folta@tove.umd.edu (Wayne Folta) (09/02/89)
One of the nice things about a Mac is being able to have nifty sampled sounds
for the beep. I would like to suggest how this fun feature can be expanded
to give a BIG user-interface advantage over Apple's competitors.
Here is the situation that got me thinking about it: I got MacRecorder and
went wild recording various short sounds for my beep. After I was done,
I found that most of them were recorded with an error in mind ("Uh-Oh!",
"You can't do that!", crashing glass, etc.). BUT--and here is the crux of
the issue--SysBeep is used in a lot of situations other than errors.
I suggest that SysBeep (I think this is the proper routine's name) should take
an argument:
BEEP_USER_ERROR The action a user has attempted is an error
BEEP_SYS_ERROR An error has occurred in doing what the user requested
BEEP_ATTENTION The user's attention is required
BEEP_SUCCESS A long-running operation has successfully completed
etc.
As an example, say I am running a communications program. I request a
download and then turn to read a book. My modem loses carrier, so
I hear the BEEP_SYS_ERROR message. I reconnect and start the download again;
this time it succeeds, and I hear BEEP_SUCCESS. I decide to do a disk
backup, and every time it needs a new diskette inserted, I hear BEEP_ATTENTION.
An unformattable diskette would be signaled by BEEP_SYS_ERROR. A locked
disk might be signaled by a BEEP_USER_ERROR, though I would picture this
sound as being more direct, as when a user clicks somewhere he or she shouldn't.
Without this extension, the Mac beep is an amusing (and endearing) feature,
but it is no more meaningful than IBM's stupid beep. Not only that, it
can be misleading... For example, my mother would be quite disconcerted
to hear "Uh Oh!", when nothing was actually wrong.
Wayne Folta (folta@tove.umd.edu 128.8.128.42)geoff@pmafire.UUCP (Geoff Allen) (09/06/89)
In article <19388@mimsy.UUCP> folta@tove.umd.edu.UUCP (Wayne Folta) writes: >I suggest that SysBeep (I think this is the proper routine's name) should take >an argument: > > BEEP_USER_ERROR The action a user has attempted is an error > BEEP_SYS_ERROR An error has occurred in doing what the user requested > BEEP_ATTENTION The user's attention is required > BEEP_SUCCESS A long-running operation has successfully completed > etc. [examples of how this would work deleted] It would be nice to have a feature like this in MacMoney. When you do a "Reconcile Account" in MacMoney, you get a beep a split second before the dialog appears that either tells you, "Congratulations! You and the bank agree." or "Your balance is greater [less] than the bank's by ______ ... " Every time I hear that silly beep, my heart stops. I tend to associate a beep with something wrong. And I can think of many things I'd rather do than go through my statement item by item to figure out what's wrong. I think it would be great if MacMoney would give different sounds -- one to indicate success and one to indicate that something is wrong. They wouldn't need to be cute*, just different, and able to communicate the idea of sucess or failure. * In fact, I get tired of cute sounds REALLY quickly! -- Geoff Allen - WINCO Computer Process Engineering {uunet,bigtex}!pmafire!geoff <or> ucdavis!egg-id!pmafire!geoff Disclaimer: WINCO doesn't believe in Macs, so of course these are my views.