On Thursday, December 09, 2004 8:04 AM, Paul W. Frields wrote: > > The chief problem with the "less is more" approach is probably that > after repeated issuance, the impact is somewhat lessened. I > would think > almost any prompting system suffers similarly; prompts that are > successful at overcoming that factor probably fail usability tests (at > least with regard to the "user satisfaction" portion of those tests). > > The above example, and similar fixes, really only have impact when > viewed in contrast with the existing prompt, e.g. an su > session launched > from a user's normal prompt. In that case, the question becomes: How > much better is it to see the slightly longer $PS1, in addition to the > normal change of '$' to '#'? When one logs into the console or X as > root, on the other hand and this prompt is issued from start to finish > of the session -- or normal scrolling processes remove the > contrasting, > original prompt from view -- my bet would be that the user quickly > becomes used to the prompt, and it loses its effectiveness. > > Sorry to butt in, especially if this particular US$0.02 is redundant. > > -- > Paul W. Frields, RHCE > Perhaps you could just rig the keyboard to give the user a mild electric shock every couple of seconds. That would teach people to limit their root use. Matthew E. Lauterbach
