From: Paula_Lieberman@amicol.UUCP (Paula Lieberman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.multimedia
Subject: Re: CDTV & No Manuals Gripe
Distribution: world
Date: 7 Jan 93 21:09:16 EDT
Organization: Amiga Colony BBS


In a message dated Tue  6 Jan 93  9:38, Steven_hurdle@amusers.uucp (steven 
wrote:

 comp.sys.amiga.multimedia
 S> Subject: Re: CDTV & No Manuals Gripe
S> Message-ID: <Steven_Hurdle.00ur@amusers.UUCP>
 message dated Sun  4 Jan 93  2:44, King@snoc01.enet.dec.com
 S> (randall K
 S> wrote:

 KK> OK. I'll be an honest maverick. Although I love the CDTV for its PD
 KK> Fish
 KK> via PARNET, the lack of documentation is a turnoff for normal people.

 KK> Simcity for example. We didnt have the original on floppy, so the ROM
 KK> is 
 KK> all we had. My daughter sat down excited to get into it, turned it
 KK> on,
 KK> and wanted to know some reasonable things like. Whats the objective?
 KK> What kind of strategies are there? All she got on the help screens
 KK> was
 KK> hieroglyphic pictures and points on various photographs.  She
 KK> wandered
 KK> around cities pointlessly for a while, and has abandoned it since.
 KK> Strike 1.

 S> You obviously aren't paying attention at all.  Whip-out the case that
 S> Sim
 S> City came in.  Open it up.  What looks like just an inner-sheet on the
 S> front of the case to tell you the title of the game is actually a
 S> rather
 S> well-done booklet.  Had your daughter read this I suspect she'd get a
 S> pretty good idea of what her goals should be.  Most CDTV discs I have
 S> have
 S> manuals inside the cases like this.

 KK> Then my good lady wanted to random play an audio CD. Wheres the
 KK> instructions?
 KK> On the welcome disk. 10 minutes later she has waded through all the
 KK> American
 KK> voices to find something that on our real CD is the push of a button.
 KK> She's not going back and doing anything else fancy again.
 KK> Strike 2.

 S> I guess this is valid.  I hadn't thought that this would be a problem.
 S>  It
 S> all seemed pretty self-explanatory to me and I think Commodore
 S> designed
 S> those screens quite well.  I never had to consult the welcome disc to
 S> figure it out.  If nothing else, a little bit of experimentation would
 S> have
 S> easily shown what it all does.

 S> I also think Grollier's Electronic Encyclopaedia was intuitively
 S> designed
 S> and I've never had to consult the help function.

Different people do things/remember things differently.  I played with a
CDTV at a dealer's for a few minutes, and really was annoyed at the
presumption of not providing -written- directions for people who want to be
able to LOOK at the instructions WHILE doing something, as opposed to NOT
being able to have the instructions available EXCEPT by getting out of the
applications one is in and jumping through lots of hoops to get back to the
specific screen on the Welcome CD.  I thought it spectacularly idiotic and
presumptuous.  I know what my memory is -- put instructions on-screen, and
then take them away, and forget it -- I definitely WILL have forgotten
them!  What you see is what you get, out of sight out of mind....... the
Security Office at a place I worked knew all about my bad memory. There
were these safe combinations which I was always forgetting..... 

[another example is my gripes about DLG and screen editors......]
 S> Steven Hurdle <==> The Swindler                [public replies only
 S> please]
 S> Writer of "Virtual Rumours", a rumour/news column in some club
 S> newsletters.
 S> Coming to you from Victoria B.C., the Bahamas of Canada:  via
 S> SupraFAX!!!!!

 S>                      "Give me AGA, or give me DEATH!!!"

-- Via DLG Pro v0.992

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