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From: CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu (Christopher Tate)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc,comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: give me solid facts: Windows/Mac
Message-ID: <91086.010558CXT105@psuvm.psu.edu>
Date: 27 Mar 91 06:05:58 GMT
References: <1991Mar27.033317.23763@cs.uoregon.edu>
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 35

In article <1991Mar27.033317.23763@cs.uoregon.edu>, akm@obelix.cs.uoregon.edu
(Anant Kartik Mithal) says:

>[...]
>I feel (MHO) that an application like Word (substitute your favourite
>'major' application here) is so complex to use that just a consistent
>user interface will not be enough to "master" the application.  [...]

There's a crucial point here, though -- the time required to achieve
*basic* proficiency at a Mac application is vastly lessened as soon
as the user has learned just one from scratch.  Since the user interface
paradigm is strictly enforced (except in Microsoft apps :-), basic
editing skills, etc. are easily transferred when learning your way
around new programs.

I have it on apparently reputable word (from William Woody et alia)
that the user interface guidelines for Windows are not as rigorously
defined as those for the Mac; they seem more a set of suggestions
than the N Commandments.  Some time ago, Apple realized that "drift"
in developers' use of the interface tools provided with the Mac was
causing damage to the inter-program skill transferral I mentioned
above, and began publishing its Human Interface Guidelines (and
started spreading rumors about the User Interface Thought Police :-).

I'd be very interested in knowing how different the user interfaces
for, say, WordPerfect and Microsoft Word are under Windows 3.0.  These
are two very popular applications that have extremely different command-
key usages in their straight DOS versions; how have they converged in
translation to Windows?

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