Re: [tlug] The Great Mistake is thinking OOo is different [was: Why Vista Sucks]

["SL Baur" <steve@example.com>]

On 4/12/08, tlug@example.com <tlug@example.com> wrote:
> On Saturday 12 April 2008 13:55:24 SL Baur wrote:

>  > (mainly secretaries with High School education and at best "Business"
>  > degrees) document preparation with vi(1) and LaTeX(1) on BSD 4.2
>  > Unix.  Guess what?  It was *working*.
>
>
> Wow, that is very surprising and interesting!  I thought that secretaries of
>  that time used typewriters and generally disliked word processors (the
>  hardware kind) and computers.  Was such a thing widespread, or did you just
>  happen to know a very interesting group of secretaries? ;)

Common.  In 1985, having any piece of electronics on your desk was a
*huge* status symbol.  They gave me a real vt100 and more than one
person (engineer type)  told me how jealous they were (the alternative
was to walk across the campus to the computing center and sit behind a
terminal there).

So on the contrary, they were ratther proud to be placed among the
elite.

>  Is the dumbing down of tools the primary cause of the dumbing down of people?

Some time in the last half of the 80's a sea change was occurring.  By
1990 departmental secretaries and above had all been consumed by
the borg and it was considered impossible for them to learn anything
other than the specific tools they had received expensive outside
training for.  Interesting though, that their work areas were always
littered with keyboard overlays and pages and pages of commands
posted around their machine.

As to the "dumbing down" part, I'm not sure where that came from.
Some of it was dumbing down the hardware like in the Mac.  The
Microsoft two button mouse was a show-and-tell sort of thing.  "Mine
is bigger than yours!  Neener, neener, neener!".  The guys at Xerox
PARC who did the original Star spent millions of dollars (quite a lot
of money for the time) on human interface studies and after extensive
research on pointing devices of various configurations settled on the
3-button mouse as an optimum for ease of interface use.  This is the
same sort of study that gave us exactly 7-digit telephone numbers,
arguably one of the most sensible human/machine interface decisions
ever made.

When I was tasked to write an MMI standards document in 1987, I
visited various groups within the company collecting feedback and
opinions.  The moment that sticks out the most in my mind, was a
confrontation with one lady who practically shouted at me, "You
will not force us to use a chording (mouse) interface!"  I wasn't
particularly inclined to anyway mind you ...  But do recall that it
was in this time frame that the limitations of single button mice
were being discovered and Apple's interace forced all kinds of
awkward chording on users that still exists to this day.

The key thing here, is that until the meme that computers and textual
interfaces were "hard" started spreading, people, including untechnical
secretaries could and did learn to use new ones and be productive
at it.  And let's face it, from a human/machine interface point of view,
the earliest attempts on the low end machines that became the
best sellers, were atrocious.

The end result, a couple of decades later, is when Microsoft attempts
to fix some of the brain damage they introducedM-bM-dpopularized
it's dismissed for being different.

> To me, and I know that this is not universal, formats such as PS and PDF are
>  what I think of as "output formats."  PDF is a dual purpose format that tries
>  to support two very different uses: portability for transmission and display
>  on a screen as well as printability.  Perhaps it is trying to be bridge to
>  the paperless office era, but it clearly has its deficiencies, as most
>  all-in-one formats do.

No and you miss the point.  PDF *is* an output format, but it has the
property that your document will print out the same no matter what
the hardware within the limitations of human engineering.  No other
standard has even come close to achieving that, though TeX dvi perhaps
has similar properties.

> I respect Steve-san's opinions as well as your own, though I do not agree with
>  all of them.

That's fine.  There isn't *anyone* I respect that I agree with 100%.

>  > WSYiWYG is easily the most productivity pessimiser ever invented.
>
>
> There are many who would say the same thing about computers in general.

It depends on the application.  For better or for worse, certain
activities such as the creation of nuclear weapons would have been
impossible without computers.  However (in)efficient the underlying
software might be, having discussions like this one with the participants
scattered all over the world wouldn't work either.

I also find it fascinating that we've been able to solve problems like
computer chess, but been unable to make similar progress in the
office automation front.  You are aware, I hope, that Ken and Dennis
sold their video game system (Ken Thompson wrote the first Unix
Kernel so he could play Space War) to management as a document
preparation system?

>  > (A close 2nd and 3rd are the one and two button mice, but I do not expect
>  > you to understand that).
>
>
> I have used a three button mouse since I first started using computers, and I
>  prefer using them over ones with one or two buttons (not to mention mouse
>  wheels).  Though I spend the vast majority of my computer time using vi and
>  have little need for mouse buttons, I also work on graphics projects.  Three
>  buttons are very useful in 3d graphics, as each button can be associated with
>  a different dimension.  (For example, holding down two buttons can constrain
>  cursor movement to a plane.)  Multiple mouse buttons are also useful in the
>  implementation of context menus, of course, but they are not the only way.
>
>  Though I tend to dislike one button mice myself, I recognize their purpose for
>  other people.  I built my grandmother a computer so that she could easily
>  communicate with me while I am in Japan, and the mouse was a very unnatural
>  thing for her.  Two buttons and a scroll wheel was a constant cause of
>  confusion.  When Mac Minis came out, I replaced her computer with one of
>  those, and she much preferred the simple mouse.

See discussion above regarding the origins of the 3 button mouse.  The
one button mouse is a decidedly inferior and awkward system compared
to what can be done with a sensible mouse.  That doesn't make it totally
unusable and in fact, I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro notebook.  Unix
with a one button mouse is preferable to Microsoft Windows.

Oh, I might as well add - in the process of drawing up the MMI document
I described above, in one brain storming session I drew up a screen that
looks remarkably like what I later saw on Microsoft Windows XP (and my
first look at a Microsoft Windows 95 screen).  The reviewer screamed,
"That's hideous!  We can't do that!"  Food for thought.

There's no problem being an opinionated wanker[1] like I am, like Steve is,
(like Linus is), so long as there are excellent reasons for being such.

-sb

[1] Term coined by uber Emacs hacker Erik Naggum to describe himself.