Text File

Aucb.523 fa.editor-p utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!C70:editor-people Wed Feb 24 13:44:20 1982 HUMAN-NETS discussion of editors >From Admin.JQJ@SU-SCORE Wed Feb 24 13:41:33 1982 There has recently been quite a bit of discussion on HUMAN-NETS concerning text editors. Much of that is random flaming about the relative advantages of WordStar vs. Electric Pencil vs. Emacs vs. Teco, or discussion of mode based vs. modeless editors (generally with little agreement over definitions of "mode"). However, there is some overlap with our discussions, and some material there which many of the people on this mailing list might be interested in seeing.

I have extracted all (most) of the HUMAN-NETS messages on editing published so far in 1982. Since they total some 80 messages, I have placed them in a file at SCORE available for anonymous ARPAnet FTP to anyone interested. They are [SU-SCORE]PS:<ADMIN.JQJ>EDITORMAIL.HUMANNETS, and will be available on line for at least a couple of weeks.

As an example drawn from this pool, I am forwarding a request for information. Perhaps one of you kind readers with a bent for cognitive psych might be able to help this person. ---------------

Date: 17 February 1982 1639-EST (Wednesday) To: HUMAN-NETS at MIT-MC From: Jeff.Shrager at CMU-10A Subject: Perceived or actual complexity of systems

I am seeking pointers to papers etc on the actual or perceived complexity of programming languages, systems, interfaces, or processes relating to computers (debugging, editing, etc). Are there any good dimensions along which to measure perceived complexity? Have any experiments been done to measure this? (Note that the kind of complexity that we are interested in is not directly related to complexity of algorithms whose metric is of the sort: NSquared, or NLogN. Rather, we are looking for measures in terms of learning curves, or function use statistics (or anything else that might indicate this sort of "human" complexity, not "mathematical" complexity)).

------------------------------

-------

----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/

This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:

1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.

2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.