[Oberon] Dumbing down

[cglur at onwe.co.za]

> Douglas G. Danforth wrote:
> > > I have a goal and that is to take a form of Oberon (currently Native)
> > > and strip it to a "bullet proofed" form ...
> 
> > In what way does n-o V2.3.6 not meet your requirements ?
> 
> Much too complex for commsumer use.
> (I can use it just fine but I'm not an average computer user)
> 
> Oberon has never been "marketed" to the American public.  But
> in order to do that it must meet some very basic requirements
> of simplicity and reliability.  A three button mouse will not
> be saleable.  BlackBox has done a good job in circumventing
> mouse interclicks.
>  
"circumventing mouse interclicks" implies that the S3 method is
the natural (primitive) first attempt that needs refining !!

Dumbing-down has proved a commercial winner, especially in the US.
Witness the explosion of the Macdonald, Disney, Microsoft cult.
But don't confuse minimalist elegance with crude dumbing down.

If Sys3 and/or V4 have been 'modularly designed' as the they should 
have been, then modification to one button should not be a problem ?

Those that need an automatic gear-shift and want to play the piano
with one finger must also have their vote. My goldfish also doesn't 
appreciate Motzart.  Different strokes for different folks.

But please don't ruin Sys3. 

Yes the first day, I had discomfort with the mouse.
And for quite some time I used to: Edit.Open FileName .
But since I've been able to just 'look at and think of open' FileName,
I don't want to loose this ability.  Recently I had to use MS-word.
What a lame turkey !   I've got a marvelous apl. (polog) on linux;
but I have to move all the documentation over to n-o, because only
there can I 'mark it with my koki pen'. With various colours and fonts,
I can structure the text so the concepts jump off the page.

BTW you can identify the n-o (or not) users by the mailer they use - to
this list, and news groups.  Top posting of course, exposures a MS-Win
user.   As a heavy user of n-o, I'm aware that getting potential users 
started is not enough to bring them to the level when they might become 
potential contributors. That's why the 'one fingure idea' might fail to
be more than just a temporary fad.  There needs to be an upwards path
to serious usage. And to get back to the piano metaphor: I'm told
"you must start by doing (unpleasant) finger exercises; you can't
start by playing one-fingure tunes, and expect to excel".

As one has increasing experience with Sys3, it becomes obvious that
the 'mousing' has evolved towards optimal usage.  This excludes the
current disasterous changes (alpha version) which obviously have been 
introduced to ape MS usage.

It would need a tedious analysis to measure the superiority of the
Sys3 interface; but how many moves/actions would MSword need to
solve this:-
  You've got a 845 line text file,
  where the string "Regulation Gazette" appears 17 times.
   You need to copy/extract from the paragraph start;  the text 
   containing the 3rd occurance of "Regulation Gazette", up to
   the end of the paragraph, which is after the 11th occurance of 
  "Regulation Gazette" and has the string "Entries or Documents".

This extract you need to insert immediately, before the first paragraph
of FileNo2 which contains "Regulation Gazette".
-------------

BTW n-o V2.3.6 became too 'small' for my heavy usage (no file directories)
but as I remember it's "bullet proofed".
n-o current alpha has serious bugs (not acknowledged - or denied by eth);
but the addition of separate file spaces via partitions allows the growth
into heavy duty usage and is an imaginative solution.

-- Chris Glur.