Re: OT: GUI [was:]Ann: TeXCAD 4.1

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@acm.org>]

Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> writes:

> Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@acm.org> wrote:
> : But more importantly, keyboard interfaces are simply more productive
> : than WIMP interfaces; it takes less time to get the job done.
> 
> There are interfaces with a strong emphasis on the mouse (3 buttons
> and  no nervousness wheel) that are still surprisingly productive.
> Plan 9 for example.

Productive at what sort of task?

When writing Ada code, the result is text. Unless you can enter
characters into a file more efficiently using the mouse, text is
generated by typing on the keyboard. Therefore, anything that takes my
hands off the keyboard is wasting time.

For editing video or sound, a mouse interface does make more sense.

So I need to qualify: "Emacs is the most productive environment I know
of, for tasks that are mainly text-based". That includes writing code
and documents, which is the overwhelming part of what I use computers
for.

-- 
-- Stephe