On Wed, 7 Jul 2004, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> As happens more often than not, we agree far more than described: > > Everything you wrote is spot-on, but the "bonus information" is an > inherent byproduct of any index that shows more than one related item, > and should not necessarily be limited to paper. --Possibly, maybe even probably; but most studies contrast the two. > Given the ways humans handle paper it wouldn't be surprising if > paper-based indices scored slightly higher if only because people are > accustomed to slowing down when working with paper. But the principle > should appy well for indices in general regardless of the media used for > display. --I hear you that it "should"... One problem may be that people have had a good hundred years or more usage of printed indices (go back much more than that and having an index is an iffy proposition, which turns out to be a real drag in historical research) and that this collective usage has codified the purpose and arrangement of a printed index (as well as our expectation that printed materials aught to have them). Hence, we don't have to learn how to use them each time we encounter them. But this isn't the case yet with online search capabilities (do I use "+" or "AND"? "-", "OR", or "NOT"? quotation marks or no quotation marks?). > Again, this is not to suggest that printed manuals have no unique value. > They do, and even though most major software companies are migrating > to electronic documentation I agree that it's important to offer print > as an option. --And, again, a funny anecdote: when we discuss this in my class (paper versus online viewing/retrieval of information), all the CS majors will argue vehemently that online is preferable/superior. But when I ask them how many of them actually use the online documentations versus printed documentations, almost to a person they don't use online docs and they do use printed docs. Go figure. Again, usage habits may come into play: With printed material, we can paperclip/dog-ear pages for future reference; we can scribble in the margins, highlight text, etc. etc. Alot of online docs also have inherent spatial disorientation problems (how many of use "know" that a certain piece of info we're looking for is on the right page as opposed to the left page? At the top versus the middle or bottom of the page? Towards the beginning/middle/end of the book?). For online docs to approach the usability of printed docs, there's also the issue of machine logic versus human "logic" ;-) Our fuzzy gray matter can deal with misspellings (machine's mostly cannot without alot of extra programming involved) and with card = page = screen types of understandings (although the "see also" helps alot in this case I rather suspect). With standardization and continued usage of online information search and retrieval, perhaps some of these problems will be ameliorated. Judy _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
