Third-party or "out of the box" plugins [was "re: Frame's future"]

[Marcus Carr]

H4y^3,

hedley.finger at myob.com wrote:

> The example of the Turbo Tarburner was chosen with care.  Even as we
> bicker, a major automotive manufacturer is implementing an on-demand
> customised workshop manual.
> 
> The mechanic will simply enter the car's body number or VIN or
> whatever, and a custom manual for just the equipment in that build
> will be created on the fly and presented on screen.

It makes perfect sense - the information about what the car is equipped 
with has to be pretty easy to obtain. Even things like the service 
history of a vehicle should be stored electronically in one of its 
numerous computers. Writing it in a book that sits in the glove box for 
the life of the car is pretty silly.

> The mechanic will be able to use a TOC, Index, or boolean search
> engine to find the instructions they need.  The index is there for
> people who, unlike us, do NOT work in the IT industry and have a more
> sophisticated approach to information retrieval.  But EVERYBODY knows
> how to use a back-of-the-book index -- even if it is on-line!

Maybe, though I usually think of an index as being a collection of 
shortcuts necessary because the information is difficult to find by 
other means. Of course it is difficult to find things in hardcopy, but 
in an electronic product I might question whether the user interface is 
as good as it could be. For our mechanically gifted friend, I'd be 
inclined to provide a graphic interface and a touch screen that let him 
drill to the warp drive than compel him to hunt and peck on a toughened 
keyboard. An index may have its place, but it's a much smaller home than 
where it used to live.

> And they will probably print out just the pages they need to fix the 
> warp drive.

Perhaps they could load the printer with gasket paper - at least that 
way they'd be able to recycle effectively...

Have a good weekend, Hedley!


Marcus