[373] in Athena User Interface
Re: Beta, system, and usability testing, p.s.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brad Thompson)
Wed Aug 16 19:15:58 2000
Message-Id: <200008162315.TAA15537@rat-thing.mit.edu>
To: beland@MIT.EDU
cc: aui@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 16 Aug 2000 18:55:55 EDT."
<200008162255.SAA13154@scrubbing-bubbles.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 19:15:56 -0400
From: Brad Thompson <yak@MIT.EDU>
> > [This mail intentionally not sent to non-aui people.]
>
> Why not? I've already heard these arguments; Susan has not.
And we should come to a conclusion amongst ourselves before we start
talking to people outside the group. Witness badness with PSB.
> 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.
You make two assumptions:
1) Emacs is not easy to use.
2) There is something easy to use that is a valid replacement for emacs.
I disagree with both of these.
> 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.
"certainly", "surely"...hmmm.
> 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.
Emacs does not fit my definition for a word-processor at all. StarOffice
can pretend to be a word processor, but I would not want to inflict it
upon users who can spare ten minutes to do the emacs tutorial.
> > 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.
Yeah...the file menu is the second one over instead of the first, and
the edit menu is the fourth one over instead of the second. Users will
never figure that one out.
> Perhaps it's not clearly more intuitive for you, but it is for me. I
> suspect it would also be for Joe Random User.
GNU Emacs requires you to read the menus for simple operations; the
menus are not where they are in Word. There are no substantial
differences.
But they are *3D*, and that makes it easier to use!
yak
