creat 1226
Well, you've done a pretty good job of translating for yourself in what I've snipped below: I think I get the gist of it now, namely that the developers of tomorrow, and even ordinary end-users when they hit a glitch of some sort, are going to need to get beyond the "black box" model of the computer, and hiding the inner workings behind a GUI doesn't help with that.
snip
Well, yes -- that's why it's important to put a label of some sort on the container (and slip a label inside, too). It's also, of course, why open data formats are important. I don't want to be a business or government holding enormous archives in the sooper-secret proprietary Office file formats when Microsoft goes belly up and takes all their source code with them to the great bit bucket in the sky.
more snippage
It's certainly one very useful tool for that.
That's just one use of a rat.
It's also good at doing tasks that are appropriately modeled as physical manipulation. Examples:
- adjusting slider controls, especially ones that elicit a real-time response (e.g. a graphical equalizer for audio playback).
- sorting (visually represented) objects into piles
- moving furniture around a room
- playing with the front-panel switches of an emulated PDP-10 (though admittedly real switches are way faster!)
- drawing and painting (though a tablet is usually preferable to a mouse for these)
In short, pointing devices are good for interacting with information that can be displayed and manipulated visually on a display that provides instantaneous feedback. Some people work better in a visual style of interaction than others do, but it's a very efficient way of working for many people for many tasks. They are also appropriate for making marks on "paper" that in the real world leave you reaching for a pencil rather than a typewriter.
of I've But only because you graciously spent the time making me rewrite my rewrites :-). Yes. I'm even claiming that there won't...
In other words, although I furiously agree with many of the points you made, in the end I'm still sticking to my theme of horses for courses.
I also have to add, as a parting shot, that if your experience of the rat has been confined to using it under various flavors of Microsoft Windows, I can well understand where your low estimation of its utility comes from.
Oddly, when I open an mp3 or an ELF file in Emacs I learn nothing.
Perhaps I need to give vi a try; if that fails, I suppose it's not too late to learn TECO.
slide-sorting until I was just Ewwww-ing at the way people are storing bits. Finding and-or recovering a specific bit collection...
-- Roland HutchinsonÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWillÊplayÊviolaÊdaÊgambaÊforÊfood.
NB mail to my.spamtrap at verizon.net is heavily filtered to remove spam.ÊÊIfÊyourÊmessageÊlooksÊlikeÊspamÊIÊmayÊnotÊseeÊit.