Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] what's wrong with glame
From: Richard Dobson (RWD_AT_cableinet.co.uk)
Date: Thu Jul 26 2001 - 23:47:14 EEST
Paul Davis wrote:
> who said a shallow learning curve was a goal?
>
In a word - users! A shallow learning curve exists where, primarily, a
user can open an application specified to perform a specific set of
tasks (e.g a soundfile editor, a word processor), and does not have to
read the manual, in order to start using it. The program is
self-documenting - the function names are expressive, toolbar buttons,
if used, identify their functions clearly (hence, ToolTips, status-bar
explanations). You should not, in most cases, have to use something in
order to find out what it does. Where de facto conventions exist for
some operations (such as mouse drag to select a region), they are
implemented, even if the developer has thought up some wizard-prang new
fancy way of dong this that he undestands but the user has no clue
about). When a user complained that an audio program I had written
didn't allow 'Play' to be controlled with the space bar ("all programs
do that!"), I learned this lesson myself.
Error messages are presented in plain English, and do no merely say
"Error" or "You can't do that", but offer a reasonable suggestion of
what you could do. The program itself guides the user into its more
obscure areas.
Now I am well aware that Linux/unix inherits and gleefully preserves a
aura of obscurantism, with requests (often none too polite!) to RTFM at
every turn, but often the FM is incomprehensible unless you already know
what it means, and often the FM doesn't exist anyway. Where
documentation does exist, it often says things like "to un-mitigate the
interface manifold bi-furcation, de-synchronize the positronic
lambdoma". Fistly, it assumes you know how to do the latter, and
secondly, it assumes you know ~why~ you would want to do the former in
the first place.
I could go on; you get the idea.
Failing the shallow learning curve is not a problem confined to Linux,
of course, but Linux does rather seem to specialize in it.
Someone (I genuinely forget who) recently posted a mesasge to this list
saying "I don't care about users, except contributing users", where the
clear meaning was that by this was meant erudite users who were probably
also programmers.
I rest my case...
Richard Dobson
-- Test your DAW with my Soundcard Attrition Page! http://www.bath.ac.uk/~masrwd (LU: 3rd July 2000) CDP: http://www.bath.ac.uk/~masjpf/CDP/CDP.htm (LU: 23rd February 2000)
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