Re: Killer -Reply

[Tracy Boyington <trlyboyi -at- GENESIS -dot- ODVTE -dot- STATE -dot- OK -dot- US>]

> Saying that users "expect" the word "abort" is a dangerous
> assumption.  How do you know this?

Because it *is* so commonly used (otherwise, we wouldn't be arguing
about it, would we?) Remember "abort, retry, fail?" (hmm... now I
see... the whole thing is a fiendish plot by Bill Gates...)

Actually, I have never *written* the word "abort" in this sense,
because that's not the kind of stuff I write about. But as a fairly
experienced computer user, I expect to *see* the word "abort" and
I know what it means. Like I said, if your users don't expect "abort"
and you'd rather use something else, by all means do so.

> To most audiences, what's the difference between saying
> "aborts" and "stops"?

To me, "abort" means that everything about the process will be
discarded -- it will be as if I never even attempted to start that
process. "Stop" means stop the process where it is right now, but
anything that has already been done is still done. But that's just
me. I'd like to see some studies done so we'll all know what to
use.

Tracy

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Tracy Boyington  trlyboyi -at- genesis -dot- odvte -dot- state -dot- ok -dot- us
Oklahoma Department of Vocational & Technical Education
Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA
http://genesis.odvte.state.ok.us/cimc/home.htm
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