SQL Notes

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Posted by Cassius
Feb 6, 2008 at 12:32 AM

To keep thread title relevant to topic, this is continuation from Infohesive (Info+adhesive?? = info “sticks” (isn’t lost) ).

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>Pierre Paul Landry wrote:
>>About names… any cool suggestions for better name for SQLNotes?
>
>Pierre, one last thing: as I said in another post, I have installed SQLnotes and am quite >impressed by what it can do. On the other hand, I find it minimally intuitive, perhaps because >I’ve never been a regular Ecco user. ...

For names, I first thought of “InfoAll,” but that name is already being used. I’ll keep thinking about it. If the author-friendly capabilities of SQL Notes approaches those of GrandView, then it would be nice if any name change reflected authoring as well as info.

Some general thoughts from my university teaching and non-academic experience. Whether teaching, writing, or designing a software interface, assume the audience is smart but is unfamiliar with the subject. “Smart” means no “cute helpers” like the MS Word “Office Assistant” wiggly paper clip. “Unfamiliar” means, as Alex D suggested, having at least two user interfaces (menus + toolbars): One for beginners and one for advanced users.

An experience I had working one-on-one with a young, capable, data base programmer may be instructive: He could write decent documentation that a database expert could understand but, despite my spending weeks trying to show him how to write for a general audience, he just couldn’t do it. This was despite my using many examples of the form, “Replace this technical database term you wrote with this, more general phrase, that your audience will understand”) Unless it has recently changed, the extensive documentation for MyBase is an example of documentation written largely for the “already a MyBase expert.”

-c

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