Jay McGavren’s Journal

I’m sure you all remember my earlier rant about Enso 2.0 and the discussion with [ICR] that followed… Well, Andreas Schuderer is even more doubtful about the new design that I - so much so that he’s done a lengthy writeup on his reasoning and a usable demo with a possible fix.

I like his scratchpad a lot better than “open notepad”, that’s for sure.

By not providing (or insisting upon the use of) an editor, Enso has moved away from the noun-verb interaction that Archy encouraged. This may be a step in the right direction again.

Bloxes. A great idea that Aza Raskin should have sold to someone else to implement.

Look, I know all about distractibility, believe me. I know about having more ideas than you could ever possibly do. That’s why you need to discipline yourself and focus. Archy was a good starting place, and a good final goal. Enso was arguably a necessary detour. (But it’s not making money any more, is it?) The music search service was, well, what the hell was it? And now you’re breaking off into manufacturing?

I have the utmost respect for you and your work. But if you spread yourself too thin, each of your projects is going to disappear the moment you turn your attention away from it.

I copied my comment on my Enso 2.0 prototype problems to the Humanized blog, and got this reply from “Andreas”:

> It also shows why adding complexity to the system is a Bad Idea. If bad design doesn’t get you, entropy will.

Very true. And sounds like a Larry Wall quote. :-D

They just posted a new version of the prototype. We’ll see if it addresses any of my concerns.

Here’s the article…

Basically, everything that used to be \[capslock][command-name] {arguments}/[capslock] is now \[capslock][command-name]/[capslock]{arguments}\[enter]/[enter]. About the only part I like so far is that {arguments} can have shift-characters now.

Perhaps I’m being hasty, but perhaps not. Full impressions in a few days.

Just saw Aza Raskin’s post to the Humanized Weblog regarding “Enso 2.0″…

…and I hope I’m wrong, but I’m filled with a sense of impending doom. The champions of amodality are turning to the Dark Side.

Enso shouldn’t make you type all of “open” every time

Yes it should. If a command is important enough to use repeatedly, the user will get very fast at typing it. If it’s so important, make the command short (and “open” is short enough).

Enso should gracefully handle the case where there’s no convenient place to enter text

Give us enough commands that we never have to leave our editor, then. (Remember The Humane Environment? The Canon Cat?) Don’t introduce unneeded complexity into the Enso interface itself.
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