October 1989 - Vol. 32 No. 10
Features
The case against user interface consistency
Designers striving for user interface consistency can resemble Supreme Court justices trying to define pornography: each of us feels we know it when we see it, but people often disagree and a precise definition remains elusive. A close examination suggests that consistency is an unreliable guide and that designers would often do better to focus on users' work environments.
A finite and real-time processor for natural language
People process natural language in real time and with very limited short-term memories. This article describes a computational architecture for syntactic performance that also requires fixed finite resources.
Impact of a restricted natural language interface on ease of learning and productivity
People process natural language in real time and with very limited short-term memories. This article describes a computational architecture for syntactic performance that also requires fixed finite resources.
Four paradigms of information systems development
Developing computer-based information systems necessarily involves making a number of implicit and explicit assumptions. The authors examine four different approaches to information systems development.
The Computing Research Board's 1987-1988 Taulbee Survey includes the latest statistics on production and employment of Ph.D.'s and faculty in computer science and engineering. Included also are departments offering Ph.D.'s in computer engineering.
An evaluation tool for measuring authoring system performance
A model for producing objective and precise measurements of the power and performance of authoring systems is described. An animation task is given as an example of the model's potential as a tool for evaluating authoring systems along the dimensions of functionality, flexibility, and productivity.
Practical performance of Bloom filters and parallel free-text searching
Bloom filter technique of hashing finds several applications, such as in efficient maintenance of differential files, space efficient storage of dictionaries, and parallel free-text searching. The performance of hash transformations with reference to the filter error rate is the focus of this article.
