From: Sean Russell <ser@...>
Date: 2002-02-19T02:07:28+09:00
Subject: Re: OT OmniWeb [was: Netscape 4.x?]

Thomas Hurst wrote:

>> Until you get in the habit of keeping track of which mode you're in,
>> it is easy to make mistakes.
> 
> That big-ass "-- INSERT --" is enough of a hint for me to keep track of
> modes as well as, if not better than keeping track of, say, where my
> mouse is.

There's still an unneccessary attention shift required.  UI studies show 
that attention shift -- making up your mind to do or look somewhere else -- 
is a significant contributor to the amount of time it takes to perform an 
action.  And a big-ass INSERT is not, actually, a big help.  You may not 
conciously notice the lag, but it slows you down anyway.  And, after all, 
people regularly drive their cars out of gas, despite a big-ass gas gauge, 
and a big-ass red warning light :-)

"The Humane Interface", by Jeff Raskin, is a good book to read.  It is full 
of a lot of, well, crap, but there's a lot of interesting research and 
useful information in there, too.  Considering the state of GUIs these 
days, it should be required reading for programmers.

>> If you're like me, you probably hit "ESC" a lot
> 
> No, I rebound ESC to caps lock actually :)

Ooooh... great idea!  The only time I ever hit caps lock is on accident.  
And, there are some people on the planet on whose keyboard the caps lock 
should be permenantly disabled.

> I don't hit escape much, actually, not in vim anyway.

I do, but I do a lot of jumping and searching, and block deleting... as I 
mentioned, vim's addition of being able to use the cursor keys without 
going out of edit mode is its best feature.  'vi' is still a pain in the 
butt to learn.

> Well, vi is aimed at console and keyboard use; there's not a whole lot
> of other ways you can squeeze all that power into an editor without
> either using emacs-style Ctrl-Meta-Alt-Delete-Backslash-A-B-Esc or Vim
> style <ESC>:<commands>.

Yes.  I wasn't saying there was a better way to do it; I claimed it had a 
sharp learning curve.

> User interface designers can spout off as much as they like about it,
> but until they come up with a more intuitive editor that keeps the power
> and speed, they're just spouting.

Ah, but from spouting comes innovation.

It seems that I'm always arguing this point.  It /is/ good to try and 
identify what makes bad and good user interface design.  It /is/ good to 
try to think of better ways of writing GUI APIs.  It /is/ good to invent 
new programming languages like Ruby.  This is the only way we improve what 
we have.  Vim is a result of people being dissatisfied with vi -- and they 
found a better way.

>> Try the Project.vim script.
> 
> I'll have a look.  Think I grabbed it and forgot about it.

It's great.  Really.  I love that software.  I mean, I have actual feelings 
of tenderness for it.  I'm thinking of proposing.

-- 
 |..  Don't question authority.  They don't know either.
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