Dear List:
I was going to post on the subject of wordwrap. I set out to analyse
when it worked and when it did not and I could not make it work!
Hello...now it is working. Deep mysteries. The ctrl/T toggle does not
seem to always bring back word wrap after you have lost it.
So, being in a very bad mood after losing a few hours of CAD work by
failing to negotiate a nest of menus correctly I want to have a general
bitch about not the grammar in postings to the list, but the grammar
incorporated in software.
I realise the reason I detest win95 so much is that the GUI has all but
destroyed natural grammar. Even in a graphical interface there is a
grammar of distinction between places and actions, and a time line of
where you have been. It really upsets me when I cant distinguish between
an exe, a directory and a file. Also It bothers me when things are
behind things, or in wrappers.
I write to extol the vitues of millennium old inventions such as word
order, alphabetical order, dating, and systematic name attributes,
called inflection in the overlooked dicipline of grammar.
I find I like the Arachne interface because the hot keys are always
verbs, the arrow keys are always time line, and the ikons are definitely
buttons which you push - more verbs.
Nouns are well handled when you are in the shift/F2 mode.
I have inordinate difficulty with utilities like pkunzip which defies
the grammar of maths: function(input)=output
I realise that such an international program as Arachne will have
trouble in following the differing gramatical conventions of different
languages - for example the Indonesians just next door use post
qualification rather than pre qualification like in English, so you sort
of have to think backwards!
My pet hate is abreviated menu entries like "copy" "save" "OK" "esc" etc
where you want to know crucial details like; is copy a noun or a verb?
Does it mean write or read? "Save" is such a fraught command that I
always look for a "save as" and then completely specify to a new file
name! I even struck a program last night that had "copy" appearing at
different levels in the menu tree, and doing different things!
http://www.nimnet.asn.au/~kali
