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From: wilde@tigger.Colorado.EDU (Nick Wilde)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Save/Discard/Cancel
Message-ID: <1990Nov30.041941.24294@csn.org>
Date: 30 Nov 90 04:19:41 GMT
References: <21847@well.sf.ca.us> <1990Nov28.192747.10650@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
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In article <1990Nov28.192747.10650@Neon.Stanford.EDU> cheshire@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Stuart David Cheshire) writes:
>Where does all this "Don't Save" rubbish come from?
>"Cancel" means "Don't save, don't destroy, don't do anything."
>What does "Don't Save" mean? Don't save and do WHAT instead?
>I want the button to say "Discard" because that's what it does - it destroys
>all the work you just did.
>
>I have once lost a load of work like that - very tired, click the close box by
>mistake and this thing comes up saying Yes/No/Cancel. My brain was in UNIX mode
>[ rm *     Are you sure? (Y/N) ] so I hit "No" before I realized what I'd done.
>
Huh ? Cancel means "Don't do anything". Don't Save means Do what I asked
you to, but Don't save first.  I'm not sure I understand you're confusion.

I'm not sure there's ANY magic combination of Verbs that will stop somebody
from misinterpreting and doing the wrong thing. In you're case, you
went into automatic and basically ignored what the machine was trying to 
tell you - "Do what I say, D*mn it!". 

I remember reading somewhere (sorry, can't remember the reference) where it
was claimed that this type of "are you sure" dialog doesn't do any good 
most of the time, anyway, for this very reason. It comes up at just the
wrong time, when the user has already decided his/her plan of action and
is busy worrying about the next step - "Don't bother me about that saving
that silly text file, darn it, I'm looking for the C compiler".

Perhaps the only thing that would work is a universal "undo" command -
Wouldn't that be neat ? I folder right next to the trash on your hard 
disk labelled "Waste paper" or something like that, where the last
document you changed and didn't save gets put by the application in
case you decide you really do want it. Like when I go diggin through
my own waste paper basket to find that note I threw away. (Only this
one wouldn't have a banana peel on top of it:))

-Nick

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Nick Wilde                                           wilde@boulder.colorado.edu