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From: whh@pbhya.PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc,comp.sys.next,comp.sys.mac,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: replacing the desktop metaphor (Wives)
Keywords: desktop metaphor, graphical interfaces, computing environments
Message-ID: <22624@pbhya.PacBell.COM>
Date: 29 Dec 88 20:04:34 GMT
References: <850@mtfmi.att.com> <673@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> <1489@umbc3.UMD.EDU> <27265@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Pacific * Bell, Oakland, CA
Lines: 107

In article <27265@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster) writes:
> How funny! My wife is also a fantasy writer, also types faster than 100
> wpm, and also doesn't care how it works as long as it does. She wrote the
> first draft of her first novel in vi, the second draft in WordStar, and
> has long since given up both for MacWrite, saying "I'll never go back."

(Why does this feel like an argument over who's father is tougher?)

My wife has used--and hated--WordStar.  Ditto, MacWrite.  This is probably
why there is diversity in the market.

> You don't use a mouse for typing, that is what a keyboard is for.  You use
> the mouse for editing, because you can move the cursor, and select regions
> faster with it than you can with key commands, even given the time to put
> your hand back on the keyboard.  This advantage improves the larger you
> screen is.

I don't know about that, ^[d}3{P seems pretty quick to me--certainly at
the typing speeds we're discussing.  Or, for changing character names,
^[:g/oldname/s//newname/g is pretty fast.  How would you do those things
in WordStar or MacWrite?

> My wife doesn't need to use nroff, the wordprocessor does it already. 

Slowly, while preventing other activity from taking place.

> Issac Asimov once said, "I use Electric Pencil, and it is the only word
> processor I'll ever use." I asked him why, and he said, "It was so hard to
> learn to use that I'm never going to waste the time to learn another one."
> 
> Maybe you should think about why you cling so tightly to the ancient vi
> and nroff.

Because they work--comfortably.  They have a very large repetoire of actions
and they are available on a wide variety of hardware platforms.

> My wife says that now that she has the Macintosh, it has liberated her
> artistic skills, that she is drawing when she never had been able to
> before.  Books, like "Zen and the Art of the Macintosh" have given her
> good ideas.  She would never have tried on a unix system.  Come to think
> of it, I've never seen a book called "Zen and the Art of Unix." I wonder
> why?

Possibly, because people are too busy *using* the system to be interested
in how to disguise it.

> To sum up, it isn't that character based systems are too hard to learn to
> use that motivated people can't get useful work done, it is that
> Macinoshes are so easy to learn to use that you discover that you are
> capable of doing things you'd never bother to attempt without them.
> 
> Don't you think you owe it to yourself to at least give them a try?

She *has* tried the Mac.  She detests it--thuroughly.

> ----------------digression- -------
> >They want 10-pitch, constant width output.  Note that this lets out most
> >of the Mac standard fonts.
> 
> 1.) Mac programs let you change the fonts, and fonts are widely available,
> often for free, and installation is easier than installing a new font in
> nroff/troff.

So who has to install new fonts for nroff?  It just uses the printer.

> 2.) Who are your editors?  All the submission guidlines I've read want
> clean, black, double spaced copy.  non-porportional vs. porportional fonts
> aren't specified anywhere. My wife's article on European Shamanism in the
> current issue of "Shaman's Drum", for example was just printed using an
> ordinary font.

Was the ouptu kerned?  How did the editor check word counts?

> 3.) This does seem stretching for a criticism.

Only partly--every Mac I've encountered has printed v*e*r*y s*l*o*w*l*y
due the processing required to "draw" the output.  We find that unaceptable
when printing a 500-page manuscript.


I am delighted that your wife is happy with the Mac.  I would like to point
out that *no* system/editor/formatter/whathaveyou will suit everybody.  There
is room in the field for many different approaches and/or metphors.  The
hedache with the Mac is that it is restricted to one single, enforced mode
of operation, with no allowance (save buying from someone else) that there
may be other ways of accomplishing the same ends.  The second problem here
is that not only the Mac windows-only, but Apple is doing it's best to
prevent anyone else from bringing a *compatible* window system to market.
This virtually assures that all windowing systems will be different.  Try
sitting down at anyone elses windowed system--say, Sun or Next or OS/2--
and see how much of your knowledge still works.  My wife can sit down
in front of many many systems, log in and *use* that system.  In a recent
temporary job she had she was alternately using a Sun and a PDP/11 (Yes--
as of early December Berkeley still had a 2.9 system running!) and could
work with both--with only minor adjustments needed.  When she came home,
she could use our Cadmus 9730--again, nothing different enough to cause
problems.  You are right that graphical systems should be examined, but
at this time, I think I'll wait for them to come out of the hands of the
True Believers for a while first.

      --Hal 

=========================================================================
  Hal Heydt                             |    "Hafnium plus Holmium is
  Analyst, Pacific*Bell                 |     one-point-five, I think."
  415-645-7708                          |       --Dr. Jane Robinson
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