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From: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (David Phillip Oster)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: What is .Bout for?!?
Message-ID: <21203@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Thu, 8-Oct-87 14:00:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.21203
Posted: Thu Oct  8 14:00:57 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Oct-87 09:16:28 EDT
References: <870003@hpcilzb.HP.COM>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (David Phillip Oster)
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley
Lines: 62

In article <870003@hpcilzb.HP.COM> tedj@hpcilzb.HP.COM (Ted Johnson) writes:
>Could someone please tell me what a .Bout file is for?  A plain
>document icon called .Bout appears every now and then in a folder full

You've uncovered a bug in someone's software. The name ".BOut" not ".Bout"
would cause the serial driver (printer port) to be opened for ouput. Driver
names, unlike filenames, are case significant.

The Macintosh User Interface Guidlines state that users should not be
allowed to create files with leading "." characters in their names.
For example, if the user tried to save a file as ".Sony", it could
open the floppy drive as a raw device and destroy the directory.  Most
programs have a bug in that they don't check for this and tell the user to
type a different name, one without a leading ".".

By the way, on the subject of saving files, I was talking to a niave
user the other day, and she was confused by the error message "The
disk is full, please use a different disk." She said, "I hit 'Save', I
don't understand." I told her that if you selected "Save As..." she
would get buttons to change drives and eject disks.  

I got to thinking about her confusion. Two points to make:

1.) Software that confuses people is buggy in the user interface.

I also went back to all of my software and rewrote the error handler
so if the error condition calls for using a different disk, or
ejecting the disk to change the position of the write protect tab, it
automatically falls into Save As, with a diagnostic message dialog
window on the screen below the Save As... (SFPutFile) window.

It would be nice if other developers did the same.

----------------------

2.) Rule of Thumb: The real people who use our software are dumber
that you would possibly believe.

That isn't really true. Really they are busy, interested in something
else, and they don't have decades of computer reflexes built up. They
find computers useful, but not interesting enough to want to learn
about computers instead of use that learning time to do something
else.  They are violently frightened of making a disastrous mistake,
and from their point of view disastrous mistakes happen to them all
the time.

They don't understand the word "debugging" and don't have the skills
the word implies for coping with misbehaving systems.

They turn in bug reports like "It is refusing to print Chapter 2."
instead of "The 'Print File' printer scroll file wants to be larger
than the amount of free space on my system drive. How do I get the
software to use smaller disk temporary files or write the print file
to a different drive?"

Cultivate a few naive user friends. You'll learn about flaws in your
software designs that your internal mental processes for coping with
computers filter out before they reach your conscious mind.

--- David Phillip Oster            --A Sun 3/60 makes a poor Macintosh II.
Arpa: oster@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu --A Macintosh II makes a poor Sun 3/60.
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