Interesting that Raskin is essentially using the open source community to promote his book. Obviously not his sole intent, but an interesting lateral benefit..
-Ian.
—– http://humane.sourceforge.net/the/
Jeff Raskin: About The Humane Environment
There is a common misconception that The Humane Environment (THE) is just a hyper-efficient editor. It is not. So THE is not an editor… what is it? <a wider range of users.
But interfaces have not moved with changing times. After a decade of research into cognitive psychology and by paying attention to people’s constant computer complaints (and his own annoyance), Raskin realized that today’s GUIs are fundamentally flawed. The interface-building tools that companies and open-source prouducts provide enforce bad interface design practices. They are wrong. Period. Raskin figured out how to fix the problems. His popular book, /The Humane Interface/ <)”>http://humane.sourceforge.net/the/manual.html>) before you unlearn your present habits and can begin to appreciate it. You are in a worse position for learning it than a novice who has only to acquire new habits and has nothing to unlearn!
But once you have learned THE, you will wish that all your software had at least some of its interface features. This we guarantee; it happens every time.
After you’ve used THE, you may well be motivated to add new commands, critique what we’ve done, port it to other platforms (it is on the Mac right now, but a lot is written in platform-independent Python <.”>http://humane.sourceforge.net/humane_interface/index.html>. For experience, try the software. You can visit the projects SourceForge page here <.”>http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_idW603>.
(signed) Aza Raskin Bug List <“>http://humane.sourceforge.net/the/spec.html> Before going on to the design of the visually-oriented zooming portion of The Humane Environment (THE), it seems wise to specify the low-level interactions that take place within the document-centric portion. Also, this portion allows interaction by the visually impaired. We specify first that software necessary to demonstrate LEAP and some of the selection and command interface techniques and other benefits described in “The Humane Interface” [Raskin, 2000]. THE is intended to run on at least Windows, Linux, and Mac platforms. This specification describes the first portions to be implemented and gives some indications for future directions. Joining the THE Team <“>http://humane.sourceforge.net/the/manual.html> The user manual, written for developers of the Humane Environment
Mission Statement <“>http://humane.sourceforge.net/the/spec.html> Using CVS and Sourceforge.net <