[Bf-committers] Sum up the long outside viewers post

[Alexander Ewering]

On Wed, 12 May 2004, trip wrote:

> My favorite quotes are :
> 
> " Im all for blender as an open source app, but it suffers from the  
> same problem as every other open source tool Ive ever used.  Its  
> written by nerds, for nerds.  The only exception Ive ever come across  
> is the Firefox beta "
> 
> This Message is not propaganda, it is just a view on what the outside  
> world thinks about Blender, and it leads me to believe if Blender were  
> more user friendly then it might have a few more coders to edit some  
> code.

OK,

HOW USER FRIENDLY do people want an interface for one of the
MOST COMPLEX APPLICATIONS IN EXISTANCE to be? This discussion
is driving me crazy. The interface, the interface, and again, the
interface.

PLEASE, stop these discussions already, and just IGNORE people
starting them all over again. Blender is complex, its UI is complex.
PERIOD.

Do you want people to make a driver's license for being allowed
to drive a car? Yes? WHY?

We could JUST construct cars that have a maximum speed of 10 mph.
No problems there, even an idiot can drive them without being harmful
to anyone.
Sure, we will all arrive at our destinations a bit late, and it will
screw our economy, but well! At least the car is NEWBIE-FRIENDLY
and EASY TO USE.

What other discussions are going to start about the (already muddled-up
enough since 2.3) interface? Are we going to "remove clutter" like
it seems to be modern these days? Are we going to remove all buttons from
all menus, and make them only accessible via pulldowns, so that Blender's
"front is cleaned up" like monitor manufacturers tend to do these days?
I mean, it's really GOOD that to switch inputs on my monitor, i need to
access a MENU and SUBMENUS instead of just pushing a frigging CLUTTER-IT-UP-
button on the front. I don't have anything else to do. :)

A good example of this "newbie-friendly", "features confuse newbies",
and "remove-the-clutter"-insanity these days is GNOME 2 (for those
who know it).
I used to be a satisfied GNOME user for years, until they came up with
GNOME 2 and I tried it. It made me instantly switch to KDE.

Why?

Because it's CLEANED UP. The developers removed about 80% of the features
(its window manager can't even remember window attributes or positions 
neither snap to borders), made it all flashy with AA fonts (another 
insanity imported to Blender) and noticeably slow on a 1.7 GHz Athlon XP.

Why don't we just remove the dang 3d cursor from Blender? I'm sure it's
CONFUSING to newbies! Why not implement a nice balloon help when you hover
over the 3d window for 3 seconds, which says "Where do you want the new
Object to be"? It would be much more newbie-friendly! They wouldn't even
have to read 10 words of documentation on the cursor.

I find the argumentation about "Industry professionals" and "Nerds"
particularly funny.

First, someone "PROFESSIONALLY" using a 3d app like Blender *IS* a Nerd.

Second, as an "INDUSTRY PROFESSIONAL", you WILL have enough time and
resources to spend to buy a COMPREHENSIVE BOOK with lots of documentation
on your application (such a wonderful book does exist for Blender),
and READ it far enough to know your way around the basic particularities
of the User interface of your application.

That "The interface scares newbies away"-argumentation is totally
ridiculous. If you plan to do something *professional* (which is what
everyone seems to be complaining about), you WILL read documentation.

Sorry all the list members and particularly Ton, you already know
I *hate* political correctness and tend to be honest and direct instead
of packaging my words into a pile of pillows (some politicians in the
western part of the world already do that well enough).

Thanks for reading :)

| alexander ewering               instinctive new media
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