<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<title></title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
I'm 100% with Matt on this one.<br>
<br>
Matt Ebb schrieb:
<blockquote cite="midCBEE1D2C-BF43-421B-9249-F5B11A41D442@mke3.net"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">On 02/12/2006, at 07:18 AM, GSR wrote:
> OTOH, those new names hide any option of looking for paper that
> explain how and why things happen. It reminds me of those chemical /
> car / software companies that hide generic things (cyano glue,
> variable injection, sorting algorithm...) behind cryptic trade names
> and acronyms (SuperDuperGlue, VITXplus, FooIntelliSystem), to create a
> brand, confuse the buyer or negate the information to competitors
Ah, but that's a false dichotomy - that's not what we're proposing at all.
No-one's saying to make some lame brand out of it like 'HyperShadow Pro X' or
something, and nobody is saying that all technical information should be removed
completely.
To continue your glue analogy, currently it's like walking through the
supermarket and seeing boxes on the shelf called "Cyanoacrylate compound". I'm
proposing to call it "Strong fast-setting glue" with the exact ingredients still
there, on the back of the pack. Perhaps all the glue engineers are horrified at
that thought, and speak in hushed tones about how the supermarket's all dumbed
down, but I'm glad they're not the ones deciding on what I have to choose from
in the aisle.
There's plenty of room for technicalities in the tooltip and in a reference
manual. The point is to provide the appropriate kind of information where it's
most relevant. In the interface where things are tweaked for a visual result, it
should be something simple and understandable that describes the practical
effects that it has.
There is going to be text in the interface, something in a tooltip, something in
a manual, in any case. The trick is to weigh up which information is most useful
in which situation, and how useful it is *at that time* compared to other
information. What information is more relevant and useful to an artist, who is
in the middle of the task of trying to get their shadows to look a certain way?
The name of the algorithm that is used, or a description of what it looks like?
The names 'irregular' or 'classical' or whatever algorithm names on their own do
not carry any inherent meaning. Calling them "flurblebrop shadows" would
communicate just about the same amount of meaning to the average artist. It's
just a name that's representative of something else, that then has to go though
one extra step of translation in the minds of artists, from programmer language
(irregular) -> plain English (causes sharp shadows) -> visual result, and going
through this thought process is completely irrelevant and extra mental overhead
to the visual task of deciding how you want your shadows to look.
Artists don't and shouldn't need to understand the technical process to
understand the result. Often one can learn through experience that one thing
produces some kind of result and something else produces some other result. It
wasn't so long ago that I didn't know how raytracing worked, but I knew that it
was slow to process, and it enabled reflections and refractions, and that was
good enough for me to get stuff done.
> OTOH, those new names hide any option of looking for paper that
> explain how and why things happen.
Not at all, if you *do* want to know the technical details of how it works or
what name programmers like to give to that process, you should be able to of
course! Nobody's trying to censor that information. But that's not the job of
main button label in the interface, it's the job of a manual or tooltip or
something, and artists shouldn't be *forced* to go reading computer science
papers to learn about the technicalities of the process just to get stuff done.
You're not going to learn anything by the word 'irregular' on it's own anyway,
which makes it much more relevant in a reference text which can explain the
process rather than just give a single word. It's also much easier to do a web
search for more information from there when you're in an explorational train of
thought, than it is when you're in the middle of doing test renders with a
deadline coming!
Matt
------------------------------------------
Matt Ebb . <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:matt@mke3.net">matt@mke3.net</a> . <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mke3.net">http://mke3.net</a>
</pre>
<pre wrap="">
<hr size="4" width="90%">
_______________________________________________
Bf-funboard mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Bf-funboard@projects.blender.org">Bf-funboard@projects.blender.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://projects.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-funboard">http://projects.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-funboard</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>