Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Le dimanche 19 novembre 2006 à 10:53 +0200, Avi Kivity a écrit : > > Nicolas Mailhot wrote: [...] > I've never encountered one person actively using application help. Even > some who "did" find one answer there once upon a time only use it at > last resort when googling fails. That is because the application help is usually completely unsearchable (or you want to search for "change background color" while it is documented under "reconfigure wallpaper" or "define theme", or it has a list of functions and you want to know how to compute something specific). "Help" is (as anyone who as taught somewhen) first about understanding what the user wants, finding out what their misconceptions are, and then pointing them in the right direction. As long as AI remains as primitive as it is today, you'll at best get Clippy. > Application help is a need-to-have thing required in the function matrix > corps use before buying software, but the way it's structured makes it > rather useless (and no I've got no magic bullet either) Problem is that it requires /thousands/ of different organizations, each tailored for a morass of different tasks. [...] > A GUI can be good or bad. Most GUI programs have the same strengths and > weaknesses. A common GUI weakness is configuration settings. Another is > the help system. That does not mean for other everyday operations the > GUI is not a good choice. Just that on average, users choose not to use > the GUI config or help system because on average it's hopelessly > botched. GUIs are usually easier to learn and use for simple tasks, for complex tasks they are hopeless. And the help system for CLI is usually also very bad, but CLI user expectations are normally lower. -- Dr. Horst H. von Brand User #22616 counter.li.org Departamento de Informatica Fono: +56 32 2654431 Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria +56 32 2654239 Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile Fax: +56 32 2797513 -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
