Standards Update, USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee

[Moderator, John S. Quarterman]

From: Doug Gwyn <uunet!smoke.brl.mil!gwyn>

In article <671 at longway.TIC.COM> From: decot at hpda.uucp (Dave Decot)
>One of the primary motivations for POSIX.2a is the desire to have a
>standard set of utilities that a user can learn once, and thereafter
>be a "portable user" of those utilities.

Utilities designed for END USERS, as opposed to those designed for
programmers, should be such that they are very easy to learn.

>Prospective employers can already ask employees whether they "know MSWord,
>Lotus, and MacPaint", because those are industry-standard utilities.

Apart from MacPaint, they don't have well-designed user interfaces either.
Most Mac software can be immediately used with NO TRAINING by almost
anyone at all familiar with general characteristics of that environment.
Trying to standardize details of specific applications within an easy-to-use
environment would seem pretty much a waste of time.  Conversely, trying to
standardize details of a hard-to-use interface would also seem to be a waste
of time, since people who would most benefit from that would benefit even
more from having a decent user interface instead!

Volume-Number: Volume 19, Number 109