Organization: MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories
Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1992 14:46:06 GMT
Lines: 35
In article <1992Jul20.230813.26811@kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca> sherwood@fenris.space.ualberta.ca (Sherwood Botsford) writes:
>
> Case in point:
> I downloaded EquationBuilder immediately on reading the announcement,
> as it fills a function that several of my users have asked about.
> I read the doc file. The program runs for two minutes, and
> then quits. One of my users wants to know how EqB handles multiline equations.
> He can maybe type in three lines of equations in two minutes? Another wants to
> see how the various options interact in producing tex files, and so he wants to
> print the file after each change. Right. Another wants to see how EqB
> interacts with WriteNow, WordPerfect, Edit, FrameMaker, Diagram, Adobe
> Illustrator, and Create. Another wants to find out if he can easily use
> characters from the Shalom or Cyrillic Fonts. Another has half an equation
> typed in, but times out while hunting for the set intersection symbol. With a
> two minute timeout, this is not a useful package.
> Twenty minutes, maybe. It would be a nuisance to have to restart it
> three times per hour. People who needed it for a single equation wouldn't
> register it. People who used it day after day would pester me to get them a
> copy.
>
Sherwood raises a lot of interesting points in his post. I certainly have felt similar frustrations myself. It just hurts to see our EquationBuilder app used as an example (ouch)
We agree that two minutes is not much time to demo an application. However, we thought that it would be sufficient for a user to test one concept or idea on each launch. We hoped that by including our 120 page manual in the distribution already indexed for Digital Librarian would help answer peoples questions (eg search for multiline and Chapter 8: Multiline Equations pops up, or search for FrameMaker and Appendix D: Working with other Applications pops up).
But there is still the larger question of whether people prefer crippled demos that run indefinitely, or fully functional demos that die after some fixed time. The jury seems to still be out on this one. It is just as easy for us to do either. It depends on what the community prefers. (Perhaps both?)
Regardless, if someone feels that they need more time to evaluate our app, just drop us a note and we will do our best to be accommodating.
