> > A "touch-type" GUI is a "must have" for any application that's > > supposed to be used productively. The mouse is nice to "explore" a > > GUI or for occasional/leisurely use, but once you use an > > application daily to earn your living, it's a hopeless roadblock > > for productivity. > > You have seriously underestimated the power of the combined > keyboard+mouse interface.
As someone who has started to use computers with the Atari ST and later the Mac, and as someone who has never become proficient himself with any of the various Unix shells (besides that I had to learn to *hate* any version of MS DOS or MS (Not Responding)), I certainly don't underestimate the value of the mouse. But could it be that you have never seen an actually proficient user of a typical "enterprise" application (ERP, MRP, whatever) "zipping" through the GUI of his/her bread-and-butter application so fast that you can not even read the titles of windows or dialog boxes. Obviously, this won't work if the client runs on this pathological non-operating system MS (Not Responding), much less with "web applications". Oh, and btw; SAP is a particularly illustrative example for the horrible response time behaviour of applications with centralised application logic. They call it "hour-glass display program" over here, "SanduhrAnzeigeProgramm" in German. > > As is the "response time" behaviour of "web applications". > > On a LAN, with a proper back-end, I can get instant response from a > web app. I have been involved as "domain specialist" (and my input has always been consistently conveniently ignored) with projects for web applications and the results never turned out to be even remotely usable for actually productive work. Sincerely, Wolfgang -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
