Non-Iconographic disadvantage doesn't make sense.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by johndallman

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.

You can do it without a GUI, you just have multiple pseudo terminals that you switch between with hotkeys or that occupy separate parts of a dumb terminal, but I don't know of a popular implementation that predates GUIs (GNU Screen dates to 1987).

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by maximara

I have to ask. Did whoever wrote GURPS Cyberpunk actually understand the real strengths and weaknesses of CLIs and GUIs or were they Captain Clueless?

Yes, Lloyd Blankenship did understand computers.

What you're not processing, is that they were making a game that has abstractions. Some things were made to be fun, not mirror reality.

[maximara]

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.

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.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

What you're not processing, is that they were making a game that has abstractions. Some things were made to be fun, not mirror reality.

These sentences seem unrelated. Abstractions and breaks from reality are different things.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

These sentences seem unrelated. Abstractions and breaks from reality are different things.

Right. There were other ways to do the abstraction that make more sense then what we have.

"Graphical computer interfaces, maps, heraldic devices, and magical runes are completely meaningless to you." B146

So the text menus at the top of the screen/window (MacOS/Windows) are "meaningless" because they are now part of the GUI?!? How does that make any degree of sense?

The disadvantage may have made some sense within the context of GURPS Cyperpunk but as a generic disadvantage it is spouting total nonsense. Nevermind, it is classified in 4e as a mundane disadvantage meaning it (in theory) exists in the real world. We are yet to see something that actually fits the disadvantage as described.

I can understand Incompetence (Iconographics) but as presented Non-Iconographic makes no sense within the context of 4e GURPS.