From: utzoo!decvax!cca!Feinler@SRI-NIC@sri-unix Newsgroups: net.works Title: End User Interface ala Augment/NLS Article-I.D.: sri-unix.2054 Posted: Mon Jul 12 11:42:29 1982 Received: Tue Jul 13 05:28:39 1982 I have worked with several different user interfaces over the years and I too prefer the command completion mode used by AUGMENT/NLS and MSG. The single character (or enough characters) recognition I find less winning because one almost always has to type spaces between the characters which means thousands of extra keystrokes over a period of time. In AUGMENT/NLS or MSG one types one or two letters and the commands are completed and displayed, thus if one made a typo it is obvious. I have never found that the command completion slows me down although I have heard that argument from time to time. Also, I feel I must dispell a myth about AUGMENT/NLS because I have heard it so many times and it just isn't true. It is NOT a difficult system to learn. I have trained several people who don't even LIKE machines to do useful work with less than a day's training. It is much easier to teach someone to use than say EMACS, in my opinion. AUGMENT/NLS is a very rich set of tools all under one 'umbrella' and it is true that for someone to learn to do everything that is doable under AUGMENT would take quite some time since it has text editing, programming, text processing, mixed text and graphics capabilities, data base management, etc., etc., etc. A user can do most of what she wants with the system rather nicely, which has nothing to do with the fact that if one wants to program this may take somewhat longer to learn than if one wants to do simple text editing. The point I am making is that when comparing apples with apples (text editing with text editing, for instance) AUGMENT/NLS is quite user friendly, powerful, and easy to learn. Jake Feinler -------