Desktop GUI concept

[Christopher Browne]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 9:38 AM, Howard Gibson <hgibson-MwcKTmeKVNQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Mar 2012 09:15:48 -0400
> Thomas Milne <thomas.bruce.milne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
>> http://www.punchgraphicdesign.com/blog/2009/10/19/future-of-the-desktop-interface.html
>
>   I am still running FVWM2 here.  Do current desktops really and truly not work?

I watched a bit of the video, sans sound.  It showed off some problems
with the *recent* developments (e.g. - touch-based screens, which have
pretty anti-ergonomic properties), but it's not evident that it
torpedoes the more elderly desktop notions.

>   I can give you a good example here of a similar solution.  I took typing in school, a disturbing number of years ago.  I am fully trained on the QWERTY keyboard.  The Dvorak keyboard is probably better, but I have better things to do with my time than learn how to type again.

The pro-Dvorak propaganda suffers from the problem that it was
produced by salescritters that were trying to win contracts to sell
Dvorak keyboards.  So the "research" proving superiority is better
characterized as "marketing propaganda" than as "carefully vetted
research."

And that applies pretty well to a whole lot of HCI research: quite
frequently it is self-serving to support hawking the organization's
products.  Apple has raised this to a fine art, as their product
releases, these days, are extremely finely crafted propaganda to
support people believing that whatever they presently have for sale
has the best HCI presently in existence.
-- 
When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the
question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists