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From: preece@urbana.mcd.mot.COM (Scott E. Preece)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: (OI) Toolkit for Open Look *and* OSF/Motif Look and Feel
Message-ID: <9103100528.AA03074@etude.urbana.mcd.mot.com>
Date: 10 Mar 91 05:28:40 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 49

From: bcripe@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com (Brian E. Cripe)
| 
| > if we can't provide a
| > *better*, *more productive* GUI than a PC, where is the advantage most
| > of us have felt UNIX should have over the one-seaters?
| 
| Isn't this like saying that your new high-powered sports car should have
| something better than the standard old "brake/clutch/gas pedals and 
| steering wheel" that is found in a '75 Pinto?
---
Well, 25 years ago I had an MGA and, yes, it had brake, clutch, and gas
pedal, plus a reasonably comprehensive set of instrument dials.  If I
were to go out today and buy the nifty new British Racing Green version
of the Mazda Miata that my wife is crazy about it would also have
brake clutch and gas pedals.  It would also have windows (unlike the
MGA), a top that really could be put up with one hand, a heater that
could defrost the windshield in less than geological time, and various
goodies, like a CD player, that just make it nicer.

Now the point isn't that the cars don't have points of similarity, but
that you can have qualitative differences despite those similarities.
And I'm definitely not saying that more is necessarily better (given my
absolute druthers, I might well prefer the MGA).  But if I were to live
with the vehicular analogy, I would say the central elements of
drivability were things like the resizable, overlapping window, the
mouse, and the menu and that that left rather a lot of room to innovate.
I don't really think it is very important at all that UNIX have a GUI
that looks and works *exactly* like PM/Windows, if there is gain to be
had in diverging.

I have to say that a lot of what I hear about interface consistency
sounds awfully like elitist paternalism: "We techies, of course, can
adjust to differences, but the common user will be hopelessly confused
if the File and Edit menus weren't always in the same order or if there
were buttons as well as menus in a menubar."  Honest, people, common
office workers adjust to lots of variety in the systems and procedures
they work with everyday.  They discover efficiencies and build tools
just as software people do, they just express them differently.  They
generalize and adapt just fine.  The success of the PC, with nothing
vaguely resembling standard interfaces, ought to say something to you.
And if you think the UNIX command line is confusing, you probably
haven't ever had to use something like an IBM magcard Composer.

Change *for the sake of change* is undesirable, but, as a UNIX
proponent, I would like to feel that UNIX has strengths that make it
*better* than DOS or OS/2, and I find it hard to believe that those
strengths don't have any manifestation in the GUI world.  Frankly, if
our highest aspiration is to be just like a PC, we're wasting an awful
lot of effort.