Re: Middle click, "dumbing down" Slashdotted

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Ray Morris <webmastersguide2000 yahoo com> wrote:
> Allan Day <allanpday gmail com> said:
>
> > You're making a lot of assumptions here. When this story broke it was
> > on the basis of two commits, and had no other background information.
>
> I've read some of the discussion. The news stories did pick up on context menu, making it a non-default 
> setting, etc.
> It does appear that there is additional background I haven't located any record of.  I'm not making any 
> assumptions
> about what that may be.

> I have read discussion of making things easier for new users, the key word "discoverable"
> is used more than once on the page about the proposal, etc.

Which page? Which proposal?

> Based on the available background, I'm pointing out a
> principle that is true globally.
>
> For any system that will be used many times, over a period of time, it is false economy
> to make it simpler in the beginning by making it harder in the long run.
>
> The interface we're using right now, English, is a great example. Suppose someone proposed simplifying 
> English so
> that it could be learned completely in six months, that we remove any words or language constructs not used 
> by
> six-month-olds babies? That would of course be ridiculous.  We want the interface we're using to be deep, 
> to have more and
> more power we can discover over time.  Just as young children learn "mama", then later learn "maternal", 
> new users can
> use ctrl-c/ ctrl-v, until they learn more.  (Though ctrl-c is of course a _terrible_ habit on Linux.  The 
> same keystroke is used both
> for copying data and for immediately killing the program with extreme prejudice, losing all data.)

You're making an argument about simplification in a thread about
middle-click, but the designs for what might happen to middle-click
have neither been finalised nor publicised. I think it would be better
to wait until the text selection designs have been documented before
we discuss it. :)

Allan