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Subject:Re: What *is* user-friendly... From:Wolf Lahti <wduby -at- PACCAR -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 22 Jan 1996 09:32:45 -0800
Rick Lippincott said
>I tend to agree with WandaJane. For me, the term "user friendly" simply means
>"easy to use." A document does not have to contain cartoons, smiley faces,
>or pointing characters in order to be easy to use. In fact, as we all know,
>a manual could be -loaded- with these things yet still incomprehensible and
>useless for explaining procedures.
On the other hand, a well-done cartoon (and they are admitedly few and far
between) can aid imeasurably in imparting knowledge (See Gonick's _Cartoon
Guide to Genetics_ for an excellent example. His _Cartoon Guide to Physics_
was far less effective, suffering primarily from a lack of editing.)
>I don't need a wacky index, I need a nice, thick, clearly written index
>that links back to headings that match the feature names.
I agree this is a need, but it is a need I have yet to see fulfilled.
Everyone seems to treat indexing as some arcane art whereas it is a very
straightforward, albeit tedious, task. I'd like to find even one book
related to computing that has a decent index!
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"I hate quotations!"
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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