[Gllug] On Linux desktops...

[Nix]

On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, David Damerell stated:
> On Wednesday, 17 Oct 2001, Alex Hudson wrote:
>>GUIs are tools for power users - they enable people to do work more quickly. 
> 
> Let's remember this statement.

Especially since it's only right for a subset of GUIs; GUIs that are
directly to do with *explicitly graphical* data. (The GIMP is an
example; METAPOST or pic are the closest you get in the non-graphical
world, and they're not quite the same sort of thing.)

If you're not dealing with explicitly graphical data, I find that GUIs
often get in the way; and especially if you're an experienced user, the
power of language (i.e., text) so far supersedes the power of
(non-linguistic) GUI elements that there's just no contest.

>>looks like. So, Pine has a better GUI than vi, for example, because it's a 
>>lot easier to get into initially,
> 
> Which is meaningless to the experienced user.

And is starting to be increasingly irrelevant in the entire Western
world, given the degree of computer-saturation out there. I expect that
in twenty or thirty years, `ease of use for new users' will only be
important in school systems and systems designed for children.

>>and it edits more consistently.
> 
> If this means anything at all, it's completely wrong. Pico, Pine's
> inbuilt editor, is about as useful as a rubber crutch; if we were to

You are being overly generous :(

> say that an editor is 'consistent', we would have to pick the one
> where all kinds of commands can take an arbitrary motion command as an
> argument and acts on the text covered by the motion command - that's
> consistency.

It also has the problem that its keybindings make Emacs's look sane, and
its help system, while easier to learn without reading any docs; you
don't need to know a help key, is infinitely worse. (X)Emacs's help
system and various levels of documentation, and the ease of access of
that documentation, are better than I've ever seen in any other program
to date.

-- 
`A truly dreadful film destined to be a cult classic for masochists.'
                                              --- Chris Priest on _A.I._.

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