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From: preece@uicsl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Re: expert-friendly: are long names - (nf)
Message-ID: <4246@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 30-Nov-83 20:50:23 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.4246
Posted: Wed Nov 30 20:50:23 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Dec-83 07:55:31 EST
Lines: 25

#R:watmath:-620600:uicsl:21500005:000:1118
uicsl!preece    Nov 30 09:30:00 1983

Who says the only choice is between names with no mnemonic value and
long, hard-to-type names? What's the matter with having a simple
command mapping mechanism that turns those long names into short ones
(or vice versa). When I can't remember the command I want, I use apropos
to find it. This doesn't take long and usually gets me what I want
in one probe.  It would be better, though, if it did multi-term
searching, so that the result list would be shorter.

I can't believe multi-component commands would be any use. Who can
remember the order of the components (the trivial example of
'compile-pascal' implying 'debug-pascal' is too simple; few
commands come in neat families like that)? Worse, who can be sure
of the individual components or which ones are needed (is it
'change-file-mode' or just 'change-mode')?

Best of all would be a heuristic command matcher that would first
try the command you entered, then try it as an argument to a command-
dictionary-lookup procedure, then try mis-spellings, and ask for
confirmation if it couldn't get a single, hard answer.

scott preece
ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsl!preece