An empirical comparison of two PLATO text editors.

Two PLATO system text editors were evaluated with 14 nonprogrammers and 14 programmers who were either university staff or college students. Half of each group learned the "plain" editor, which had 8 commands and 3 screens of HELP material; while the other half of each group learned the "fancy" editor, which had 15 commands and 1 screen of HELP material. The fancy editor is a subset of the widely used TUTOR editor, but nonprogrammers preferred the plain editor. Faster learning, faster performance, fewer invocations of HELP material, and fewer requests for human assistance were characteristic of the plain editor.