Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman
No, that isn't what I meant. Cyberpunk has three kinds of neural interface: a very crude single-line text interface, where you have to sub-vocalise commands. Doing anything in that takes twice as long as an Icon interface, which looks like a GUI, and allows you to issue commands mentally. That takes twice as long to do anything as an Environmental interface, which is fully immersive VR.
The modern style of CLI usage, where you usually have several windows open and editors in some of them, isn't in the book. IME this form evolved out of GUI usage, since it demands the high-resolution screens needed for GUI work, and I first ran into it in 1995 or so.
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GUI doesn't "demand" high-resolution screens as demonstrated by the bitmap icons of MacOS and Windows 3.1. Heck, Hypercard (1987) allowed you to run a CLI exactly like you describe while also running a GUI. It just took a very specialized program to do that without turning the speed to mush.
One of the reasons Hypercard died was it was largely written in assembly which made updating it directly next to impossible (hence all the XMCDs to get around many of the limitations of hypercard). It would have needed to be written from the ground up and Apple just didn't see a future for it.