Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Editor

[brad clawsie]

it should also be noted that there are rsi issues with switching
constantly between mouse and keyboard. moving to an environment that
focuses on textual input (mutt+emacs+elinks on top of screen on top of
xmonad) has allowed me to keep my hands in the ergonomic position
dictated by my keyboard. for people with extreme-ergo keyboards
(kinesis etc), keeping your fingers in position is important




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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Editor (OT: keyboard mouse / one device + my 2 cents)

[Marc Weber]

I did think about this topic many times.
My conclusion: We need some other kind of interface (keyboard and mouse
at the same time which would speed up your workflow very often,
especially when doing some kind of graphics where you have to enter some
text)..

One solution I did find is http://www.combimouse.com/index.htm .. 
But I have'nt been able to afford this nice idea to test it.
Another is one is http://www.jazzmutant.com/lemur_overview.php 
(too expensive to be buyed by me in the near future ..  )
Another example is the iPod ...
  stop
<<   >>  move the finger to on the surface to scroll 
  play   (or something like this), I don't have one.

I totally agree that you can't say the one is faster than the other way.

When I'm faster using the keyboard (Perhaps I only think I am? :)
  finding logout (find as you type firefox), because I can even reach
  the link if it's not in the visible area.
  
  Finding directories I use often (because I don't have to look at many
  files/ directories I'm not interested in.. Perhaps my visual
  perception is not as fast as the perception of others?)
  Compare using property editors with code (find property visibility in
  either alphabetical or sectioned)..

  Finding menus on Windows (Because the move very often if you install
  new software, work on foreign computers etc).. But that's why tools
  like lounchy (windows) exist.

  Moving Windows using wmii (althoug nifty windows for Win is very nice
  as well, but you have to take off your hands..)

  scrolling (using page down/ space / return application dependend)

  tying gimp instead of (where the hell is that icon? Oh no it
  looks different because I have a newer version ..)

  using special commands such as goto previous cursor position...

  Opening files using glob patterns in vim (having mapped **/*
  (eg :e **/*some.hs )
  Opening most recent files having them listed in a buffer where I can
  use search. (compare this to File -> Open -> c:\MyProjects\. )

I'm faster using the mouse:
  navigating in directories I don't know..
  (But often I use something like find | less to get an overview )

  ... 

My friend is using the mouse most often. He is very fast. But Sometimes
you can't get as fast as using the keyboard because you have to wait
till the application pops up the window so that you "see" where to
click. (Example: A lot of windows Dialogs (Eg change the PATH variable))

Anyway it would be really interesting to use 2 mice for some tasks.
Then you can use one for scrolling and the other to click and drag.
Or you can put both on menu items (where you think they'll pop up such
as File -> save) and click in sequence. But this havily depends on the
application. Eg MS office (Not the new redisigned gui) is horrible
because it does always hide the menu items I'm looking for (perhaps
because I'm not using them very often or I don't know yet how to switch
them off). Another horrible examples are tex editors wether you can click
on buttons inserting \alpha \beta etc. Then you are switching between
keyboard and mouse all the time.

If the mouse is faster why does eclipse have so much opportunities to
filter lists/ trees ?

But I do know that I really like tools such as xfig / inckscape because
they have the keyboard shortcuts I need (select tools/ view ..)
And you are definitely faster using them using the mouse to select the
tool and moving back. But of course you have to learn them.

When watching my sister or my father using the mouse very often they
simply click on the small triangle (step up / down) in scrollbars
instead of PageUp/Down. But this is a kind of usage pattern which can be
<[ ] >
step  page left   move
left
improved by using scrolling (middle mouse button click), maximizing the
window (Windows often doesn't permit this, eg when customizing menus or
shortcuts (Visual Studio/ Word etc) before scrolling down a
list etc..

I hope I didn't talk too much and that you have found some stuff  in this
post you didn't know already ...

Marc

PS: How would mouse gestures compare to keyboard shortcuts concerning
the 2 seconds amnesia having been mentioned in article some posts ago?
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Editor

[Gabor Greif]

Am 23.05.2007 um 00:20 schrieb Ashley Yakeley:

I don't suppose you're familiar with the Dylan programming  
language, or more to the point, have looked at the IDE that Apple  
included in their original implementation of the language (around  
1993 or so)? Characteristic of Apple of that time, the UI was both  
highly innovative and a joy to use. It was based around "browsers",  
where each browser had a "subject" (such as a project, module,  
definition etc.) and an "aspect" (such as "contents of", "errors  
in", "references to", "direct methods of" etc.). Browsers could be  
linked so that the selection in one browser became the subject in  
another. This made it very easy to navigate your project.


All code was stored in a database rather than as text files, and  
individual code definitions were separate objects in the browsers  
rather than pieces of text in a big file.


Info w/ screenshots: 

Needless to say, this goes in rather the opposite UI direction to  
the "Ctrl-M Ctrl-Meta-Z  :edit qx" approach to editors that  
some people prefer.


Dylan's not a bad language, and there are open source  
implementations available for Gnu/Linux. But if you want to check  
out Apple's IDE, you'll really need a 68K Mac, as the PPC version  
is very buggy and I don't think the 68K version will run in PPC.


Michael's blog:

http://snakeratpig.blogspot.com/2007/02/road-to-haskell.html

Dylan and Haskell are very similar in the multiple-dispatch (a  
haskeller would call that

pattern matching on several arguments) respect.

Cheers,

Gabor

PS: Btw, the Apple Dylan IDE works well on PPC if you apply a patch  
that was issued by

Digitool shortly after the initial port of the IDE to PPC.

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Editor

[Albert Y. C. Lai]

This recent development of the thread leads me to these conclusions and 
conjectures.


* If you want to demonstrate the mouse to be faster than the keyboard, 
you can contrive an experiment to do so. Example: Randomize occurences 
of X's in a text, ask to replace them by Y's, but make sure there is no 
find-replace command or wizard to help.


* If you want to demonstrate the keyboard to be faster than the mouse, 
you can contrive an experiment to do so. Example: Ask to crack open your 
favourite Haskell textbook and enter it into the computer.


Some of us raise that speed is not the only concern. Indeed, cognitive 
switch may be more taxing on the worker. However, going on a limb, I'm 
going to wager that:


* If you want to demonstrate the mouse to be less taxing than the 
keyboard, you can probably contrive an experiment to do so.


* If you want to demonstrate the keyboard to be less taxing than the 
mouse, you can probably contrive an experiment to do so.


The keyboard-mouse duality (duelity?) doesn't end here. Some of us 
explains that keyboarding has become part of our motor skill, and 
mousing has not quite. So I ask, are there also people who are the opposite?


One year I went to COMDEX Canada (in Toronto) and saw a live demo of 
Photoshop or something. The demonstrator was amazing. He clicked through 
the menu system faster than I could watch! He performed long sequences 
of back-to-back menu mousing at a sustained speed paralleling that of my 
keyboarding. You may say "aha, Photoshop, analog!" but no, in his demo 
analog operations were the minority, the majority was on the discrete 
menus - I do mean it when I say long sequences of back-to-back menu 
mousing. A possible objection would be that he practiced on his demo. 
But I do invite you to observe someone who uses Photoshop or the like 
professionally; you may see a level of mouse-fu you never thought possible.


But all this musing on HCI and HCI research may all be just talking wind 
because:


Michael T. Richter wrote:
All this talk about "efficiency" while editing text would make me 
believe that most of my time spend writing software is typing.  Yet, 
oddly enough, I find that the typing is the *least* of my tasks.  Most 
of my work is done in my head, on whiteboards or on scraps of paper long 
before my fingers stroke a keyboard.


Conventional wisdom would say: Then the priority is on improving the 
head, the whiteboard, and the paper. Give secondary priority to HCI and 
IDE dreams.


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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Editor

[Ketil Malde]

On Tue, 2007-05-22 at 10:19 +0200, apfelmus wrote:

> http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html
> 
> It adresses the question whether selecting commands in menus with the
> mouse or accessing them via keyboard shortcuts is faster. The answer is:
> 
>  "* Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than
> mousing.
>   * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than
> keyboarding."

Interesting!  I did a quick test doing search and replace using the
keyboard and the menus in Emacs.  It takes me about six seconds with the
keyboard, and closer to ten using the menus.  (The first time, it took
thirty as I spent time to locate the correct menu options :-)

But I agree with the report that using the mouse *feels* a lot slower. 
Quoting the report: "It takes two seconds to decide upon which
special-function key to press. Deciding among abstract symbols is a
high-level cognitive function."

I'm not so sure I agree, using the mouse feels way more abrupt and
intrusive.  I can do M-x repl TAB str TAB foo RET bar RET with my eyes
closed¹, but to use the mouse, I need to locate the mouse with my hand,
locate the mouse cursor, locate the menu, etc etc.

Maybe that'd change if I used the mouse more?

-k

¹ I can, but probably shouldn't.  I just tried, but didn't realize focus
was not in Emacs but my mail client - which consequently promptly did a
bunch of unpredictable things to my draft.

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Editor

[Michael T. Richter]

On Tue, 2007-22-05 at 13:48 +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote:

> > >  "* Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than
> > > mousing.
> > >   * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than
> > > keyboarding."
> 
> Even if it is empirically true that mousing is wall-clock faster than
> keyboarding, one has to ask the question why users feel internally that
> keyboarding wins.  Perhaps it is because using the mouse requires a
> cognitive switch from editing the document, to a physical hand-eye
> co-ordination task, and back again?  The mental effort of switching
> might be harder work than keeping your focus on the document at all
> times, and therefore switching _feels_ as if it must be slower.
> 
> Of course this assumes that the person is sufficiently skilled at typing
> on a keyboard that they do not need to look at it, and hence their eye
> can stay with the cursor in a window on the screen.
> 
> Perhaps you can find and move your mouse using only peripheral vision,
> but even so, the first cognitive task you need to accomplish is to find
> the mouse pointer on screen, which is invariably in a different place
> from the text cursor, and so drags your attention from one focus to
> another.


All this talk about "efficiency" while editing text would make me
believe that most of my time spend writing software is typing.  Yet,
oddly enough, I find that the typing is the least of my tasks.  Most of
my work is done in my head, on whiteboards or on scraps of paper long
before my fingers stroke a keyboard.

-- 
Michael T. Richter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (GoogleTalk:
[EMAIL PROTECTED])
When debugging, novices insert corrective code; experts remove defective
code. (Richard Pattis)


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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Editor

[Malcolm Wallace]

> >  "* Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than
> > mousing.
> >   * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than
> > keyboarding."

Even if it is empirically true that mousing is wall-clock faster than
keyboarding, one has to ask the question why users feel internally that
keyboarding wins.  Perhaps it is because using the mouse requires a
cognitive switch from editing the document, to a physical hand-eye
co-ordination task, and back again?  The mental effort of switching
might be harder work than keeping your focus on the document at all
times, and therefore switching _feels_ as if it must be slower.

Of course this assumes that the person is sufficiently skilled at typing
on a keyboard that they do not need to look at it, and hence their eye
can stay with the cursor in a window on the screen.

Perhaps you can find and move your mouse using only peripheral vision,
but even so, the first cognitive task you need to accomplish is to find
the mouse pointer on screen, which is invariably in a different place
from the text cursor, and so drags your attention from one focus to
another.

Regards,
Malcolm
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Editor

[Jules Bean]

Michael T. Richter wrote:

On Tue, 2007-22-05 at 10:19 +0200, apfelmus wrote:

I can't know whether that's the case, but the fact that virtually all
commands are invoked with the keyboard clashes with HID research reported at

   http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html

It adresses the question whether selecting commands in menus with the
mouse or accessing them via keyboard shortcuts is faster. The answer is:

 "* Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than
mousing.
  * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than
keyboarding."


You beat me to the punch.  And to exactly the same URL, in fact.

I see strong parallels between the insistence that keyboarding is faster 
than mousing and the insistence that manual memory management is faster 
than automated memory management.





Why not abandon the keyboard, then, and have all your alphanumeric keys 
neatly lined up in menus? Or perhaps click on a picture of a keyboard? ;)


Assuming you wouldn't find the above more convenient, you concede then 
that some things are faster with the keys than the mouse. So it really 
is a question of degree. The mouse excels at tasks like 'select a 
particular large but illdefined (unstructured) chunk of text' : it's a 
very natural gesture. However as a programmer I am often working with 
much more structured text, and operations like 'move forward one 
sub-expression' or 'parenthesise the next two sub-expressions' tilt the 
balance back in favour of the keyboards.


The mouse is an analog input device and it excels at analog operations 
and exploratory ones (poking around menus and tabbed dialogs). The 
keyboard is a digital device and it excels at concise precision, such as 
'let-float the next 4 definitions up one level'.


Jules
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Editor

[Michael T. Richter]

On Tue, 2007-22-05 at 10:19 +0200, apfelmus wrote:

> I can't know whether that's the case, but the fact that virtually all
> commands are invoked with the keyboard clashes with HID research reported at
> 
>http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html
> 
> It adresses the question whether selecting commands in menus with the
> mouse or accessing them via keyboard shortcuts is faster. The answer is:
> 
>  "* Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than
> mousing.
>   * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than
> keyboarding."


You beat me to the punch.  And to exactly the same URL, in fact.

I see strong parallels between the insistence that keyboarding is faster
than mousing and the insistence that manual memory management is faster
than automated memory management.

-- 
Michael T. Richter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (GoogleTalk:
[EMAIL PROTECTED])
In his errors a man is true to type. Observe the errors and you will
know the man. (孔夫子)


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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Editor

[Donald Bruce Stewart]

Alistair_Bayley:
> > > I'm sure that I can quite reliably hit the command editor 
> > keybindings I
> > > use many, many times faster than if I had to select them 
> > from a menu.
> > 
> > Note that the claimed time-consuming part is not to actually press the
> > keybinding, but to chose and remember which one to press.
> 
> Yes... except that for a lot of people, programmers especially, a lot of
> key bindings have become part of your motor memory, and so you can
> probably hit the common ones quite quickly without having to stop to
> think about which combination of keys to press. Cut/copy/paste are good
> examples of this, I think.

Exactly, this is why my shell, window manager, mp3 player, web browser,
and editor all use hjkl to navigate :-)

-- Don
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RE: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Editor

[Bayley, Alistair]

> > I'm sure that I can quite reliably hit the command editor 
> keybindings I
> > use many, many times faster than if I had to select them 
> from a menu.
> 
> Note that the claimed time-consuming part is not to actually press the
> keybinding, but to chose and remember which one to press.

Yes... except that for a lot of people, programmers especially, a lot of
key bindings have become part of your motor memory, and so you can
probably hit the common ones quite quickly without having to stop to
think about which combination of keys to press. Cut/copy/paste are good
examples of this, I think.

Alistair
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Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Editor

[Jules Bean]

apfelmus wrote:

I can't know whether that's the case, but the fact that virtually all
commands are invoked with the keyboard clashes with HID research reported at

   http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html

It adresses the question whether selecting commands in menus with the
mouse or accessing them via keyboard shortcuts is faster. The answer is:

 "* Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than
mousing.
  * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than
keyboarding."



The research there is reported as hearsay, it is not referenced 
research, so I can't check their methods.


Despite the implicit claim that my brain must be lying to me and causing 
amnesia I'm unaware of, I would dispute the claims there. I suspect 
there might well be a large body of users (even 'most') for which it's 
true. However 'most' people are not fast typists.


I'm sure that I can quite reliably hit the command editor keybindings I 
use many, many times faster than if I had to select them from a menu.


Jules
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