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Re: artists

Frederic A. Martinelli wrote:
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.
So what you are advocating is software where you have to read the entire
manual - and do all the tutorials - and just memorize the whole lot before
you get started on the simplest of operations?

Jeez.  Case closed.
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.
I can't think of ANY other GUI based program that can't be learned
well enought to get basic work done in a couple of hours.


unlabelled text entry fields!

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

What?!?  So they put in those fields for future add-ons?   Couldn't
they just leave them out until they need them?   That's just sloppy.


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.
But it's VERY hard to memorize a pile of arcane icons so you know which
of the myriad modes it's hidden under.   Learning by reading a manual
just isn't the way modern software is supposed to be.  Hands up who
read the Mozilla manual?
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.
The manual should be there to look up the *occasional* difficult thing.
Not as something you have to read from cover to cover in order to do
basic stuff.   If I could master the BASIC modelling operations in
Blender, I'd be happy to RTFM when I get stuck on something arcane.
Yes and everybody should really think the same thing too so there wouldn't be anything to understand anymore.
No - the software should get out of the way and allow me to use my
valuable brain cycles for creativity and problem solving.  Powerful
software doesn't make you think hard about how to use the software
itself.
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 ? :)

:-)

That's something different.  The X/Motif style guide isn't a software
manual - it's a guide book.  It doesn't tell you much (if anything) about
X or Motif. It tells you things like "it's bad to move the mouse pointer"
and "it's bad to have the mouse affect the way the software does things
unless one or more mouse buttons are pressed down".
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... :)
Games are different.  They have to be intuitive without the need for a
manual *or* a complicated GUI.   Start either of my Tux games with just
a joystick and you'll be playing within seconds without the need for
either a GUI or a manual.

The menu's are there primarily for developers.
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 ? ;)
As I said before - I don't believe you can get away without a manual
at all.  It would be nice if one's GUI design were good enough to make
a manual completely unnecessary - but I'm not naive enough to believe
that's true for anything beyond the simplest applications.  Users NEED
to refer to the manual when life gets tricky for them - but they shouldn't
need to refer to it at all to do the really basic stuff that makes an
application useful.

I wouldn't mind having to refer to Blender's manual to find out how to
apply a texture using some fancy spherical mapping.  I do mind having
to refer to it to find out where the texture menu's are and how to
apply a basic map to a simple cube.  I should be able to do THAT without
the manual.
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.
No - I gave that information because you were mocking another poster for
his (presumed) lack of 3D skills and experience.  You were essentially
saying that he couldn't understand Blender because he was too inexperienced.

I wanted to show how utterly unfair AND untrue that line of reasoning
is.   I'm certainly not inexperienced - and I can't understand Blender.

Hence *that* particular argument of yours collapses in to the dark hole
it belongs in - and you can safely give it up as a lost cause.
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...

No - my proposition is that good software should be learnable without the
manuals.   I do not argue that manuals are unnecessary - to the contrary -
they are needed to cover the inevitable chinks in the quality of the GUI.

Thus far, I havn't needed to look at the GIMP manual - it's a very nice package.

I have needed to look up several things in the Maya and SoftImage manuals...they
aren't so easy to use.  However, in no case have I ever needed the manual in order
to figure out how to do something as simple as a textured cube - or how to bring up
the menu.

HOWEVER - I have actually read as much of the Blender manual as I can stomach - and
I bought and read the Blender book.  Neither of them were good enough to help me
understand Blender well enough to use it.  What's more, within a day or two, I've
forgotten whatever I did learn about what the Cow-spot button does and where it's
hidden and on what phase of the moon it does what.   It's just not memorable - and
the software's menu's don't give you enough of a clue to retrigger that memory.
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...
TuxKart doesn't run full-screen, there are no files to save - so the 'universal'
'X' button in the menu-bar is a perfectly adequate exit mechanism.

Blender (by default at least) comes up with no window decorations - and in any
case, I really need to save before I exit - so hitting the window border's 'X'
button isn't going to cut it.

PrettyPoly has a completely conventional menu structure.  Click on the 'File'
button (which is in the usual place at the top-left corner of the main window),
click on 'Save', 'Close' or 'Exit' as you need to...just like almost every other
complex GUI-based application.
Yep, people with new ideas are always hatred: it's a sooo easy attitude to never change any uses. :)
I'm a big fan of change - when and only when that change is an improvement.

Blender's GUI is by no stretch of the imagination an improvement.  Start
a discussion of Blender's merits and faults on any non-blender-fanatic
mailing list - and the very first thing you'll here is a bunch of
people complaining that the GUI sucks.  If that's innovative then
please stop innovating immediately!


The most funny is that in the couple last Blender there is a menu...
(yeah, i kept this one for the end ! :) )

I'll download another copy and try again.

However, the lack of a menu is only the first and most obvious of MANY
serious problems.
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.
I stand by all of them.

Games are NOT complex GUI-based applications.

If you had actually LOOKED at PrettyPoly (or Exposer or MICE or...) which
are all complicated GUI-based programs, you'd have noticed that they all
have pretty conventional GUI's - and manuals that hardly anyone reads.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
HomeEmail: <sjbaker1@airmail.net>    WorkEmail: <sjbaker@link.com>
HomePage : http://www.sjbaker.org
Projects : http://plib.sf.net    http://tuxaqfh.sf.net
           http://tuxkart.sf.net http://prettypoly.sf.net
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