Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cica!gatech!prism!loligo!pepke From: pepke@loligo.cc.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer Subject: Re: Subtantiatng my criticism (was: simple text interface) Message-ID: <248@loligo.cc.fsu.edu> Date: 8 Aug 89 22:00:01 GMT References: <9674@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <43528@bbn.COM> <14780@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <183@dbase.UUCP> <14834@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <7241@microsoft.UUCP> Reply-To: pepke@loligo.UUCP (Eric Pepke) Organization: Supercomputer Computations Research Institute Lines: 43 Let's see if I shed a little darkness on this discussion: There is NO reason to believe that graphical interfaces are inherently less powerful, flexible, or synchronistic than command-line interfaces. Paul Haeberli* describes a visual system that is inherently considerably more powerful than Unix. Useful though redirection and pipes may be, the Unix command line is still limited by the fact that it is basically a one-dimensional construct, and each tool only has one input port. Haeberli's _ConMan_ allows many and links them in a two-dimensional graphical interface. With regard to the idea that nobody would ever program with a mouse, well, there are several software project management systems that use dataflow concepts and a visual metaphor. Some of them are very good, far better, in fact, than giving every member of the software development team a copy of EMACS and turning them all loose. These are no longer the days of the lone hacker heroically kludging away; good software must be designed, and some of the best tools are inherently graphical. Constructing a powerful visual metaphor is harder than throwing together a powerful but arcane command line interface (I hope this isn't news to anybody), but this does not mean that it is impossible, just that more work needs to be done. Remember that in 1984 people were saying that nobody would ever use a Macintosh for word processing because they would have to take their hands off the keyboard to move the cursor. Well, there were other overriding advantages that the visionaries saw that we now think are old hat, and it's not easy to remember the time when it was different. There couldn't possibly be any such advantages lurking waiting to be discovered in graphical development systems, could there? :-) Reference: *_ConMan: A Visual Programming Language for Interactive Graphics_ Paul E. Haeberli Siggraph '88 conference proceedings. Eric Pepke INTERNET: pepke@gw.scri.fsu.edu Supercomputer Computations Research Institute MFENET: pepke@fsu Florida State University SPAN: scri::pepke Tallahassee, FL 32306-4052 BITNET: pepke@fsu Disclaimer: My employers seldom even LISTEN to my opinions. Meta-disclaimer: Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.