There seems to be a lot of mis-understanding about Grphical User Interfaces (GUIs). The first being that they are purely (or even mostly) graphical in nature. The next misconception is that command line interfaces don't have any graphical content to them. I will point to how our beloved Pine brins in GUI features. At the top of the screen is a band that has the program name, what I am currently doing, the folder I am in and how many messages are there. At the bottom are some control key codes to do various things such as send and/or cancel my message. Additionally when new mail comes in a message comes up for a short time letting me know how many peices and the subject and author of the last peice of email recieved. These are all graphical elements in a "text based" environment. Going to the GUI, I would imediatly point to Word. It is still a word processor. The point is typing text. While it certainly extends this to beyond imagination, it still remains a program for typing text. And then lets look at email. While certainly there are pictures sent, the vast majority of information is still textual in nature. What it really comes down to is how the text is presented. A GUI adds certain elements to the presentation. The shape of the letters will be varied. The space between letters can be optimizes for best reading, or just to "look cool." An astounding number of "graphics" on web pages are in fact text that has been drawn to have a certain look that would not be possible in using straight HTML. If you could somehow "see" what all the fuss is, it would probably bother you even more the amount of effort that has been going into GUIs. But honestly, if someone had thought it all the way through from the begining, access to a gui would never have been a problem. With the exception of real drawings, such as a diagram or schematic, most information istextual in nature. (Well much is now comming out in audio format.) Kirk Wood Cpt.Kirk at 1tree.net ------------------ Why can't you be a non-conformist, like everybody else?
