[tex-live] Perl for Windows

David Kastrup dak at gnu.org
Tue Jun 20 10:38:49 CEST 2006


Fabrice Popineau <Fabrice.Popineau at supelec.fr> writes:

> * David Kastrup <dak at gnu.org> writes:
>
>     > I mean, get real.  This sort of stuff is supposed to be the
>     > outcome of usability labs?  KDE or GNOME would get drowned in
>     > ridicule for such antics.
>
>     > No, a lot of things are quite inconvenient under Windows by
>     > design.  And I don't understand why they keep them time and again,
>     > or even make them worse.
>
> Maybe because they have such a large base of users who aren't
> interested in programming computers, or update them or doing system
> administration or other non productive task, but only to use them.

And it helps using them if scrollbars require two-dimensional aiming,
if copying directory trees aborts because files are open for read
(almost unavoidable if you want to save a user's personal directory
tree), and if dialogs cut off important information and can't be
resized?

Sorry, I don't buy that.  Those are pure usability issues and have
nothing to do with "system administration of other non productive
task".

> The windows users base is so large that MS can't change the behavour
> of its interface without causing more harm than benefit.

I was talking about stuff that is harmful in every imaginable respect.
There is no benefit whatsoever preserved by those things I described.
If you think differently, then please state any benefit you see with
any of the described things.

Rather than fixing the scrollbar dragging which has been similarly
painful since Windows 1.0, Microsoft chose to promote mouse wheels.
Nothing wrong with wheels, but fixing the scroll bars to not require
the mouse to stay on-bar while dragging would have been an independent
benefit.

And that the explorer _aborts_ copying completely because of a single
file (never mind that the reason it won't copy it is completely
lunatic in itself) is not sane user interface design.  Windows asks
"are you sure?"  "are you really sure" "I bet you don't know what you
are asking for" questions all of the time, so why doesn't it ask here
whether one wants to skip this file in order to complete an otherwise
perfectly useful operation?

Basically, there are usability and internal issues that hit me in the
face the moment I use Windows.  Stuff that should not escape usability
labs, and certainly not so for the decades Windows has been in use
already.  Stuff that will hit _anybody_ in the face if he tries to use
Windows.

And that's why I just don't get the "we should try to make things as
Windows-like as possible, because Windows is just great" sort of talk.

It is enough that we have to cater for Windows.  We don't need to
sweet-talk it.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum


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