Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!samsung!psuvax1!psuvm!MSHRI!CLARK From: clark@MSHRI.UTORONTO.CA Newsgroups: bit.listserv.info-gcg Subject: RE: How much HELP do we need ? Message-ID: <9002080547.AA03028@lash.utcs.utoronto.ca> Date: 8 Feb 90 05:47:41 GMT Sender: "INFO-GCG: Univ. of Wisconsin Genetics Analysis Software Discussion" Reply-To: clark@MSHRI.UTORONTO.CA Lines: 86 Approved: NETNEWS@PSUVM Gateway A few quick comments on Udo Hartlaub's message: /It might be that there are myriads of GCG-users round the world, who have no /access to networks (either because of missing knowledge or m:ssing /opportunity). There are 150 subscribers to this list, plus or minus a few. Anyone know how many sites use the GCG package? /Two years ago I have started to learn this programm without even knowing /what a directory is. This process worked - step by step - trial and /error - with not understandable helps from people who where just two steps /ahead - but in my eyes they were the real GCGurus. And I am still learning! /I guess that this is a typical situation. Maybe some beginners know people /who know more and who can help more than those I knew. Two years using the GCG package and haven't mastered it yet? Maybe it's kinda hard to learn? :^) /And I think that most people using GCG should be able to learn basic-VMS /even if there minds are fixed by MACs (machines you don't find as much outside /of Northamerica). I thought the best selling machine in Germany was the Atari ST. Have I been mislead? For those of you in the US who haven't seen one, it is very much like the Mac. /Reading the opinion of Stephen Clark (just as an example) I can't help /thinking: If the scientists in his institute are not willing to learn a /handful (maybe two handfuls) of VMS-commands have they ever learnt /what a output of programms as "peptidestructure" or "fold" means. Do they /know which alignment/comparison-programm is the best one for a special /question. Can I trust them if they write in a paper: there was no significant /sequence-homology to sequences of the xyz-database? I think it's fairly safe to say that you can't trust their interpretation of any computer analysis that's much more complicated than restriction enzyme mapping. (The reason it's safe for me to say this is because I haven't been successful in getting them to regard VMS mail as much more than a curiosity, so I know they won't be reading this newslist! Let me give you an example. A couple of weeks ago I showed one person [not only the head of lab, but the head of a division] how to use mail so he could retrieve the results of a fasta search that we had sent off to GenBank. The next day he asked me to get some information for him. About three days later he says, "What happened to those things you were going to find out for me?" Me: "I mailed them to you. On the VAX." Him: "Oh." Him, ten minutes later: "My password doesn't work anymore." Now of course not all people are like this, but the important thing to understand is that this is the kind of person that takes up so much of my time and is hopelessly frustrated by the GCG programs. But I am rambling.) /To make it easy the UWGCG-people /had the great idea to introduce some help on different levels, including /the definition of helpful symbols (for example the "up", "down", "home" /-commands). That`s all right and it helps really a lot. These kinds of symbols are the first ones I commented out of the start-up command procedure. I want people to understand what they're doing when they move around in the directory tree. If you don't understand directories and filenames, you're totally lost. Please let me know if you think I'm wrong in this regard. It just occurred to me that the reason Udo likes the GCG interface is because he only shows a few people how to use it, whereas I have to deal with many many more. Is this a realistic conclusion? Also, as Udo points out, probably the only people contributing to this discussion are those that are pretty well aquainted with VMS, the neophytes being oblivious to the whole thing, so we're missing the most important opinions of all! Stephen Clark clark@mshri.utoronto.ca (Internet) sinai@utoroci (Netnorth/Bitnet) "We should be quite remiss not to emphasize that despite the popularity of secondary structural prediction schemes, and the almost ritual performance of these calculations, the information available from this is of limited reliability. This is true even of the best methods now known, and much more so of the less successful methods commonly available in sequence analysis packages. Running a secondary structure prediction on a newly-determined sequence just because everyone else does so, is to be deplored, and the fact that the results of such predictions are generally ignored is insufficient justification for doing and publishing them." - Arthur Lesk, 1988