Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!
ON DYSLEXIA
On Tuesday June 19 2006, Greg Mayman said:
"Dyslexia does NOT mean a person is illiterate. Nor Does even severe
dyslexia mean someone would prefer a GUI. Seems Mental deficiency can
come in other forms too!"
In fact dyslexia is defined by an inability to deal with the written
word anywhere nearly as well as "literate, normal people". Dyslexia is
a genetic disease aflicting aproximately 10% of the North American
population. In some cases specially devised training programmes can
appreciably improve a dyslexic's ability to deal with the written word,
but probably help only a minority of dyslexics.
Steve Jobs, a dyslexic, designed the Mac operating system (a well
designed and nearly flawless operating system despite several upgrades)
with a mandatory GUI to enable himself and other dyslexics to deal
efficiently with computers. Fortunately for the rest of us Steve Jobs
never tried to make all normal, literate, text oriented people use his
Mac operating system, which is counterintuitive to most normal, text
oriented people.
Bill Gates is also a dyslexic and he made a series of bad copies of the
Mac Operating system for the several versions of Windows to date, all of
which have been noted for serious flaws. Unfortunately for all normal,
non-dyslexic people Bill Gates decided that if Windows was good enough
for Dyslexics it was good enough for normal people as well.
To make sure that normal literate people used Windows, instead of the
text oriented operating system they were better suited to, he
deliberately stopped buying DOS software upon the release of Windows 95
with the dictum that "DOS IS DEAD". When cruising the Microsoft web
site a couple of years ago, I chanced upon a stray copy of that notice
to suppliers of DOS software.
The first massive wave of post 1995 Windows viruses was a silent protest
against Bill Gates arbitrary attempt to kill DOS.
A few literate, non-dyslexic people do manage to function well in
Windows, and I both envy them and wish them well.
Unfortunately most non-dyslexic Windows users struggle hard with the
counteruitive GUI and can do very little in Windows beyond running a
browser. Most of them can do none of the things a DOS user does many
times a day, like zipping and unzipping files, changing pitch and
margins on an editor or word processor, or moving quickly from
application to application to perform their requisite work.
My son, a bright, ambitious, 48 year old fireman is typical of the many
other non-dyslexic Windows users I know who can do just a very few
things in Windows.
In contrast, my Dyslexic friend, John, who readily states that it is
extremely difficult for a Dyslexic to use DOS, handles both Mac and
Windows with aplomb, with fingers flying furiously as he deftly switches
back and forth from Mac (which he prefers) and Windows, which he
requires for some of his computing needs.
That clearly indicates that dyslexia does not involve a lack of
intelligence; rather the dyslexic simply cannot cope well with reading
matter and text names of files.
Greg Mayman went on to say:
"And I certainly would not say that screen that allows us to choose
where a downloaded file goes is aimed at dyslexic or illiterate or even
Windoze-oriented people."
"The 'view as text' option is particularly useful in certain cases."
My comments in that regard were, indeed, a bit of an exageration
motivated by a previous comment by Greg that the change in A170
downloading procedures to A190 downloading procedures was partially
motivated by Windows users wanting to use Arachne.
I have no problem at all with the availability of the unzipped view of a
zipped file in A190 at the user's option, provided it does not change
the highly inutitive downloading procedure in A170.
BCMURPHYOMPUSERVE.COM
Arachne at FreeLists
-- Arachne, The Premier GPL Web Browser/Suite for DOS --