[Sigia-l] Open Source Usability -- curable?

[Bill Bell]

"chris" <lists at semioticpixels.com> wrote, in part:
 
> I think the problem of usability in open source is more of a cultural
> barrier than an engineering or functional barrier.

Speaking as a programmer I'm not so sure of this, although I do agree that culture is part of 
the problem.

There are well understood, widely available means for all but guaranteeing code correctness 
(and I'm thinking in particular of unit testing). However, to my knowledge nothing remotely like 
this exists for assuring the quality of the interface--and indeed may not be possible. In fact, it 
appears to me that none of the most used products intended to help programmers craft UIs 
even offer means for checking the _correctness_ of these interfaces, let alone their 
usefulness.

For example, when I build something for IE the process of verifying the UI during debugging 
and final testing is a very laborious one indeed.

Bill