questions from using lint

[Henry Spencer]

> There IS a lot of knowledge about user interaction;

Far too little to be of a lot of use.  Even something as simple as how to
best handle over-long lines (wrap them around?  leave a continuation marker
on the right margin and allow horizontal scrolling?  and a dozen details of
approach for each of those) does not appear to have been studied at all.
(If this particular issue has been studied, please cite references --
I'd love to know about them.  Note that I'm talking about comparative
studies, with numeric results, not just "we did it this way and we're glad".)

> like structured software development, however, few
> practitioners appear to have bothered to study it.

For another example of lack of study, look at the March 85 CACM and a paper
in CHI 83 by the same folks:  few practitioners make ANY ATTEMPT to get real
user input on how the software should behave.  Let alone major input like
real, numeric-result experiments on prototypes to find out what the user
really needs/wants.  Very few practitioners even mention it as a significant
step, when asked about their methodology.  Is it any wonder that much of
their software isn't usable until Release 2 or 3?
-- 
Usenet(n): AT&T scheme to earn
revenue from otherwise-unused	Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
late-night phone capacity.	{allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry