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Date:      Thu, 29 Nov 2001 17:50:55 -0600
From:      Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>
To:        John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>, Eric Melville <eric@FreeBSD.org>, Anthony Atkielski <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG, Giorgos Keramidas <charon@labs.gr>
Subject:   Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?)
Message-ID:  <15366.51679.493909.223032@guru.mired.org>
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.011129152007.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <15366.47797.671224.533868@guru.mired.org> <XFMail.011129152007.jhb@FreeBSD.org>

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John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> types:
> On 29-Nov-01 Mike Meyer wrote:
> >> Alt-Tab cycles through windows.  It may be off by default though.
> > 
> > That one's hard to calculate, because you don't know how many windows
> > you'll have to go through. On my desktop, it could be as low as 1.55
> > seconds, or as high as 10.85 seconds. I'd call it 6.2 seconds as an
> > average, meaning it's much worse than any of the other alternatives.
> You must hit Alt-Tab slow. :)  You can just bang on it real fast until the
> window you want is highlighted. :)  For me that is faster than using the mouse
> since I'm used to using the keyboard so much.

Ugh, I goofed. The numbers are really 3.1 for the case where it's the
next window, and an additional 1.55 seconds per window. I normally
have 8 windows visible, so the high end is 15.5 and the average is
7.75. GOMS specifies .2 seconds to hit a key, and 1.35 seconds to
verify that the correct action happened afterwards.

Note that GOMS isn't really meant to provide an accurate measurement
of the time it takes any given user to do some task. After all, the
time to hit a key varies from .08 to over .8 seconds, and the other
actions GOMS uses aren't any better. GOMS is meant to provide a way to
compare different UI methods, and it's expected that the ratios will
be roughly correct for any single user, even if the times are
radically different from what GOMS predicts.

If you only have two windows open, then the GOMS number for changing
windows via ALT-TAB drops to the 1.55 I mentioned before. Using the
mouse is 1.95 seconds, no matter how many windows are open. ratpoison
wins here because you can go directly to any window with two keys,
without having to go through a list of them.

	<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Q: How do you make the gods laugh?		A: Tell them your plans.

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