In povray.general Nathan Kopp <Nat### [at] koppcom> wrote:
: In other words, the introduction of a new method of doing something, if
: presented properly, will not necessarily confuse newbies, but will provided
: added functionality that experts will grow to love, once they have mastered
: the slightly steeper learning curve.

  This fact seems to be hard to understand to many people who aggressively
fight against new features. Their argument is almost always the same: "It
will be too hard for newusers to learn". They always forget (or they just
ignore) the fact you mentioned above.

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):_;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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In article <39a2ff44@news.povray.org> , "Nathan Kopp" <Nat### [at] Koppcom> 
wrote:

> This is very interesting.  Many GUI OS and application designers have chosen
> to provide both.  The keyboard shortcuts, which have a higher learning
> curve, are presented in such a way that experts love them, but newbies
> ignore them.  Mouse-operated features are used by newbies and experts alike.

This was not the reason for my question * :-)


     Thorsten


* Either you dig for the various research papers regarding this topic, or
you try to locate a copy of

Tog on Interface
by Bruce Tognazzini
Addison-Wesley 1992
ISBN 0-201-60842-1

in your local libraries.  It explains in a funny way what Apple did with $50
million of research money to create the Lisa and Mac user interface.  Some
of the results are really surprising and unexpected...


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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In article <39A2F9B6.8292AE67@erols.com>, John VanSickle 
<van### [at] erolscom> wrote:

> AKA the AxisRotate() macro in the Thoroughly Useful Macros;

Correct...


> AKA the Stretch() macro in the Throughly Useful Macros;

Didn't know about this one, I salvaged the code from the Liquid Spray 
include when I needed it...


> AKA the Matrix() macro in the Thoroughly Useful Macros.

Correct. Maybe a call it "matrix2"?


> However, the current situation (a few language features, plus a few
> augmenting macros) seems to be getting everyone's scenes together.

Yes...but unless these macros are included with the standard includes, 
people have to copy them into their scene files, which wastes space and 
is not as clear as a new transform would be. Also, think of the use of 
scale, rotate, etc. in little code snippets...missing macros have caused 
people trouble already. And these transforms seem pretty basic...as 
basic as scale, translate, and rotate, at least, and there is already a 
vector function for the axis-rotation...
At the least, I am going to add functions to the source to do these 
transforms(the ones not already implemented, that is)...I have found 
some of them useful in my patches.


> Adding the above features will make things parse slightly faster,

Probably not even enough to notice unless you have a loop that does them 
thousands of times.


> but will have zero impact on rendering speed (because internally 
> everything is boiled down to one matrix).

Yep.

-- 
Christopher James Huff
Personal: chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/

<><

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In article <39a3d7b6@news.povray.org> , "Thorsten Froehlich" 
<tho### [at] trfde> wrote:

> * Either you dig for the various research papers regarding this topic, or
> you try to locate a copy of
>
> Tog on Interface
> by Bruce Tognazzini
> Addison-Wesley 1992
> ISBN 0-201-60842-1
>
> in your local libraries.  It explains in a funny way what Apple did with $50
> million of research money to create the Lisa and Mac user interface.  Some
> of the results are really surprising and unexpected...

Maybe this document is easier to get:

Walker, Neff and Smelcer, John (1990):
"A Comparison of Selection Time from Walking and Bar Menus."



     Thorsten


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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> This would look like Smalltalk where you can create objects only by
> inherting it from a preexisting class hierarchy.  But this is only
> readsay.

Brendan

> arrange all objects in a heirarchy, with "object" being the base object

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In article <39A5CB9A.13BC7C66@global2000.net>, Andrea Ryan 
<ary### [at] global2000net> wrote:

> > This would look like Smalltalk where you can create objects only by
> > inherting it from a preexisting class hierarchy.  But this is only
> > readsay.

My only experience with Smalltalk so far has been a short look at 
Squeak, but it looks like you are right.
Another language that seems to do this is Objective C...though it also 
appears to be possible to make your own root objects, this seems to be 
very rare, and you usually inherit from an Object or NSObject class.

BTW, you seem to be quoting your message body...the only thing that 
didn't look like it was from another message was your signature. :-)
You might want to change whatever setting is causing this, it is 
difficult to read if you aren't expecting it.

-- 
Christopher James Huff
Personal: chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/

<><

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"Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote...
> In article <39a2ff44@news.povray.org> , "Nathan Kopp" <Nat### [at] Koppcom>
> wrote:
>
> > This is very interesting.  Many GUI OS and application designers have
chosen
> > to provide both.  The keyboard shortcuts, which have a higher learning
> > curve, are presented in such a way that experts love them, but newbies
> > ignore them.  Mouse-operated features are used by newbies and experts
alike.
>
> This was not the reason for my question * :-)

I'm still wondering about the reason for your question.  :-)

I'll answer the question, though:  I find keyboard shortcuts _much_ faster
than using the mouse.  I often use the ALT key on my PC to access menus
instead of reaching over for the mouse.  I like to use the mouse only for
pointing tasks, such as selecting text and working with graphics.  However,
if I have the mouse in my hand (when doing pointing-related tasks), it then
becomes more convenient for me to access menus and buttons via the mouse
instead of the keyboard.

If a function can be accessed in multiple ways, I tend to use whichever way
is most convenient at that time.  One single access method is usually not
universally convenient -- it will be most convenient in some situations, but
less convenient in others.

-Nathan

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> It shouldn't be difficult to do, but I can't make much sense of the
> parsing code.

	Isn't is shame that it's not based on something
	standardised, such as XML? :-)

--
Nigel Stewart (nig### [at] nigelscom)
Research Student, Software Developer
Y2K is the new millenium for the mathematically challenged.

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In article <39B42E4E.1345ED64@nigels.com>, nig### [at] nigelscom wrote:

> 	Isn't is shame that it's not based on something
> 	standardised, such as XML? :-)

Nope.

-- 
Christopher James Huff
Personal: chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/

<><

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In povray.general Nigel Stewart <nig### [at] nigelscom> wrote:
: 	Isn't is shame that it's not based on something
: 	standardised, such as XML? :-)

  XML may be easy for a parser to read, but if a newbie (or a oldbie for that
matter) sees povray code in XML he will not understand a word.

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):_;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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