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DEEPKEYS

My first contact
with a mouse                That was on one of the
produced instant            original Macintoshes, at the     I was not yet
revulsion.                  Computer Museum in Boston.       an emacs abuser,
                                                             but I was already
I think this is why:                                         a wordstar expert.

   I just need to double-click on *that*.
   Oops, too far I overshot.  Oops, I
   went too far back.  Huh, the
   double-click didn't work.  My hand
   jiggled a little when I clicked?
   Okay, steady now... got it!

   Now I just need to drag that window
   edge over: Oops, too far... oops too
   far back, now I've got it, oops,
   just missed it!  Damn, I brought the
   window behind it into the forground.       Damn this mouse is
   Now I've got to get that out of the        acting flaky!
   way somehow...                             *Pound* *pound*.
                                              Hm, maybe I need to
                                              clean it again.


The point is that the mousey pointing
devices all require a tightly closed
feedback loop.  You need to watch the
pointer carefully while you're mousing.

Compare this to                                  mac shortcuts,
keyboard interfaces:                             windows key alternates,
                                                 x accelerators,
  In theory at least you                         or the mighty emacs...
  can close your eyes and
  just type things by
  feel and get a
  well-defined result.

  In practice of course you need
  to watch what you're doing to
  catch mistakes on the fly, but
  I contend that this is very
  different: watching to fix
  mistakes, vs. watching in order
  to be able to do anything at all.



On the Macintosh, the menu pad
("File", "Edit", etc) is pushed up
against the top of the screen.
In comparison, MS Windows and X               Well, as far as I know, X
windows has the menu pad at the               always behaves like this...
top of each window.                           But one of the funny things
                                              about X Windows is that much
                                              of it's behavior is
Macintosh fans insist that the                customizeable, and people
mac-style is superior, because                running X with different
"The edge of the screen has                   "window managers" get a
infinite depth", i.e. you can                 radically different
just slap your mouse cursor                   look-and-feel.
against the top of the screen
without fear of overshooting and                         For all I know,
needing to correct.                                      there's some
                                                         window manager
                                                         that makes X
   So how deep is                                        look exactly
   your keyboard?                                        like a Mac.





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