rmc@cca.UUCP (Mark Chilenskas) (12/06/83)
In one of the follow-up articles on long names, the author pointed
out that using regular, short, mnemonic commands was superior to longer,
more spelled-out commands. The example given was that it was easy for a
reasonably experienced user to note the regularity in the compiler
commands cc, cp and ct. I thought this was especially interesting as cp
means copy on our local 4.1b system.
This is an example of overly cryptic command names. Even a person
writing an article explaining the regularity can't keep things straight
because there are too many possible commands that the abbreviation might
stand for. Things seem to go easier when the "true" command names are
longer and more descriptive but can be abbreviated down to the shortest
non-ambiguous beginning. TOPS-20 does this well by beeping if the
command is still ambiguous and allowing you o type `?' to determine the
available options. However it does not (as mentioned before) help to
find the name of a particular facility. For that you need an apropos
and/or a comprehensive help facility.
Which brings us to a problem with pop up menus. True, they give you
the options available at the point where the cursor is pointing, but it
is not always clear where your cursor should point for a particular
operation. For example, in the Symbolics mail system, it is not always
possible to delete or reply to a message - one must be pointing to the
proper part of the message header. Clearly, there must be a "help"
or apropos available to let a confused user (regardless of expert,
casual, or beginning status) find out where to move the cursor to delete
unwanted messages.
The lesson appears to me to be that there is no level of help, no
degree of verbosity that is "correct" in any sense of the word. A
continuum must be available to all users all the time. Then the expert
can be reminded in the middle of the command line that the protection
flags come first and the file name comes last in chmod. The casual user
can `help protection'or whatever and discover that chmod is the command
to change file protections. The first time user can `help protection
all' and find out what file protection means. And so forth.
R Mark Chilenskas
chilenskas @ CCA-VMS
decvax!cca!rmc