Subject: Mouse vs. keyboard

From: Chen Shapira <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2000 18:15:09 +0200

To all hard-core hackers claiming that using the keyboard is much faster
than using the mouse - here's what a study (conducted by apple, one must
say) reports:

In one study of this phenomenon (Tognazzini, Tog on Interface, 1992.), users
were asked to do the same task using the keyboard and the mouse. The
keyboard was powerfully engaging, in the manner of many videogames,
requiring the user to make many small decisions. The mouse version of the
task was far less engaging, requiring no decisions and only low-level
cognitive engagement.

Each and every user was able to perform the task using the mouse
significantly faster, an average of 50% faster.

Interestingly, each and every user reported that they did the task much
faster using the keyboard, exactly contrary to the objective evidence of the
stopwatch.

--
Chen Shapira

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From: Alex Shnitman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 01:50:02 +0200

Hi, Chen!

> faster using the keyboard, exactly contrary to the objective evidence of the

And who says that the stopwatch is what matters? In the existential
philosophy of our days, the world revolves around the person, and his
feelings are all that matters. If he feels more productive using the
keyboard, then this is the truth, and the stopwatch as an empiric
evidence doesn't bear any significance (just as any other *empiric*
evidence, by definition).

:-)

-- 
Alex Shnitman                            | http://www.debian.org
[email-masked], [email-masked]   +-----------------------
http://alexsh.hectic.net    UIN 188956    PGP key on web page
       E1 F2 7B 6C A0 31 80 28  63 B8 02 BA 65 C7 8B BA

Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.

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From: "Nadav Har'El" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 18:12:06 +0200

On Thu, Oct 26, 2000, Chen Shapira wrote about "[hackers-il] Mouse vs. keyboard":
>...
>...

I'm sorry, but I completely don't buy this research (but note that I haven't
read it - I'm just speaking "theoretically").

Are you sure this wasn't one of those "Scientific Maariv" articles? :)

The efficiency of using the keyboard vs. the mouse depends on the features
the OS offers the user, so it doesn't make sense to talk about this issue
without comparing actual operating systems.

For example, to copy a file on a Windows machine, it is obvious that
drag-and-drop is quicker than opening a DOS window and using the "CD", "DIR",
and "COPY" commands. However, how do you, using the "faster" Windows Explorer,
copy all the GIF files under some directory (and its subdirectories) to
another drive? You'll probably be forced to do it one by one, and believe me,
while using the mouse is very efficient for doing one thing, it because
horribly inefficent when repeating an action several dozen times. On the
other hand, in Unix, using zsh (for example), I just do
	 cp /some/directory/**/*.gif /another/directory
which is much faster than the mouse way.

Another example, suppose you compare the ease of printing a Word document
(click the load icon, choose file with mouse, click print button) to
the difficulty of printing a tex file (suppose for a moment that you don't
have a GUI for tex) - typing "latex" and "dvips" commands. Is this really
a good comparison? No. Why? First, people tend to repeat commands (you print
the file, pick up the printout, find an error, correct it - and then you
print it again), and modern shells make it very easy to repeat commands.
Second, what happens when you need to print, say, 10 documents? It takes
me less than 30 seconds to type
	for i in *.tex
	do
		j=`basename $i .tex`
		latex $j
		dvips $j
	done
and it will take me much more than that to load and print 10 files into
Word (forgetting that you can probably do that in VB - VB is more commonly
used by virus writers than actual users).

People may argue against what I said by saying that typical users don't
need such sophisticated loops and repetitions of commands. I say they're
wrong - beginner, unsophisticated, users may not need them, and find Windows
very convenient. But once you learn a little more about your computer, Windows
starts being a strait-jacket. Some users learn to accept that strait-jacket,
thinking it is natural, but others (like me) refuse to accept it.

I once spent half a day trying to insert about a 100 pictures (each about 1 MB
in size) to a report I was writing in MS-Word. It was hell. I had to manually
resize, load, manipulate, etc., each and every picture, most of which were
nearly identical. After several hours, I gave up. Instead, I printed an empty
page (except the headers) to Postscript, and then wrote a shell script (took
me about 30 minutes) which ran various commands on each image, transformed it
to Postscript, and overlayed 3 pictures on each blank page (after changing the
page number). The result looked very good, and it also allowed me to switch
the entire set of 100 images at a later time, without any more work. Now that
is what I call efficiency. It wasn't easy, but it was quick (30 minutes
vs. hours of work), even quicker to do again if you find an error (just run
the shell script again), and not boring (for some reason the article you
quoted thinks that "engaging the mind" is a bad thing. I disagree, and find
repetitive, boring, tasks much worse).

In short my theory is that keyboard (command line) UI lends itself much
better to repetition and autmation, which makes it more efficient in the
long-run than mouse (graphical) UI for experienced users. Of course, having
both kinds of interfaces implemented well (see, for example, Emacs) is the
best thing, because it wins in both contests: it allows for easy one-time
tasks, and easy automation.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |      Friday, Oct 27 2000, 28 Tishri 5761
[email-masked]             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |War doesn't determine who's right but
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |who's left.

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From: Adi Stav <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 11:43:43 +0200

> faster using the keyboard, exactly contrary to the objective evidence of the

Interesting. Do you have a URL for that? 

	- Adi Stav

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From: Gaal Yahas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 09:52:39 +0200

> To all hard-core hackers claiming that using the keyboard is much faster

In case you haven't read it yet, take a look at Neal Stephenson's
essay, In the Beginning was the Comamnd Line. It has been published
in book form (Hearst, 1999), but is also available online at:

http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

-- 
Gaal Yahas <[email-masked]>