Comments about command lines

My response to http://www.humanized.com/weblog/2007/02/24/your_grandmothers_command_line_the_command_line_co/, about the maybe-rise (again) of command line interfaces.


To follow Tim's comment, I would like to see you talk more, perhaps in a future piece, about the specific design choices you made for Enso. I understand -- and support -- the general idea of the keyboard as a renewed & rejuventated interface device. Like many of your readers here, I too use Quicksilver, AppRocket, etc. So I get the big picture.

But about the *details* of Enso . . . one interesting choice is that you impose specific commands (such as "open"). This seems like a huge break from the world of "launchers", a step into the territory of command-lines that actually have commands (e.g. bash). I'm curious to know what you are aiming to gain by that? How would you compare yourself to something like Quicksilver, which is goes beyond launching, into the terrain of Unix pipes, but without a verbal command syntax such as "open" or "calculate"? Quicksilver seems to be managing to give the users the power of complex actions, without requiring them to learn a vocabulary of explicit synonyms for those actions. (Thus, in QuickSilver, to "calculate" something, you don't have to use the word "calculate" -- you enter in a calculation and it just does it.)

Another design choice of yours, which I do think is pretty innovative, is the ability of Enso to grab user-selected stuff from other programs. Does this go beyond (demoable but perhaps ultimately limited) plain-text selection? Do you see this ability growing into an important part of your tool?


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My response to http://www.humanized.com/weblog/2007/03/05/are_adaptive_interfaces_the_answer/, about adaptive interfaces such as Microsoft's "adaptive menus" in Office -- now defunct.


I do have a small point to make about customizable user interfaces. Which is this: their praises are often sung by hard-core users, the kind of users who do similar work, on a single machine, for years on end. Their work is focused, and even somewhat repetitive. What they love, above all things, are shortcuts.

But be aware that catering to one user clique may hurt you in a wider marketplace. A *lot* of people in the world use more than one computer in a day. Others have to take account of the fact that others will use their computer sometimes. And a third, very large, group of people don't view computers as something to be customized, so they never go an inch down that road regardless of the rewards.

Customization -- feathering one's nest -- only pleases the base. Does Enso allow you to create your own commands? I'd argue that in the end it's completely unimportant. Let them eat emacs.

Conforming to the user, however -- that is golden.

MSFT just did it wrong, as usual.