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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: Interface design (was: Re: Walkthrough comp: reviews/critiques (long))
Message-ID: <GDxHDK.63o@world.std.com>
Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 05:46:31 GMT
References: <GDv88M.GI@world.std.com> <slrn9gucie.c2r.mwmiller@treehouse.columbus.rr.com>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Lines: 84
Xref: news.duke.edu rec.games.int-fiction:63336

Matthew W. Miller <mwmiller@columbus.rr.com> wrote:
>>I really wish people who want to do this sort of thing would switch to a
>>development system that allows the "status line" at the bottom
>
>Above or below the prompt? (I'm serious.  I use a MUD client called Tiny
>Fugue which has a text window, then a status line, then a five-line space
>for command entry.)

Hard to say; with a "status line" that changes sizes for different
conversations or whatever, I'm not sure which is better; for a fixed
size status line, prompt above status line. No, wait. I'm not
thinking clearly.

TinyFugue--one word, by Greg Hudson, I think, I don't remember whether
it's a mod of Tarrant's original tinytalk or written from scratch, but
it's the same interface layout--doesn't have the option of things like
reverse video to set things off, so the status line is also used to
delimt the prompt line, since the prompt doesn't scroll up into the
rest of the text like it does in a single-person adventure--all in
all, a very different application, so the UIs aren't that
comparable.

As long as we want the prompt to scroll up into the transcript, the
prompt would go above the status line, the status line at the very
bottom.

>>Input does not belong at the top of the screen. Heck, neither do status
>>lines, according to the human factors literature;
>
>Human factors literature is written by marketing weasels and salesmen.

I mean the kind of human factors stuff where people run experiments
and create things like Fitt's law. It's not hard to base user interface
design on science. Apple used to do it; MS never bothered.

>The status line in most GUI programs, I think, is not comparable to the
>status line of an IF game.

Er... depends on the program. Heck, the status line in games like Doom
are at the bottom of the screen--some designers place that status
info at the top instead, and it noticeably sucks--and there are written
articles from game developers urging other game developers to put it at
the bottom.

*And none urging it be put at the top.*

>In my personal opinion, the status line of an
>IF game is most comparable to the title bar of a window, or the location
>bar of a web browser, and where is *that* located?

I *never* look at the title bar of a window I'm using.
"Telnet - world.std.com".  "MS-DOS Prompt".  Such useful
information. Of course, an application could put useful,
changing information in a title bar, but then it would
be a status bar. And if you say "status line", people don't
think you're talking about the title bar, at least not
in my neighborhood.

I agree that the status line certainly is comparable to the
title bar of a window insofar as I generally never look at it.
I missed out on the humorous status line in "At Wit's End"
in the last comp because I never looked up at it. And I
missed the prompt in Walk Through Forever for a while. I
constantly miss things in the prompt.

If every command I type produces only two or three lines of
text, then everything I need to read (what I type and the
game prints) is at the bottom of the screen. If the status
line is entirely irrelevant, sure, leave it at the top. But
it would be way more useful at the bottom.

I can't guarantee that I wouldn't still totally miss things
if the status line was at the bottom, but it seems a lot
more likely I'd notice something right next to where I was
already looking.

I may be basing this on personal opinion, but since there's
supposedly scientific evidence *plus* you can explain logically
why it's advantageous with a very simple theory, I don't
really understand your resistance.

SeanB
who used to hang on muds with Greg Hudson while he was developing
tinyfugue, and still hangs on a mud with the Grod who wrote tinywar
