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Wow, that was you? I've heard the anecdote decades ago (probably read it on Usenet or in a book) but never thought I'd learn more nor find the person responsibl

• drfuchs 5y ago
  Well! Yup, "Book" internal design and implementation was all me. I don't think anybody else at Frame even knew the message existed, until that fateful day. The bug that caused it to come up was also mine. Any pointers to lectures/presentations? That was news to me! So as to not leave the wrong impression: The entire user-visible document model and feature set of FrameMaker were ultimately the responsibility of one person (V.P. Engineering David Murray), who kept all the features mutually consistent, and the product as a whole "just right" as far as being not too complex or confusing while still being powerful enough for users to be able to do what they needed to do, and have an accurate mental picture of how everything worked. I believe that this approach was essential to the success we had; I'm always astonished when hearing in passing how things go in some other places, along the lines of "so programmer X decided to put in feature Y, got a quick OK from management, and then went off and designed the UX/UI all by themselves, implemented the whole thing, and merged it on in..."