Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!nih-csl!lhc!ncifcrf!haven!umd5!umd5.umd.edu!anderson From: anderson@sapir.cog.jhu.edu (Stephen R. Anderson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.next Subject: Re: NOT (click to type) in NeXTStep? Message-ID: Date: 7 Nov 90 13:06:43 GMT References: <1990Oct28.165341.6949@cs.cmu.edu> <2955@lectroid.sw.stratus.com>, philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick) writes: [previous discussion of customization a la X deleted] If you want one more, it forces all users to either become designers or make do with whatever suboptimal setup they inherit from however they got their initial setup from. Look at it this way: a BMW or a Honda has a professionally designed interior. The placing of controls may be a bit different but, because the design is good, you get used to it quickly. Imagine if the switches and controls came packed in a separate box and you had to figure out how to position them optimally. Ergonomics is a difficult subject in car design; it is no easier in human-computer interaction. I'd rather have mildly inconsistent interfaces designed by professionals than be forced to design my own. "Professionals" don't always get these things right of course; that's why there are certain makes of car I wouldn't drive. But this is no argument for demanding total customization. My apologies in advance, but this seems to suggest some lack of familiarity with life under "brand X" interfaces. In fact, X supports a large number of interface styles: at least gwm, mwm, olwm, and (tv)twm come to mind. Each provides a somewhat different (you should pardon the expression) look-and-feel. In general, these different views of human-machine interaction have been thought out in very considerable detail, typically by people with quite clear and coherent (though distinct) notions of the design considerations involved. Beginning users need do no designing whatsoever to have a fully functional setup that may well meet all of their needs. Quite advanced users may also find one of these packages nearly ideal off the shelf. But even the least customizable of this lot, OpenLook, provides some range for tweaking things to match what an individual finds optimal (and even OpenLook lets you choose click-to-focus vs. real-estate-focus!). The interface styles available under X in no way force the user to design things from the ground up: they merely _allow_ this (to a greater or lesser extent). To pursue your automotive analogy further, suppose your choices were limited to (a) the BMW/Honda/Porsche/Ferrari [choose one for illustration]; or (b) a GMC pickup. Now suppose the new BMW/Honda/etc. has been professionally designed to put the clutch on the right, and the accelerator on the left, and you can't bear that. Which would you prefer: being forced to buy the pickup, or having the option to re-arrange the pedals? I think it will be quite unfortunate if a substantial number of potential users of NeXTs find themselves having to choose something else for relatively trivial, low-level reasons. Why do you think there are so many thousands of init's and cdev's written for the mac? It's really not because Apple didn't have enough professionals at work in designing the OS, but rather because different folks go for different strokes - some of which weren't really envisioned when the OS was desgined in the first place. The resulting situation at present is rather chaotic, but I bet lots more people have macs than would be the case if the plain-vanilla Apple-supplied macOS were the only possibility. I'm not saying interfaces should not be customizable at all, just that I think there are limits. I really can't see that making the user become a designer is "more productive". On the other hand, _letting_ the user affect the design may well have a big impact on productivity. This is especially true, as others have pointed out, for users who work on more than one machine. If you go back and forth among Suns, macs, and the NeXT, it sure doesn't help productivity to have to constantly have part of your attention focused on "let's see - how was it that you do that on this box?" Steve Anderson