Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2016 19:44:37
From: Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se>
To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Even more Gnus material: we made the paper!
Jonathan Groll <lists@groll.co.za> writes:
And of course, Emacs is just one of the wide
variety of "terminal-" or "shell-based" tools with
which users operate their computers and use the
Internet without the need for a graphical
interface. Emanuel goes on to say he considers
himself "text-based" and has largely "bypassed the
Web." Other similar accounts can be easily found
online of users who prefer "the warm glow of
a green screen full of text over the cold
blockiness of a graphical interface."
Like most of us, I do mostly have a text-based view
of life although, under X Emacs lets me view office
docs, JPEGS and PDFs and surfing with w3m under X is
hardly "text-only".
I use X as well to watch documentaries (and
"Survivor") and to see my gnuplots and the result of
my LaTeX - and, sometimes it is useful to Google the
name of a tool and see its picture before you go to
the shop.
These are just examples but they are good examples.
The idea is not to never use graphics, but rather do
that when there is reason to do so and when there is
not, instead present a uniform text display *and*
input interface.
The "cold blockiness of a graphical interface" is
a good way to put it. I also think there is the aspect
of authenticity or at least the perception of what is
real. When you look at a good looking webpage or
something else graphical the first time, it looks
great and you are impressed. But the nth time, no
matter how good it looks, your eye is so trained it
still doesn't look real. It looks artificial. And it
is! And it gets worse because to an extent you know or
can guess how: this is HTML, this is CSS, this is
JavaScript, this is...
It is too much. So I just want text - like this, if
you don't mind switching to X:
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/pics/text-mail.png