I don't have a whole lot to add to the meat of the discussion, but thought some might be amused by the following way my dog (a Boston Terrier) tries to "deceive." He sometimes wants to go for a longer walk than I do, so when we're getting close to home he pulls in the opposite direction. Of course, I say No, sharply, and direct him home. But he's also learned that if he needs to poop, I'll let him. So, nearing home, he heads for a tree and goes into a crouch, watching me all the time. When he thinks I'm sufficiently deceived, he stands up (without pooping of course -- he didn't really have to go) and starts pulling off in the opposite direction. He seems to think I'll have forgotten I'm actually headed home. I find this quite hilarious.
Someone else mentioned that when you point, a dog will look where you are pointing whereas a wolf will look at the finger. Some months ago I read an article about research on autism and its association with "mirror neurons" -- neurons (postulated, I think) that are responsible for appropriate mimicry: what it is that makes a baby imitate your facial expression when he can't see his own face in the mirror. Autistic children lack this ability, apparently, as do chimpanzees. It was also mentioned in the article that chimpanzees, unlike dogs, but apparently like wolves, will look at the finger (and not where you are pointing) when you point.
Hi, I develop computational chemistry apps. I'm now with Schrodinger, Inc., but back when I with Columbia University, I posted to the comp. chem. mailing list to find out what typical users felt about this. First, some background. I had been having some e-conversations with Lisa Balbes, a freelance tech. writer and consultant in GUI design for chemistry apps. She and I both very much liked printed manuals, and wanted to use the survey to bolster our position. Also part of the background was that printing the manuals was a major expense and logistical hassle. The prevalent feeling among the respondants was that supplying hard copy wasn't necessary. Most actually felt that on-line and HTML docs were sufficient, and that searchability was key to this. Some argued loudly that we shouldn't waste trees. On the other side were those who pointed out that you can't read HTML while riding on the bus or sitting on the pot, and that they liked to mark up their personal hard copies. But even those who liked hard copy said that it would suffice to supply online docs in a format that could be printed with TOC and index; examples of such format would be PDF and PostScript, but not html. Thus we concluded that we didn't actually have to supply the paper copy, but did need to supply the wherewithall for users to print thir own. We did this for a year, but eventually found that a number of customers complained. First, our survey wasn't very scientific and we may have underestimated the demand for vendor-supplied hard copy. Second, it is not only the fraction of respondants that counts, but also the strength of the desire. For the most part, those who didn't think hard copy is important were indifferent (except for one or two "greens"). OTOH, those who wanted hard copy wanted it a lot. So we started supplying it again. Why is vendor-supplied hard copy better than user-printable? Primarily because it's more compact, printed on two sides and easy to carry around -- not to mention the barrier to printing a doc that might be 100+ pages long. My own feeling, having gone through this, is that it depends on the complexity of the application, and how self-documenting it is. I doubt hard copy is important for, say, a text editor or a word processor. But for anything complex where there may be a lot of subtleties -- particularly content-related subtleties -- it is very important. Recently, I bought Exceed, an X-server for PCs that comes from Hummingbird. I was very happy to have compact, well-written vendor-supplied paper docs that I could read in the subway or take out to lunch and read in the park. -P.
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I don't have a whole lot to add to the meat of the discussion, but thought some might be amused by the following way my dog (a Boston Terrier) tries to "deceive." He sometimes wants to go for a longer walk than I do, so when we're getting close to home he pulls in the opposite direction. Of course, I say No, sharply, and direct him home. But he's also learned that if he needs to poop, I'll let him. So, nearing home, he heads for a tree and goes into a crouch, watching me all the time. When he thinks I'm sufficiently deceived, he stands up (without pooping of course -- he didn't really have to go) and starts pulling off in the opposite direction. He seems to think I'll have forgotten I'm actually headed home. I find this quite hilarious.
Someone else mentioned that when you point, a dog will look where you are pointing whereas a wolf will look at the finger. Some months ago I read an article about research on autism and its association with "mirror neurons" -- neurons (postulated, I think) that are responsible for appropriate mimicry: what it is that makes a baby imitate your facial expression when he can't see his own face in the mirror. Autistic children lack this ability, apparently, as do chimpanzees. It was also mentioned in the article that chimpanzees, unlike dogs, but apparently like wolves, will look at the finger (and not where you are pointing) when you point.
Hi, I develop computational chemistry apps. I'm now with Schrodinger, Inc., but back when I with Columbia University, I posted to the comp. chem. mailing list to find out what typical users felt about this. First, some background. I had been having some e-conversations with Lisa Balbes, a freelance tech. writer and consultant in GUI design for chemistry apps. She and I both very much liked printed manuals, and wanted to use the survey to bolster our position. Also part of the background was that printing the manuals was a major expense and logistical hassle. The prevalent feeling among the respondants was that supplying hard copy wasn't necessary. Most actually felt that on-line and HTML docs were sufficient, and that searchability was key to this. Some argued loudly that we shouldn't waste trees. On the other side were those who pointed out that you can't read HTML while riding on the bus or sitting on the pot, and that they liked to mark up their personal hard copies. But even those who liked hard copy said that it would suffice to supply online docs in a format that could be printed with TOC and index; examples of such format would be PDF and PostScript, but not html. Thus we concluded that we didn't actually have to supply the paper copy, but did need to supply the wherewithall for users to print thir own. We did this for a year, but eventually found that a number of customers complained. First, our survey wasn't very scientific and we may have underestimated the demand for vendor-supplied hard copy. Second, it is not only the fraction of respondants that counts, but also the strength of the desire. For the most part, those who didn't think hard copy is important were indifferent (except for one or two "greens"). OTOH, those who wanted hard copy wanted it a lot. So we started supplying it again. Why is vendor-supplied hard copy better than user-printable? Primarily because it's more compact, printed on two sides and easy to carry around -- not to mention the barrier to printing a doc that might be 100+ pages long. My own feeling, having gone through this, is that it depends on the complexity of the application, and how self-documenting it is. I doubt hard copy is important for, say, a text editor or a word processor. But for anything complex where there may be a lot of subtleties -- particularly content-related subtleties -- it is very important. Recently, I bought Exceed, an X-server for PCs that comes from Hummingbird. I was very happy to have compact, well-written vendor-supplied paper docs that I could read in the subway or take out to lunch and read in the park. -P.