Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 13:47:49 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) Cc: David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com>, Nils Holland <nils@tisys.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: NatWest? no thanks Message-ID: <15332.18917.367328.996483@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <63zo63brsq.o63@localhost.localdomain> References: <20011102090253.G795-100000@jodie.ncptiddische.net> <3BE2EF8D.4CB9A508@acuson.com> <63zo63brsq.o63@localhost.localdomain>
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Gary W. Swearingen <swear@blarg.net> types: > David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com> writes: > So the problem is that people are being offered tools with too many > features without organizing them and giving them good defaults so that > they can be as easy to use as older devices to do the same limited > things while having the ability to do much more for those who want to > learn their use. If you haven't, find a copy of Raskin's "The Humane Interface", and read it. He argues - quite convincingly - that the real problem is that people are being offered applications at all. It's silly to have to start a "word processor" to deal with a document with words in it vs. having to start a "drawing program" to deal with a document with graphics in it when the operations on the two things are fundamentally the same: add, select, cut, copy, paste and set properties. To borrow the ever-popular automobile anology, it would be like having to load a different UI to park, drive on city streets and drive on a highway. > Using a CLI/configfile makes all features simultaneously available and > about the only way to present varying levels of usage-difficulty is to > give the "man" command a "--ignorance-level" option so it could present > differently-targeted man pages to people. Actually, you want it in an environment variable, so that the shell can control it. Every time you make a mistake, it raises the level. When you do a couple of things in a row right, it drops the level. Commands should also pay attention to it and provide more verbose output depending on how high it gets. Experiments with this kind of thing have been reasonably successful, though I'd be hard pressed to find the references. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Q: How do you make the gods laugh? A: Tell them your plans. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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