Aucbvax.2189
fa.works
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!works
Thu Jul  9 04:40:44 1981
Re:  Contexts as Icons
>From obrien@RAND-UNIX Thu Jul  9 04:36:48 1981
     I hadn't really thought about this before, but the PLATO
computer-based education system does exactly this - it saves
state between terminal sessions.  It does this only for students,
though, not for "authors" (programmers).  I hadn't thought of it
before because PLATO is so strange that I really don't think of
it in terms of other computer systems.

     State-saving works but can't be done blindly.  It turns out
that almost all real applications ("lessons") require the author
to do his own state-saving so that the student doesn't come up
with no context, but is instead presented with a higher-level
frame that tells him where he was and presents some options.
Only blind drill-and-practice stuff can use full state-saving
at all usefully, and sometimes not even then.