On Fri, 08 Sep 2006 17:45:48 +0100, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> __/ [ John Bailo ] on Friday 08 September 2006 17:42 \__
>
>> The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
>>
>>> I have to agree also with Steve Woz -- or was it Jobs? --
>>> in which a computer should be as simple to use as a
>>> toaster,
>>
>> That is one of the biggest fallacies in the history of technologies.
>>
>> There is no rational reason that a computer should be "easy to use".
>>
>> Computers perform at the edge of every human capability: writing,
>> knowledge, thought, mathematics, science.
>>
>> Are these things /easy/?
>>
>> Or take the emotive side: communities, personality, popularity, dating,
>> relationships.
>>
>> Are these things easy? Yet computers are in constant use by people for
>> these things.
>>
>> Or how about gaming?
>>
>> Games are ever and ever more complex. It's not possible for someone to
>> sit down at a computer and "play WOW". He'd be booted out the
>> community. Likewise, it took me days and weeks of play to be able to
>> really participate in an UT2004 Onslaught battle.
>>
>> Yes, I think there should be a more /gradated/ scale of use: easy
>> interfaces for easy things. But trying to make everything on a
>> computer *easy* is a Fool's Quest.
>
> I find this observation very interesting. I have been arguing for a while
> that in order for a professional document to be produced, a proper
> typesetting launaguage must be used, at an abstract level or using some raw.
> Certain information must be embedded by the user rather than be guessed
> automatically (e.g. structure semantics). For that reason, WYSIWYG
> paradigms, while supposedly simple, produce some of the worst Web sites and
> poorest documents. The fact that their adopters choose the wrong tools does
> not help the quality of the content either.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Roy
Only a Linux kook like Roy Schestowitz could micro-analyze the process of
writing a letter.
The rest of the world sits down, starts MS Word and starts in typing.
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