Re: Info sucks?
On Tue, Sep 15, 1998 at 09:15:33AM -0400, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> Hamish Moffatt <hamish@debian.org> writes:
>
> The keys are completely non-intuitive. I have read the help; two hours
> later, I cannot remember how to use info. It takes significant effort
> to learn anything which is non-intuitive. emacs is similarly
> counter-intuitive, which is why I use nvi.
>
> Now you are moving into the realm of arbitrary personal opinions. I
> find the Info keys perfectly intuitive.
Choosing vi over emacs (or vice versa) is an arbitrary personal opinion,
because _both_ interface systems were designed years ago for Unix geeks
running terminals without arrow keys and which waste the ESC key,
before the CUA (Common User Interface) standard came out.
I'm a skilled programmer and I can (and do) program my editor's scripting
language. I use the emacs-like interface of "jed". But I know for darn
sure that it's not intuitive.
<tirade>
IMNSHO, nobody has ever gotten a text-mode user interface right except
Borland, and to a lesser extent, Microsoft. Go try someone's old copy of
Turbo C++ 3.0 or Borland C++ 3.x sometime. In 1991, Borland's text-mode
hypertext on-line help system beat our "modernized" info so completely as to
make it embarassing. Theirs looks nice, and most keys (eg. arrows to move,
letters to search) actually do things that make sense. When you don't know
a key there's a menu bar. It has a mouse interface in text mode, so you can
click on their hyperlinks.
To put it clearly: people who call _any_ text-mode Unix program's UI
intuitive need to have their head seriously examined and then go sit in
dosemu for a while. Yeah, Borland C++ could easily bring down the whole
system (and it did, lots of times) and the compiler bugs drove me crazy, but
its UI was _incredibly_ efficient, while still easy to learn.
So don't tell me info's keys are intuitive. I know them well, and I know
they're not.
</tirade>
Have fun,
Avery
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