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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!grand!day
From: day@grand.UUCP (Dave Yost)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer,comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: DTS and Compatibility (Was: MF)
Message-ID: <489@grand.UUCP>
Date: 21 Apr 89 17:48:38 GMT
References: <1562@neoucom.UUCP> <28399@apple.Apple.COM> <3637@brunix.UUCP> <1304@internal.Apple.COM> <3918@brunix.UUCP> <28878@apple.Apple.COM> <378@lloyd.camex.uucp> <28942@apple.Apple.COM> <29046@apple.Apple.COM> <381@lloyd.camex.uucp>
Reply-To: day@grand.UUCP (Dave Yost)
Organization: Grand Software, Inc., Los Angels, CA 213-650-1089
Lines: 29

In article <381@lloyd.camex.uucp> kent@lloyd.UUCP (Kent Borg) writes:
>*My* mother just started using a new Mac Plus.  She had a terrible
>time getting the thing to print. ... >She looked in the MindWrite manual.
>She looked in the ImageWriter manual (couple years old).
>Finally she looked in the Mac manual and discovered the Chooser.
>
>Conclusion: Things are plenty complicated already.  Be very careful
>about incremental changes which help a local problem but might break
>the larger interface.  User interfaces are complicated things.
>
>Kent Borg

Which leads into one of my favorite soapbox derbies:

True, but another way to look at this case history
is that she couldn't find the answer to her question
quickly enough in the manuals.  The solution is for
manuals to provide a fanatically complete and annotated
index.  That is, an index whose mission is to field *any*
question you might have that is answered in the book.
Most indeces are about 1/4 what they should be, I
believe.  The model we should all emulate is the index
in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.  Every quotation is
indexed by every key word or thought in it, and you are
never given just a raw page number; you always get some
context with it so you can tell if the page number has
what you are looking for.

 --dave yost