Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!cicada.engin.umich.edu!cerberus
From: cerberus@caen.engin.umich.edu (R Eric Bennett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NOT (click to type) in NeXTStep?
Summary: move to focus in X is annoying
Message-ID: <1990Nov6.075323.3326@engin.umich.edu>
Date: 6 Nov 90 07:53:23 GMT
References: <1990Oct28.165341.6949@cs.cmu.edu>
Sender: cerberus@caen.engin.umich.edu
Organization: University of Michigan Engineering, Ann Arbor
Lines: 32

In article <1990Oct28.165341.6949@cs.cmu.edu> cap+@cs.cmu.edu (Chris Paris) writes:
>I find it interesting that in this group people almost universally prefer
>NeXTStep to X. I might share these sentiments except for one glaring
>omission in NeXTStep (or in my knowledge of it). That is, I have found
>no way to eliminate the requirement that I click in a window to move the
>keyboard focus to it. I find this extremely annoying, and actually prefer
>working in X over NeXTStep for this reason alone. If anyone knows a way
>to configure NeXTStep the way I like, I would greatly appreciate a
>response.


It's funny to hear that someone actually LIKES move to focus.  Sure its nice to
be able to type blind every once in awhile, but more often than not it sends me 
clamoring to find out where I'd typed 'make' in my source code.  I admit that
I am not the greatest typist but when typing in a unix command I like to SEE 
what I am typing.  I have also only used X on DEC 3000/5100 (?) but 
move to focus is REALLY annoying on them because you can only bring the window
to the front by clicking on a button at the top of the window.  I have wasted
more time trying to move a window to the front than I have ever saved by being
able to type without a window being key.  It's also annoying to have a window
come up and have your input redirected to that window just because it happened
to come up underneath your mouse pointer.

According to human factors work, you only waste .1 second clicking the mouse 
and since you have to move the mouse to activate another window anyway (~1.2
seconds) I think I'd rather have the whole thing take ~8% longer just to avoid
the above headaches.

Just one man's opinion,
R Eric Bennett
cerberus@caen.engin.umich.edu
cerberus@itl.itd.umich.edu (NeXT mail)