Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!milton!milton.acs.washington.edu!dennis
From: dennis@yang.cpac.washington.edu (Dennis Gentry)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Remote NeXT Users, etc.
Message-ID: 
Date: 26 Sep 89 02:39:58 GMT
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In-reply-to: jst@cca.ucsf.edu's message of 25 Sep 89 03:13:33 GMT

Listen, Joe:

It's fine if you want to use things in ways in which the
designers did not intend them to be used.  For example, feel
free to drive your car with your only your feet instead of your
hands (but not on my street, of course).

It's also fine for you to ask for help from the designers, or
the company they work for, when you do something like this.  For
example, it seems reasonable (if a little weird) to write to the
Ford Motor Company and say "I can't figure out how to steer my
car very well.  And by the way, I can't use my hands to do it,
either."

But it's *not* fine to expect immediate help in this situation.
It is perfectly reasonable (if not particularly helpful) for
someone from the Ford Motor Company to write back "Well, you'll
have to use your hands to steer correctly."  At this point, you
pretty much have to take them at their word, and either figure
it out for yourself, or do it the way they designed it.

It's especially *not* fair to broadcast your beef with the
company to the world, publishing such statements as "Ford Motor
Company has bad PR!"  or "Engineer X at Ford Motor Company is an
unhelpful person" before you take the problem up with Ford
itself.  And if you don't get a reasonable response from
Engineer X, you should ask to talk to his supervisor, rather
than immediately publishing deprecatory statements about X.

So please *don't post* your complaints about the company or its
people.  I (and I think most other) news readers here don't
think you're being fair.  You're not only trying to drive the
brand new car with your feet, you're apparently volunteering to
drive the brand new car with your feet for someone else,
discovering that you can't do a very good job that way, and then
publishing personal complaints to thousands of people when the
car company tells you that you currently have to use your hands
to drive.

To be fair, I (and probably some of the other news readers) are
interested in the technical problems you've encountered.  I am
sure that the people at NeXT are interested in the technical
problems you've found, even if they can't give you an immediate
workaround.  I'm sure the NeXT product could be improved, but
it will be improved most quickly if we all send in clear,
concise bug reports, rather than personal complaints.

I won't go into the gory details of the problems you've brought
up, except to choose one example where I think you are being
unreasonable.  You say that it would be philosophically wise to
maintain the Unix man pages.  Perhaps it would, if you could
automatically generate them from the new documentation.  Digital
Librarian in combination with the (pretty darn good) on-line
documentation is *far* superior to the old man pages from a
neophyte's point of view.  You say that man pages would keep
people from getting lost, not knowing where to go next in
documentation.  You have apparently never watched a novice user
try to use man pages on a Unix system.

Most sincerely,

Dennis Gentry
(dennis@cpac.washington.edu)
CPAC Computing Services Manager, and
NeXT UW Campus Advocate