[austechwriter] Re: [austechwriter]Terminology - screen or window
- From: "Steve Hudson" <cruddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 19:21:06 +1000
I was giving this some thought today whilst commuting. You, I, the other
tech writers, we aren't the users Mike. We know - they don't. Trust me, go
down to a data entry room anytime and strike up a convo. These are low paid
workers with no other business skills than a good typing speed. They mostly
don't understand computers, have been sent on a Windows awareness course by
their company to train them to not freak out when their ANSI screens go GUI.
How many times have you heard a bank teller exclaim their dismay at the
stupid computer and then whinge about how they don't understand computers at
all. However, that's a red-herring as you knew anyway :-)
The main point is that screen is mainframe and mini computer user
nomenclature (c/o MVS / OS/400 computers and their various clones and
competitors) for the display area. Remember the old ASCII popup dialogs on
the VT102 screens running 3270 data streams? That was still the screen. No
word of popup, dialog nor box. There was no need to differentiate between
screen areas because only one area was usable! So they simply use the active
part of the screen and everything is always on the screen.
This audience group is relatively common as the LCD in any user population
for major IT companies for the large-scale end-user applications.
Steve Hudson
Word Heretic, Sydney, Australia
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael West
> However, if your _audience_ (about which Mike mentioned zero, zip, nada)
is
> from a mainframe terminal background, they will thank you for using the
> term screen which they are used to meaning a window.
Not sure I agree. I'm from a mainframe
terminal background (CICS/3270
vintage 1980), but when working
in a GUI environment I prefer to use the
GUI vocabulary. But yes, if your users
would be totally flummoxed by the
term "window", having had no introduction
to Windows and all that other new-fangled
claptrap, by all means don't confuse them.
Still, I don't see how "screen" would solve
the problem, which as I understand it refers
to changing content within the same "screen"
(if you prefer) or window.
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