HCI is everything

On Fri, 10 Jun 2005 12:15:45 -0500, news

Apple made the attempt with the Apple IIGS. Some of the work they did there made it's way into the Mac system software and vice versa.

You should know people DO NOT refer to the Macintosh computer as an Apple. If they do so it is at the peril of getting royally flamed by an Apple-user (the Apple-IS called an Apple). The Macintosh is usually referred to as a Mac.

To answer your question the UI (user interface) is pretty standard across the Mac, Linux, and M$. They were all basically ripped off from the Mac, which in turn was a ripoff of Xerox. If you can use one GUI you can use them all.

There is a lot less text oriented programming going on on ALL platforms. When the younger generation of programmers make the attempt, they don't seem to be able to pull it off effectively.

With the exception of M$, you should have the option to do so with any machine. The trend these days is to write around the buttumption everybody has an account which is charged at a single price per month. When I was paying $1.00-hour it was a chore keeping it below an hour-day. With a broadband connection it is less of a problem. I can set up some automated tasks (download binaries from some newsgroups) and walk away confident I don't have to limit my time.

Useful unless you are paying by the byte. In which case it doesn't really matter

I think there are some site rippers available which work under the Mac, Linux, and M$. Otherwise you may want to consider putting your lynx dumps into a script.

If you can do it under Linux you can do it on an OS X Mac.

If you were in Winnipeg I could show you an easier way under Linux. The Mac and M$ don't seem to have virtual windows. I haven't run OS X enough to be sure. If you are using X, both Gnome and KDE have the capability of virtual desktops. I'm running four of them at the moment. One application I keep open all the time is a text console. It is in it's own virtual desktop. If you are sticking with text mode (not X) you may want to look at the screen command. I as I recall from 10+ years ago you could switch setup has (again) four I can access. The keys necessary are arranged so user started X on one of the virtual terminals.

I still think it's easier to open another text window under X.

This is a really powerful text editing feature. I'm pretty sure this can be done from the *NIX (Linux and OS X) command line. I remember doing something like this at University (15+ years ago). Don't ask me how. I use Open Office for large documents and a combination of pico and kate for smaller ones.

No doubt.

This is likely to be something found at the application level rather than the operating system level.

If you don't have an OS X capable Mac yet, I'd suggest looking into Linux a little more. Some of the features you were asking about are there, just not as intuitive. Once you find where they are then no problem...

OTOH I find the OS X interface to be very much like the M$ XP interface.

Later Mike