From: julian@sdf.lonestar.org (P. Julian Eby)
Subject: User interface, News, Mail, et al
Summary: Why so many interfaces, prompts, etc.?
Organization: Best lil' ol' Pubnix in Texas
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 17:48:10 GMT

I'm "alpha testing" my Waffle installation right now.  It has been very
frustrating at times dealing with the bewildering variety of user interfaces
for the different commands.

At the main menu, you type a command and press ENTER.  Ambiguous (internal)
commands are rejected with a message.  At the mail and news menus, ambiguous
commands are taken as the "safer" interpretation.  Some commands will take
parameters as if they had been entered at their submenu.  Others, like STATUS,
insist on the submenu.  The files section uses single, "hot" keystrokes, as
do the BROWSE and RN commands (neither of which commands are listed in any of
the reference docs, they are instead referred to obliquely in the 
documentation of other commands).  And none of these varied interfaces give
any indication to the user of the differences between them in their default
prompts.  Some of the worst offenders, like the JOIN and STATUS prompts, 
cannot be changed at all!  Need I mention the way that ADD and DELETE on both
the JOIN *and* UNJOIN menus perform exactly the same function, namely adding
the group if you're not joined and deleting if you are?  Aaaaagh!

To make matters worse, there are user options which the user is never asked
for, and cannot set, such as the number of lines per screenful.

Are there any plans to address these issues in future versions of Waffle?
The FUTURE.DOC mentions the files section menu as a target, which I find
ironic since that's one of the few parts of the interface that has a good
"feel" to it, and a little menu/prompt manipulation should give it a good
"look" as well.  I've worked up a way to create restricted access INFO trees,
and most of the commands aren't bothersome.  It's just that some of the
potentially highest use areas are some of the most confusing (i.e. the mail
and news systems).  I'll be replacing the default line editor with M. Kimes'
LINEED or something similar, so I don't care about its weirdnesses.

I've been looking at the e4w/pcelm package for mail, and some of the various
alternative newsreaders like SNEWS, RUSN, and NWREADER...  but so far every
last one seems to be designed for local PC use, NOT remote use.  Are there
any packages out there for that purpose?  I'd prefer not to have to use
DOORWAY or to roll my own.  I don't need anything complex, but user interfaces
along the lines of the Unix "elm" and "trn" (threaded version of "rn") would
be nice.

Ah well.  If I design my menus and help system well, I should be able to keep
my users' confusion to a minimum.  Since all the built-in prompts that expect
to have a "type line and press ENTER" response end in "?" marks, I'll make
all the configurable ones do the same, except for the "hotkey" ones which I'll
make something else.  Menus for things that accept ambiguous commands I'll do
something like:

A)gain - read article again
B)ack - go back one article
C)atch-up (skip remaining articles)

...etc...

CANCEL - cancel article just read


only a bit neater.
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Newsgroups: comp.bbs.waffle