Mishkin@YALE.ARPA (04/27/83)
From: Nathaniel Mishkin <Mishkin@YALE.ARPA>
Date: 22 Apr 83 13:08:52-PST (Fri)
From: harpo!utah-cs!lepreau @ Ucb-Vax
Subject: Re: Lisa Specs
Unless the rep didn't know what he was doing, the software seems
to have some equally gaping holes. You can't have two (or more)
windows up and "open" simultaneously! Their visicalc clone can,
but that's built into it and not in the general display
manager/editor/whatever. Apparently moving a chunk of text from
one file to another is a major project, as you first have to move
it to an intermediate "clipboard," close the first window, and
get the other. Each step taking interminably long, of course.
They can't even handle rectangular regions, i.e., couldn't move
a column of numbers around.
After reading all the glowing commentary on the Lisa, I must say that
these last sorts of comments ring more true than the raves. I mean,
I'm sure that Apple did a really fine job but I'm afraid that all too
often when people see "windows" they assume a "well-designed,
user-friendly, programmer-friendly, fast, arbitrarily sophisticated"
window system rather than a sort of ad hoc, semi-unprogrammable, slow
window package.
Good window systems are a hard thing to do. There are window systems
with very good user interfaces and poor programming interfaces. E.g.
you can point, pick, move text around, change and move windows, pop
and hide windows -- but try and make a program do these things and
you discover that all the operations have been "hardwired"; if you
want to write an application that does window operations, you have no
access to the smarts already built into the window environment and
you have to start from scratch.
There are window systems with very good programming interfaces but
poor user interfaces. E.g. you can create and control windows of
numerous kinds and shapes from a program -- unfortunately, if you have
2 window oriented applications on the screen at the same time, the
user can't pick text from one window and put it in the other; or the
user discovers that the key for some operation in one window is not
the same as the key for the same operation in the other window because
the programmers of the different applications haven't designed the
user interfaces in concert; or the user is unwilling to use some general
facility like keeping a transcript of window activity because instead
of the horrible, crocked up, special case implementation in the "good
user interface, bad programming interface" case, his ultra-flexible
programmable window system is too slow when running in "transcript mode".
Part of the motivation for this semi-diatribe is that I use an Apollo
which has an interface that is essentially the "good user, bad
programming" one and people always tell me, "y'know, on X machine,
I can write programs that do all this zippy window stuff; your machine's
window system stinks because it can't do them too".
I suggest we all keep a watchful eye out for sexy but shallow or
expensive interfaces of all kinds.
-- Nat
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