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Wolf wrote:
> That's the lovely thing, you do not need the full-blown Eclipse platform at
> all! The minimal thing you need is the Eclipse "Platform Runtime Binary"
> edition.

That's very good to hear.

> BTW, I would suggest splitting the renderer from the GUI application
> completely, like mentioned by nemesis above.

That's increasingly sounding like the way to go.

> The project thing is extremely easy to understand and to use. You need just
> a couple of clicks to set-up your project in the default manner.

You'd be surprised by just how much that can trip up first-time users.
Just a few weeks ago I watched much confusion when a bunch of students
were expected to use Visual Studio for an assignment the first time
(including myself...why would I need VS when I have vim?). I heard lots
of people asking "what was that menu that he clicked?".

A process that should have been as simple as "vim <filename>" turned
into a half-dozen mouse clicks (file -> new project, select "Console
application", select next, go to properties, unselect "precompiled
headers", and so on).

Of course, part of the problem is that what *should* have been printed
on some handout, the instructor just did on a big screen and expected us
to follow along. Invariably, students fell behind and got lost.

Now, in the Unix world, the people who don't like projects will just
wander off and use vim (or emacs, or pico (eww), or ed, or...). However,
I'm still worried about turning away new users in Windows/Mac. The
concept of a "project" is going to be completely alien to people coming
from 3DS, or Photoshop, or whatever. They're going to have enough
trouble adjusting to the concept of SDL as it is.

I'm asking for a stupid-easy way to hop in, create or open a stand-alone
scene file, and render it. (And no, as far as I am concerned, a
pre-populated sample project isn't enough.) We don't need to give up the
projects feature, but I want a way to bypass it.

Think of it as some scratchboard feature for transient test code that
just doesn't deserve the overhead of creating a full-blown project.

- --
William Tracy
afi### [at] gmailcom -- wtr### [at] calpolyedu

You know you've been raytracing too long when even though you've
explained raytracing to them, your family doesn't really understand what
you're talking about, and they wonder why you won't just admit you took
those pictures with a camera.
    -- Jeff Lee
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