Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!YALEMED!STONE From: STONE@YALEMED.BITNET Newsgroups: bit.listserv.info-gcg Subject: RE: The lost users Message-ID: Date: 7 Feb 90 15:35:00 GMT Sender: "INFO-GCG: Univ. of Wisconsin Genetics Analysis Software Discussion" Reply-To: STONE@YALEMED Lines: 29 Approved: NETNEWS@PSUVM Gateway X-VMS-To: IN%"info-gcg@utoronto" Mike Yablonsky writes: >I have a suggestion for you to think about. I have seen some nice >shells written for the GCG package. Why aren't they incorporated >into the package??? Are these taboo??? I would suggest an effort to >develop the user interface (perhaps through a shell) to encourage the >beginning user. Meet the user half way. Keep your ability to modfiy >the package and therefore the advantages of that flexibility but do >something for the user. As users get more involved they may dig into >the help or manuals. Users with experience will find their way >somehow. What you have to do is get them the experience to reach >that point. Hear - Hear .... GCG must do something to accomadate the novice or occasional user. The Information for New Users section in the manual is a start, but what would be more helpful is a version of the program manual for the novice. GCG should include plain english explanations of all questions and command line switchs for all of it's programs. These explanations should tell the user what the answers mean to the problem at hand. Lisa Caballero recently explaned the meaning of the, "Integrate how many adjacent diagonals?" question in GELOVERLAP and WORDSEARCH. Her explanation was accurate and extremely usefull. Since, even the newest user could understand the important role of the answer to the stringency of search. Explanations such as Lisa's should be incorporated into a GCG manual. Maybe there should be a new Tutorial Manual... ____________________________________________________________________________ Lynna Stone-Infeld, User Support Specialist STONE@YALEMED.BITNET Biomedical Computing Unit, Yale Univ., Sch. of Med., New Haven, CT, 06510 My opinions are my own!