“Never” is an exaggeration, of course - I’d be quite satisfied with the already-proposed e-mail command, and maybe some equivalent to curl.

jay: “After enough uses, my thought process would be: “OK, ‘60 * 60 * 24 * 365′… [highlight] [command ‘calculate’]”. “Calculate” is, in my mind, the “turn this equation into the number I actually need” command. I don’t want to be typing “calculate” while trying to remember a complicated series of numbers and symbols.”
[ICR]: If you’re not in an environment with a text input - and I frequently am - I have to think “open notepad” first which has exactly the same effect of knocking numbers out of my brain except worse, because opening a text editor has nothing to do with calculating a sum. …

I am rarely in an environment without text input, so it makes it hard for me to see that side of the argument. You’re certainly right that opening an editor first is just as bad in that situation.

jay: “…when I return to the machine…I’m going to stop and think about whether it’s open.”
[ICR]: I guess the solution would be to tap “Esc” as you get up - not that hard a thing to train yourself to do (I’ve trained myself easily to type “pause track” at the drop of a hat). You can then use the “resume” command if you need to.

I guess I missed that they were proposing to use Esc that way. That would indeed help, and I’m sure I could habituate to it.

[ICR]: I think you missed this very important part of the article:
“What happens if you want to calculate some text that you’ve already typed?
Select it, hold down Caps Lock, type “cal”, and release. The entry area will be pre-filled with your text. Hit enter the result is inserted at your selection.”
It’s the answer to a lot of your qualms.

No, I did see that. I guess I’m just really, really repulsed by the thought of that Enter key after everything. Before Enso (and unfortunately during, occasionally), I had to use the Windows Run menu. (Windowkey-R, type command, Enter, hope the window you’d been working in gets focus again because sometimes it doesn’t.) This hearkens back to those dark days.

jay: “Don’t let the slow typists among your users ruin Enso for everybody.”
[ICR]: Interestingly it’s not the slow typists, it’s the lazy ones. And I suspect they are perfectly adequate

I have no objection to the good (productive) kind of lazy. But I’m really concerned that people’s shortcuts are going to start getting in the way of legitimate commands.

Anyway, you make some good points, good enough that now I have to wait until the new Enso release to see if my fears even come to pass. (Of course, by then it will be too late to stop it. :)

I would echo your worries here. It distresses me when people want to shorten everything down to two letters to open anything. However, I guess something to be mindful is that the system is flexible enough to easily allow you to create your own good shorthands. “o” can easily become synonymous with “open” in peoples minds.

“Give us enough commands that we never have to leave our editor, then”

Surely you can see that’s far beyond the scope of Enso - that’s writing a whole new environment and that project is being/has been done at least twice (I think).

“After enough uses, my thought process would be: “OK, ‘60 * 60 * 24 * 365′… [highlight] [command ‘calculate’]”. “Calculate” is, in my mind, the “turn this equation into the number I actually need” command. I don’t want to be typing “calculate” while trying to remember a complicated series of numbers and symbols.”

If you’re not in an environment with a text input - and I frequently am - I have to think “open notepad” first which has exactly the same effect of knocking numbers out of my brain except worse, because opening a text editor has nothing to do with calculating a sum. The process of “calculate … this expression” fits much more naturally in these cases. For the occasions where a text editor is open the old model also works, type the expression, select, calculate, enter. (Just the addition of “enter” there).

“And yet in the same article, they complain about Unix “df” and “tar -xvzf”.”
I am inclined to agree again. But also again, be mindful that the user has chosen these shorthands, not the system.

“Again, I’m thinking “‘outrageous accent’ in french”, not “french outrageous accent””
Again, see my argument for calculate.

“And yet you’re having experts type a completely different phrase than the beginners.”
An “expert mode” is one in which you have to switch to a completely different environment to do more advanced things. This is the software working as the user wants it to.

“…when I return to the machine…I’m going to stop and think about whether it’s open.”
I guess the solution would be to tap “Esc” as you get up - not that hard a thing to train yourself to do (I’ve trained myself easily to type “pause track” at the drop of a hat). You can then use the “resume” command if you need to.

“They’re proposing typing entire e-mails into Enso. I’d call that important content.”
To me it seemed they were proposing you type long emails in a text editor, select it then use the “email to” command.

I think you missed this very important part of the article:
“What happens if you want to calculate some text that you’ve already typed?

Select it, hold down Caps Lock, type “cal”, and release. The entry area will be pre-filled with your text. Hit enter the result is inserted at your selection.”
It’s the answer to a lot of your qualms.

“A user’s expertise and habits are stored in their own grey matter, and they carry that with them to every computer they use, networked or not.”
Yes, but a naive Enso is not consistent because it can’t be. Different people have different things installed, so a different number of commands appear on different machines and at different times on the same machine. The adaptive algorithm suggested deals with that in a very nice way - it aids habituation rather than breaks it.

“Don’t let the slow typists among your users ruin Enso for everybody.”
Interestingly it’s not the slow typists, it’s the lazy ones. And I suspect they are perfectly adequate