Re: My GWorkspace feature request

[Pascal Bourguignon]

Eric Christopherson writes:
> On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 at 04:48:57PM -0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> > Eric Christopherson <rakko@charter.net> wrote:
> > > [...] Namely, I really like context-specific menus [...]
> > 
> > Aren't context menus a variety of mystery meat?  I use GWorkspace a fair
> > amount, but never noticed them before either.  I would bet that no "normal"
> > users of this machine has found them yet either.  Let's not go there,
> > please!
> 
> I never noticed them until they were pointed out on the list. But I don't
> see how that is an argument against including them. There are loads of other
> useful OpenStep/GNUstep features that I never noticed until I read a little
> bit about how to use the environment. Generally, I would say, as long as the
> "core" behavior is available through more visible means, less visible ways
> of doing something do not hurt users who don't know they exist.
> 
> Besides that, users used to other toolkits and desktop environments who are
> trying out GNUstep are likely to know about context menus in those
> environments and expect something similar in GNUstep.

A good guestion.

It's  right that  Contextual  menus  are not  very  current either  on
Macintosh user interface or on NeXTstep user interface.

You  have  to  realize that  what  made  the  interest of  these  user
interface  was  in great  part  their  dumbing  down of  the  ancestor
graphical user interface, namely: Smalltalk.

In  Smalltalk, and  in  objet oriented  graphical  user interfaces  in
general, contextual menus are a  very powerfull paradigm: you point to
the view of  an object with the cursor, and click  on the THIRD button
of  the  mouse,  and you  get  a  menu  of  messages that  object  can
receive.

But, in total  generality, a luser with an IQ  of 80 cannot understand
this notion,  he can't even count  up to three  and can't discriminate
left from right.

So Steve Job said: Let there be One mouse button, One application menu
always visible in  the menu bar on the top of  One small screen, 21888
bytes  is enough visual  data input  for everybody  and there  was the
Macintosh.

But guess what, a lot of  power users and programmers were able to get
more than 512*342 bw pixels of  visual input and some of them had even
up  to  5 fingers  a  limb!   They prayed  Job,  and  lo,  Job in  his
magnificience said: let there be Two mouce buttons, Two bits per pixel
on  a  bigger screen,  and  let  be a  menu  window  and allow  pop-up
context-specific menus.  But the pop-up application menus will be only
for the strong and very courageous soul who will dare to activate them
in their  Preference Panel, and the  contextual menus will  be only by
the meekest programmers attached to their objects.



I've seen  users hesitate and not  finding their menu items  in a menu
bar in plain  sight, so how do you suppose they  would guess that some
feature  exists in  a hidden  contextual  pop-up menu?   How are  they
supposed to know which object has such a menu? (Well, on MacOSX, there
supposedly those little triangles).

So,  for the  commonest applications  such as  the  Workspace Manager,
since it has  to be used by all the users  whatever their level, first
time grand'ma  user, to  a seasoned hacker,  it's worthwhile  to avoid
these contextual menus.

For a given application, it may or may not be justified. It depends on
the complexity and the orthogonality of the application.

-- 
__Pascal_Bourguignon__                   http://www.informatimago.com/
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