From: utzoo!watmath!idallen Newsgroups: net.works Title: Re: Bandwidth, encodings, abbreviations and command language. Article-I.D.: watmath.3130 Posted: Fri Jul 30 00:35:08 1982 Received: Fri Jul 30 01:48:55 1982 References: populi.261 It was said (populi.261 from G:wing) that VAX/VMS is a very human command language. The text of the article went on to state that all VMS commands were words, and abbreviations just abbreviated each word. This may be true, but if this article was meant to be a followup to my article on bandwidth and encoding, then the point of my news item was missed. (I do try to make myself clear, but it's not easy!) The followup article might reasonably argue that VMS has a human-oriented *abbreviation scheme*; but, the article does not give any evidence that the unabbreviated *language itself* is human-oriented. My main point was that we mistake bandwidth-improving encoding schemes (abbreviation is one such scheme) as being *language design*. Everyone is saying how wonderful their abbreviation scheme is; nobody is saying how wonderful their *command language design* is. I don't much care how easy it is to abbreviate the EXPUNGE_DATASET_WITH_QUERY command, if I can't even remember that it is the command I have to use. I strongly believe that the *first* requirement for command language design is to make the language *memorable*. Once we remember *what* we want to say, we can, at our leisure, learn encoding (abbreviation) schemes to speed things up at the keyboard (or mouse, or ...). -IAN! U of Waterloo (decvax!watmath!idallen)