🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <JAN.92Dec22131534@pallas.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de> jan@pallas.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de (Jan Vorbrueggen) writes:
> In article <id.GL0W.ED9@ferranti.com> peter@ferranti.com (peter da silva)
> writes:
>    In general, user friendliness requires detailed control over every aspect
>    of the user interface (as any Apple developer about that!).

> Not quite. While being able to tailor your environment to your needs is
> important, it's much more important that things are consistent across
> applications, intuitive in the sense that you don't need more than two or
> three tries to find out how to do what you intend to do, and easy to memorize
> (which, of course, is much easier if things are consistent).

I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but you must
understand that what you read is not what I meant. And if you can understand
THAT sentence...

When I said "detailed control over every aspect of the user interface" I
was talking about control by the vendor (for example, Apple), via developer
guidelines and withholding releases and support from developers who do not
toe the line, rather than by the user.

User level customizability is a whole different issue. How customizable is
your toaster? You can toast dark, or light, and you can use one slot. That's
about all. But it's sure user-friendly.

>    Open systems require conformance to externally defined standards and
>    interoperability with software you've never had a chance to spec. It's VERY
>    hard to get the two together, which is why so many people are excited about
>    the NeXT.

> I think people are excited about the NeXT because it fits the bill I gave
> above...When first introduced, the machine was anything but inter operable
> (optical disk, not all SCSI disks talk to it, nonstandard window system with
> nonstandard monitors, no power switch :)).

You could take a NeXT system, stick it on a network or a phone line, and
run it as a peer with any other UNIX system. The application programmer
interface is UNIX with Mach extensions, and both UNIX and Mach are open
standards. The primary disk interface is SCSI (quality of that SCSI
implementation aside, it *is* a standard). You could run X11 on it
pretty easily if you wanted to. It's an awfully open system compared
to Mac, or NT, or OS/2, or VMS... the only nonstandard stuff was the
window system, and given the quality of X you really can't blame them.
-- 
Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
Ferranti International Controls Corporation                'U` 
Sugar Land, TX  77487-5012 USA
+1 713 274 5180                            "Zure otsoa besarkatu al duzu gaur?"