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From: stephenw@murdu.OZ (Stephen Withers)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Porting UNIX Applications to the Mac
Message-ID: <1171@murdu.OZ>
Date: Wed, 24-Sep-86 17:58:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: murdu.1171
Posted: Wed Sep 24 17:58:44 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Sep-86 18:41:32 EDT
References: <1572@cbdkc1.UUCP> <1091@hoptoad.uucp> <1897@utecfa.UUCP>
Reply-To: stephenw@murdu.UUCP (Stephen Withers)
Organization: University Computing Services, The University of Melbourne
Lines: 14

In article <1897@utecfa.UUCP> edusoft@utecfa.UUCP (BIll Idsardi) writes:
>The idea is, however, to keep the modes simple and small, so that
>a user's options and how to get at them are obvious.
>
>So, MacWrite has lots of little modes, and vi has two big modes.

I think the question is more to do with the "depth" of a mode, rather than its
complexity.  With MacWrite, "insert mode" is so shallow that you can't call it 
a mode - you can hit any of the shortcut keys as you type.  With vi, you must 
get out of exit mode before you can do anything but type more characters.

Anyway, I believe that one of the main determinants of a good user interface
is how easy it is to do something catastrophic.  With MacWrite (and most Mac
programs) it's hard; with vi (and most Unix programs?) it's easy.