Mackey.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA (01/10/84)
From: Kevin <Mackey.PA@PARC-MAXC.ARPA> "The HP 150 is a lovely machine for lower level management and "pink collar" workers - the people who are takingover most of the data processing functions in the office, and the people who are word processing." -- Liz <SOMMERS@RUTGERS.ARPA> (WORKS Digest V4 #4) Why is the 150 so good for word processing? It seems you have to revert to cursor keys to do any serious editing. I would agree that it's better for people who won't be around long to quickly learn to use a touch screen *if* it's faster to learn *and* the speed is worth what you can do with it. It would seem that Reed.SoftArts at MIT-MULTICS (in V4 #4), after observing beginners, doesn't agree that touch screens are faster than mice to learn. I agree that people feel slowed down by having to move from keyboard to mouse and back. But the most important thing is that *overall time* to do things (complete a writing assignment) is shorter with the mouse. Do people who don't like the mouse feel it's *overall* faster for them to use a cursor control key to move around in the text? After awhile (about a week) I found I didn't notice the switch, I just saw the mouse out of the corner of my eye (I don't have to look away from the screen), and just reach for it and move back when done. It's like learning to drive a stick-shift. It's strange and frustrating at first, but soon it becomes automatic and you like it. Why are fast typists using the mouse so much that they complain of being slowed down having to find the home row? Don't they have a backspace key to correct errors they just made? The mouse does require a certain discipline. A good typist should learn to type at their fastest and ignore the mouse, then go back over what they have done and use the mouse to fix the various mistakes. As to having the pad, all the secretaries in our building have room for it, and I think they find it worth it or they wouldn't find the room. I love mice. And I'm frustrated trying to convince people how great they are. I suppose you have to experience it over a perioud of time (to become familiar with it and to use it in several applications) to see how nice it can be. It might also be a matter of taste. I remember how much time it used to take me to do things with just cursor keys and key menus. I want others to know how much they can benefit from the mouse interface. For an article that compares various interfaces, see "Computer Pointing Devices: Living with Mice" by Cary Lu, High Technology, Jan '84, p 61-?. I haven't read it yet, but from what I've heard the author dumps on touch screens. ~Kevin
REM%MIT-MC@sri-unix.UUCP (01/17/84)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC> Often in rapid typing I make many little typing erors like may occur in this very sentence I'm typing I'll deliberatly wait until I'm done befor going back tocorrect the errors, and deliberatly make a copy so you can see the original and the final versio of this. Often in rapid typing I make many little typing errors like may occur in this very sentence I'm typing. I'll deliberatly wait until I'm done before going back to correct the errors, and deliberatly make a copy so you can see the original and the final version of this. There, 3 errors corrected, all by string search instead of pointing device. [Addenda, a fourth found on second reading just before dispatching this message, also located by search, fine-adjusted by incremental-cursor, see below, and corrected by auto-insert default EMACS mode.] [Further addenda, a fifth found and corrected.] The point I'm making is that whereas mouse is advocated as useful for text editing (now called "word processing"), in fact most of the time simple typos can be found and fixed by backwards string search easier than by any kind of location-specific pointing device such as mouse or cursor. Thus your advocating of a mouse in text editing is a red herring. Furthermore, having used the string search to get in the vicinity of the error, typically at the start or end of the seach string depending on which editor is being used (in EMACS backwards search puts you at start, but pressing ctrl-S can put you immediately at end), you still need to step to the point of corrction in the middle of the erroneous string, and for that I would think incremental cursor controls would be much easier to use than a mouse because you can step forward or backward N characters by pressing the appropriate cursor-step key N times whereas with a mouse it's very hard to quickly determine you're at exactly the correct spot instead of off by one. Thus for simple correction of typos, the most common thing done other than straight typing, it seems you'll need incremental left/right cursor commands in any case, even if you have a mouse, while the mouse won't be used because it's dominated by searching and stepping. [Addenda in second paragraph (third if you count both clones of first paragraph separately) typed&inserted at this time, just before adding CC:WORKS and dispatching. RMAIL is nice.] [Further addenda in that same paragraph added now, on third reading, after adding CC:WORKS, just before dispatching.]