Jul 11 2007
Evolution of help systems
In the beginning, before there was Word, text editors were used exclusively by technically competent people and programmers. They may have used rudimentary manuals to remind them of the commands that were available, and, of course, even they needed some initial training for each new application program, though it might have been no more than a short ‘walk through’ provided by a knowledgeable colleague.
As the field developed, the user population expanded, and especially with the advent of Unix and similar operating systems, manuals were supplied on line, so they could be accessed whenever needed.
For instance, the Unix ‘man’ command can display helpful information about a program, such as vi, thus, in response to the command ‘man vi’:
Figure 1. Unix page from the command ‘man vi’
It is clear that these manual pages are not intended for a naive audience, as acknowledged in the last paragraph shown above.Fortunately, the more advanced Pico editor has help screens built in, which are more immediately useful (we have seen, in an earlier screen shot, that the command for this is ^G):
Figure 2. Help screens from Pico
With the growing use and popularity of word processing programs intended for a general market came a realisation that non-technical people needed different support, and would not be well-served or satisfied by the style of manual described above.
Frequently, printed manuals were included in retail packages together with the floppy disks (remember these?) containing the program materials. For instance, a copy of WordPerfect I bought in the mid-1990’s is accompanied by a User’s Guide of 530 pages, with a succession of chapters starting with how to start the program and describing the use of menus, button bars and other features of the user interface, and proceeding to illustrative tutorials on progressively more complicated aspects of word processing (Novell Inc; 1995). There is also a machine-readable (.pdf) version of this publication, covering much the same ground, and also a supplementary machine-readable manual on the uses of macros in WordPerfect.
And to provide a quick reminder, or as a short-cut into the program, there is also a guide card which gives a succinct summary of the major elements of the word processor.
If a new user were so inclined, and if time and pressure permitted, it seems likely that diligent study of these documents would enable him or her to tackle almost any word processing task that would come up.
However, not everyone has the temperament, nor the time, nor the opportunity to take this systematic approach to acquiring new skills. In any case, it runs against the principle that ‘just in time’ learning is often found to be most effective, since aspects learned are immediately used and hence reinforced.
What is needed for those who can’t learn ahead of time, or don’t want to (and as an aide-memoire even for the diligent) is a help system which can provide assistance while they are actually working on a document, without interrupting what they are trying to do. This need led to the introduction of on-line help systems; as well as the print materials listed above, WordPerfect also provided a sophisticated system of on-line help.
So, starting from the elementary on-screen reminders of commands supplied with Pico or WordStar, there has been a process of development until we see the powerful help systems which are the focus of the experimental work in this thesis.
The thesis concentrates principally on Microsoft Word, the dominant commercial word processor of today.
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