Mousing Hurts! (Was: Paragraph Tag shortcuts?)

[Jay Smith <jay@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bruce,

Warning: venting (hydrothermal event).

I mean all this in the most friendly way (really, seriously), but I am
afraid that my ranting sounds a bit blunt.  I get *really* annoyed on
the subject of user interfaces and tend to start frothing at the mouth.

I will explain it in three contexts:

1) You may not have personally felt the "white hot knife twisting in
your charred flesh" pain that makes you want to amputate your arm and
shoulder.  More and more people are having this completely mind-focusing
experience as we all use our mouses 8-12 hours per day.

2) You may not be personally responsible for:

  a) writing the checks to the people who are now classed as "disabled"
(or to the insurance company that is paying for their therapy).

  b) Hiring, training, and paying for those peoples' replacements.

3) You may not be WAITING for your EPA-brethren, the nice OSHA folks, to
decide how many hours per day you and your employees will be ALLOWED to
work at mouses and keyboards.  And thus force you to double your staff
so that you can get the same amount of work done.  (By the way, you
cannot raise your prices.)

If I sound annoyed, I am, but NOT at you.  I am annoyed that the folks
who design the "user interfaces" of programs like Frame are not chained
to a Frame workstation seat for 30 8-hour days.  They should be FORCED
to use a mouse (or type escape t m d) to move down one table cell FIVE
HUNDRED TIMES.  ARGH!

The BEST word processor or publishing program user interface that I have
yet to enjoy is Corel WordPerfect (I use WP8 Win95).  Want to move down
a row in a table?  Hit the down cursor.  Want to simply a task?  Write a
macro (using their incredibly easy to learn for a dummy like me macro
facility) and tie it to a keystroke.  Maybe Corel will buy Adobe....
Oops, maybe we should not think about that!

HEY!  Here is an idea -- Rick Quatro, listen up:  Build a FrameScript
user interface control package (fancy word for set of scripts) which
will "enhance the QUALITY of the user experience".  I know that I can do
this and do that all myself (I have FrameScript), but who has the time?  

Jay


"Bruce Ashley (EPA)" wrote:
> 
> Personally guys, I cannot see what is wrong with leaving the catalogs open
> and when you want to select a particular paragraph (or character) style, you
> simply click on the style showing in the catalog.
> 
> Instead of using <F8> or <F9> and then the short-cut keys (ie 2 to 3
> keystrokes), you only need to click once.
> 
> This is obviously easier with larger monitors and smaller catalogs. It also
> requires you to use a mouse :)
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Bruce Ashley

-- 
Jay Smith

e-mail: Jay@JaySmith.com

Jay Smith & Associates
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