From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@invweb.net>
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 1997 17:47:06 +0800
To: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Subject: Re: Word Processors and GUIs
In-Reply-To: <v03102806b0ce2de79528@[207.167.93.63]>
Message-ID: <199712300946.EAA29290@users.invweb.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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In <v03102806b0ce2de79528@[207.167.93.63]>, on 12/30/97 
   at 12:26 AM, Tim May <tcmay@got.net> said:

>In this environment, where people at all levels are using multiple
>programs--e-mail, word processing, drawing, spreadsheets, math programs,
>graphing programs, Web browsers, and so on--it is much more efficient to
>have an integrated environment, a common set of basic commands, a GUI.

While you have made some intriguing points they for the most part address
the benefits of standardization not of a GUI (note: Standardization !=
GUI).

While some standardization is good it is not the be all to end all. While
standardization of cut, paste, open, close, print makes perfect sense most
commands do not fall into this catagory. The inherent benefit of this
standardization decrease the more specialized an application becomes. With
a program like Autocad or MathCad or even Lotus 1-2-3 where one has a
steep learning curve of specialized commands the benefits of standardized
basic commands boarders on insignificant.

Once we get past the standardization issue to the one of textmode vs GUI
(which was the topic of my original post) I doubt that one can make the
case that a draftsman running a graphics program under a textmode OS is
less efficient as his counterpart who is saddled with a bloated GUI OS. In
fact if both are operating on the same hardware I would venture a guess
that the textmode user will be more efficient by the simple fact that his
resources are not being consumed by the GUI.

The same case can be made for the accounting staff using spreadsheets or
the secretaries typing letters. I'll take an accounting department using
Lotus 1-2-3 3.x up against a similar group running MS Office and Win95/NT
any day of the week. I'll get the same work done faster and *cheaper*. Now
the MS group will have prettier reports but why should the accounting dept
be in the business of typesetting??

This brings up another issue of decreased performance with the GUI's. It
is the notion that every document must be type-set. I can't even start to
imagine the millions of man hours wasted in the office because every
insignificant memo, report, and letter has to be formatted "just right"
before it is acceptable. Now with the growing popularity of e-mail this
trend has reversed somewhat but you have companies like Netscape and
Microsoft who are eagerly trying to herd the masses back into this typeset
mentality.

But I digress. :)

Another contention I have with the GUI's is the use of icons. One of the
most misused and time wasting "features" of the GUI's. It makes absolutely
no sense for someone who is working on the keyboard to stop what they are
doing, go over to the mouse, and then point and click to execute a
command. Now if you are in some type of graphics/drawing program where
most of your work is being done with a mouse already then it makes sense
but in a word processor or a spreadsheet or even a database it is highly
inefficient.

Well I guess I will rap this up with a final note. With the GUI OS's (and
the applications that run on them) as size and complexity increases
performance and reliability decreases. Without a doubt I can get more work
done on cheaper hardware running *nix or os/2 using only text mode
applications than I can running a GUI with it's associated bloated
applications.


- -- 
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William H. Geiger III  http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

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