Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!iuvax!mailrus!bbn!bbn.com!levin
From: levin@bbn.com (Joel B Levin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Some Human Interface (was: System Error = 03)
Message-ID: <51903@bbn.COM>
Date: 8 Feb 90 15:21:40 GMT
References: <1990Feb4.224159.26586@athena.mit.edu> <2820@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu> <886@gistdev.gist.com> <33777@news.Think.COM>
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Reply-To: levin@BBN.COM (Joel B Levin)
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In article <33777@news.Think.COM> barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
|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.  . . .
|		 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. . .
|
|What's worse, the user might think they understand the error if it were in
|English. . .

This is all true, and I agree with it, but I think there is a
perception that the user would be happier with a message like "Bus
error" or "Segment not found" than with "System error 01".  It is
indeed not more useful to the user to see such a message, but it is
easier for the user to remember when getting help for the problem, and
I suspect it is psychologically more satisfying.  More documentation
for the necessarily arcane things like sadMacs should be in the back
of the Macintosh user manual, however.

If you are in a position to provide more useful information and help
(Larry's description of the MacApp error handling capability is an
excellent example) there is no excuse for not doing so, on the other
hand.  In a SysErr, this is generally not possible.  (And a well
written program reduces the odds of getting that far consdierably.)

	/JBL
=
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