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From: sthomas@library.adelaide.edu.au (Steve Thomas)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Tools vs Appliances (Re: Noun-Verb vs Verb-Noun)
Message-ID: <1177@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au>
Date: 23 Jul 90 02:34:36 GMT
References: <1990Jul16.214644.3009@ee.rochester.edu> <OGDEN.90Jul18112959@aigyptos.nmsu.edu> <F7s.2f21@cs.psu.edu>
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In article <F7s.2f21@cs.psu.edu> flee@guardian.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) writes:
>I think the noun-verb/verb-noun distinction that David Seah tries to
>describe isn't syntactic, but more like the difference between a drill
>press and a hand drill.  You take your object to a drill press, but
>you apply the hand drill to your object.  It's the difference between
>a tool and an appliance, between a knife and a food processor.

i.e. its a question of horses for courses. There's also a skill element here:
to continue your analogy, a chef would always use a knife in preference to a
food processor, because s/he likes the greater control offered by the knife.
A novice cook on the other hand might prefer the food processor to losing a
finger!
>
>The MacPaint-style interface has both tools and appliances; you select
>a pencil tool and draw lines, but you select part of the drawing and
>duplicate it.

This is maybe a different issue to the noun-verb/verb-noun distinction - I'm
not sure. But it is clear to me that in many cases you have to specify the
noun/object before you can specify the verb/action, whereas you specify the
verb/_tool_ before the noun/object (i.e. distinction is between action and 
tool). This at least must be true if the tool is going to create the object,
since the object does not exist yet! 

>People certainly seem to have no problems using both tools and
>appliances in real life.  
>Many people who just
>want to get things done are happier with full-feature appliances.  In
>contrast, the hacker mentality is one that thrives on tools; 

Like I said: novice versus expert. The failing of the Mac OS here is that it
did not cater for both. The provision of an optional command interface would
not have been difficult, and would have stifled all those critics from the 
DOS world.

Aside: an example from the Mac Finder of interest in this debate: the Open
option from the File menu is only available once you have selected a file or
folder. Why? If the user could choose Open first, then go thru a standard
file open dialog to get the file, s/he would not have to go thru the tedious
business of opening folders all over the desktop. I know some people who hate
this, so why not, Apple?
--
/*
Steve Thomas, Senior Systems Analyst
Mail  : Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide,
        GPO Box 498, Adelaide, SOUTH AUSTRALIA 5001