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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!grkermit!masscomp!trb
From: trb@masscomp.UUCP (Andy Tannenbaum)
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: A good human-factored user interface for postnews
Message-ID: <125@masscomp.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 26-Oct-83 09:17:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: masscomp.125
Posted: Wed Oct 26 09:17:34 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Oct-83 01:31:07 EDT
References: <464@cbosgd.UUCP>
Organization: MASSCOMP, Littleton, MA
Lines: 23

Mark Horton (and others after him) have been discussing the cognitive
engineering effects of having [567]+-2 options on the postnews
Distribution: field menu.  I don't believe that the rules of short
term memory chunking (?) should apply to this question.

The problem at hand is to choose a geographic region, or perhaps some
other region.  Let's say you had to choose a destination from a menu
list of counties or states or Bell Labs locations.  I could see having
a preliminary menu {county, state, BTL loc} which then dispatched you
to the submenu.  I can't see displaying only the [567]+-2 closest or
most populated states.  Similarly, Mark Horton suggested trimming a
potentially useful set of options to accommodate cognitive theory.

You coggers out there are stretching your theories a bit too thinly for
my tastes.  It's this kind of problem that creates the rift between
psychologists and people trying to get things done in the real world.

As long as I'm in town, I might as well mention that I agree that the
netnews group names should be separated into distribution and
category, so that my global flames would be posted to group: flame,
distribution: net (or world or whatever).

	Andy Tannenbaum   Masscomp Inc  Littleton MA   (617) 486-9581