Talk:Graphical user interface

Removed paragraph in "post-WIMP"

I have removed the following from the post-WIMP section since it's just plain wrong.

Post-WIMP includes 3D compositing window managers such as Compiz, Desktop Window Manager, and LG3D.[citation needed] Some post-WIMP interfaces may be better suited for applications which model immersive 3D environments, such as Google Earth.

Compositing, which is what is being refered to does not change the principles of the user inteface (it's still windows, icons, menus and pointers) hence they cannot (with sanity in mind) be claimed to be "post-WIMP" interfaces -- they are simple WIMP interfaces. 80.167.145.44 (talk) 17:57, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

CLIs...

How are CLIs more efficient and productive than GUIs? The article states that they are but doesn't bother backing up that claim. - 190.231.251.111 (talk) 04:08, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Old myth. It depends heavily on what you're doing. Both are inferior to scripting which is what 'BATch' files and keyboard/mouse macro programs do on terminal(text) and graphical interfaces, respectably. An example of a script format supported by many versions of Microsoft's Windows and Office is VBA (VisualBASIC). Once you get proficient in both interfaces, the real limitation is latency. There are some things that having only about a dozen keys to worry about and getting instant visual feedback (doesn't matter if text or graphics) is a godsend. Caveat: Old mechanical mice running over a DB9 connector were REALLY imprecise and thus made it slower to interact than optical mice. This combined with slower 2D fill rates on older cards that sometimes had less than 1MB of RAM (more than half of which was just for the frame buffer!) didn't exactly make GUI's efficient for most things. Be aware that some people confuse text-based interfaces with scripting, which is clearly more efficient than manually entering commands through an interface, period. 71.196.246.113 (talk) 19:24, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

IBM's SPF and ISPF/PDF

Being around at the time, I think much of the inspiration for GUI styles comes from IBM's screen presentation called SPF (superseded by ISPF and PDF). This was the state of the art at the time. The physical displays (eg IBM's 3270, 3278) had a fixed programmable size (typically 24x80 characters), so the facility to display information or request input was severely constrained by that. Even today, the 24x80 format is typically in use !

SPF presented 1 or 2 logical screens; displayed information was severely limited by the screen size; commands were keyed as an abbreviation (eg, option 2 meant start the editor, or you could skip to another panel); command shortcuts were numeric or character, (there was no "click" then) and translated into a command or command sequence with variable parameters; there was help at every level - typically F1 meant "HELP"; one could skip directly to another screen.

Functionally, not that different from modern GUI, just very limited in what could be achieved. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SombreGreenbul (talk • contribs) 06:50, 21 July 2013 (UTC)