[Bf-committers] Newbies and Blender

[Doug Ollivier]

Wow, you hit the nail on the head with a lot of common issues.

Even for experienced users the /tmp directory is a huge problem. (auto 
saves not saving is a major cause of wasted time for me)
I would personally hope the /tmp directory not be saved with the file 
but be a system wide variable for all blender files unless specifically 
asked to embed it by the user if for example the /tmp folder is specific 
to the project....

As for save and exit dialogues, I think its fair enough to want one. i 
don't see the increase in productivity gained by clicking once more to 
exit.   but then again, if the /tmp file is working correctly this 
shouldn't be needed as it saves a quit.blend file anyway.


Doug Ollivier

Chris Want wrote:
>
> I had an interesting experience this week teaching
> nine hours of blender to some new users (it was only supposed
> to be a three hour course *gulp*).
>
> Seeing new people use blender, one becomes aware of
> certain traps that experienced users don't even think
> about anymore. There were a few things that I found
> particularly nasty:
>
> 1) I think that the confirmation for quiting should
> also have a choice to save the file (whether it is
> modified or not, which blender does not test at all).
> A few people lost work due to undesired quiting. I
> would recommend a pop up that says:
>
> Quit Blender?    (<---- first choice)
> Save file and quit?
> Cancel?
>
> (or some variation of the above).
>
> 2) I think there should be a big, scary, extreme
> warning for when the temp directory doesn't exist.
> If the temp directory doesn't exist, autosave doesn't
> work, and the quit.blend isn't written. Thus the
> people who unintentionally quit blender did not have
> a backup file to use... sad, sad, sad. (I designed
> my files on a unix system that had /tmp for the Temp
> dir, but C:\tmp did not exist on the lab machines.)
> What I would recommend is that at start up, the
> existence of the temp directory is queried, and if
> this directory does not exist there should be a
> pop up offering a platform specific alternative,
> e.g.,:
>
> Warning! Autosave directory /tmp does not exist!
> Use C:\Temp?     (<---- first choice)
> Create /tmp?
> Work without autosave?
>
> Something like that...
>
> 3) The okee() dialog draws a little "OK?" on the
> titlebar of something that requires confirmation.
> Very often, the students would try to click the
> word 'OK', like they do in every other program.
> With blender, this is ineffective and they are
> expected to click the stuff underneath the word
> 'OK'. Should I really have to explain how to
> use a confirmation dialog?
>
> Anyways, these were the main things that really
> bothered me... any comments?
>
> Regards,
> Chris
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