Re: Change terminology to better align users’ experience with modern GUIs

[Emanuel Berg <moasenwood@zoho.eu>]

tomas wrote:

> Thanks for the clarifications, Eli. Still,
> I feel that someone "entering" this world
> might be a bit... lost.

[Note: The last paragraph is the interesting
 part of this post! And not only because it is
 about me :) ]

First, I think people who come to a piece of
software like ours aren't beginners or are
lacking in self-confidence when it comes to
computers or learning new things in general.

Second, speaking even more broadly, I think
that changing small details "here" won't bring
about huge changes "there". If people aren't
coming to us, it doesn't matter if a window is
called a frame, and a pane is called a window.
Changing that won't make a difference, much
like changing the color of a sign above
a derailed business won't make customers
suddenly line up the pavement.

Why people came to the software at one time,
and why they don't do it now, if that indeed is
the case, is a better question, and I admit
I don't even have an educated guess.

I grew up with computers from when my age
consisted of a single digit, and they all had
GUIs, the first computer I ever saw was
a Mac Plus - with no fan and no HDD, and 800 KB
floppies which contained the OS as well as any
other software - not that there were a lot,
back then, at least not for the Mac. So while
it didn't have much, the OS, Finder, was a GUI
one. So it was even then all about GUIs and
when I started programming, by instinct, it was
with Visual Basic 5.0, so it was all GUIs there
as well! But when I started programming in
a more methodic way (altho it was still by
instinct to a large degree, I'd now say), by
that time I really didn't want anything to do
with GUIs - buttons, menus, the mouse...
I considered that - in general, because there
are exceptions like web browsing, GISs, FPSs,
and so one - I considered that to be using
a computer at a lower level, at the level of
the consumer oriented masses, that only cared
for services, multimedia, and games, not the
computer itself, if you will. Also, I wanted an
editor which I could tweak in exactly the way
I liked. All this came together with Emacs.
When I came here in particular, to what I now
call gmane.emacs.help, it felt like everyone
was older and more experienced than me. Now,
I don't know, maybe it just felt that way and
there were actually a lot of people coming to
the Emacs world about that time. Probably!
Also, I don't know if their reasons were the
same as mine. Because if several people came
around then, and several people came for the
same reasons, that'd mean, that those reason
don't hold any appeal to today's folks, and
that's why they aren't coming. And if they
don't, well all the more reason to believe that
yeah, changing frame to window and window to
pane won't change anything from that
side'a things.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573
https://dataswamp.org/~incal