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In this environment, where people at all levels are using multiple programs--e-mail, word processing, drawing, spreadsheets, math programs, graphing programs, Web browsers, and so on--it is much more efficient to have an integrated environment, a common set of basic commands, a GUI.
While you have made some intriguing points they for the most part address the benefits of standardization not of a GUI (note: Standardization != GUI). While some standardization is good it is not the be all to end all. While standardization of cut, paste, open, close, print makes perfect sense most commands do not fall into this catagory. The inherent benefit of this standardization decrease the more specialized an application becomes. With a program like Autocad or MathCad or even Lotus 1-2-3 where one has a steep learning curve of specialized commands the benefits of standardized basic commands boarders on insignificant. Once we get past the standardization issue to the one of textmode vs GUI (which was the topic of my original post) I doubt that one can make the case that a draftsman running a graphics program under a textmode OS is less efficient as his counterpart who is saddled with a bloated GUI OS. In fact if both are operating on the same hardware I would venture a guess that the textmode user will be more efficient by the simple fact that his resources are not being consumed by the GUI. The same case can be made for the accounting staff using spreadsheets or the secretaries typing letters. I'll take an accounting department using Lotus 1-2-3 3.x up against a similar group running MS Office and Win95/NT any day of the week. I'll get the same work done faster and *cheaper*. Now the MS group will have prettier reports but why should the accounting dept be in the business of typesetting?? This brings up another issue of decreased performance with the GUI's. It is the notion that every document must be type-set. I can't even start to imagine the millions of man hours wasted in the office because every insignificant memo, report, and letter has to be formatted "just right" before it is acceptable. Now with the growing popularity of e-mail this trend has reversed somewhat but you have companies like Netscape and Microsoft who are eagerly trying to herd the masses back into this typeset mentality. But I digress. :) Another contention I have with the GUI's is the use of icons. One of the most misused and time wasting "features" of the GUI's. It makes absolutely no sense for someone who is working on the keyboard to stop what they are doing, go over to the mouse, and then point and click to execute a command. Now if you are in some type of graphics/drawing program where most of your work is being done with a mouse already then it makes sense but in a word processor or a spreadsheet or even a database it is highly inefficient. Well I guess I will rap this up with a final note. With the GUI OS's (and the applications that run on them) as size and complexity increases performance and reliability decreases. Without a doubt I can get more work done on cheaper hardware running *nix or os/2 using only text mode applications than I can running a GUI with it's associated bloated applications. - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://users.invweb.net/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a-sha1 Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBNKjBr49Co1n+aLhhAQFgdwP/aZGf5nvcgP1mV7dOnOCImTyZ8eTz8QxX sS9gUMQ6qqVJFLTpI7fk62dOv8CjBmT+5QlW+f/XW+YIc+IUmEeoU5sE8aFC9kb2 EB9Zw/wxzSWuypRir2SJcF6YW7EUoTpPRjGCYMQwpfE5cPYdLX+2v9QQCRIOM1fS 1RZ4DnW1GmY= =rr1v -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----