[372] in Athena User Interface
Re: Beta, system, and usability testing, p.s.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher D. Beland)
Wed Aug 16 18:56:01 2000
Message-Id: <200008162255.SAA13154@scrubbing-bubbles.mit.edu>
To: Brad Thompson <yak@MIT.EDU>
cc: aui@MIT.EDU
In-reply-to: The events that comprise the history of the universe.
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 18:55:55 -0400
From: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
> [This mail intentionally not sent to non-aui people.]
Why not? I've already heard these arguments; Susan has not.
> Emacs is the supported editor on Athena. There would be an enormous
> support load in changing this, and there are no reasonable
> alternatives.
I'm not convinced that there wouldn't be a support load *decrease* in
the long term, if we were to substitute something easy to use for
Emacs.
> 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.
I certainly don't think that the current large-gorilla incarnation of
Star Office is a suitable application for quick editing. I don't know
if novice users would prefer to use SOffice over Emacs - even if there
was a few seconds time penalty - for quick editing, but most people
surely would for documents of any length.
Users currently complain very loudly that there is no good word
processing program on Athena. (Where "good" is something they can sit
down and Just Use, with their either minimal or Win/Mac experience.)
Perhaps the question is, should the button be for a text editor, or a
word processor? Emacs does not fit my definition of a user-friendly
word processor; Star Office does. However, there are a lot of
problems yet to be solved with Star Office, which is what APSE is
working toward.
> The menus work just fine.
Just because they work doesn't mean they're user-friendly. Even at
first glance, they have a completely different layout than any other
application I use; even that is a major usability hit.
> XEmacs not clearly more intuitive, and the support and maintainence
> effects would be really nasty; we already give users an emacs.
Perhaps it's not clearly more intuitive for you, but it is for me. I
suspect it would also be for Joe Random User.
But since this is a usabilty question, I'm not sure what value there
is to flaming about this on AUI without the usability team's input.
It is, after all, what they're there for.
-B.
