Re: e-mail application

[Al Hudson <nospam [at] york.ac.uk>]

On Thu, 10 Jun 1999, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Thing is, ease of use is also _multi-dimensional_. Efficiency is
> important, and leads to ease of use in one sense (reduces user
> fatigue, etc.) But there is also the slope of the learning curve, and
> that's more important to sometime users who don't need efficiency in
> a given app, but rather need to get it over with fast so they can
> click the close button and get back to real work.

This is more human factors than ease of use. I define ease of use being
able to find a function quickly when needed; that's it. A lot of stuff
comes under that heading (i.e. preventing you from finding stuff), but
good configurability usually means that an app can be set up to be user
friendly. Most apps aren't setup correctly by default under linux though,
which is a shame.

> VM/XEmacs, is a really good try at it; Pine is too, except that I'm
> prejudiced against anything that starts right out by opening a menu in
> my face,

<pine fan> Setup/Config/initial-keystroke-list will sort you out ;)

everyone should use Pine, it is the one true path ;)))

Cheers,

Alex.

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