Hi, On Tue, Aug 05, 2003 at 09:55:59AM -0700, Ian Hickson wrote: [SNIP] > Why can't we instead have nice friendly messages? e.g.: > > Startup logging has begun. Log will be stored in '/var/log/boot'. > > ...instead of "bootlogd". [SNIP] > > Error messages are there for people who know what they need to do. > > So if I do something wrong (like get the command line arguments to > 'apt-get' wrong, as I did), then I don't deserve to be helped by the > program? What would be wrong with a helpful message, such as: > > apt-get: the first argument should be one of 'install', 'remove', 'update', or another operation > > ...instead of just "E: Invalid operation foo"? [SNIP] > How about a message such as: > > dselect: to select an installation source, superuser privileges are required (try logging in as root) > > It's still accurate, but now it's helpful as well, and uses a more > friendly voice. (This also changes "access method" to "installation > source", which makes more sense to me.) You know, I think these are actually good suggestions. I think there's a lot to be gained *not* by dumbing down, *not* by losing any information that might be useful to a geek or to a new user as (s)he's learning, but by phrasing texts so that they appeal more to generally intelligent human beings, rather than to people that just happen to have some specific knowledge. Apple has a great way of doing that. They don't dumb down, they don't belittle you, they assume an intelligent being who can grasp reasonably complex English sentences, but who has less knowledge of computer idiom. I think this is an area in which software can be improved without scaring the geeks with offensive 'my first Sony' UIs, teletubby landscapes, informationless error messages, and stupid attempts to fix things behind the users back (simply displaying expired pages from a cache for instance). Indeed, Microsoft gets it all wrong, from a UI standpoint. But instead of assuming that we are pushed in that scary direction when someone complains about our UI, we may also realise that there are things that can actually be improved, without harming Unix's strong points, UI-wise. I fully agree with the poster that increasing the number of intelligent and intelligible English sentences that we output is one of those things that can be done without harming the hacker in any way. Of course, like any enhancement, it needs a volunteer who can scratch his or her itch by doing this work. This may actually be one of the bigger problems. Most developers who can do the work have gotten used to the idiom and badly worded error messages. Cheers, Emile. -- E-Advies - Emile van Bergen emile@e-advies.nl tel. +31 (0)70 3906153 http://www.e-advies.nl
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