[Gllug] On Linux desktops...

[Alex Hudson]

On Wednesday 17 October 2001 3:57 pm, you wrote:
> Surely the purpose of a GUI *is* just pretty windows, which indirectly
> make it easy for newcomers to get started with an application. Though I
> suppose there are exceptions like the Gimp for example :).

That's why Linux desktops suck (for the most part).

GUIs are tools for power users - they enable people to do work more quickly. 
They enable you to work with datasets with more than one dimension. They 
allow you to express more powerful relations between objects.

People do, though, often misunderstand what it means to be command-line. Just 
because a display is made of text, on a console, doesn't mean it's not a GUI. 
Good user interface design is about interaction, not what the thing actually 
looks like. So, Pine has a better GUI than vi, for example, because it's a 
lot easier to get into initially, the shortcuts are easily available, and it 
edits more consistently. However, people have moved into vGUI (X Windows, for 
example), because a text-based interface is incredibly limited in terms of 
interaction - how do you design a drop-down menu in text? Does three rows of 
characters take up too much room? Etc. - the actual widgets for interacting 
with software are better in a highly graphical environment.

Cheers,
			Alex.

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug