Re: [OT] Random thoughts about user interfaces, was: Re: Text editors

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

This is one thing I would not quite agree with.  GUIs are obvious to a lot
of computer users, because they are familiar with them (even people who do
not use computers much have some familiarity with them -- just look at
some of the commercials on TV or movies).

Clicking on a label that says File, and then clicking on the save label
seems obvious because that is what you do in every other program.  If the
key combination C-x C-s saved the document in every program, people may
consider that obvious.

GUIs are self documenting if they follow some easy to learn conventions.
You could say the convention of providing a --help option, and using POSIX
style command line options makes command line tools self documenting.  In
both cases, if you do not know the conventions neither of these interfaces
apear to be self documenting.

Which is easier to learn if you have zero knowledge and no initial
guidance is debatable.  But with a short tutorial, each type of interface
can be learnt.  Which interface is more preferable depends on the person
(if we ignore any preconceptions about interfaces for a moment).

James.

--
Email: james@daa.com.au
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/


On Wed, 14 Jul 1999, Nils Philippsen wrote:
> I'd like to object a bit: a GUI approach has the advantage of being
> self-documented (it's more obvious to click on a save button that you see
> than pressing C-x C-s which you can do only if you _read_ documentation
> beforehands -- people tend to _not_ read documentation). IMHO a GUI that
> can be used with keyboard shortcuts and hotkeys is a thing that appeals to
> both the casual and the professional user of an application.
>