-3 where one has a
> steep learning curve of specialized commands the benefits of standardized
> basic commands boarders on insignificant.

You are confusing learning the commands with learning the 'model' that the
program impliments. The learning curve comes from the user learning the
model the programmer(s) had in their head(s) while writing the program and
learning to solve problems with the black box functions the
programmer/developer uses to solve those problems.

> Once we get past the standardization issue to the one of textmode vs GUI
> (which was the topic of my original post) I doubt that one can make the
> case that a draftsman running a graphics program under a textmode OS is
> less efficient as his counterpart who is saddled with a bloated GUI OS. In

I use both POVRay as well as LightWave, one text and one GUI. The GUI
program is *much* easier to develop 3d renderings in because things like
boundary violations, control path anomolies, and such are *much* easier to
see and deal with in the GUI interface. I also use Scientific Notebook, I
can't imagine doing the same sort of things I do with that GUI
text-processor with say a textual Postscript or Tex program. Just try making
a nice nifty graphical output using Postscript (say) using a GUI and a
editor working in Postscript directly.

> fact if both are operating on the same hardware I would venture a guess
> that the textmode user will be more efficient by the simple fact that his
> resources are not being consumed by the GUI.

This assumption is *very* dependant upon the model of the software. It
depends upon whether the process takes the command sequence and executes it
in parallel or in series with the command entry sequence. In other words, if
the program renders while you are entering new commands will obviously be
much slower than a program that takes the sequence of commands in toto and
*then* executes them. The efficiency to a large part depends upon the model
of the software, not the particular command and control interface.

If you expect to execute processes in parallel (ie edit & execute in
parallel) then a GUI is much quicker (not taking into account the added
overhead of the GUI, which in and of itself is not a condemnation of the GUI
but rather the poor processors we have to run them on) because you can see
you errors as they occur and it keeps them from propogating through the
design or use process. If sequential is your goal then it really doesn't
matter because in both cases (ie GUI v CLI) becuase while it's executing
your commands you can't do anything anyway.

Of course, these models *only* apply if we are single-tasking programs. If
we allow multi-tasking then GUI wins hands down because graphical
information content is *much* higher than CLI in every case. This allows us
to display more information on a GUI than a CLI.

Personaly, this is a non-argument from the technical perspective. It is more
indicative of the mental flexibility of the holders of the various
positions. I wouldn't use an OS that wouldn't let me do both at the same
time (and I don't) and use them as I need them.

> The same case can be made for the accounting staff using spreadsheets or
> the secretaries typing letters. I'll take an accounting department using
> Lotus 1-2-3 3.x up against a similar group running MS Office and Win95/NT
> any day of the week. I'll get the same work done faster and *cheaper*.

Excuse me but the user interface of your example, 123, *has* GUI elements
even in a text mode display.

> This brings up another issue of decreased performance with the GUI's. It
> is the notion that every document must be type-set. I can't even start to
> imagine the millions of man hours wasted in the office because every
> insignificant memo, report, and letter has to be formatted "just right"

This is a condemnation of human nature, not GUI's. I use a plain old text
editor when I'm making simple edits. A perfect example is from work where we
recently have taken on a group of office 'helpers' to take care of the more
mundane office needs. They discovered they could add graphics and
attachments to their email and ever since we have suffered from the abuse,
emails with a dozen attachments of pretty pictures that I have to
specificaly work through. Considering I get somewhere in the neighborhood of
500 emails a day that can be a real time sink (thank god for procmail!).
But whattcha gonna do, shoot 'em?

> Another contention I have with the GUI's is the use of icons. One of the
> most misused and time wasting "features" of the GUI's. It makes absolutely
> no sense for someone who is working on the keyboard to stop what they are
> doing, go over to the mouse, and then point and click to execute a
> command.

Then quit using the mouse on the wrong damn side of the keyboard. If you're
right handed the mouse goes on the left, not the right. That way you don't
have to quit typing to deal with the GUI. It takes a couple of days to over
come the 'handedness' that is built into our brain, but the long term
benefit is that your wrist load goes *way* down on the right *and* your left
hand fine motor control improves significantly. If you happen to be left
handed then you need a reversed keyboard with the return key and such on the
L. and the mouse on the right.

Try it for 3 days - you'll like it.

> Well I guess I will rap this up with a final note. With the GUI OS's (and
> the applications that run on them) as size and complexity increases
> performance and reliability decreases. Without a doubt I can get more work
> done on cheaper hardware running *nix or os/2 using only text mode
> applications than I can running a GUI with it's associated bloated
> applications.

That's interesting, I use Linux (x86 & PPC) , WinNT, AmigaDos, AIX, & Solaris
at home on my personal machines (11 of them not counting the TI explorer,
, Atari 800, SX-64 and C-128) and don't find a significant difference in
reliability. They all stay up for weeks and weeks.

OS/2 is a sucky os, it's unstable and calling it reliable is a joke. It's
user interface is inconsistent, it's task swapper is weird and stalls at
strange times for no apparent reason, etc., etc. Note that this is a personal
opinion and not a function of my working for IBM and being required to use
OS/2 everyday (I don't like that requirement either). It is a function of my
using OS/2 since the 1.0 days. It's interesting to note that IBM is moving
OS/2 from the general OS area to specialized applications...


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