--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "sparaig" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Toznazinni's articles in his book were based on Apple's *original* > research in the early 80s before "WIMP" became popular. They helped > *define* the wimp system. I'm not against menus as such. But menus can also be called up by keys. > But there is no doubt that > > people working with programs professionally everyday, like on > > terminals do so mostly via shortcuts, and do so faster. > > > Well, with terminals, there's usually no mouse,and terminal-oriented > programs were designed for text-control from the start, with mouse > control, if it is there at all, added as an afterthought. > Additionally, programmers are an exception since most programming > involves thinking rather than typing on the fly. People working on terminals are not programmers. They are secretarys or people working in shops, or if you check in at the airport they use terminals. I work on a mac and use a database program, and use shortkeys whenever I can, its so much faster. > Still most > > terminal programs work that way. For graphic programs you need a > > tablet of course. But even in Graphic programs like photoshop, you > acn > > work much faster bringing up dialogues by shortcuts. Mac may have > > worked this out nicely, but its still a minority using it. I prefer > > the unix way to call up a program, by just typing in the first two > or > > three letters in a terminal and then let it autocomplete it, instead > > of going to some menu trying to find the program. > > This is different that what we were talking about: typing aka word- > processing using wordstar/vi commands for formatting as opposed to > using a mouse for formatting. And most people find it more convenient > to refer to icons with names, or names in a simple list, than to > remember the partial name of a document. I am not against that. Lists menus are there in terminal programms as well. But you don't have to move a mouse to a specific place, you could type in a number e.g. > Now, starting a program > might be different but few people have ten thousand programs that > they regularly use, while many people have 10 thousand documents (eg > drafts of text, edited versions of pictures, etc.) organized by date, > etc. and for them, selecting from a list of names organized by > date/name/etc is more efficient than doing text-completion on the > name. But thats beside the point. I am not against lists. >I mean, if you put the date of the last edit last, you have to > type the entire name anyway. There are hybrid methods where you bring > up a list, type a few characters which narrows your search, and then > tab down/mouse to the specific version you want, but that still isn't > the same as text-completition by itself. Well these hybrid methods seem to be very fine for me, but they don't require the use of a mouse. The point is that people are educated by the use of the mouse and interlaced menus to do everything in the slowest possible way. (as an example: I had to look up the word 'interlaced'. How did I do that? I typed 'ding verschachtelt' into my terminal, and viola had the right translation of 'verschachtelt' through my program 'ding'; with menus, I had to go to the menubar, go into some submenu trying to guess were it was, had to wait till the program came up, and then start to type in 'verschachtelt' and then wait for the result) > > So its a matter of convention. If you have the same kind of command > > with each program to do a similar kind of job, its so much better. > > Like saving, do you still go to the menu to save? > > > > How often do you save? If you were to save as often as typists do > formatting changes, using a mouse might well be a better thing to do, > especially if other commands are being mixed in with the save-changes > command at random points in your typing. I don't get you? You really think that moving your mouse to some icon is faster than typing cstrl + s ? > Using the keyboard to type single commands is generally slower than > using a mouse to make a menu selection. This must be a rumor. I don't believe you. Maybe its just some apple sponsored research to sell their philosophy. Why not start selecting every letter you type from a menu if its so much faster? That would be the logical conclusion. I'm glad that system X now switched to unix, bringing back a console so that you can look under the hood. Until system 9 Apple was like a car where you couldn't open the engine hood. With regards to computers I like control. > This is because your brain > switches operating modes to use the same muscles for control input as > for data input. You may perceive the keyboard shortcut as faster but > this is because you don't notice the time your brain is spending in > the mode-switch. I just don't believe this is true. The brain is fairly adaptble, and its simply a matter of training, and therefore a matter of convention which is faster. Moving a mouse and then pressing is just a step more then simply pressing two keys with two fingers. > When you use a mouse, you're using a different set of muscles to > enter the commands, which is more efficient for the brain than using > the same sets of muscles for two different types of activities. Well mouse is definitely slower with me, but then I don't play so many video games like you ;-) To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
