From: utzoo!decvax!cca!Hank@sri-unix Newsgroups: net.works Title: menus versus typing Article-I.D.: sri-unix.2664 Posted: Fri Aug 13 07:39:51 1982 Received: Tue Aug 17 06:24:20 1982 I don't use an Alto often enough to know whether a menu-driven system is the best for everyday use. I do know that it is the best when you've forgotten all the commands for that particular system. An area where I claim menus are preferable over a keyboard are in graphics systems. In particular, VLSI layout systems . You spend most of your time moving the mouse (tablet puck in our case) around clicking tablet buttons. In the particular system that we use (Caesar), there is no menu on the screen. The system is written so that you can avoid the keyboard almost all of the time, but as the design becomes more and more complete, I find myself using the keyboard more often, since I need to use more complex commands. Everyone that I know who uses Caesar complains about this. They want a menu for the most common commands. Setup and cleanup commands can of course stay on the keyboard since they are rarely used. >From my own experience using other layout systems that are menu driven, I know that they increase your performance by eliminating the need to take your hand off of the puck (I don't type well with only my left hand).