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From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: net.text,net.unix
Subject: (Re:)^50 Use of ``vi'' for business office word-processing
Message-ID: <1413@bu-cs.bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: Tue, 23-Sep-86 16:23:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: bu-cs.1413
Posted: Tue Sep 23 16:23:20 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Sep-86 22:20:32 EDT
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
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Xref: mnetor net.text:1011 net.unix:5630


From: guy@sun.UUCP
>If nobody has anything to add that teaches us anything *new*,
>rather than merely providing further confirming instances in support of what
>(as stated here) we already know, further discussion seems pointless.

Ok, is this new?:

I'd like some references on experiments etc done in this area, surely
someone in the field of human factors engineering, psychology or theology
must have approached this question using some simple experimental models?

For example, I was told of a paper a while back done within Bell Labs
(probably late 70's) where they brought in some outside researchers to
measure some things about UNIX and some of the editors. If I remember
right they gathered a few different experience groups and plotted
learning curves for various tasks using UNIX/ed. This was repeated
using more mnemonic and less mnemonic commands (I believe they also
tried 'anti-mnemonic', that is, like having the command 'copy' delete
something.)  As I remember it was done at the request of some warring
groups w/in the Labs, some of which wanted to leave UNIX as is and
others who insisted that commands be made more mnemonic (I believe the
results of the paper were consistent with current history, it made
very little difference to the learning curves.)

Does anyone know of the whereabouts of this report? Similar things
they could recommend? It certainly doesn't have to be UNIX, just stuff
like O/A.

I presume a biblio coming out of this discussion will help make it all
worthwhile. I'll look around also.

	-Barry Shein, Boston University