ANNOUNCE:-- TimingAnalyzer Free Version -- Draw timing diagrams

On Jun 5, 9:14 am, Brian Drummond <brian_drumm...@btconnect.com>
wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Jun 2008 12:44:03 -0700 (PDT), rickman <gnu...@gmail.com>
>
> Do you work in the NHS, or for one of their equipment suppliers?
> All the CUI references (includinghttp://www.mscui.net/seem to be
> associated with the health care sector.
>
I think what rickman was trying to remember was the 'Common User
Access' or 'CUA' developed by IBM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_User_Access

KJ

"Robert Miles" <robertmiles@bellsouthNOSPAM.net> wrote in message 
news:_tU1k.736$RY.138@bignews8.bellsouth.net...
>
> "rickman" <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote in message 
> news:3253a340-9804-4fd5-b6d8-df9dd706ae86@c58g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
> [snip]
>> Independant of the UI issues, a program really shouldn't crash when it
>> reads a data file... of any nature.  Of course that is a theoretical
>> goal and can be difficult to achieve in practice.  But certainly
>> crashing on startup without visible error messages is not a good thing
>> either.  I had to start it from a DOS box to get anything useful from
>> it... maybe that is more of a Java issue... and don't get me started
>> complaining about Java.  Does *anything* written in Java actually
>> work?
>>
> I suggest that any program for Windows Vista that uses Java should
> start with a check to see if Java is even installed, and if so, whether
> the version installed is suitable for what the program needs.  My version
> of Vista came without Java, and the Microsoft version is no longer
> available.  I installed the Sun version, but still have problems with 
> getting
> all the programs that use Java to run correctly.
>
> http://www.java.com/en/
>
When getting the URL for that last message, I noticed that Sun now has
a version of Java newer than the one I had before, and decided to install
this update.  The Google Toolbar program is offered at the same site,
so I thought I'd let you know that if you're using the Windows Mail
program that comes with Vista, you should avoid installing the Google
Toolbar program unless you want to see what problems it causes in
Windows Mail, although it often doesn't cause them immediately.
Web sites that offer to let you do Google searches don't cause the same
problems.

On Jun 5, 9:14 am, Brian Drummond <brian_drumm...@btconnect.com>
wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Jun 2008 12:44:03 -0700 (PDT), rickman <gnu...@gmail.com>
>
> Do you work in the NHS, or for one of their equipment suppliers?
> All the CUI references (includinghttp://www.mscui.net/seem to be
> associated with the health care sector.
>
I think what rickman was trying to remember was the 'Common User
Access' or 'CUA' developed by IBM.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_User_Access

KJ

On Jun 5, 12:53 pm, KJ <kkjenni...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On Jun 5, 9:14 am, Brian Drummond <brian_drumm...@btconnect.com>
> wrote:> On Wed, 4 Jun 2008 12:44:03 -0700 (PDT), rickman <gnu...@gmail.com>
>
> > Do you work in the NHS, or for one of their equipment suppliers?
> > All the CUI references (includinghttp://www.mscui.net/seemto be
> > associated with the health care sector.
>
> I think what rickman was trying to remember was the 'Common User
> Access' or 'CUA' developed by IBM.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_User_Access
>
> KJ

I had the initials right, but the name wrong.  The wiki article you
link to calls it...

Windows Consistent User Interface standard (CUI),

Notice the wiki note that

CUA has never had significant impact on Unix terminal applications.

That explains a lot of why people don't tend to migrate between
Windows and *nix.  I know that most open source programs that I have
tried seemed to me to have a bizarre user interface.  I know that I am
more sensitive to this sort of thing than most people, but once I see
something that works well, I really, really hate to go back to poor
practices.

For the most part any new program should try to emulate the UI of the
other common programs out there, only altering features if it *really*
has a positive impact.

rickman wrote:
> 
> Doesn't Microsoft provide a CUI for Windows?  If nothing else, all you
> have to do is fire up most *any* program to learn how mouse clicks
> work to select items.  Having the default action of a click to be
> "adding" items to the selection is a new twist.  Most programs use
> Cntl-Left Click to cumulatively select items (or often to unselect
> them too).  Unselection is typically done by clicking on *anything*
> else including nothing. 

Yes, certainly the common EDA/CAD model is Click Selects, and ^Click
toggles the Selected flag on eash item. So you can add/delete
at will, from a selected set.

Some systems also then allow right-click Combine into a Group/Block.


> So if I click on object A and then click on
> object B and drag, I would not expect object A to be dragged along
> with B.  This happened to me with this program.  Object A was dragged
> off the view and the undo didn't work.  I couldn't find a way to
> expand the view, so I ended up with a drawing that had things in it
> that I couldn't delete or see.

Better pgms have a Zoom Extents, to cover this type of problem.

>  I ended up closing the program (partly
> out of frustration and partly out of time constraints) and let it save
> the file.  I tried to start the program up again and it would not
> run.  The author says the drawing file is now corrupt.  When the
> program auto-opens it on startup, it crashes.

If this is easily reproduced, it should also be easy to fix.

-jg

On 2008-06-05, rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jun 5, 9:14 am, Brian Drummond <brian_drumm...@btconnect.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Do you work in the NHS, or for one of their equipment suppliers?
>> All the CUI references (includinghttp://www.mscui.net/seem to be
>> associated with the health care sector.
>
> I have no idea what you are talking about...  I am an electronic
> design engineer and have never worked in the health care sector.  What
> exactly is NHS?  Is that a government agency or a company? 

NHS = National Health Service, the state run healthcare provider
here in the UK.  Unlike state healthcare provision in the US the
NHS is fairly comprehensive and covers the entire population (paid
for out of general taxation).  As a result it is a massive organisation
- it dwarfs the entire Ministry of Defence, for instance.  ISTR it
is Europe's biggest employer.

> I'm really not trying to bash the tool.  I expect there are those who
> like it and use it.  I have often wanted a good tool for drawing
> waveforms and timing diagrams.  But the very first and most important
> feature is that it has to be easy and intuitive to use.  I feel that I
> should be able to sit down and use it without reading a manual or
> taking a tutorial.  Many years ago I did that with a Mac!  I expect
> most people do that with the iPhone and iPod.  A timing diagram editor
> is not a complex tool.  I should be able to draw simple waveforms
> without learning a complex interface.  I currently use Visio and I
> find that to be a burdensome tool for simple things.  It also has its
> own ways in which it doesn't work.  I just wanted something a bit
> simpler.

Interesting that you mention Macs.  For many years Apple have
published user interface guidelines that document exactly how UIs
should behave.  I recall looking through the one for the Newton a
few years ago and it was very prescriptive and quite forceful in
places.  I remember it was full of things like "This UI component
has square corners.  This other component has rounded corners.  If
you need to reimplement them for some reason you stick to those
conventions or your users will be swamping your helpdesk with
support enquiries."  This might not give designers as much leeway
to create "really cool" interfaces but I suspect it is more in
tune with what many users actually want.

This is also an area where Microsoft have completely lost the plot.
Since Windows 95 every major release of Windows has been accompanied
by a new interface.  Applications are even worse - I don't know
how many style of toolbar have been played with over the last 15
years.  Microsoft always make great play of the new interface but
who exactly does it benefit?  Users are forced to learn new interfaces
every upgrade and application developers are forced to 'upgrade'
their programs with the new UI or risk being considered outdated.

The only people I can see benefiting are Microsoft themseleves (it
provides a very obvious reason to upgrade, even if it does lack
clear benefits) and hardware manufacturers (the upgrade needs newer
faster hardware).  For all the talk of enhancing the user's experience
it seems obvious to me that MS don't give a shit about users.  All
that matters is ensuring that the revenue keeps coming in from
repeated meaningless upgrades.

-- 
Andrew Smallshaw
andrews@sdf.lonestar.org

Andrew Smallshaw <andrews@sdf.lonestar.org> writes:
> [...]
> For all the talk of enhancing the user's experience it seems obvious
> to me that MS don't give a shit about users.  

Have you ever met Tux? :) 
-- 
%  Randy Yates                  % "Maybe one day I'll feel her cold embrace,
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC            %                    and kiss her interface, 
%%% 919-577-9882                %            til then, I'll leave her alone."
%%%% <yates@ieee.org>           %        'Yours Truly, 2095', *Time*, ELO   
http://www.digitalsignallabs.com

On 2008-06-05, Randy Yates <yates@ieee.org> wrote:
> Andrew Smallshaw <andrews@sdf.lonestar.org> writes:
>> [...]
>> For all the talk of enhancing the user's experience it seems obvious
>> to me that MS don't give a shit about users.  
>
> Have you ever met Tux? :) 

I prefer Beastie myself.  Shackleton had the right idea about
penguins. ;-)

Seriously though the situation on Unix platforms is getting worse
by the minute.  10-15 years the toolkit wars were over and Motif
was the winner.  Most apps were shifting to Motif and CDE was coming
to further standardise the UI.

However, as soon as Linux started to gain traction things started
to deteriorate again, quite probably becasue Motif wasn't free.
Now you need any number of different toolkits to cover a broad
range of apps and things like Gnome and KDE are far more substantial
bits of code than anything that went before.  The net result is
that each app has a completely different appearance, works in a
different way, and the whole assembly is one great waste of memory
and processor time.

-- 
Andrew Smallshaw
andrews@sdf.lonestar.org

> This is also an area where Microsoft have completely lost the plot.
> Since Windows 95 every major release of Windows has been accompanied
> by a new interface.  Applications are even worse - I don't know
> how many style of toolbar have been played with over the last 15
> years.  Microsoft always make great play of the new interface but
> who exactly does it benefit?  Users are forced to learn new interfaces
> every upgrade and application developers are forced to 'upgrade'
> their programs with the new UI or risk being considered outdated.
> 
> The only people I can see benefiting are Microsoft themseleves (it
> provides a very obvious reason to upgrade, even if it does lack
> clear benefits) and hardware manufacturers (the upgrade needs newer
> faster hardware).  For all the talk of enhancing the user's experience
> it seems obvious to me that MS don't give a shit about users.  All
> that matters is ensuring that the revenue keeps coming in from
> repeated meaningless upgrades.
> 

An excellent example of this is Office 2007.  The UI for all the major 
applications have been changed completely with Ribbon bars, etc.  It 
takes ages to work out where on earth really simple things are and they 
are now buried in (even more) obscure locations.  Microsoft's 
advertising will have you believe "easy" but I disagree.

	Andrew

rickman wrote:
> On Jun 5, 9:14 am, Brian Drummond <brian_drumm...@btconnect.com>
> wrote:
>> On Wed, 4 Jun 2008 12:44:03 -0700 (PDT), rickman <gnu...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
<snip>
>>> I spent about 5 minutes working with this program before I gave up.
>>> My reason is not the problem posted below, but because of the user
>>> interface decisions made.  I don't know why every new program has to
>>> reinvent something about the user interface.  There is a standard call
>>> Common User Interface (CUI) that is even documented by Microsoft,
>>> IIRC.
>> Do you work in the NHS, or for one of their equipment suppliers?
>> All the CUI references (includinghttp://www.mscui.net/seem to be
>> associated with the health care sector.
> 
> I have no idea what you are talking about...  I am an electronic
> design engineer and have never worked in the health care sector.  What
> exactly is NHS?  Is that a government agency or a company?  BTW, I
> typoed above "call" should have been "called".  CUI is a windows
> standard as far as I know.  I guess maybe it is more general, but I
> have only heard the term used in the context of Windows.
> 

I'm guessing (from your time zone) that you're in the USA.

The "NHS" is the British "National Health Service".  To people from the 
UK, "medical", "health care", and "NHS" are synonymous - the private 
health care is a very small minority there (mostly for people who want 
to pay for comfier beds and better food, or vanity surgery).