[ale] Slackware to drop Gnome?

[aaron]

On Monday 11 October 2004 16:43, Pete Hardie wrote:
> > I googled for Fitt's Law, and I think that the "Windows style"
> >  of menubar (in the application window)
> >  would be more appropritate than
> >  the "Mac style" with regard to Fitt's law.  What am I missing?

A couple of things....

First, and most annoying for someone who learned GUI navigation in the on a 
multitasking graphic media system with a single menubar and multiple, 
independent work space screens for programs, is the wasted screen realestate. 
How many "FILE - EDIT - TOOLS - HELP" menu strips do you need on your screen 
at one time?? More to the point, how many can one person USE at one time??

The second is more on the Fitts law aspect (at least as Michael Hirsch has 
explained it to me), and has to do with the idea that items on the edges of 
the interface area are infinite in size; once the pointer hits the edge it 
can't go any further, even if you continue roll the mouse in that edge 
direction forever. Any interface targets at the far edges are, in effect, the 
biggest possible targets and the easiest to hit.  I would add that the top 
edge is probably the most logical for text menu items, because all common 
written languages read top to bottom, even those that may also read right to 
left.

> I have a similar question - I work with a number of applications
> active at the same time - not all of them have the same menubar items,
> so this use of Fitt's Law would imply that my menubar would be
> redrawing every time I moved the mouse off one application onto
> another.

That is the way it works. The menubar tracks to whichever application or work 
space tools you are presently choosing to address.   I think any "redraw" 
overhead is insignificant and can be totally ignored.

> Now, Macs may not have this problem, being a monoculture w/r/t
> application software, but Linux is tres diverse, and lots of apps have
> different menubar items.

There is nothing in this concept that limits what main and sub menu items the 
application offer the user. Again, this Amiga / Mac Single Menu Bar approach 
works because you, as the user, can only be effectively interacting with the 
one program or making one menu choice at any given moment. (Though Amiga had 
a great, patented menu feature that allowed multiple option selections from 
menu lists with a single pull down.)

All this being well and good, I think a really big issue for making a system 
comfortable for the user is _consistency_, which is one of the challenges for 
the diverse anarchy of programs and interfaces that can be called a Linux 
system.  Mac built their entire marketing reputation on their "user friendly" 
consistency, though I found their  heavy handed style guides and one button 
mouse thinking were extreme to the point that, prior to OSeX, I found Job's 
vision of User Friendly quickly became User Handicapping. Still, for menus, 
most every GUI based application ever written has included a standard, base 
set of menu headings and grouped functions, and the order for those quickly 
became ubiquitous across platforms. 

All this brings to mind more of the other nice, consistent features of the 
Amiga Inuition GUI. With Intuition, menus are ALWAYS displayed and accessed 
via clicking and holding the right mouse button at the top edge of the 
screen. This allowed the extended select trick, where users navigate the 
menus lists by holding down the right button, then click the left button to 
toggle any of the menu items from any list or sub-heading. When not accessing 
menus, the menu strip space at the top of the screen is available to show 
anything the programmer chooses, like left clickable icon tools, or various 
status info items ( e.g., Deluxe Paint uses the space to display things like 
x-y pointer coordinates and drawing mode indicators, all of  which can be 
toggled off for full screen image display). When the pointer isn't at the top 
of the screen, the right mouse button can be put to use for other pop up 
menus or interface actions. 

I've always found that the Intuition GUI is aptly named.

peace
aaron