Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> __/ [ Mark Kent ] on Friday 25 August 2006 09:04 \__
>
>> begin oe_protect.scr
>> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>>> __/ [ Kelsey Bjarnason ] on Friday 25 August 2006 01:52 \__
>>>
>>>> On Thu, 24 Aug 2006 16:23:46 +0100, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> OpenUsability Sponsored Student Projects
>>>>>
>>>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>>>> | The GIMP team is proud to announce that the GNU Image Manipulation
>>>>> | Program has been chosen as the first Open Source Software project for
>>>>> | a sponsored student project on usability.
>>>>> `----
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.gimp.org/announcements/open-usability-gimp.html
>>>>>
>>>>> Personally, I find that GNU Image Manipulation Program very usable. I
>>>>> get things done more quickly than I did with Paintshop and Photoshop.
>>>>
>>>> Good app... abysmal UI. I keep looking for the magic button that'll
>>>> merge all these dissociated chunks into a single, coherent unified
>>>> window.
>>>
>>> The window fragmentation is what enables you, for instance, to work on 10
>>> images simultaneously in multi-head displays, without all the clutter that
>>> is in menus and toolkits. It took me time to comprehend why it's a better
>>> way of getting things done (been using GIMP since 2002). If this isn't a
>>> convenient transition (due to long-acquired habits), there is a plug-in
>>> that achieve what you want and it's also prepackaged under the fork called
>>> GIMPShop where, even menu item names and layouts, have been altered to
>>> resemble Adobe Photoshop. It has become rather popular for the wrong
>>> reasons.
>>
>> The windows way of doing things has created a generation of people
>> who assume computing solutions should work in a single-windowed way.
>> To a great extent, this is really a legacy of DOS, where there was
>> only
if you knew anything about UI development you would know that a lot of
time & effort went into researching this : google up SDI & MDI.
You can argue all you like, but the "gimp" way plain sucks on a desktop
where every other app works another way.
>> one task running at any one time (okay, you could have TSRs, but there
>> was never a comms standard for them, and no memory protection at all,
>> so use at your own peril).
>
>
> Particularly, when one deals with /images/, the problem at hand changes. Why
> have a 800 pixel wide window which contains a GIF that's just 64 pixels by
> 64 pixels? That's an utter waste of space. And nested Windows (i.e. image
> windows within a parent windows) leave you with a dreary grey (?) background
> rather than your lovely wallpaper.
>
>
>> This limitation forced designers to come up with packages where everything
>> was accessible through a single start-point, one of the best-known
>> examples being the Borland IDE.
>
>
> That's another interesting perspective. The IDE concept follows the same
> fallacies. When I do programming I see the pleasant image of the Matterhorn.
> I have a shell windows with transparency and I have a tab-enabled editor on
> the other monitor (it includes translucent components too). It's a rather
> motivational way of getting things done. And it's highly productive and
> flexible as there is no clutters and there is plenty of control over the
> workspace.
>
> Mind you, a package/PL like MATLAB runs as an IDE by default, but I always
> run it with the --no-desktop option. I used to work in its IDE. What a total
> disaster that was. Why can't people grasp common sense and drop the filth
> Microsoft has been force-feeding them by delivering programs that arrogantly
> make all the decisions /for/ the user, even when they peril productivity?
> IDE's don't work. It's better to compose your own environment, for your own
> tasks, for your own level of expertise, as well as your available hardware.
> It's like comparing a meal where you get no choice with an open buffet.
>
>
>> The unix way of doing things which by design supports multiple
>> processes, windows, and so on, never needed the IDE and all its
>> associated complexity; the odd result of that was that until recently,
>> the /prettiest/ development environments were only available for Windows,
>> although the Eclipse project has completely changed that.
>>
>> It's also been common for app developers to provide compatibility menus
>> and so on, even right back to lotus 123/excell and so on.
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