Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 23:08:02 -0700 (MST) From: Wes Peters <softweyr@xmission.com> To: John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Commerical applications Message-ID: <199701300608.XAA02640@obie.softweyr.ml.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.3.95.970128152915.8252N-100000@fallout.campusview.indiana.edu> References: <199701282023.NAA28496@xmission.xmission.com> <Pine.BSI.3.95.970128152915.8252N-100000@fallout.campusview.indiana.edu>
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I recently stated:
% "Ordinary" people can't even used wordpad. I know, my father has been
% flopping around for years with his notebook, and has finally pretty
% much figured out notepad. God forbid he should ever want to do running
% page footers or something like that. Which, of course, wordpad won't
% do.
John Fieber wittily replied:
> And I you believe he would have better luck with vi + groff?
No, but he'd be just as well off with Xedit or aXe. You can stop
throwing vi in my face, I've been there and back for far too long.
Perhaps you should just get over your vi-phobia.
> I've spent a number of years teaching introductory computing and I'll
> just say that people do come in and have difficulty with things as
> simple as wordpad. However, in a relatively short period of time,
> most can grasp the idioms of the windows or macintosh interface
> enough to get useful work done with it, and most importantly, the
> learning curve flattens out dramatically, allowing them to pick up
> other applications more rapidly. (Unfortunately, as they approach
> "power-user" status, the curve takes a sharp upturn again.)
Windows or Macintosh? You're talking about two RADICALLY different
systems there. The Mac shows simplicity and elegance in almost every
area the Windows sucks. Talk about comparing apples to turds!
> Since so many X programs are based on home-grown interface toolkits,
> the idioms are inconsistent which dilutes the advantages
> considerably. I hear time and time again from die-hard unix junkies
> about how GUI applications are crap, illustrated with crappy X
> applications. The only thing that says is that those are crappy X
> applications. It says nothing about the inherent advantages or
> disadvantages of GUIs in general, nor does it acknowledge the
> relatively successful deployment of GUIs on other platforms.
> Fortunately, the emergence of Tk is helping to turn this around but I
> don't think Tk alone provides enough.
I, on the other hand, hear time and again from die-hard unix junkies
about how GUI applications are crap, illustrated with crappy Win
applications. These days, most especially illustrated with examples of
the awful abuses of dialogs as they relate to WinNT administration, but
that is probably due to my past experience in doing the same for UNIX.
> I agree that word processing is an important application in the
> desktop computing world, but that is tangential to the main point
> I've been trying to express which is how the lack of a good GUI
> *infrastructure* inhibits the development of a useful GUI
> applications. You yourself state that the lack of a consistent
> screen and printer rendering mechanisim is at least partly
> responsible for the lack of decent word processing.
And again I disagree, I feel that the overbearing insistence on one
style in the Windows world inhibits development of useful GUIs that
express complex tasks in new and meaningful ways. Everyone on the
planet wants to make their application look EXACTLY like Word 7, whether
its a word processor, a user administration tool, or a control system
for a nuclear power plant. This is madness, but nobody in the PC world
is willing to step up and say so.
I've probably only seen 3 or 4 applications in the past 5 years that
have actually delighted me to see. Not a single one of them has been on
the Windows platform. People tell me over and over again that Win3,
then MDI, then 3D controls, are going to revolutionize user interfaces,
but I haven't seen any substantive improvements in Windows since they
dropped the bad tiling scheme in 2.0. The Windows user interface
environment is stifling and ridiculous.
One of these 3 or 4 applications, however, does run on X. It is even
publicly available, as all good X applications are. This is XV. I know
you're going to hate it, because it doesn't use Win-standard scrollbars,
but it is a great example of a beautifully crafted UI.
One of the other applications was one I worked on, for a government
training system, on an SGI workstation. It was pleasing because it was
so application specific; the only "system" knowlege required of the user
was the ability to login from the SGI graphical login screen. This was
a very graphical system using complicated 3d plots on top of
aeronautical charts, and we spent quite a bit of time working with the
users of the system in their facility to get this right. In the end, we
did work that I am proud of, but the user interface would completely
escape anyone who was not familiar with the application domain.
If you want to see an example of what I'm talking about, stop beating
blatherings into your keyboard and go get a demo of CA-Unicenter. Look
at their geographical or organizational views, and the automatic
drill-down capability. Compare that to the idiotic bullshit
administration screens offered to the hapless administrator of a WinNT
system. Now tell me about how the scrollbars in Unicenter don't look
like every other scrollbar you've ever seen. My previous employer who
would have been a competitor to Unicenter explicitly decided to opt for
a 'Microsoft-like' GUI and basically dropped off the radar screen in
terms of competing with CA. <snort> Of course, I'm sure they'd be
glad to hire you as a manager, you're singing their song and they've
either fired or killed off the last 3 or 4 they've had.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com
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