Re: Job Log for interactive sessions

[MacWheel99@xxxxxxx]

> From: editor@400times.co.uk (Dave George)

>  <snip>
>  You must have the best users in the world to not need this tool
>  </snip>
>  
>  Al,
>  
>  It's been a while, but one of the most prominent things a remember
>  from programming class, was that a user should never see a program
>  message! 
>  
>  Maybe, he doesn't have the best users - 
>  perhaps he has the better programmers! :)
>  
>  DG

You make a good point but we have packaged software ... thousands of programs 
... because it is more economical to buy a package than to hire an army of 
programmers to reinvent that wheel.  That packaged software comes with a 
great variety of program messages, some that make perfect sense to me, some 
that I think are poorly phrased & extremely misleading & confusing, and some 
that I think are bugs I need to locate & resolve.

When users are keying in stuff, they typically get many error messages on 
line 25 of their interactive screen.

This is an invalid item number.
That operation number is not valid for the item number you selected ... 
cursor on operation field & F4 for a list of operations available for that 
item.
The date you keyed is not even close to today ... are you sure that is what 
you intended ... F16 to accept if in fact that is correct.
You keyed that this factory worker put in more hours in one day than there is 
in a day, perhaps your decimal point is misplaced?

My mind is a blank slate at how to program without providing the user with 
some kind of error message interactive communication when they try to do 
something that is not supported by the program specifications.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)

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