On 4/14/2017 3:41 PM, Timon Gehr wrote:
Haskell does not do that. Why do you think it does?
Do what? I did not mention Haskell.
Back in the 80's, like everyone else, I went about creating a GUI user
interface library. I discovered something interesting - what is
orthogonal and consistent to a computer is anything but when dealing
with people. What people view as orthogonal and consistent is a rat's
nest of exceptions in the code to implement it. This is what makes a
user interface library fiendishly difficult to pull off.
...
Would you mind sharing an example?
It was 30 years ago. I don't remember specifics, but I can think of one - the
tab key. It means different things depending on what box you're in. Some more
thoughts - is a box in a fixed position, or is it movable? Is a box
user-resizeable or not? Is the size of a box determined by its content do do you
throw up scroll bars? or maybe relay out the contents? How do fonts affect this?
How about screen resolution? Which parts of a box should be selectable with cut
operations and which not? It just goes on and on.
There's the famous Windows 'start' button which you click on to turn the
computer off. Of course, it is consistent from a programming point of view,
because it starts the shutdown program.
In any case, look at English. It is not remotely consistent, and drives
programmers to fits trying to parse it. But people find it intuitive.
