Post #4674211 · Elektrine

2026-09-12 01:22 UTC

I'm apparently in a bit of a spicy mood, and I need to temper that while reading up some summary information on Jef Raskin and the Humane Interface. There are genuinely some good ideas in there. But also, I am not surprised that LEAP could not be leveraged into anything with staying power in the free software world, despite that being a place where cult classic software can be kept on life support indefinitely by diehard fans. Take this paragraph from raskincenter.org: > The shift in mobile computing toward search-based navigation — typing in a search box rather than navigating menus — reflects, at least in spirit, the LEAP approach. Spotlight on macOS, the omnibox in web browsers, the search-first navigation in smartphone launchers all represent movements toward finding by content rather than navigating by location. Raskin argued for this approach before smartphones existed. Uncharitably? "Ah, this is why every garbage proprietary OS searches the internet when I want an installed program."

Replies (1)

@MaddieM4@raphus.social 2026-09-12 01:28

I say this as someone who has latched onto a cool UNIFYING PRINCIPLE!!1! or ten in my life, and had to get smacked down by friction with reality. That will happen again, I'm not immune, the only thing I've gotten better at is holding those principles with a lighter hand. Up to a point, a skepticism of modes is pretty reasonable and evidentially-supported. A full declared war against modalism is fundamentally wrongheaded in ways that are impossible to reconcile with the world of "existing software that does useful things," and the effort to bridge them will eventually lead to declaring some kind of surrender. Try playing any video game where you can do a variety of in-game actions, where the authors needed to support controllers for consoles. In fact, I'll go for the meme here. "Press F to pay respects", cool cool. Do you want F to be bound to "pay respects" for the whole game? You gonna do a lot of that? No. You want that action to be impossible in a context where respects are sensible to pay? Prolly not!

Open ##4674210