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Subject:Metaphors to aid description? From:Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- AXIONET -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 16 Jul 1997 11:52:37 -0400
John -dot- Cornellier -at- PARIS -dot- IE -dot- PHILIPS -dot- COM wrote:
>Reading The Economist the other day, I see an article saying, >briefly: "metaphors were once hailed as the saviour of >computing. Oppressed by the command line interface, the world >greeted with rapture the cartoonish Apple ... but then >metaphor abuse ... where bad bits of the physical world are >reinvented for the sake of familiarity.
Two of my favorite bits of bad metaphor come from the OS/2 world: a
contact manager called Relish adds desktop objects
called Buns, and a modem program called RhinoCom calls entries
into its phone book Rhinos. Both are illustrated by suitable
icons.
Both programs are first-rate, but the cutsiness is a bit much.
Reviewing RhinoCom a couple of years ago, I could help commenting that
the program suffered from "terminal whimsy."
--
Bruce Byfield (bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com)
Technical Writer / Job Bank Team, STC Canada West Coast Chapter
h: (604) 421-7189
"When you're old and got arthritis,
Your bowels have got colitis,
You've galloping bollicitis
And you're thinking it's time you died,
If you're been a man of action,
while you're lying there in traction,
You may gain some satisfaction
Thinking, 'Jesus, at least I tried!'"
--Andy M. Stewart, "Rambling Rover"
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