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Originally Posted by Maurice Ravel
In my posting I comment that SimpleText doesn't stagger new windows and bizarrely Bob Williams says "This statement patently false" (he forgot the "is") then says "in the case of SimpleText, you're right that it didn't position windows very smartly."
Make up your mind :)
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That's not quite what you said, though. Go back and re-read your sentence. You said, "Historically programs like SimpleText just always opened a new window...." I suppose one could interpret that as, "Historically, programs that violated human interface guidelines, like SimpleText, just always opened a new window...," but I think most people would go the simpler route of, "Historically, programs just always opened a new window...", with SimpleText as a mere example. And *that* is a false statement.
Yes, some programs have behaved differently, but not most. I don't have statistics, but the majority of programs I've worked with over the years do mostly follow the guidelines. As well, the majority of professional Mac programmers I've worked with over the years (being one myself) also strived to follow the guidelines in their software, especially so in the pre-Mac OS X era. I can also tell you that software that didn't follow the guidelines (and the developers who wrote it) were often tarred and feathered by the media, by users, and by other developers. This culture of UI consistency is the very essence of what historically defined the Mac (and is the reason it's so painful to see what's happened to the Mac OS UI in the OS X era).
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I don't think it is possible to say that there is a standardised behaviour for Mac windows in any real sense. If one is described in the human interface guidelines then it has been ignored in many instances for decades by Apple and third party developers.
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This line of thinking is illogical. For example, on most roads in the US, a statistically greater portion of drivers drive faster than the speed limit. Even so, I highly doubt that any court would accept that as reason to declare the local laws to not, in fact, be laws (i.e., standards). Apple spent millions of dollars to develop very good human interface guidelines, and they told developers to adhere to them unless they had very good reason not to. In my experience both as a user and a developer, most developers did just that. Now, most developers didn't know the guidelines like the backs of their hands, but they tried to at least be familiar with everything relevant to their work.
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Please note I think it would be great if developers paid attention to it but frequently they don't and attempting to re-write history to claim that they once did doesn't cut it with me I'm afraid.
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Again, UI consistency is the historical hallmark of the Mac, so to rewrite history to say that most software didn't follow the guidelines Apple laid out is a real disservice to the thousands of developers that spent millions of extra hours getting the UI details right, not to mention rather libelous of the platform itself. Just ask some longtime Mac developers what they think of such assertions....
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There's a strange bit in Bob's posting about templates and programs for "power users". Apparently programs written for “power users” are more likely to base new files on templates according to Bob. Well I don't think "power users" come into it very much. ClarisWorks for example bases its new files on templates. I will comment that the current version of AppleWorks doesn't seem to stagger its new windows (oh dear).
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I said that programs that cater to power users often utilize templates; I never said that programs must be exclusively for power users to use templates. There's a big difference--you're essentially making the common mistake of confusing causation and correlation.
As for AppleWorks, I don't have the current version, but the version I do have, 6.0.3, does indeed stagger windows. I'd be surprised if the newer versions don't still do it. Perhaps you're simply misunderstanding the point of discussion?
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I’ve always found the description “power users” with Macs rather amusing. I’m a “power user” I use gas and electricity. My Mac is powered by electricity; not gas I’m glad to say:)
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Now you're really just being silly. The way you keep quoting it and such, it sounds like you disregard the term "power user" as having any meaning. Well, from the Dictionary app included with OS X:
"power*user - noun - Computing - a user who needs products having the most features and the fastest performance."
So the term does formally exist. Further, there's absolutely nothing about being a Mac user that says you can't also be a power user, and I suspect many of those who fall into the intersection of the two would object to that view.
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On the subject of Nisus Writer: is it seminal? Well if you look at their market share then the original Nisus Writer (for Classic) was pretty small but if you look at what they did then it was indeed seminal. The list of programming "firsts" is possibly the greatest of any program. In addition Nisus Writer was the only OpenDoc host created and was ahead of all others with implementation of EGO's (Editable Graphic Objects). The list of things that people take for granted in Word Processors today which came first on Nisus Writer Classic is very long indeed. Multiple undos, non-contiguous text selection, Find/Replace using GREP, these are just a few things. So Nisus Writer does indeed deserve to be described as "seminal", more so in my humble opinion than any other program for the Mac.
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Most of its firsts either were later adopted by others on a natural software--or in some cases, OS--evolution path (unlimited undo), or they simply were not adopted (OpenDoc). In either case, the word "seminal" is not a good fit. In fact, the lack of adoption of its forebear's features by others is why Nisus Writer Express still differentiates itself with many of those very same things the company pioneered years ago. (Actually, I really wish some of those features, like non-contiguous selection, *would* make it into more competitors! <cough>-Word-<cough>)
Also of note, classic NW was often disparaged on the grounds of its non-conformance to UI guidelines. The current version is just as widely esteemed because of its excellent conformance to UI guidelines.
Even if NW was seminal, I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that it was more seminal than PageMaker. PM, along with the LaserWriter and PostScript, is what led to widespread adoption of the Mac in the creative field. Photoshop was also highly seminal, though I'd say less so because it targeted a part of the larger market that PM created.
Incidentally, grep was around in various programs long before it was picked up by Nisus. Perhaps it wasn't in a general-purpose Mac word processor (?), but it was in other software (e.g., some text editors).