[371] in Athena User Interface
Re: Beta, system, and usability testing, p.s.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brad Thompson)
Wed Aug 16 18:33:18 2000
Message-Id: <200008162233.SAA13448@rat-thing.mit.edu>
To: beland@MIT.EDU
cc: aui@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 16 Aug 2000 18:14:27 EDT."
<200008162214.SAA07712@No-Whammies.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 18:33:15 -0400
From: Brad Thompson <yak@MIT.EDU>
[This mail intentionally not sent to non-aui people.]
sbjones:
> > Would it be better to put the *Office word processor on the bar
> > instead of or along with Emacs? As powerful as Emacs is for power
> > users, for a new comer, it's intimidating.
No.
For lack of a better way of describing the situation, StarOffice is shit.
Emacs is the supported editor on Athena. There would be an enormous
support load in changing this, and there are no reasonable alternatives.
We do not want to hand someone staroffice when they need a text editor
any more than we should hand someone matlab when they need a DNS server.
beland:
> But as you say, it's really hard to use. I myself hated having to
> learn all of its arcane keybindings and weird way of doing things.
> (Now, of course, I'm used to it.)
The menus work just fine.
> Personally, I'm inclined to suggest putting XEmacs there instead.
> (add xemacs; xemacs&)
XEmacs not clearly more intuitive, and the support and maintainence
effects would be really nasty; we already give users an emacs.
> Certainly, Star Office is the appropriate choice for doing any serious
> amount of word processing (like writing a paper).
This word "certainly"...I do not think it means what you think it means.
It's a sad day when emacs is the lightweight editor...
yak
