Re: More beginner help needed
From: P.T. Breuer (ptb_at_oboe.it.uc3m.es)
Date: 01/08/04
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Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 15:30:21 GMT
Ed Murphy <emurphy42@socal.rr.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 23:20:21 +0000, P.T. Breuer wrote:
> > These are windows concepts. The name is merely a guide. You can apply
> > any app to any file. What happens when you click on a file with a given
> > suffix is between you and your file browser. You can configure it to do
> > whatever you like. A log file needs nothing special to look at it with.
> But it does need *something* to look at it with. (You probably consider
It doesn't *need* it. I.e. you can look at it how you like - you may
prefer to "look at" an audio recording with an audio editor (?), but you
don't need to. I'd always look inside first before deciding what I'd
prefer to view it with. "less" works well on most things, and there's
always bvi for those really really binary things.
> the various choices to be non-special.)
I'm not sure quite what you mean.
> I don't think you understand why many users have trouble with the
> command line. You often answer "how do I do X?" questions with
> "however you like!", ignoring the stark reality that
> (a) the set of choices presented to the user (i.e. literally anything
> that they might type at a command line) is overwhelmingly large;
You are confusing syntax with semantics. Only some action paths have
the correct semantics. You get to choose among them yourself, in your
own mind. When you have decided, you then have to "speak" the commands,
which is a question of syntax.
So your choice is not at the level of syntax - that is already fixed by
your decision on the actions to take. Decision takes place at a much
more abstract level. The decisions then are refined down by
implementation choices to particular modes of speaking.
> (b) the set of choices *useful* to the user (i.e. anything that will
> actually accomplish X successfully) is comparatively tiny;
Well, as in "large". There must be 10 useful ways to accomplish
virtually anything. But the design decision lies in what to accomplish,
not in how to pronounce the command once you have decided.
> (c) many users, given (a), have very little idea how to narrow it down
> to (b), or to find out how they might do so.
They have the same semantic choices available to them as I do. I am not
deliberately misunderstanding you! What I am saying is that it is not
my business to make their semantic choices for them.
> For these users, one of the major advantages of a GUI is that it guides
> them through this narrowing-down process.
You have hit on the correct concept there - the refinement process is
the means by which we turn an impulse into an activity. First we decide
a goal, then we posit routes to achieve that goal, via subgoals. Then
we convert each subgoal into an action.
> "How do I surf the web on
> this thing? Let's look through these menus. Oh, this one called
> 'Internet' sounds promising, let's see what's in that one."
In this case the decision was about how to _find out_ how to surf the
net. Action decision was to click on a menu and see what it sys.
They could alternatively have decided to go to the help index (man -k
browse). They could have tried typing "netscape" in a terminal window.
They could have gone to their package manager and searched for "net" or
"browse" categories. Their choice. All are valid strategies. At a
suficiently high level, they and I have the same choices available to
us.
> This is why they (in your terms) "put on dark glasses to see": because
> they can *find* the dark glasses, which are prominently displayed on a
> pedestal, whereas the clear glasses are buried somewhere in a huge pile
> of microscopes and telescopes and periscopes and kaleidoscopes. Saying
> "clear glasses exist", while true, is not all that useful unless you
> also show how to find them.
It is a question of what you see when you look (said zebbidee).
> >> and the example for Log Level just says "Log Level = 3" which would be
> >> fine if it said which way was up and what full-scale was.
> >
> > Eh? Obviously higher numbers are more logging!
> That is not the least bit obvious.
It is the obvious choice for a field named "Log level". You can make a
case for it being the logging _threshold_ instead, in which case 0
would mean "log everything", and large numbers would mean "log
nothing". But in that case the field would be called "logging
threshold".
> The lowest uid (0 == root) has
It's not the lowest id. Try "-1" (nobody).
> the most file access permissions (everything). The lowest DEFCON
> level (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEFCON) represents the highest
> degree of combat readiness.
You mean defcon 0? Or defcon -1? Somehow I think they have their
numbers backwards, and they are the nonintuitive ones!
I think you made a fine argument!
Peter
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