A really good article on software usability

[Tim]

Tim:
>> I was helping someone come to terms with computing a while back, and
>> every time they closed a document, they'd be asked about saving it, and
>> they'd always say yes, no matter what.  

Anne Wilson:
> But at least it's the safe option.

But it wasn't.  They were losing data and keeping broken copies.  They
were saving unintentional changes to documents, irretrievably losing the
originals.  Likewise, they were saving what were meant to be temporary
changes to documents (bit they didn't want printed, but still wanted in
the file).

>> They put no thought into the fact that they hadn't made any changes to
>> the document, so that they shouldn't save as closing.  The program
>> was stupidly prompting them, because they'd printed it (not a real
>> document change, in the normal understanding of the word).  

> So you don't consider print settings for the document to be a real change?  I 
> do.  It's odds on that if I want to print it again I will want to use the 
> identical settings.

I don't.  If I'd changed printer settings, perhaps.  But just printing
the document, no.  The "document" hasn't changed.  Data about it may
have, if you keep track of how many times it's printed.  But in the
usual sense of whether some document has changed, refers to the actual
content.