Moving open files

[Ed Greshko]

Dotan Cohen wrote:
> 2008/7/8 Ed Greshko <Ed.Greshko at greshko.com>:
>> Dotan Cohen wrote:
>>
>>> When a human moves a stapler from one drawer to another, he has no
>>> reason to suspect that any modification to the stapler (such as
>>> refilling it) would cause a duplicate stapler to appear in the old
>>> drawer. Likewise with the movement of open files. This seems to be a
>>> real 'gotcha' or trap that one could very easily fall into.
>> Your analogy is askew.....
>>
> 
> Let's see.
> 
>> Let's take a 3-ring binder with some document in it.  For the sake of ease,
>> the document is a single page.  And we have 2 people, X and Y, and they
>> never talk to each other.
>>
> 
> Well, my user thinks that he is the only one handling the page. He
> opens it, he moves it. Sure, there might be a technical reason to use
> a two-person analogy, however, from the user's point of view he is the
> only one who touches that binder.
> 
>> X opens the binder, takes out the doc, makes a copy at the copier and puts
>> the original back in the binder leaving the binder open.  X goes off to his
>> desk to make some modifications.
>>
> 
> My user never made a copy at the copier and put the original back in
> place. From a technical point of view that is a good analogy, but from
> the user's point of view he took out the document and started working
> on it directly. He did not make a copy, no matter how the program
> works internally.
> 
> The rest of the analogy is flawed because it assumes a two-person
> office. My user sees himself as the only person in the office.

No, you make the mistake of not equating person X and Y with applications. 
Analogies are not literal.

> 
>> Y comes along, removes the doc from the binder, takes it to his office and
>> places it in his filing cabinet.
>>
>> X is finished, goes back to the binder sees the original missing, says "what
>> the heck...I was going to trash it anyway" and puts the modified document in
>> the binder.
>>
>> The next day X asks Y for the document.  Y goes to his filing cabinet and
>> hands it to X.  X says, "hold on a minute....".
>>
>> That's what they get for not talking to each other....but everyone knows, or
>> should know, that X and Y don't talk.
>>
>> The same holds true if X puts a note on the binder saying please don't touch
>> or move this document.  Y can just ignore it.
>>
>> And yes...if at some point Y goes back to the binder and finds the modified
>> doc in the binder he may say..."We don't need 2 of these" and burns it then
>> the modifications made by X are lost.
>>
>> Knowing that the above happens is why document management systems were
>> written.  But, of course, using a document management system may be overkill
>> in daily, informal use.
>>
> 
> Dotan Cohen
> 
> http://what-is-what.com
> http://gibberish.co.il
> א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת
> 
> A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?


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