Re: How to install X-Chat in five hours (or more)

[Tollef Fog Heen <tfheen@raw.no>]

* Emile van Bergen 

| Hi,
| 
| On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 10:19:53AM -0700, Ian Hickson wrote:
| 
| > And I would scream if you called it "/_My_ Variable Data/" too... :-P
| 
| I would even scream at 
| 
| /Variable Data/
| 
| simply because it encourages slow and RSI-inducing click and drag
| behaviour, because such path names are impossible to type in (and this
| one even requires escaping the space to distinguish between the argument
| separator). 

Tab completion or using /Va* is about as fast as /var.

| In short, such path names are definitely no improvement from a UI
| standpoint, even though it may seem that way from a casual observer.
| Even shorter: UIs are rarely obvious. And there must be a reason why
| geeks like working with Unix.

UIs have two costs: an initial learning cost and a «running cost»
(which also includes the retaining the learnt level) which is per
operation (a little bit simplified, but you get the idea).  If you are
going to use a system a lot and over a long period of time, the
initial cost matters a lot less than if you are only going to use the
system occasionally and for short periods of time.  Also, catering for
the different conditions of users is important; I'd hate to have to
use a command line interface with obscure unix-like commands for
operating an ATM, since I fairly seldom use those and therefore the
running cost is less important than the initial cost.

Geeks use systems a lot and for long periods of time, so using more or
less obscure interfaces is good, not bad for us.

:)

-- 
Tollef Fog Heen                                                        ,''`.
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are      : :' :
                                                                      `. `' 
                                                                        `-