Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 08:16:55 -0700 (PDT) From: "Eric J. Schwertfeger" <ejs@bfd.com> To: Wes Peters <softweyr@xmission.com> Cc: "John S. Dyson" <toor@dyson.iquest.net>, Jamie Bowden <jamie@itribe.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Microsoft the GUI King (was Re: ATT Unix for Windows) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.95.970903080933.22340A-100000@harlie.bfd.com> In-Reply-To: <199709030704.BAA12723@obie.softweyr.ml.org>
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On Wed, 3 Sep 1997, Wes Peters wrote: > If you were to, for instance, create a graphical tool for system > administrators to create and manage user accounts and groups, it would > be waste of time writing extra code to support keyboard navigation for > something that is an inherently graphical task. For instance, the > "gesture" for adding a user to a group is to "copy" the user from the > "all users" view to the "group: engineering" view, you simply use the > mouse movements for copy, drag, and drop. To expect *any* user to use > tab and arrow keys to select a user, change focus to the group frame, > and drop, is really quite silly. To expect *every* user to use the mouse to do the same is almost as silly. Besides, that's what accellerator keys are for. One Alt-key to select the user list, page-up/page down (or even better, start typing the name), you get the idea. And having done stuff like that, I can tell you that if your GUI toolkit supports it, this kind of stuff is trivial to add. I've had plenty of mice die on me while in use (Las Vegas is a rather dusty environment), and the ability to funtion without a mouse is, for me, essential. I can even do just about everything I ever need to do on Win95 without a mouse. Then again, just so that I don't have to take my fingers off the keyboard, I bought an IBM Trackpoint II keyboard to use at home. Now the question is, how to convince them to get me one at work :-)
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