Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!uwm.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think!barmar
From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Some Human Interface (was: System Error = 03)
Message-ID: <33777@news.Think.COM>
Date: 8 Feb 90 03:23:12 GMT
References: <1990Feb4.224159.26586@athena.mit.edu> <2820@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu> <886@gistdev.gist.com>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
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In article <886@gistdev.gist.com> joe@gistdev.gist.com (Joe Brownlee) writes:
>The Mac interface has many features which make it superior to others, but
>when it comes to its error handling, I just don't think ID=03 is acceptable.

Chuq answered from the technical perspective.  I think it could also be
argued that this is reasonable human interface.

Most situations that result in bombs or sad macs involve aspects of the
system that are above the head of most computer users.  They have to do
with executing invalid opcodes, corruption of the heap, miscalling system
routines, etc.  The translations of these bomb id's are things like
"Segment Loader Error".  In general, the textual translation would be no
more meaningful to the user than the numeric one.  And so what if the user
knows what the error is?  There's still nothing he or she can do about it;
it's a bug in the program or OS.

What's worse, the user might think they understand the error if it were in
English.  However, this could be based on misinterpreting the technical
terms that would necessarily be included (unless you can think of
non-jargony ways to report the kinds of errors that result in bombs).
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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