>Andy.Law at bbsrc.ac.uk (Andy Law) wrote:
>>WPI? Don't do it, it's ghastly!!
I disagree. I think it does a nice job of making GCG accessible to
those who have problems with using the command line. There are many
more scientists who are uncomfortable with using a command line, any
command line, than the reverse. They just don't tend to post here.
(They probably don't even know that the newsgroup exists.) Our users
have been quite happy with WPI.
learn at u.washington.edu (Jerry Learn) writes:
>I agree that WPI is pretty much
>an abomination (whew, that's a bit harsh). Steve Smith, the developer of
>GDE, the Genetic Data Environment, is now working for GCG and it appears
>that WPI in its next incarnation will me more GDE-like in implementation.
>This should be a big plus, if you can wait 6-9 months.
GDE is great for us, but we have not found it to be useful for the
average scientist who is not especially computer literate--they just
have too much trouble getting started, and have to spend more time on
it than they're willing to. What a computer-savvy person picks up in
minutes never does become clear to the average user. WPI in its
current form, in contrast, is extremely usable by such scientists.
Instead of just saying that WPI is ghastly, why not say *why* and
*for whom* it's ghastly? That would be useful. Just saying it's an
abomination, without any explanation of what about the package makes
you think this, is less than useful. The program might actually be
just the thing for the original poster, even if it doesn't suit you
at all.
________________________________________________________________________
Paula E. Burch, Ph.D. Molecular Biology Computational Resource
Baylor College of Medicine phone: (713)798-6023 fax: (713)798-4279
Houston, Texas 77030 internet: pburch at bcm.tmc.eduhttp://mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu/pburch.htmlwww at mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu
