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Date:      Mon, 5 Nov 2001 13:41:41 -0600
From:      Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>
To:        David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com>
Cc:        chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: NatWest? no thanks
Message-ID:  <15334.60277.832949.765531@guru.mired.org>
In-Reply-To: <3BE6DBC6.5A985010@acuson.com>
References:  <20011102090253.G795-100000@jodie.ncptiddische.net> <3BE2EF8D.4CB9A508@acuson.com> <63zo63brsq.o63@localhost.localdomain> <15332.18917.367328.996483@guru.mired.org> <3BE6DBC6.5A985010@acuson.com>

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David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com> types:
> Mike Meyer wrote:
> 
> > If you haven't, find a copy of Raskin's "The Humane Interface", and
> > read it. He argues - quite convincingly - that the real problem is
> > that people are being offered applications at all. It's silly to have
> > to start a "word processor" to deal with a document with words in it
> > vs. having to start a "drawing program" to deal with a document with
> > graphics in it when the operations on the two things are fundamentally
> > the same: add, select, cut, copy, paste and set properties.
> 
> OpenDoc on OS/2 Warp, now there was a humane interface.
> 
> Problem is that the software companies aren't selling interfaces,
> they're selling applications. It's going to be up to us non-commercial
> Open Source types to take the best ideas of OS/2, RISCOS, and others and
> combine them into a human interface. Unfortunately we seem too obsessed
> with creating WIMP++ to have time to break the mold and start over.

FWIW, most of the ideas that Raskin talks about were implemented in
the Canon Cat.

I think it's going to take a hardware company selling a platform built
around those ideas. Open source systems makes that less likely by
providing a cheap supply of readymade conventional software.

That OS/2 and the Cat are both dead doesn't help much.

	<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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