Jef Raskin's Humane Interface Released

cold wolf writes "With a new site layout and information, the Raskin Center has also just released Archy (formally known at The Humane Interface). It is currently in Alpha phase and Windows only, as an executable."

Comments

Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

This interface is awful. I remember checking it out a long time ago. Nothing has improved.

Imagine a text console running a program that is a cross between EMACS and VI (at the same time). It's wide, flat, hard to use, cryptic, etc...

Ugh, it feels like something that came out of 1970's mainframe computer science.

Re:Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

A truely functional interface would be easy to use. If it truely was humane, I could sit down and start using it right away.

Hell, I sat my 4-year-old down and they were using Windows, OS X, or GNOME with a mouse in less than 60 seconds.

This isn't that way. It's like sitting the same 4-year-old down in front of Vi and saying "go to town!" Pfffft, that will never fly.

Note that I actually am a Vi user and I love it to death, but it took a long painful learning curve to realize the full power (which I can use because I'm a programmer/power user). A casual user has no need to expend the effort on such things. This interface requires too much effort to use, it's not humane. Dispite all their humane-this, humane-that, it still feels a lot like a computer nerd coming up with a technical solution to a human problem.

Trying it out now

[snorklewacker]

First impressions: really awful.

Forward and back arrows do what you expect. Up and down scroll the screen. Page up and down do nothing.

The mouse, of course, does nothing at all.

Keys you expect to repeat don't. That triple-tap thing holds firm for everything. Even backspace. Even the arrow keys.

Tildes and backticks are impossible to type, they've become control characters.

The cursor blinks frantically and distractingly in not one, but two colors.

To access help, you have to hold down capslock while you type.

I stopped there. Guess it needs a little more time in the oven, but so far it's flying in the face of usability.

Re:Trying it out now

[TuringTest]

First impressions: really awful.
I find it different, but really interesting. Much better that any other GUI used only with keyboard. *Those* are awful.


# Forward and back arrows do what you expect. Up and down scroll the screen. Page up and down do nothing.
I wrote to Brad Lauster just two days ago on this very point, and he was quite open to commentary. Main movement is supposed to be done through text search, but maybe page up/down will be implemented. Remember that this is in very alpha stage.


# The mouse, of course, does nothing at all.
The mouse will be used for graphic manipulation and navigation in the zooming interface. For text processing, it uses the keyboard. This is the main point that makes habit forming possible.


# Keys you expect to repeat don't. That triple-tap thing holds firm for everything. Even backspace. Even the arrow keys.
All keys do repeat, thank you very much. You have to tap it three times, not press and wait until it repeats. This avoids the error of having autorepeat when you don't want it, and is faster when you do.


# Tildes and backticks are impossible to type, they've become control characters.
This program is a prototype. The final product is suposed to run under dedicated hardware (a special keyboard). Afaik- there is a USB "LeapBar" extension for current keyboards.


# The cursor blinks frantically and distractingly in not one, but two colors.
Maybe you could file a usability bug report? This project is being user-tested. If it is annoying, it will be removed.


# To access help, you have to hold down capslock while you type.
The LeapBar will have a dedicated Command key.
With the zooming interface you could simply "zoom out" until you see the Help section.
And yes, the textual interface is designed for good typists - that's not strange, since it's supposed for advanced text manipulation.


I stopped there. Guess it needs a little more time in the oven, but so far it's flying in the face of usability.
No, its only strange because you have to learn it from scratch. Is not more difficult than a current WIMP "point-and-click" interface is for novice users. Actually it's easier - more consistent, more simple, you don't have to think what you want to do in advance.

Is it really as useless as you say?

[AtariAmarok]

"Archy doesn't even use files in the conventional sense so your argument is sophomoric"

Is it really as utterly useless as you say? No files means you can't use it with email attachments (which are files) or digital cameras (which create picture files)....to name two common uses of files. Any so-called "revolutionary" OS idea that is incompatible with such ubiquitous and useful things as email and digital cameras will "go away" for sure.

Bingo!

[TuringTest]

It's the same concept of Emacs. Must be good, since Emacs is considered by programmers as one of the best development environments.

The main benefit of Archy over Emacs is that it has been engineered with ease of use in mind, not just ease to extend.

Re:Why?

[AtariAmarok]

"The construction of analogies (desktop, files, etc) was good in the 90s to educate people, but now it's time to largely deprecate it."

Yet, files are a lot more intuitive and easier to deal with. As someone once said, "a book is a book!". In the e-world, a book is best represented as a file (ebook), not a mushy structure. The same is true of pictures.

There are a lot of other things in Archy that are a lot worse than the "tried and true" methods which have developed over time because they work. The "you don't have to save" is a problem. It does not make things easier, it just replaces save commands with much-more-confusing "undos". "Better be much more careful when you type that letter! It is automatically saving, and you will have to use a tedious undo feature to undo any mistakes you might have made".

Other problems include enforcing someone's "morality" at the expense of the user's preference. Their principle of " giving you only one way to accomplish a task" only works if you happen to prefer that one way. Flexibility is much friendlier.

Under their "Train of Thought" part, they list 5 bullet items of problems with the non-Archy approach. The first two have already been pretty much solved on the Mac and in sophisticated office suites. The third, about someone's dialog box, is just a problem that happens sometimes in poorly designed programs. #4 (multiple ways to do things) is a strength, not a problem. #5 is more complicated: sometimes there is a very good reason for the commands to do different things, and sometimes there is not.