Alternative to typo? (take II)

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Milan Davidovic wondered: <<Let's say, for whatever reason, that you  
*can't* get an unequivocal statement of when the typo will cause the  
behaviour. Would you still avoid the "may" statement?>>

That's clearly a design flaw in most cases. There are some systems in  
which engineers really, for no fault of their own, can't predict the  
system's behavior with absolute certainty. That's far less common for  
mechanical devices than for software, but these things exist. In such  
cases, you must report the possibility rather than erroneously trying  
to give a sense of certainty, and using "may" is the correct way to do  
this.

But the rest of my original response remains valid: it's ethical (not  
to mention good business sense) to explain the problem to the  
designers so they can try to minimize or eliminate its impact on  
eventual users, and you still have to try to find some way to help  
users recover from the problem.

For example, some TVs don't support progressive-scan mode from some  
models of DVD player, and if you inadvertently select that mode, it  
can be a nightmare trying to reset the DVD correctly -- because you  
can't see the settings on your TV that would allow you to navigate the  
menus and choose the old display setting. Smart designers display a  
message that says "press the OK button to confirm that you can see the  
new progressive scan mode; if not, we'll reset it to a mode that you  
can see in 15 seconds". Sadly, there appear to be fewer such designers  
than one might hope.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Geoff Hart (www.geoff-hart.com)
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Effective Onscreen Editing:
http://www.geoff-hart.com/books/eoe/onscreen-book.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------------

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