to be quite so confusing—“Is the file going to be used for Input or
Output?” and “How large should the disk buffer be?” But by the time I
got to “Edit mask,” “Copy attributes to field,” and “Enter algebraic
expression,” I was thinking seriously about hara-kiri. We are _not_
talking quick and easy here. We are talking call in the professionals
or resign yourself to a lot of long, hard work. Considering that I
don’t even get to keep the copy of InfoStar—I only own a 64K CP/M
machine, and InfoStar requires a PC DOS and at least 96K of RAM and
recommends that you use a hard disk (but will put up with two floppy
drives provided that you can get 320K of memory on each disk)—I
eventually just threw my hands into the air and gave up. There is no
doubt in my mind that InfoStar is a terrifically powerful program that
will allow you to do just about anything you want in the world of data
bases. The doubt in my mind is whether I’m an ordinarily intelligent
person who was thrown by some big-league complexity or whether I’m an
absolute moron because I didn’t find the program “simple” and “easy to
use.” (Variations of the words “simple” and “easy” appear seventeen
times in the InfoStar hype booklet; for example, “InfoStar is ...
easy-to-use ... goes well beyond the capabilities of a simple data
base system. InfoStar eases the job of managers.... It’s really quite
simple. The whole process is really quite simple.... And it’s
easy....” All this on one page, mind you.)
To sum it all up in a nutshell, InfoStar offers some _wonderful_
features, particularly in the area of making things easy for the clerk
typist/secretary who’s doing data entry. And it is, as advertised,
lightning fast at calculations and sorting. Its use of WordStar
commands is a drawback, and its refusal to allow the arrow keys to
function, along with its insistence on making you plod through help
screen after help screen that you’re really not interested in, can be
infuriating; but I suppose the clerk typist who is forced to use
WordStar—at only five years old the dinosaur of word-processing
programs—might find it convenient.
But if you, the doctor or lawyer or small business owner, want a
custom-designed form or a custom-designed report, you’re not going to
be able to delegate the job to a clerk typist/secretary/assistant.
You’ll have to either hire a consultant to do it for you or resign
yourself to spending days or even weeks mastering ideas and language
that, to me, range from the arcane to the dumbfounding.
It’s really quite simple?
BACKUP VII ❑❑ Graphics Tips
No matter how you’re using a graphics program, remember the RDHP—the
Rough-Draft Hierarchical Principle. It also may help at times when you
word-process memos.
The principle: create the basic pictures or prose yourself. But if
pressed for time? Then farm out the details. Just as a secretary might
put your memos in the right format on paper, he or she might also smooth
your drawings. Or your art department might.
Here are other tips for graphics users:
KNOW YOUR CHARTS AND OTHER BASIC TOOLS
A =line chart=—a graph with the outlines of hills and valleys—is great
when broad trends count more than the numbers themselves.
One glance at a good line chart can tell you if wok sales are up or
down.
And for even better effect, you might try a =curve chart=, or =area
chart=, filling in the area below the curves that the lines make.
“Instead of looking like a wriggly line,” explains Carl Herrman,[103] an
award-winning graphics expert, “it looks like a mountain. It’s much
easier to follow.”
Footnote 103:
Carl Herrman is communications director at MITRE Corporation, a
nonprofit research and consulting firm in McLean, Virginia. His
address there is W 160, 1820 Dolley Madison Blvd., McLean, Virginia
22102.
And if you want to show sales trends in three wok categories? Well, you
can still use a filled-in chart.
“You might fill in the bottom one solid black,” says Herrman. “You might
do a =cross-hatch=—parallel intersecting lines—on the middle one. And on
the top one, you might have a straight-line effect or a lot of lines
running close to each other.
“That way, you can readily see the difference between the three It’s
more effective than three graph lines on top of each other.”
Another tool is a =bar chart=, with bars of different sizes—horizontal
or vertical.
=NAME THAT CHART= With Apple’s Macintosh and the Microsoft chart
graphics package from Microsoft, you can whip up charts like the ones
below. Chart will even pick up numbers from a sister spreadsheet
program, Multiplan. My thanks to artist Jo Steele, who works for the
Dartmouth College Computer Center and is a partner in Northtronics
Associates. Oh, and don’t blame Jo for the use of those over-mentioned
woks. My mistake. Next time I’ll use dishwashers or watermelons.
[Illustration:
Do broad trends count more than the numbers themselves? Then use a
=line chart=, a graph with the outlines of hills and valleys.
Amalgamated Wok might decorate each sales rep’s office with such a
chart, at which a myopic CEO could smile or frown as he walked in.
]
Use a bar chart to compare sizes or emphasize differences, including
those over time. With the bar chart, you might contrast 1979 wok sales
with 1984’s.
Don’t normally use the bar chart, however, to illustrate trends. For
that, it’s usually back to the old line or curve chart.
Just the same, Mike Slade, a product manager at Microsoft, says: “There
are times when you can illustrate trends successfully using overlapping
bar charts—with bars of different colors or patterns.
[Illustration:
A =curve chart= or =area chart= is just a line chart with the area
below the lines filled in. This is a deluxe version with different
shadings indicating different years. A no-frills area chart might
actually be easier on the CEO’s eyes than would a line chart without
shading.
]
[Illustration:
Yes, wok sales are increasing and our canny artist used a =vertical
bar chart= to emphasize this. Just the ticket for a presentation to
a stock analyst studying the prospects of the Amalgamated Wok
Corporation. Notice that numbers are easier to take in than those on
a line chart.
]
“You might have a vertical bar for 1979 wok sales slightly overlapping
with one for 1979 widget sales and continue these twin bars for the next
five years.
“Use overlapping bar charts when you’re showing trends for a number of
different products or categories.”
[Illustration:
Wow! Look at the hefty wok sales in November and December. Someone
offer rebates? Actually you’d be better off using a =pie chart=
instead to show the percentages of semi-annual sales from different
regions. _Regions_, not the 50 states. You can only slice a pie so
thin.
]
Yet another tool, the =pie chart=, just like a pie, with slices, nicely
shows relations of complete parts.
Use the pie chart to show the percentage of sales that came from four or
five regions.
On the other hand, suppose you have many, many small components in your
pie—say, you’re interested in the percentages of domestic sales in each
of the fifty states. Then a map with percentages on it might be better.
I’ll stop here—this is a computer book, not a graphics guide. For more
detailed information, Herrman recommends _Designer’s Guide to Creating
Charts and Diagrams_ by Nigel Holmes (from Watson-Guptill, New York).
KEEP IT SIMPLE—WHETHER ITS A CHART OR MEMO
Don’t make your charts look like puzzles. “If you clutter up your chart
with too many facts, you’ll lose the very simplicity that graphics can
offer,” says Herrman. Home in on your main point. “If need be,” he says,
“use a short narrative under the chart to back it up.
“In fact, you might be able to say something in words more simply than
with a chart. If you’re trying to compare the cost of widget imports in
the last fifty years and it’s doubled each year, then why not just say
so in prose?”
Also, avoid other forms of visual clutter. Don’t make people’s eyes spin
with special effects and too many colors.
=Grid lines=—a series of little squares like those on engineering graph
paper—often confuse chart readers. “Don’t put them in if you can help
it,” says Herrman.
“Definitely not,” agrees my friend Hard-core bureaucrat.
In memos, don’t confuse your readers with a barrage of different
typefaces. A little variety is good. But make sure you have a decent
excuse, such as special points to stress or different categories of
information.
“If you show off your fancy typefaces,” says my friend the
Hard-Core-Bureaucrat, “it’s just a plague that’ll make your eyes ache.
That’s one reason I’m down on fancy graphics for routine stuff. Some
Macintosh users are going to produce memos that look like samplers from
printing salesmen.”
Even on a thousand-word memo, use three of four typefaces at the most.
Also, don’t stint on white space. Apple’s manuals for the Macintosh and
its more expensive sister, the Lisa, are models of wise use of white
space.
AT THE SAME TIME, KEEP IT LIVELY!
If you can get away with it, why not try a little flair in your graphics
and your points will be more memorable.
A good model in many cases is the newspaper _USA Today_, which sports
some of the liveliest graphics in the country.
It regularly publishes charts with such sexy facts as amount expected to
go for health care in 1990 or the percentage of women who received
haircuts and other beauty-shop treatments in 1983.
To jazz up the chart titled “Only Their Hairdressers Know,” an artist
drew the face of a woman with her hair blowing out. The lengths of the
bunched-up strands varied according to the percentages of women
receiving different kinds of treatments. “Haircut” (76 percent) was
three times longer than “Coloring” (a mere 24 percent). Today the
average micro user may not be able to produce such “hairy” graphics, but
the future may be different.
Snazzy graphics is like colorful writing. Humanize your work. The “Only
Their Hairdressers Know” chart wasn’t in the fanciest of color—just
black and white and blue—but it was more eye-catching than most
eight-color ones might have been.
And if you yourself can’t draw too well even with a computer? Well, what
a chance to liven up the workday of a young, talented aide who’d like a
break from the typewriter, er, word processor!
Besides, on occasion, you can at least do what an editor may have done
with the hairdresser chart—think up the basic idea.
KEEP THOSE CAPTIONS LIVELY, TOO
Imagine you’re writing captions for a hybrid of the _New York Times_ and
_The National Enquirer_.
Try to be accurate, clear, and interesting.
Snare the skimmers! Give them no choice but to read your report.
I’ll qualify that. Alas, many report writers, especially the government
species, don’t _want_ to be clear with words or charts.
Maybe they can scrutinize this section to know what to do in reverse.
KNOW YOUR COLORS—WHEN AND HOW TO USE THEM
There _is_ life without color.
Just look at the nifty things you can do with high-resolution black and
white, with its many different shades.
If your picture offers widely varied shapes and sizes, color just might
not help that much.
Think, too, about costs. If Mac had had color, the $2,500 introductory
price would have been several times higher. So Apple concentrated
instead on resolution. And very likely, some makers of similar machines
will do the same. There’s a technical trade-off: color capability often
comes at the cost of sharpness. Even black-and-white graphics today—at
least the affordable kinds—normally are a far cry from the sharpness
required in an annual report or the slickest sales brochure.
Still, to a generation weaned on color tv and movies, a 100 percent
monochromatic life would be like a monastic life.
And color could be just the ticket for enlivening graphs that visually
drone on and on with statistics.
What’s more, it can help separate elements of charts. Just don’t overuse
or abuse the technique. Don’t use color to slice a pie chart too thin.
In working with color, you should know the best combinations. Often
you’ll want to alternate weak, cool colors with strong, warm,
“advancing” ones that leap out from the screen. The strongest colors
usually are bright red first, then orange, then perhaps yellow—it
depends on your machine and other variables.
“Your weakest colors,” says Herrman, “could be blue, green and brown. If
you try blue and bright red, your chart will be much more readable than
if it has green with blue. You might also use green and orange.”
Try, too, to avoid adjacent colors that “vibrate” together in an irksome
way. “Red and green is worst,” Herrman says. Another loser: red and
blue.
Other advice? Match colors to what they stand for. If you’re comparing
oil and gas production, the oil might be black and the gas a light blue.
Oil sometimes _is_ black. And gas often bums blue.
Remember, also, that dark colors often can better represent large
numbers. Say your company has its biggest, best year ever in sales. And
now you’re bragging with a multiyear bar chart? Well, you use a dark
blue or black bar to represent your recent, gigantic revenues. The
leaner years, by comparison, might be a very light color or maybe faint
grays or perhaps just white inside gray lines.
Yet another tip is to be consistent if possible. “If you’re comparing
oil and gas through twenty charts,” says Herrman, “stick with oil in
black and gas in blue in all the charts.”
“But,” you say, “how do I choose my graphics programs in the first
place?”
Here are the questions you should ask, among others:
1. Does the program help you come up with pies, bars, or whatever kind
of chart or drawing will be most useful to _you_?
2. Can it do so as quickly as possible?
Here programs using a mouse—the pointer on your desk—have a real
advantage.
3. Does the program fit in well with your other software?
That’s one advantage of Lisa- and Mac-type systems. You can more
easily stick a chart inside a page of text—perhaps sparing your
readers a distracting flip to the back.
Another advantage of a “good fit” is that it may save you hours of
typing and drawing. Look for programs that will let you select trends
from spreadsheets, then more or less automatically whip up charts
based on the numbers. This way, too, you don’t have to waste time
typing in the numbers from the spreadsheets. Microsoft Chart can do
that with the right software for the Mac, Lisa II, and IBM computers.
Are you shopping for a program that changes charts automatically along
with the numbers? Then see if you can do this without having to clear
the chart from your screen and replace it with a special menu.
4. How much memory space does the program—and the electronic files of
the resultant drawings—take up?
You want enough space on your disk for spreadsheets, word processing,
and other programs _if_ you change your tasks often. But you don’t
change often? Then don’t worry as much about this.
Frugal use of space, of course, is one advantage of integrated
programs combining graphics with word processing and spreadsheets or
communications.
You might also worry about the lengths of the files. One chart can
take up the equivalent of page after page in disk space if you’re
storing the image of the chart rather than the instructions for
creating it.
5. What about the program’s color capabilities—both on screen and on
paper? How many colors offered? And if the program has preset color
combinations, do they work well together?
6. Does the program coexist okay with the printer or plotter you own or
are about to buy?
7. How easy is the program to learn? What about the other general traits
of good software mentioned in Backup III, The Lucky 13?
Whatever your graphics program, don’t stint on the hardware. A good,
sharp, high-resolution screen is just as important—more so, in fact—as
it is in word processing.
BACKUP VIII ❑ Consultant Contracts:
Some Who-How
Questions
Charles Harris, a lawyer who is expert in computer negotiations, ticks
off a list of contract questions very similar to the Who-How from the
newspaper world.
His list:
1. “Who?” Who from the contracting firm is doing the work? A junior
member? If so, you might ask, “Can he perform? Will the consulting
firm still bill me the full rate?” Find out the track record not only
of the firm but also of the people actually doing the work. Write
their names into the contract if you can. Spell out the qualifications
of substitutes you’ll use if the original people leave the consulting
firm before finishing the assignment.
2. “What?” Describe the task as clearly and precisely as possible. And
in my opinion you might consolidate the “What?” and the “How?” here.
Is there a right way and a wrong way of accomplishing the “What?”?
Find out the right way before signing the contract.
3. “When?” Can you negotiate a penalty if the firm misses a deadline?
And how about a bonus if it comes in early?
4. “Where?” Will the consultants do the work in your office? Theirs? On
your computer? On someone else’s?
5. “How much?” Obvious.
In my opinion, you’d also do well to keep asking the “Why?”—to make
the consultants justify whatever they have in mind for you. Why not?
You’re the one spending the money.
Also, at least consider the following:
1. Thinking small. Don’t bargain over the Who-How simply for the whole
project; break it up into parts. “You say, ‘For this much money we
expect to at least get a machine in the door,’” Harris suggests. “‘For
this much money we expect to get the following diskettes for the
following programs.’ ‘For this much money perhaps we’ll talk about
customizing software.‘” If a consultant flubs an early part of the
work or specifies the wrong programs or equipment, then you can more
easily send him packing. “But,” you worry, “can a rival consultant
pick up the pieces?” Well, you simply insist that the original
consultant do his work in as standardized a way as possible. See if he
can use a program like dBASE II or III—software with which thousands
of other consultants are familiar.
2. Making the consultant give you the source code of the new software.
That’s another pick-up-the-pieces kind of protection.
3. Insisting that any manuals for his software be complete and in plain
English. If your consultant can write only computerese, in fact, you
might not even want to bother with negotiations.
4. Bargaining if possible for a software warranty. Then, if you discover
glitches in the software after it’s in use, the consultant won’t
charge you to correct his own mistakes. You might not succeed here.
But try.
5. Possibly requiring the consultant to give you a discount on
modifications or expansion of your system.
6. Negotiating for full or part ownership of the software he may develop
for you. But don’t count on getting rich from the sale of the
programs. Adam Green, a software training expert, tells of a
computer-store salesmen who, in that way, would appeal to customers’
greed. A taxidermist, for instance, might hear this pitch: buy from
me, use the right consultant, and you’ll make a killing in specialty
software for taxidermists. “The consultants would usually intend to
finish a job writing this specialty software,” Green said, “but it
would drag on, and the customers would run out of money, and the
things usually didn’t get finished.” Very likely you _won‘t_ want full
ownership, because it would reduce the consultant’s interest in
perfecting his brainchild.
7. Forbidding the consultant from selling the new software to your
competitors. Antitrust complications might arise if you don’t bear the
financial risks of software development. If you do, however, you’re
within your rights to demand exclusivity, just as the consultant is
within his rights to charge you more for it. “Trade secret” is a key
phrase both here and on the issue of ownership. “I recommend to
clients that they go for trade-secret protection because copyright law
protects the information only in the way it’s presented,” says William
Wewer, a Washington lawyer who specializes, among other things, in
intellectual-property law. In other words, an unscrupulous consultant
might bypass the copyright law by using a different programming code
to duplicate your new software’s functions.
8. Making the consultant pledge that he won’t violate any trade-secret
laws or copyrights. You don’t want to suffer because someone else has
plagiarized or pirated software. Be certain you’ll own the _master_
copies and instruction manuals that the consultant buys. Try to
register immediately with the software company as the buyer or user of
the disk. You want to know about updates of the product and about
debuggings, which you won’t find out about with a pirated copy. A
shady Massachusetts consultant has resold the same dBASE II program
ten or fifteen times. The buyers think he is purchasing it for them
and that he’s going to supply a version modified for their needs. “But
halfway through the work,” Green says, “he just walks off.”
9. Hammering out a confidentiality agreement, if necessary, to protect
company secrets. You don’t want an outsider blabbing to competitors.
10. Making the consultant agree in writing that he is working as your
independent contractor, not your employee. Protect yourself against
unfair Workmen’s Compensation claims and in similar ways.
11. Trying to write into the contract your right to a full explanation
whenever you want one. Make the consultant justify his recommendation
for a certain computer or a certain program; he owes you at least oral
explanation and perhaps a written one. How much experience has he
himself had with the product? Is he going by someone else’s word?
Whose? How certain is he that the software-hardware combo that worked
for the other person will work for you? Can he arrange a demonstration
of the combo so you can see for yourself how the software runs?
12. Remembering that there’s only so much protection the law can give,
especially at the micro level. Trade-secret and copyright laws can be
vague and expensive to enforce—a major stumbling block to a small
business. Your best protection is simply to deal with a reputable
consultant whose credentials you have checked.
13. Choosing the right lawyer, if you can afford one, for the contract.
He needn’t call himself a “computer lawyer.” A good contracts lawyer
or intellectual-property expert, if conversant with computers, might
also work out.
If the job is simple enough, don’t negotiate in the same detail that GM
does when installing a $10-million mainframe. Again, even with small
tasks, do sign a contract or write a letter similar to the sample one on
page 114. And if you can afford it and the job’s important enough, think
about still-another contract—for a second consultant to check up on the
first.
BACKUP IX ❑ Window Shopping
The ad men and writers have had fun with the inevitable: “Microsoft Does
Windows.”
You read the headline and envision some programmers with buckets and
rags, bravely scaling Manhattan skyscrapers to help executives get a
clear view when they’re looking up from their computer screens.
=Windows=, however, actually are _within_ computer screens.
You can split your screen into parts: one window showing a chart, for
instance, while the other displays the report into which you’re
inserting it.
Of course you need a screen big and sharp enough to get good views of
many windows.
And the software problems could be hairy. Microsoft as of late 1984 was
months and months behind in releasing its windows-type product. Other
companies were behind on theirs, too. Someone once coined a term for
much-talked-about-but-late software—“vaporware”—and it is sure described
windows.[104]
Footnote 104:
I asked John Butler, a Microsoft products manager, why windows would
hit the market months late. “We don’t like to announce products too
far ahead of time when they’re not fully developed” he said, “but with
Windows we had to tell other software companies about its existence
early on—so they could write programs taking full advantage of ours.”
Well, now that the miracle windows are theoretically here, are they
worth gazing at?
Depends.
_Don‘t_ buy windows if you’re just writing short letters and you needn’t
blend anything else into them or regularly don’t consult other material.
But consider them if, say, you want to look at many spreadsheets quickly
while writing reports.
Think what this means to executives with cluttered disks, er, desks.
They can stash their material away electronically and not have to print
hard copies as often in the future.