FreeLists / arachne / [arachne] Re: Setting up Arachne 193 :-((

["Greg Mayman" <gmone@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:42:36 -0500 (EST), ewalt@xxxxxxxx wrote:

> Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

> Greg Mayman said:
>> IMO it is not reasonable to expect a new user to know how to do that.

> IMHO there are *no* new users of any DOS programs anymore. Let's not

Absolute rubbish! Of course there are.

There are thousands, possibly millions of DOS programs out there, and
nobody could claim to be familiar with more than a tiny fraction of
them.

Any time a DOS user tries out software he hasn't used before, he is a
new user BY DEFINITION!

> delude ourselves. Anyone who is interested in using Arachne or any
> DOS program for that matter is going to know something about DOS and
> paths--at least it seems like they should.

But they won't necessarily know ANYTHING about Arachne, or any other DOS
program for that matter, unless it has sufficient documentation to
explain it to someone who uses it for the first time.

For WAITASEC (as one example) "sufficient documentation" is the name of
the file. It waits for one second then returns.

For FDATE, the 200k text file that accompanies the download package is
sufficient. Without that, the program is useless to a new user.

> Why would a "new user" stumble into DOS in the first place? Nobody
> left but us "old and getting older users" I bet.

It is most unlikely that anyone would "stumble into DOS" these days,
except by accident.

There may be some who would elect to try it out intentionally, but that
is another matter.

   ,-./\
  /     \ From Greg Mayman, in beautiful Adelaide, South Australia
  \_,-*_/   "Queen City of The South"  35d 01'44"S  138d 32'13"E
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