I mostly use computers for processing data - reading text files (which yes i did convert from pdf, i will explain more shortly), writing articles for my site (haha funny), essays for school (philosophy etc), programming. like it or not, our society is built around using text for these things.

My perfect interface would be a text display, which can display graphics etc inline. It should also allow interactive text components to link to other such windows. In short, something like traditional hypertext.

I think that Emacs does a very good job of implementing such a system. this is why i like emacs. Emacs also has the advantage of allowing mouse control or keyboard control, and having (easily) human readable configuration files (no xml) that can be edited as text or gui. it may have a bit of a learning curve, but it really does cater to all demographics (i think).

there is no space for a mouse in my personal interfate - this is not necessarily because i believe that a mouse is less efficient than a keyboard, as i have seen evidence that a mouse can be very efficient. it is just that i have found that it is a lot harder to buy a low quality keyboard than a low quality mouse - that is, cheap keyboards always work a lot better than cheap mice. this is important to me as i spend a lot of time using computers which are not mine, and i do not want to have to carry a mouse with me. learning to cope without a mouse is much easier.

one thing i definitely do not want to see is dropdown menu toolbars. i think that most of the time they are bad as items could go into several sub menus, or it is just hard to find and discover what you are looking for. they are a epitome of bad mouse ui design. they impose heirarchies where there are often not (although i know sometimes there are). i dont know, they are just not good. i think some kind of search system with tags would work better (rather like emacs with helm, which i do not actually use myself).

anyway, better a mouse than touchscreen. all the touchscreen designing is resulting in wasted space and superfluous animations. it is detrimental whatever you believe in.

by the way, jkl, i have seen that acme video, it does not change my views on the system compared to emacs, but I had forgotten the fundamental key chording thing. that is a very nice use of mouse.