Re: GUI necessary? -- MIDRANGE-L

Roger,

>I take exception with the guys here who say there is no relation between
>multi-tasking and GUI. 

(snip)

>The two are forever tightly coupled.

What I meant is that one is not a prerequsite for the other, as they
mean two different things.  However, it is much more common to see
multi-tasking without GUI than GUI without multitasking (MT).  The two
will probably be forever coupled, but that is because people expect
both these days, not because one requires the other.

I've always thought the terms could loosely be defined as:

MT  = Multiple concurrent tasks (preemptive or [yuck] "cooperative")
GUI = Graphical display mode user interface
TUI = Text mode user interface (even if Foxpro/DOS style)

Granted, the Foxpro/DOS style was a far cry from legacy AS/400
green-screen.  But it still used text elements for the window borders
and shading, buttons, etc.  In my book, it was still TUI.  It could
not use pictures for buttons or icons, multiple fonts, WYSIWYG
formatting, only text-based "graphs", etc.

I've always thought that to be consdered GUI the screen needed to be,
well, graphical!  IOW, the screen mode had to be any of the various
graphics resolutions as opposed to any of the various text modes.  An
interface which included windows, icons, menus, and a pointer was
called WIMP as I recall, but could be TUI (ala Foxpro/DOS) or GUI (ala
Mac/Win/etc).

>GUI clearly needs a new name. It's not longer just graphical, with pixels
>and pictures, but now represents a class of user interface innotvation that
>presents something to the something that looks rational and more intutively
>presents choices. Like clearly labeled buttons ("Checking" or "Saving").

Was "inNOTvation" a Freudian slip? <g>

Obviously, we are getting about as many differing opinions as to what
GUI means to people as tool vendors have for the word CASE.

>Back in the old FoxPro days, you could make pretty good
>character-based UIs, that accomplished most of the same things a
>pixel-driven UI could do.

Been there, done that.  It was farily intuitive with minimal training
for new users, and they migrated to Win 3.x easier than S/3x users.
But I still (prevoiusly) considered it a TUI based WIMP, not GUI.

>So, for me, it's a matter of not being absolute and selecting what works
>best given the situation and _always_ putting the users needs ahead of
>needing to stop coding by 5.

That's 5 am, right? <g>

Doug
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