Why not grab? Re: [Bf-funboard] Regarding the old grabber business

Luke Wenke bf-funboard@blender.org
Fri, 7 Nov 2003 10:55:42 +1000


Hi,
What about calling it "Grab" though...? It is shorter so the screen would be
less cluttered, it would take a bit less time to read (productivity)... and
it is a verb so people can think "I'll Grab this" (or "Rotate this" or
"Scale this") Of course, people can think of the verb form of grabber but
that takes a bit of extra time. The only advantage of grabber I'm aware of
is that it is copies the word used in an old Amiga program (which not many
users would currently use)... well it would also follow tutorials and old
manuals a bit better but people should be able to realize that "grabber",
which has the hotkey "g" and is used to move things is the same thing as
"grab", which happens to have the same hot key.
As far as "translate" goes, I didn't know anyone suggested that. "Move"
would be much better (if you had to think of an alternative to grab) - it is
shorter than "translate", and would be understood by everyone... to the
general public, they'd probably think "translate" has something to do with
converting things between different languages or formats.
- Luke.

----- Original Message ----- 
> I did a little statistical study asking people around
> what they thought "grabber" meant in the context of a
> 3D graphic program if the entries "Rotate" and "Scale"
> appeared in the same menu. I didn't even tell them
> that those entries where in a menu called "Transform"
> in a context menu related to 3D objects.
>
> Please also bear in mind that all of those were
> totally unknowledgeable in the field of 3D graphics
> and that their primary language isn't english.
>
> All of them guessed correctly that it was something
> used to move (in the sense of translation) something
> else.
>
> Now, I don't want to say that "Translate" wouldn't be
> clearer, but I think the argument that newbies cannot
> understand "Grabber" at all is exagerating a lot.
>
> Martin