Keyboard Abuse...and More

[Steve Owens <uso01%eagle -at- UNIDATA -dot- COM>]

Pam Tatge says:
> [...] finally a tired finger slowly slips off of the RETURN key as its
> presser passes out from weariness and boredom. (Hey, it could happen.
> I work with someone who, after reading an instruction to "select any
> container on your [Interleaf] desktop", called me to say he didn't see
> a container named any. It's not just an urban legend anymore.)

        Heh, 'fraid it still is.  The "definition" of an urban legend or
myth is a slippery, relative little thing.  See, maybe it's not a legend
to *you* anymore, because it happened to your friend, but to *me*, well,
this happened to a friend (your friend) of a friend (you).  A nice little
catch-22!

> What do the rest of you do about this? Are you okay with checkbox
> and radio button, do you have labels that you think are better, or
> do you avoid naming them, too?

        Thanks for bringing this up, so I could actually have something
topical to reply to :-).

        Frankly, until you just described them, I always wondered exactly
what the hell a radio button was (and I used to play around with the old,
OLD radio set at my grandmother's house - bigger than most TVs these days).

        "Check-box" doesn't seem that bad;  you click in the box to add a
check mark there, activating some option.  Seems it'd be more appropriate
to call them option boxes or option checks or something similar.  I seem to
recall a specific technical term from somewhere (logic or circuit design or
some such) that describes radio buttons, but it escapes me now.

Steven J. Owens
uso01 -at- unidata -dot- com