Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ucbcad.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!ucbcad!ucbesvax.turner
From: ucbesvax.turner@ucbcad.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Re: windows... - (nf)
Message-ID: <1069@ucbcad.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 18-Dec-83 01:43:26 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbcad.1069
Posted: Sun Dec 18 01:43:26 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 14-Dec-83 02:05:14 EST
Sender: notes@ucbcad.UUCP
Organization: UC Berkeley CAD Group
Lines: 38

#R:pyuxa:-42000:ucbesvax:25800005:000:1379
ucbesvax!turner    Dec 11 16:03:00 1983

Re: windows, mice, framistans...

I have much the same complaint about mice--the touch-typist's bias
against moving hands away from home keys.  Another related problem
is having to move my eyes from the screen.  A common sequence of
events is

	look for mouse
	take hand from keys and grab mouse
	look on screen for target
	find cursor on screen, establish eye-hand interlock
	move to target and point
	(then, assuming that keyboard interaction is needed)
	put hand back on keyboard--and type the wrong thing

After a while, I wise up, and those last steps become four (overlapped)
steps

	look down at keyboard
	put hand on *right* keys, look up and type the right thing

But that's too many eye and hand motions for me.  My shoulders start to
hurt, and my eyes start to burn out.  I suspect that if you gave me a text-
editor with a mouse interface, I would rarely use the mouse, and would
deeply resent any operations that *forced* me to use it.

I think I will make the move away from keyboards when there is finally
adequate support for recognition of hand-written characters.  Even at
that, I type about 3 times faster than I write.  The interface would
have to be heavily oriented around graphically-invocable textual trans-
formations, to be worthwhile in terms of speed--lots of short-hand
macros for building up structure...
---
Michael Turner (ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner)