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From: rem@remsit.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Request for human interface design anecdotes
Message-ID: <439@remsit.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-Oct-87 12:03:54 EST
Article-I.D.: remsit.439
Posted: Thu Oct 29 12:03:54 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Nov-87 09:56:48 EST
References: <3389@uw-june.UUCP>
Reply-To: rem@remsit.UUCP (Roger Murray)
Organization: REM's IT, Santa Monica, CA
Lines: 20
Keywords: human factors, interfaces

In article <3389@uw-june.UUCP> pattis@uw-june.UUCP (Richard Pattis) writes:
>In 1982 I was using the UCSD P-system editor.  After deciding to leave the
>editing environment, the user is asked to press a key to inform the machine
>what to do with the resulting file.  W means write it out; E means exit
>without saving - these keys are adjacent.  In 6 months of intensive work
>on this system I screwed up only once, after editing a few hours of text.

After working with UCSD Pascal on the Apple for a long time, a friend of mine
needed some help writing a program in Apple Pilot.  When I first took a look
at it, I noticed that it (the Pilot "system") was much like what I was used
to (the disk was crunched now and then, etc.).  In fact, the editor was the
same Pascal editor I had been using, except for one subtle but important
difference: ESC (abort insert) and CTRL-C (save insert) were switched.  If I
had a dime for every time I typed in a screenful of text, only to hit CTRL-C
and have it magically disappear...
-- 
Roger Murray

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