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Re: "The Debian exim 4 packages suck badly" on exim-users@exim.org



On Fri, Feb 18, 2005 at 06:02:00AM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 17, 2005 at 09:04:59PM -0600, Donald J Bindner wrote:
> > When you compile a kernel and check the help on a module, you'll
> > never find "If unsure, don't say Y."  Something to think about...
> 
> That's because the string is "If unsure, say N".
> 
> asuffield@cyclone:/usr/src/linux-2.6.10$ grep unsure * -r | grep Kconfig | egrep -c "say '?Y"
> 148
> asuffield@cyclone:/usr/src/linux-2.6.10$ grep unsure * -r | grep Kconfig | egrep -c "say '?N"
> 366
> 
> So much for that theory. Testing it took no more than a couple of
> minutes; you could have done that yourself and saved us all the time
> of a couple of mails.

I think you may have missed his point. One of the principles of good UI
design is that you never almost never want to tell someone what *not* to
do, if it is is a situation where telling them what *to* do is equally
meaningful (and in this case, it is; "If unsure, say N" and "If unsure,
don't say Y" mean the same thing for a Y/N question).

The reasons for it are long and not all that interesting unless you happen
to be interested in the field, and I'm too tired to go dig up a good
reference on Google, but I'm fairly sure one could be found without too
much difficulty.

Whether 'Y' or 'N' is the correct default is irrelevant; there is a good
reason the string is "If unsure, say *" rather than being "If unsure, don't
say *".
-- 
Joel Aelwyn <fenton@debian.org>                                       ,''`.
                                                                     : :' :
                                                                     `. `'
                                                                       `-

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