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Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!utcsstat!laura
From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Menus, forms, commands etc.
Message-ID: <1090@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Sep-83 03:37:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1090
Posted: Tue Sep 20 03:37:48 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Sep-83 10:00:54 EDT
References: ulysses.611, <2415@csu-cs.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 42

I do not have my copy of "the Starcrossed" here right now, so if anyone
wants to correct my quotes, go right ahead, I am doing this from memory.
"The Starcrossed" is by Ben Bova, and it describes the debacle that
began as an attempt to produce a Canadian science fiction tv series,
and ended up as "The Starlost" about the funniest sf series because it
is so poorly done. 10 times as bad a Space 2001... really, really, bad.

Now who was involved in this mess? Harlan Ellison. I have heard him tell
this story at a con, and Bova has recorded it for all posterity, but I
may have the words wrong...

At any rate, Ellison goes to the prop room where people are building
spaceship models. And the models have fins, and other attachments that
are obviously designed for travel in an atmosphere.

Ellison says "Look you morons, this film is taking place in SPACE.
Where there is NO AIR. These fins are stupid!"

The nearest prop-maker replies "But the fins look SPIFFO!".

This is one of the things that I see in some menu/help/whatever systems.
The same people who are designing the help facility also want to
make it 'Spiffo'. The wants lots of diagrams, and cute messages...

the problem is that there is a certain amount of CPU time spend in
printing long informative messages, and a LOT involved in repainting
an elabourate screen. And it looks spiffo! but most days i wonder
if it is really worth it. Yesterday I saw a full-screen spiffo
spelling corrector. Bells, music, 3 screen colours, pictures and 
pop-up dictionary pages. Real spiffo. But all i want is a mechanism
to list all my spelling errors, and a way to give me a chance to globally
change them to something else. Quickly. And it would be several orders
of magnitude faster if it didn't bother to hoot and wave at me. i am
well aware that I am one of the lousiest spellers ever to use the program,
and see no need to be reminded of the fact...

This program is a CAI program that may be used to teach spelling somewhere.
I guess the emphasis was on 'fun to use'. This in not compatible with
my aims -- fast to use and quiet to use would be on my list.

laura creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura