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Visibility of The Objects of Interest

The document discusses how word processors meet some but not all of Shneiderman's criteria for direct manipulation interfaces. Word processors allow visibility of text, incremental typing with rapid feedback, and reversibility of actions through undo. However, complex formatting can move emphasis from content to style. The typewriter metaphor is no longer appropriate as word processors enable functionality like active space bars that typewriters did not.

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Supun Banupiya
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114 views

Visibility of The Objects of Interest

The document discusses how word processors meet some but not all of Shneiderman's criteria for direct manipulation interfaces. Word processors allow visibility of text, incremental typing with rapid feedback, and reversibility of actions through undo. However, complex formatting can move emphasis from content to style. The typewriter metaphor is no longer appropriate as word processors enable functionality like active space bars that typewriters did not.

Uploaded by

Supun Banupiya
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Discuss the ways in which a full-page word processor is or is not a direct manipulation

interface for editing a document using Shneiderman’s criteria. What features of a modern
word processor break the metaphor of composition with pen (or typewriter) and paper?

Answer : We will answer the first point by evaluating the word processor relative to the criteria
for direct manipulation given by Shneiderman.

Visibility of the objects of interest


The most important objects of interest in a word processor are the words themselves. Indeed, the
visibility of the text on a continual basis was one of the major usability advances in moving from
line-oriented to display-oriented editors. Depending on the user’s application, there may be other
objects of interest in word processing that may or may not be visible. For example, are the
margins for the text on screen similar to the ones which would eventually be printed? Is the
spacing within a line and the line breaks similar? Are the different fonts and formatting
characteristics of the text visible (without altering the spacing)? Expressed in this way, we can
see the visibility criterion for direct manipulation as very similar to the criteria for a WYSIWYG
interface.

Incremental action at the interface with rapid feedback on all actions


We expect from a word processor that characters appear in the text as we type them in at the
keyboard, with little delay. If we are inserting text on a page, we might also expect that the
format of the page adjust immediately to accommodate the new changes. Various word
processors do this reformatting immediately, whereas with others changes in page breaks may
take some time to be reflected. One of the other important actions which requires incremental
and rapid feedback is movement of the window using the scroll button. If there is a significant
delay between the input command to move the window down and the actual movement of the
window on screen, it is quite possible that the user will ‘overshoot’ the target when using the
scrollbar button.

Reversibility of all actions, so that users are encouraged to explore without severe penalties

Single-step undo commands in most word processors allow the user to recover from the last
action performed. One problem with this is that the user must recognize the error before doing
any other action. More sophisticated undo facilities allow the user to retrace back more than one
command at a time. The kind of exploration this reversibility provides in a word processor is best
evidenced with the ease of experimentation that is now available for formatting changes in a
document (font types and sizes and margin changes). One problem with the ease of exploration is
that emphasis may move to the look of a document rather than what the text actually says (style
over content).

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Syntactic correctness of all actions, so that every user action is a legal operation

WYSIWYG word processors usually provide menus and buttons which the user uses to articulate
many commands. These interaction mechanisms serve to constrain the input language to allow
only legal input from the user. Document markup systems, such as HTML and LaTeX, force the
user to insert textual commands (which may be erroneously entered by the user) to achieve
desired formatting effects.

Replacement of complex command languages with actions to manipulate directly the


visible objects
The case for word processors is similar to that described above for syntactic correctness. In
addition, operations on portions of text are achieved many times by allowing the user to highlight
the text directly with a mouse (or arrow keys). Subsequent action on that text, such as moving it
or copying it to somewhere else, can then be achieved more directly by allowing the user to
‘drag’ the selected text via the mouse to its new location.

To answer the second question concerning the drawback of the pen (or typewriter) metaphor for
word processing, we refer to the discussion on metaphors in Chapter 4. The example there
compares the functionality of the space key in typewriting versus word processing. For a
typewriter, the space key is passive; it merely moves the insertion point one space to the right. In
a word processor, the space key is active, as it inserts a character (the space character) into the
document. The functionality of the typewriter space key is produced by the movement keys for
the word processor (typically an arrow key pointing right to move forward within one line). In
fact, much of the functionality that we have come to expect of a word processor is radically
different from that expected of a typewriter, so much so that the typewriter as a metaphor for
word processing is not all that instructive. In practice, modern typewriters have begun to borrow
from word processors when defining their functionality!

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