On May 18, 2007, at 10:51 AM, Onno Benschop wrote:
... What I see here is a classic example of an expectation mismatch. The new user expects the computer to almost "honour" their data,
That's a variation on Raskin's First Law of Interaction: "A computer shall not harm your work or, through inaction, allow your work to come to harm." Computers typically bludgeon this expectation out of users. Someday, perhaps, they'll be nicer.
the more experienced user expects the computer to do what it is told. There is something to be said for your proposal, if we keep in mind the "do no harm" approach, but then you would need to do that for all such commands. That is a long and slippery slope to head down.
Yes, that's probably unworkable without a long-term effort between Linux and Unix distributors, on something they probably wouldn't consider important.
...
Perhaps when a user launches a terminal for the first time, a dialog
pops up that says something along the lines of:
Commands entered within a Terminal screen may not work as you
expect. Sometimes a command will overwrite files without warning
you. If you are unsure, use the 'man' command to find out.
...
Even better would be to print a similar message (it probably needs rewording a bit) in the terminal itself when it is launched. Then it would be more likely to be read, and it wouldn't require an extra click to dismiss.
Cheers -- Matthew Paul Thomas http://mpt.net.nz/
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