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From: gaynor@constance.rutgers.edu (Silver)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.editors
Subject: Re: Idea for new MacIntosh Editor
Message-ID: 
Date: 5 Jun 88 06:10:08 GMT
References: <5024@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Distribution: comp
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 92

> The problem, I soon realized, was the lack of an internal logic, an
> ideology of editing, or better yet, an entire ideology of the user
> interface.  The MacIntosh has addressed this need admirably, but no
> one, as far as I can tell, has yet implemented an editor entirely in
> conformity with the MacIntosh philosophy.

Indeed, the MacIntosh-style interface (viz Xerox'x PARC interface, I
believe) is noted for its organization and consistency.  Point for
Apple.

> One of the more confusing aspects of using the MacIntosh for the
> beginner is the complexity of the hierarchical file structure.
> [Avoid confusion by] elminating all such computereese concepts.

This particular example is a particularly bad choice of a `confusing
computereese concept'.  Tree-structured hierarchical directory
structures are not very confusing.  It even has a real-world
correspondence in envelopes, manilla folders, desk drawers, etc.  Just
because an idea requires learning does not make the idea confusing or
unsound.

> ... old documents are simply left lying on the desktop at full size
> so the user can tell which is which.

Havoc surely ensues for any non-trivial number of documents.  I rarely
let a directory contain more than 20 or 30 files, because I have a lot
of trouble dealing with more than two handfuls of objects at once.

> Every keyboard is slightly different from every other, and it just
> gets too confusing to remember.

Too true.  It's amazing that keyboard layouts have not been
standardized.  I someday hope to see reconfigurable keyboards to
sidestep this problem, or even a means to make them portable between
machines (they say you can't take it with you? :-).

> Even the letter keys are in confusing places--who ever thought of
> putting E next to W next to Q?

This was done in the early days of manual typewriters to slow typists
down to a rate that the machine could handle without jamming.
Precious little success with that idea.  See Devorak's work on
keyboard layouts for a detailed discussion on more reasonable
keyboard configurations.

> [symbol menus easily accessable by the mouse]

So far so good.  Consider also a menu of transformations defined for
each symbol or category of symbols.  The PostScript language designed
by Adobe is an interesting and orthogonal implementation of many of
the standard concepts of graphic layout.  See The PostScript Language
Reference Manual by Adobe for more information.

> [more than one mouse button vs. clicking patterns]

I am an advocate of mice with multiple buttons simply because we are
physically capable of dealing with them.  It takes only a finger and
an opposing thumb to grip a mouse, leaving three fingers available for
other tasks.  It is up to the designer of the interface to make sure
that the buttons are treated consistently.  An extension to this
concept is `chording'.  Unless handled very carefully, though,
chording can become overly complicated (control-shift
left-and-middle-button?  Hmph.)

> [one document per floppy disk, to avoid confusion about the disks
>  contents]

You present one fairly weak argument in support, without addressing
any other issues.

  - Floppy disks cost money.  Not much, but it adds up.  You're saying
    the remaining space on a disk be forgotten until used.
  - You are restricting your memory medium to floppy disks?  What have
    you decided to do about mass storage media, like hard disks?  This
    is a preposterous idiom to follow in this event, of course.
  - Some groups of documents belong together; you leave it up to the
    user make sure that the physical disks are always grouped
    together.  This goes along with the concept of directory
    structure, above.
  - (Fill in your favorit argument in the space provided.) ___________
    __________________________________________________________________
    __________________________________________________________________

> ... (wysiwyg) ...

A good idea in most cases.  There are times when it's inconvenient,
though.  There are lots of programming concepts that can easily be
lost if care isn't taken to preserve them, like functional
abstraction, data hiding, etc.

Regards,
[Ag]