[rt-users] Newbie trouble: keywords don't work

[Jim Meyer]

On Fri, 2002-05-24 at 12:35, Alexander Dupuy wrote:
> Jim Meyer wrote:
> > Perhaps the more proper solution is to improve the documentation?
> 
> Improving the documentation assumes that people actually read it first.

This is where it reduces to philosophy: you don't want new users to have
to read the instructions before you start setting RT up for production.
I think that reading those instructions is the measure of a responsible
technologist. I wouldn't hire an irresponsible one; you spend too much
time cleaning up problems of poor implementation or, worse, poor
preliminary evaluation.
 
>   And it does nothing to address the fact that the user interface uses 
> '/' as a separator between nested levels of keywords in it's display, [...]

I don't see that using a / separator is a problem which needs to be
addressed. Again, I think it's a matter of philosophy.

> And your analogy with a 10MPH governor is overblown; [...]

Analogy is always flawed; it's an attempt to model a problem in more
familiar terms and fewer words than required to precisely describe the
entire system at hand. If you find you're having to explain your
analogy, you know it's not a good one.

To be precise, your solution means that any new user is protected
against this one flaw (and lulled into thinking he understands the
system, a side issue to this discussion); any programmer can remove the
limitation once s/he has hunted it down; and any other user (e.g.
experienced non-programmers) is stuck with it. That is unacceptably and
artificially dumbing-down the system to no worthy purpose.

I think we must agree to disagree. Luckily, we are neither of us the
arbiter of this. =]

Cheers!

--j
-- 
Jim Meyer, Geek At Large                              purp at wildbrain.com