[ Date Index ][
Thread Index ]
[ <= Previous by date /
thread ]
[ Next by date /
thread => ]
On Wednesday 21 July 2004 10:24, Adrian Midgley wrote:
On Tuesday 20 July 2004 17:15, John Daragon wrote:I doubt that this is refutable. But, given that the idiot^h^h^h^h^huser didn't bother to read the manual (where this behaviour *and* how to defeat it is clearly documented), I'd say that the probability of him/her reading the *source* tended to zero.That argument, as is often the case, about the accessibility of the source code is not that the individual user should or would read or modify it, in this sort of case, but that the development of the software is improved by the openness of the source code.My opinion is that end users who take science forward through peer-reviewed publication whcih includes details of methods are likely to think that the publication of the method in the instance of the software is a significant difference.Alas, you've picked te wrong horse to whip. The book (in this case the online documentation) makes it absolutely clear that this is the way in which Excel is designed to work. Just because this user doesn't like it doesn't make it wrong.Possibly, but not with as big a whip as it may appear - it isn't an argument about wrongness, or actually about the virtues of Excel, what it is is pointing out that one development process produced Excel which behaved thus, and another development process produced Gnumeric, which experimentally did not behave thus (and in this single instance that would have been nice) and draws a parallel which I have for some time believed to be significant between the development process for science (in an idealised form to be sure)
You can say that again ... The idealised bit, that is. And I think you're wrong. What Open Source really does is to expose the quality of code to the world, and to enable someone who doesn't like the way something is designed to change it (providing they can be bothered to lear the language du jour and understand the source). My experience is that distributed design generates bad software in the same way that modern epidemiology generates junk science.
and the development process for Gnumeric, in contradistinction to that for Excel.Between the seats in a Piper PA28 there's a lever with a button on the end. It's where you'd expect a handbrake to be if you hadn't read the manual.Only if you had learned to drive a car.
That'll teach me to state my assumptions !
If you came to a car, having only learned to fly then you would have a different sort of accident available. I've only flown a Chipmunk, where the seats are fore and aft. So from what are people expected to come to Excel, and appropriate assumptions built into Excel?and if you'd failed to read the manual then you'd be one disappointed bunny if you expected it to work like one. That doesn't make Piper irresponsible for not publishing its drawings.Although I think they do.
Alas, they don't.
Excel doesn't damage data. It merely transforms it in this case, and in a manner that the manual tells you it will. The idea that this user couldn't reconstruct his or her original strings (or whatever) from the data that Excel holds is frankly ludicrousBut reportedly true.
And that report is not correct.
Perhaps a reasonable design aim might be to separate the display format from the underlying data, which would avoid this entire class of accidents being possible.
No it *wouldn't*. That's exactly what Excel does in this case, and exactly what these users failed to expect. SEPT02 is interpreted as 02SEP04 and stored as 38232 (from whence it's pretty trivial to reconstruct SEPT02 if you need to).
I see that the open source development process of the WWW has tended that way.
This is again *nothing* to do with open source. IBM wrote GML in 1969. jd -- John Daragon argv[0] limited john@xxxxxxxxxx Lambs Lawn Cottage, Staple Fitzpaine, Taunton TA3 5SL, UK (house) 01460 234537 (office) 01460 234068 (mobile) 07836 576127 (fax) 01460 234069 -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.