So, first off, I do not think you have put your finger on the reason palm-sized computers use a launchpad of app items, nor why they have dispensed with menu bars and textual input.
It's not because text nor menus are "old" but because there's no easy way to type and there's not enough screen real-estate for fixed format presentation. The "old" argument is pure misdirection. If "old" were sufficient argument, we could all stop breathing because that's just an ancient way of doing things. And we could stop eating, because eating was good in its time, but who has time for that nowadays? And we could stop talking or otherwise communicating with each other because that's for creeps and weirdos. Similarly, claiming things are "bad" without offering your context and criteria is just silly. Ok, sure, Excel is a really bad tool if you want to fry some eggs. And terminal isn't going to work very well by itself if what you really need is a camera. But if you get rid of terminal and text you might as well also get rid of programming languages (which is exactly what Apple has been selling and advocating in the App Store ... though they've been forced to back off from that stance, and for good reason). The concept of "text" underlies the concept of "files" also. It's not just about programming, but it's a fairly versatile abstraction for addressable memory. So it's not going away, not matter how much some people might hate computers. Those people aren't going to be interested in J, either, so it's probably best to just ignore them and let them go on doing whatever it is that they do... Put differently... While it's true that consistency is useful in the context of communicating systems (which is what user interfaces are about) that does not mean that inconsistency is not useful. Each has their place. You need consistency so that you have a medium of exchange. But if you don't have any inconsistency you have nothing to exchange. And this will never be perfect - we have to live with approximations which were originally designed for other purposes. So, with that in mind, menus and toolbars can be thought of as two flavors of the same kind of thing - which is fixed functionality screen real-estate. And, on-screen keyboards and launchpads can also be thought of as variations on these themes. So... If the menubar was "good in its time" that suggests that for a variety of purposes it's also "good in this time" and also that it will be "good in the future". That it fails for other purposes just tells us that it's like everything else - useful in some contexts and not in others. Similarly, the concept of a terminal is one of the more powerful and versatile concepts in the history of computers. Haters are going to hate, but that doesn't mean that they have anything better to offer. (Though, again, that's a contextual issue...) Similarly, with the table of contents for a book. If it's a book I read and then discard, sure - I'm not going to have much ongoing use for the table of contents, nor the index. However, if it's a reference work? Both the table of contents and the index are going to get a workout. Or, if the book is online, I might be able to use a search engine (but note that printed paper still has some advantages over online display media - I could list some of those if you like...). The Chemical Rubber Company Handbook is a really good example of a reference work whose index and table of contents has good long-term value... ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRC_Handbook_of_Chemistry_and_Physics ). Anyways, back to the Mac - I find that I simply do not use most of what the Mac has to offer. There's a small set of "Mac things" I use but mostly what I use it for is "non-Mac" things. But that's how it is with most computer systems - we (or at least I) use some small part of it and ignore most of the rest. And that's probably how it should be. Thanks, -- Raul On Wed, Sep 16, 2015 at 7:30 AM, Ian Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > Dan has a point. Who uses menus nowadays – if there's an effective toolbar? > > On the Mac, the menubar has become nothing but a clothes-horse to hang > hotkeys on. On Windows, there needn't be any rational link between the > hotkeys and the menubar at all. (There needn't be any rational link > between any parts of the UI – and often isn't.) > > But: "abusus non tollit usum". The prevalence of abuse isn't an > argument against proper use. > > The menubar was good in its time (1980s) and was a great improvement > on what went before – teletype interfaces. Just the sort of interface > we still expect the J user to use in the guise of the Term window. > Which says something for our belief in modern GUIs. > > But a menubar only works (a) for the novice user, as a roadmap of the > app[lication], (b) to the extent it looks like the menubar of every > other app. But that's been too restrictive for the "creativity" of 3rd > party product developers. > > Pressing for a good design of menubar has been a lost cause for years. > As an industry we're in the position of having to provide one, to look > like a "proper" program, but nobody believes in its effectiveness > because nobody's aware of a good example. (For really bad examples see > Word and Excel.) > > It's like the Table of Contents of a textbook. There's got to be one. > But nobody uses it in day-to-day consultation of the book: if there's > a good index they use that. You only use the TOC on first buying the > book, to get a broad idea of coverage. > > I put it to the forum: JQt as it stands has neither a good "Table of > Contents" (menubar) nor a good "Index" (Help subsystem). But have we > got such a torrent of genuine "novice users" that it's worth anyone's > time developing either? Or can we handle them all by one-to-one > volunteer tutorials on the 3 (4) forums? > > It's no mystery why modern palmtop platforms have dispensed with the > menubar, in favor of a launchpad of app icons. (And – as an aside – in > the context of iOS, an "app" is whatever you can buy from the App > Store.) > > But one has to ask: which is the cause and which is the effect? > > On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 7:59 PM, Dan Bron <[email protected]> wrote: >> Ian wrote: >>> A properly designed menu system is a huge help for a novice user. >> >> Tangentially related: I ignore menus as often as I can. On websites, for >> example, I universally opt to use the search feature. And if the search >> feature is absent, or sucks, I use a site-specific search in Google. In >> applications, similarly I try to learn the pertinent keyboard shortcuts, >> maybe do some customizations in the preferences dialog, and thereafter >> ignore the menus. >> >> In short, I have no interest in learning someone else’s ontology. It’s like >> going to a pharmacy in a foreign country: sure, it makes sense to whoever >> laid it out, but I still can’t find anything. Easier and more effective to >> just ask someone to point you in the right direction. >> >> -Dan >> >> >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
