[Bf-docboard] more editing: part 1, introduction
Luke Stodola
bf-docboard@blender.org
Thu, 01 Apr 2004 19:22:58 -0500
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RCS file: /cvsroot/docboard/BlenderManual2.32/PartI/introduction/en/chapter_introduction.xml,v
retrieving revision 1.1
diff -u -w -r1.1 chapter_introduction.xml
--- chapter_introduction.xml 29 Mar 2004 16:18:32 -0000 1.1
+++ chapter_introduction.xml 2 Apr 2004 00:20:08 -0000
@@ -8,19 +8,19 @@
<title>What is Blender?</title>
<para>Blender is an integrated suite of tools enabling the creation of a
- broad range of 3D content. It offers full functionality for modeling,
- rendering, animation, post-production, creation and playback of
- interactive 3D content with the singular benefits of cross-platform
- operability and a download file size of less than 2.5MB.</para>
+ broad range of 3D content. It allows advanced modeling and
+ rendering of stills, animations, and interactive 3D content.
+ It runs on many different computing platforms. Despite its great
+ power and flexibility, it has a download file size of less than 2.5MB.</para>
<para>Aimed at media professionals and artists, Blender can be used to
- create 3D visualizations, stills as well as broadcast quality video, while
- the incorporation of a real-time 3D engine allows for the creation of 3D
+ create 3D visualizations, both single frames as well as broadcast quality video.
+ The incorporation of a real-time 3D engine allows for the creation of 3D
interactive content for stand-alone playback.</para>
<para>Originally developed by the company 'Not a Number' (NaN), Blender
- now is continued as 'Free Software', with the sources available under GNU
- GPL.</para>
+ is now released as 'Free Software', available under the GNU
+ General Public License.</para>
<para>Key Features: <itemizedlist>
<listitem>
@@ -31,12 +31,12 @@
</listitem>
<listitem>
- <para>Small executable size, for easy distribution;</para>
+ <para>Cross platform, with OpenGL based GUI, ready to use for all
+ flavours of Windows, Linux, OSX, FreeBSD, Irix and Sun;</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
- <para>Cross platform, with OpenGL based GUI, ready to use for all
- flavours of Windows, Linux, OSX, FreeBSD, Irix and Sun;</para>
+ <para>Small executable size, for easy distribution;</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@
</listitem>
<listitem>
- <para>More than 250.000 people worldwide user community;</para>
+ <para>Worldwide user community of more than 250.000 people;</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist> You can download the latest version of Blender at
download.blender.org.</para>
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@
animation studio in the Netherlands and one of the leading animation
houses in Europe. NeoGeo created award-winning productions (European
Corporate Video Awards 1993 and 1995) for large corporate clients such as
- multi-national electronics company Philips. Within NeoGeo Ton was
+ multi-national electronics company Philips. Within NeoGeo, Ton was
responsible for both art direction and internal software development.
After careful deliberation Ton decided that the current in-house 3D tool
set for NeoGeo was too old and cumbersome to maintain and upgrade and
@@ -79,12 +79,12 @@
(NaN) as a spin-off of NeoGeo to further market and develop Blender. At
the core of NaN was a desire to create and distribute a compact, cross
platform 3D creation suite for free. At the time this was a revolutionary
- concept as most commercial modelers cost several thousands of (US)
- dollars. NaN hoped to bring professional level 3D modeling and animation
+ concept as most commercial modelers cost several thousand
+ dollars (US). NaN hoped to bring professional level 3D modeling and animation
tools within the reach of the general computing public. NaN's business
model involved providing commercial products and services around Blender.
In 1999 NaN attended its first Siggraph conference in an effort to more
- widely promote Blender. Blender's first 1999 Siggraph convention was a
+ widely promote Blender. This convention was a
huge success and gathered a tremendous amount of interest from both the
press and attendees. Blender was a hit and its huge potential
confirmed!</para>
@@ -98,20 +98,20 @@
By the end of 2000, the number of users registered on the NaN website
surpassed 250,000.</para>
- <para>Unfortunately, NaN's ambitions and opportunities didn't match the
+ <para>Unfortunately, NaN's ambitions didn't match the
company's capabilities and the market realities of the time. This
overextension resulted in restarting NaN with new investor funding and a
smaller company in April 2001. Six months later NaN's first commercial
- software product, <emphasis>Blender Publisher</emphasis> was launched.
+ software product, <emphasis>Blender Publisher</emphasis>, was launched.
This product was targeted at the emerging market of interactive web-based
3D media. Due to disappointing sales and the ongoing difficult economic
climate, the new investors decided to shut down all NaN operations. The
- shutdown also included discontinuing the development of Blender. Although
+ shutdown included discontinuing the development of Blender. Although
there were clearly shortcomings in the current version of Blender, with a
complex internal software architecture, unfinished features and a
- non-standard way of providing the GUI, enthusiastic support from the user
- community and customers who had purchased Blender Publisher in the past,
- Ton couldn't justify leaving Blender to disappear into oblivion. Since
+ non-standard way of providing the GUI, there was enthusiastic support from the user
+ community and customers who had purchased Blender Publisher in the past.
+ Ton couldn't justify leaving Blender to disappear into oblivion, but since
restarting a company with a sufficiently large team of developers wasn't
feasible, in March 2002 Ton Roosendaal founded the non-profit organization
<emphasis>Blender Foundation</emphasis>.</para>
@@ -120,13 +120,14 @@
developing and promoting Blender as a community-based <ulink
url="http://www.opensource.org/">Open Source</ulink> project. In July
2002, Ton managed to get the NaN investors to agree to a unique Blender
- Foundation plan to attempt to Blender as open source. The "Free Blender"
+ Foundation plan to attempt to release Blender as open source software.
+ The "Free Blender"
campaign sought to raise 100,000 EUR so that the Foundation could buy the
- rights to the Blender source code and intellectual property rights from
+ rights to the Blender source code and other intellectual property rights from
the NaN investors and subsequently release Blender to the open source
community. With an enthusiastic group of volunteers, among them several
ex-NaN employees, a fund raising campaign was launched to "Free Blender."
- To everyone's surprise and delight the campaign reached the 100,000 EUR
+ To everyone's surprise and delight, the campaign reached the 100,000 EUR
goal in only seven short weeks. On Sunday October 13, 2002, Blender was
released to the world under the terms of the GNU General Public License
(GPL). Blender development continues to this day driven by a team of
@@ -244,21 +245,24 @@
<section id="introduction_opensource">
<title>About Free Software and the GPL</title>
- <para>When one hears about "free software", the first thing that comes to
- mind might be "no cost". While this is true in most cases, the term "free
- software" as used by the Free Software Foundation (originators of the GNU
- Project and creators of the GNU General Public License) is intended to
- mean "free as in freedom" rather than the "no cost" sense (which is
- usually referred to as "free as in free beer"). Free software in this
- sense is software which you are free to use, copy, modify, redistribute,
- with no limit. Contrast this with the licensing of most commercial
- software packages, where you are allowed to load the software on a single
- computer, are allowed to make no copies, and never see the source code.
+ <para>When one hears the term "free", the first thing that comes to
+ mind might be "no cost". In English, the word "free" has several distinct
+ meanings, the most common being "free as in freedom" and "free as in
+ price". When we speak of free software, we are not refering to the cost of
+ the software, but to the freedom associated with it.
+ Free software in this
+ sense is software which you are free to use, modify, copy, and redistribute,
+ with very few limits. Contrast this with the licensing of most commercial
+ software packages, where you are allowed to load the software on only a single
+ computer, are not allowed to make any copies, and you never see the source code.
Free software allows incredible freedom to the end user; in addition,
since the source code is available universally, there are many more
- chances for bugs to be caught and fixed.</para>
+ chances for bugs to be caught and fixed and new features to be added.</para>
- <para>When a program is licensed under the GNU General Public License (the
+ <para>Free software is usually copyrighted, and users are given a license to
+ use the software under specific terms. The most famous such license is the
+ Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License. When a program is
+ licensed under the GNU General Public License (the
GPL): <itemizedlist mark="bullet">
<listitem>
<para>you have the right to use the program for any purpose;</para>
@@ -316,23 +320,25 @@
<section id="introduction_support">
<title>Getting support - the Blender community</title>
- <para>Being freely available from start, even while closed source, helped
- a lot in Blender's diffusion. A large, stable and active community of
+ <para>Blender was available at no cost, even while it was still
+ a non-free, closed source program, and this helped
+ a lot in Blender's diffusion. A large, active, and stable community of
users has gathered around Blender since 1998.</para>
<para>The community showed its best in the crucial moment of freeing
- Blender itself, going Open Source under GNU GPL in late summer
- 2002.</para>
+ Blender, allowing the software to become Open Source, under GNU GPL,
+ in late summer 2002.</para>
+
- <para>The community itself is now subdivided into two, widely overlapping
- sites:</para>
+ <para>The Blender community is now subdivided into two widely overlapping
+ groups:</para>
<orderedlist>
<listitem>
<para>The development community, centered around the Blender
Foundation site <ulink url="http://www.blender.org/"></ulink>. Here is
the home of the development projects, the Functionality and
- Documentation Boards, the CVS repository with Blender sources, all
+ Documentation Boards, the CVS repository with Blender source code and
documentation sources, and related public discussion forums.
Developers coding on Blender itself, Python scripters, documentation
writers, and anyone working for Blender development in general can be
@@ -353,14 +359,17 @@
community exhibits a lot of independent sites, in local languages or
devoted to specialized topics. A constantly updated listing of Blender
resources can be found at the abovementioned sites.</para>
+ <!-- URL for the listing? --->
- <para>For immediate online feedback there are three chat boxes permanently
+ <para>For immediate online feedback there are three Internet Relay Chat
+ groups permanently
opened on irc.freenode.net. You can join these with your favorite IRC
client.</para>
+ <!-- wording issues? Are they called channels, not chatboxes? and "opened"? -->
<para>Chatboxes are <keycap>#blenderchat</keycap>,
<keycap>#blenderqa</keycap> and <keycap>#gameblender</keycap>. The first
- of these is accessible even without a IRC client but with a plain Java
+ of these is aeven ccessible with just a plain Java
enabled Web Browser through the elYsiun site (<ulink
url="http://www.elysiun.com/"></ulink>).</para>
</section>
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