[...] I've asked them if they want to go hourly, but there is resistance. [...]
You may wish to read the paper on motivation that's available at the following URL. I found it rather interesting. http://www.naggum.no/motivation.html kai
> One place where the toolkit and/or window mangler people could > really help is the slow, stupid, repetitious, non-searchable menu > paradigm. If I were to pick one thing after proper documentation, it > would be this. Maybe even before. You don't want each program to cope > with it. That's the wrong layer. OK, you've got me really curious. What do you think would be a good replacement for this?
Give each menu item a name, and then allow executing a menu item by name. Also provide a search facility across all item names. Also add documentation to each item which says what that item does and provide a facility to search that documentation. Windows users have the Start menu where they can browse the available programs, but there is also a `Run' item which allows you to enter a program name. (Sadly, there is no obvious correspondence between the items in the Start menu and the things you have to enter at the `Run' prompt.) Most Windows apps are also programmable I think, so each function in the menus has a name. I don't know if there is something which allows you to enter a function name and have it executed. This VBA stuff also allows for scripting, which is nice. (Caveat: I've never really used Windows, so this is all hearsay. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.) Emacs provides both menus and command names, and you can search in the command names and the command documentation. But the command is not always obvious from the menu entry. I use menus when I don't know what some software can do, so I browse the menus and can thus find out. But if/when I become proficient at a task, I prefer kbd shortcuts or command names. And I want the ability to script an app to provide my own commands for my own tasks. kai
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because I couldn't think of a good beginning.
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because I couldn't think of a good beginning.