Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? (Was: stepping machanism

From: Fred Cisin <cisin_at_xenosoft.com>
Date: Fri Apr 9 14:38:36 1999

Some random thoughts:

In an early (beta?) version of the Borland C compiler install program,
they had icons for the error responses. For "Ignore", they had a 55MPH
speed limit sign! For "Abort", they had a coat hanger! I'd bet that
THOSE didn't last very long!


In the earliest versions of MS-DOS, the choices were Anort, Retry, Ignore.
Later, they added "Fail", and also permitted the OS to only include the
choices that were relevant. That meant that when SMARTDRV's write caching
hit an error, the ONLY possible choice was RETRY, or power cycle, since
it was reporting an error in an operation that had previously been
reported to the application as having been successfully completed! Kinda
like when you tell your boss that you finished the report, but "left it at
home on the kitchen table"; then when you run home and fire up the
computer to START working on it, it won't boot. (compounded by Windoze
SETUP installing and turning on SMARTDRV whether you like it or not. I
told the Windoze 3.1 beta people at MICROS~1 that SMARTDRV's write caching
was ultimately going to result in MAJOR product recalls; but they insited
that THAT was a HARDWARE problem! Hence the 6.00 to 6.20 fiasco)


The BIGGEST problem with the ARIF (Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail) interface
is that it put the error on one line, and then the question of "what do
you want to do about it?" on another line. (without ever asking the
QUESTION!) It SHOULDA been one line! YES, that could have worked just
fine in 40 column mode - just make the messages 40 characters long, and
let 'em wrap. The result is that the luser sees a line that they
understand, followed by another line they don't understand. They will
then fixate on only the last line:
"I've got another of those abort-retry-ignore errors!"
"OK, what does it say on the line above that?"
"abortretryignore"
"and the line above that?"
"abortretryignore"
"and the line above that?"
"abortretryignore"
"and the line above that?"
"abortretryignore"
"and the line above that?"
"Drive not ready"

If the statement of the problem, and the request for choice of responses
were to have been on one line, the user would have a harder time IGNORING
the relatively meaningful portion of the error statement.

In the cmdline version of OS/2, did they fix that? NO! They inserted an
error NUMBER at the beginning of the error description, to absolutely
solidify the luser's unwillingness to read the error message.


So, have error messages been getting better or worse? Many MICROS~1
message now leave out those annoying details, such as WHAT went wrong.
And the "OK" button is offensive to me.
"Absolutely everything that you have done since your last system backup
has been totally and irretrievably corrupted. OK?" No, it is NOT OK! I
REFUSE to click OK to that!



> To the average end user, the "abort, retry fail" message may as well be a
> string of garbage like "dsfsd, asjh^34\, "(*p,.8IC?".
Received on Fri Apr 09 1999 - 14:38:36 BST