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Re: artists

Steve Baker wrote:

Frederic A. Martinelli wrote:


getting lost. It may be capable, but boy does the UI suck. The UI may be


The UI is very good as long as you know what you're doing / searching for.

But that's only good if you already know what's there and what the
teeny-tiny icon for it looks like.   Lots of the menu's have completely
Yes, that's what i've said "if you know what you're doing/searching for", personnaly i'm not searching for functions that i know not to be included because i've spend some time reading the doc _before_, for exemple, so its easier for me to know what something means as the choice is smaller even if i still haven't read that part of the doc. That's what i'm talking about.
Personally i've never considered that not knowing a program before having ever used it is a dramatic flow in the GUI design, or after a week of use if you prefer.

unlabelled text entry fields!

For futures fonctions/add-ons, it's a design, it's all subjective here.


I DO know what I'm searching for - but since it turns out to be a 16x16
pixel image comprising a white square with cow-spots on it...how the f**k
am I going to recognise it when I see it?
Almost(all?) the icons are explained in online tutorials, there is quite a lot of things online. That haven't have been a problem for me.



The menu is the space bar, it's written in a lot of places but for 
that you have to RTFM,





That's a classic example of the kind of problem Blender has.  Every other

GUI-based package on the planet comes up with the menu ON by default.  You

may want to provide a way to hide it - and you may want to have a 
preferences

option to have it be off on startup - but the default should be to be 
friendly

to newbies.   Sophisticated users can tweak the program to suit their 
preferences,

newbies cannot.



The idea of having to read a manual to find the menu is a concept that 
went out

sometime in the early 1980's!



Ha, ok and as you've started to work in 1979 you've almost never read 
any manual... :) I understand your point of view now. :) But Franckly 
since late 1990's everybodies stating that not RTFM is "a bad 
thing"(tm), especialy under Linux.



Note that you should tell that also to Adobe which makes each year more 
money because of pdf docs (that can be printed if people prefer to read 
them...) They must be fools then, how can they spend so many times 
coding things that no one uses !?!... :)






When you *do* find the menu - it's not remotely like any other program 
you've

ever seen.   People would expect to see (as a minimum) File on the left 
with

standard entries like New, Load, Save, Save As and Exit - with 
standard-looking

file selector popups.  Instead you have the weirdest file selector I've 
ever

seen!   I can understand that there might be some unusual requirements 
of 3D

artists that might affect things like how you make polygons - but the 
basics

like directory browsing is a well established thing that EVERYONE 
understands.



Yes and everybody should really think the same thing too so there 
wouldn't be anything to understand anymore.

Note also that when everybody'll do the same thing then we'll get some 
person putting a pattent on it... Of course. :)






Blender is agressively awkward in ways it doesn't NEED to be awkward.



The authors need to read the X/Motif style guide - that's widely 
recognised to

be an authoritative guide to getting GUI-based applications as least 
minimally

useable - Blender probably breaks every guideline in there!



Maybe the programmers haven't read the manual ? :)



So according to you nobody's able to play a game as (almost?) none of 
them have the File menu entry in them... And it's well known to young 
(pirated-)game players that not having a menu is something killing. :)

I take the time to verify that effectively there is no menu in "Tux the 
penguin: a quest for hearring". Indeed. But it does have a manual with 
the key-bindings inside (of course ?)... Same for TuxKart... :)






there are keybindings: they just don't match 3DS ones, 




That doesn't matter.  What DOES matter is that they don't mirror menu items

and the key binding isn't listed next to a corresponding menu item.  The 
way

people learn key bindings is that they start off by slowly plodding 
through the

menu's - and when they find something they need to do a lot, they'll get 
sick

of doing that and read the keybinding printed next to the menu item and 
start

to use it.  Learning keybindings by reading about them in the manual 
doesn't

work for most people.



Yes and that's why you're saying that manual are useless. I hope that at 
least none of your software have manuals... I'm kidding here, i just 
can't resist this one... Ho, and by the way why did you put a manual 
online for the Pretty-Poly editor ? ;)






and for modern usability: really you obviously don't know a single 
heck about 3D rendering so how can you say that ? First learn _then_ 
give your opinion.





...well, I *DO* know about 3D rendering - I've been working in 3D graphics

since 1979.   I've written modellers, renderers and 3D applications, 
I've designed

3D graphic hardware, I earn $150,000 a year because I'm a 3D graphics 
guru, I've

built HUNDREDS of programs with user interfaces that are ALL better than 
Blenders'.

I wrote programs in OpenGL before the first implementation was even 
complete.

I wrote the first every 3D game for Linux.  I use 3D modellers several 
times

a day - and have done so for the past 25 years.



Wow, you've certainly impressed all the newbie out there. :)

Hehe, i'm kidding as i guess that you've said that because you were 
feeling i was agressing you for some reason, what is false and certainly 
not intended btw. You didn't need to gave those personnal informations 
out there as everybody knows you under Linux.






So whilst this guy *may* not be 3D literate, I most certainly *am* - and 
I agree

with him 100%.  The blender interface sucks.



Please don't try to "out qualify" people in your debates with them.  
There is always

someone better qualified than you are!



No, i wasn't "out qualifying" anyone, i just make replies according to 
what i can deduce/know.






KILL... Once you find out how to save and load, you have to save you 
model

all the time so that you have something to revert to when the inevitable

"what does this app do now, how can I get it back to normal?" comes 
along

and foces you to KILL it.





Impressive you're not even used to test after the Q/X/Ctrl-Q/Ctrl-X 
sequence of keys to quit a progs, you're using computers since how 
many days ?





Listen to this guy.  He's in your "target demographic".   If he can't 
figure

out how to do something, it's the fault of the GUI designer - not the fault

of the user.   If he didn't figure out that Q/X was the right thing - then


Yes, if we follow your logic that manuals are useless...




you should consider having a 'File' menu with an 'Exit' item at the bottom
of the list of entries - and have that menu be on the screen at all times
unless it's been explicitly dismissed.

This guy DOES know how to exit from:  GIMP, Mozilla, OpenOffice, etc.  If
he can't figure out how to exit out of Blender - then it's CLEARLY Blender
that's at fault.




So, as in TuxKart you're quitting with the X and ESC keys and not 
Ctrl-Q, you're clearly at fault too... as you don't make like Gimp,... ? 
:) For Pretty-Poly editor it's with Alt-F4 and Ctrl-C...



Yep, people with new ideas are always hatred: it's a sooo easy attitude 
to never change any uses. :)



The most funny is that in the couple last Blender there is a menu...

(yeah, i kept this one for the end ! :) )



Fred.

P.S.: Note that i take your own programs as exemples not for personal 
attacks but because they are well known softwares _and_ because you made 
them.