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From: smh@mit-eddie.UUCP (Steven M. Haflich)
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Long names and menus
Message-ID: <990@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Dec-83 08:15:05 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.990
Posted: Thu Dec  1 08:15:05 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Dec-83 07:09:20 EST
References: <19001@wivax.UUCP>
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 27


	Since I do work for Wang, the next discussion is slightly
	biased.  I've used the VS system for more than five years, and
	have never typed (or forgotten) a command, because the entire
	operating system, including utilities and applications is
	menu-driven via PF keys.

The salient reason function keys were implementable on the Wang system,
I suspect, is that the user interface only runs on one kind of terminal
(or perhaps a limited set of similar devices).  Look at termcap
sometime.  The only reason all those entries are there is because
someone, somewhere, used each of those devices!  Unix is a non-captive
general time-sharing system that runs on lots of different hardware and
terminals with varying configurations of function keys.

Menu systems will likely be standard once high-resolution bitmap
displays and mice are also standard.  They have existed on Lisp
machines, various Xerox machines, and others for many years.  I have
seen apparently-nice window systems on Unix running on the Blit, on the
widely-unannounced Sun II (*), and on Apollo machines.

Of course, it will remain difficult to access such capabilities from
home at 1200 baud, although I have heard opinions that the Blit can be
made to function reasonably.

(*) Sun II might or might not someday be a trademark of SMI [:-)].

Steve Haflich, MIT Experimental Music Studio