John Chambers wrote: <bits snipped>
>One of the fun aspects of working on unixoid systems is the >variety of command languages that you have available, each >with its own flock of partisans. ;-) Hmm, sounds just like abc, really. > Pretty pictures are fun and >flashy, but if you actually want to accomplish something >without constantly gritting your teeth about the idiocy of >the user interface, you need a command language that you >can type and that can remember things for you. Did you read the first post of this thread? Three hours spent fighting with Unix to do something exceedingly simple and straightforward, resulting in failure. Twenty seconds on MacOS 9 allowed me to fix it. Yes, Unix is supremely flexible and powerful. But if its learning curve is sufficiently steep to terrify me (I've been using computers for thirty years) how is the average user expected to cope? >On another list, there was a recent "UI" discussion, about >the various keyboards that are available on accordions. We >got into a fairly funny (if short) thread triggered by >someone contemplating augmenting the accordion with a >mouse. After all, keyboards are keyboards, and if a mouse >is such a marvelous addition to a computer keyboard, just >imagine how it could help an accordion (or piano) player. If your accordion is actually a synthesiser, try comparing the process of creating a new voice using the synth's keyboard with that of doing the same job in a GUI based program on a computer, to be uploaded via midi. The GUI wins hands down. But this is not getting the abc standard fixed... Phil Taylor To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
