John Hudson wrote:
> >Eight keystrokes to replace a single character isn't exactly
> what I would
> >call an efficient solution. [...] At this
> conditions, it would be
> >simpler to delete the whole words and type it from scratch.
>
> FWIW:
> This is exactly what a lot of people would do, even if only a single,
> fairly easily selectable character needs changing.
That's what I often do myself when I misspell a short word such as "Arjun".
But if I did a small error in a long word, I'd rather go back and edit just
the offending letter. I think that we all want this possibility, and nobody
would appreciate a system where Delete and Backspace delete whole words by
default.
Ken's and my discussion is a sort of slow-motion analysis of what goes on
while typing text. We used a short word just in order to keep the example
short. But feel free to apply the same concepts to cases such as
"Bhagavadgitopanishad"
> When I'm typing, I'm
> processing words in my head, not strings of characters,
And Indian users too shouldn't be forced to process strings of *abstract*
characters into their heads!
But an editing systems which directly uses the ISCII/Unicode encoding
elements forces users to understand the details of the algorithm for
rendering complex scripts, and to continuously "run" this algorithm forwards
and backwards into their heads, in order to understand where they should
place their cursor to delete or enter characters.
I was speculating about how to let the users alone with the signs of their
script, leaving the task of running algorithms to the computer.
> and it is easier to
> delete and retype a whole word -- to step back and then
> continue my train
> of thought -- than to interrupt my thought to select an individiual
> character. I don't think efficiency in input can necessarily
> be measured by number of keystrokes.
I did not only compare the number of keystrokes (which, anyway, is a valid
measure of efficiency), I also analyzed the visual effect of each keystroke,
comparing it to the result that is intuitively expectable.
What I found is that, in many cases, what happens on the screen after
pressing a key is puzzling, unless one has a firm understanding of the
Unicode character/glyph model, and continuously thinks at this model while
typing.
_ Marco
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Wed Nov 28 2001 - 07:49:46 EST