[Gllug] On Linux desktops...

[Alex Hudson]

On Thursday 18 October 2001 12:16 pm, you wrote:
> >Go look up the old Boing systems, and anything that used a vector display
> >(particularly CAD systems).
>
> Which are probably GUIs by my definition (and, hint, that used by the
> rest of the world) too. What's your point?

I wasn't arguing they weren't GUIs, I was telling you why I said 'graphs' and 
not 'graphics'. The concept of a graphic on a vector display is strange; the 
concept of a graph on a raster display is not.  Being so quick to redefine my 
words, I was hoping you were actually reading them too :P

> Yes. As I say, it's a marginal and not very interesting distinction
> here; and I would hesitate to describe lynx under X as providing a GUI
> simply because it's getting the pointer from X; but the pointer,
> itself, is part of the X GUI.

I didn't say anywhere it was getting a pointer from X: it isn't. This lynx is 
running on a console tty, no X involvement whatsoever. Yet, it appears to 
conform to your ideas of a GUI....

> _Graphical_ user interfaces have graphics, that being what the word
> means. Text interfaces don't. There are some curious edge cases
> involving the line-drawing characters and whatnot, but there you go.

Your 'curious edge cases' should point you to the fact that you're talking 
about a continuity, not a set of discrete properties.

> >So, when I run the command line on a text-mode display, it's text mode.
> > When I run it under a framebuffer, it's a GUI. Right.
>
> No; it's a text mode interface either way.

Even though I can display a bitmap in it? Another "curious edge case" I 
suppose :)

> You can point me to any number of studies that say something patently
> false, but who cares?

Ahh, of course, human interaction studies aren't "real science", and 
therefore you can shrug them off...

> As I say, it depends on what's being represented.

Which is where I agree with you: substituting icons for words does not a good 
interface make, and I'm sure you can reel off a number of examples where that 
is the case. But you're missing my point: the icon paradigm is a far more 
powerful one that a text-button one. 

Cheers,
				Alex.

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