CompuServe Messages

Well, I gave a stab at trying to change Amiga developer's point of view regarding user interface issues. I circulated a document "A Common User Interface for the Amiga" about a month ago. So far very little in the way of positive feedback has made its way back to me. However, I still try, and will (hopefully) get a version of this document printed in Amazing Computing. This article discussed the reasons and advantages of a common user interface between programs, and pointed out how such a user interface would _not_ stifle creativity (this seems to be the major argument against ease-of-use, amazing as this fact may seem). It then goes on to give suggestions of the essential elements of such an interface, and talks about how this could be implemented in an easy fashion. Unfortunately, as I said, no one seems to be interested in this. In fact, when the concept of "User Interface" is brought up the conversation invariably turns to "file requesters." To me a file requester is but one small part of the overall picture, but apparently I am in the minority. Interestingly enough, the greatest reluctance to adopting a common user interface has come from WordPerfect Corp. Not so strange, since they are obviously trying to do their own interface on every machine they write their word processor on (this is one of the reasons that their Mac version hasn't sold that well).