Re: [linux-audio-dev] what's wrong with glame

New Message Reply About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Other groups

Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] what's wrong with glame
From: Iain Sandoe (iain_AT_sandoe.co.uk)
Date: Fri Jul 27 2001 - 16:08:12 EEST


Richard Dobson wrote:

>[lots of reasonable stuff snipped...]

> 'Intuitive' is a wonderfully useless (and much abused) (non-)technical
> term, as it invariably means different things to different people,
> because, strangely enough, people learn to wotk (and think) in different
> ways. Nothing is intuitive, until you have learned it! Any of you tried
> learning a musical instrument to conservatoire level recently? How long
> did it take you? But these instruments are very intuitive to play, when
> you have mastered them.

this is quite right, of course, (and I'm one of those that finds Macs
intuitive - always to be surprised when 'doze-trained people have trouble
using it ;-)

I suspect that the real answer lies in having a "HIG" (Human Interface
Guideline) that is followed by the vast majority, if not all, of app
writers.

The reason that this results in what people call "intuitive" is that the
apps behave in the same way, the same keys do commonly used functions etc.
etc.

This idea is prevalent on Mac (first) and these days also 'doze - the reason
one man's "intuition" is another man's "drop from great height" - is, I
suspect, that these learned keys, policies & so on are different.

---

Now, of course, in an anarchy, getting agreement about a HIG seems a tall order. [Iain rates the probability approx. = 0.5 * sqrt(bugger all) ]

What about it LAD?

an Audio HIG?

at least then all these apps we have will work together in a (linux-learned) "intuitive" way.

I still feel that "complexity of interface" is not the same as "richness of capability" and, as an app writer am painfully aware that designing good UIs is actually harder that fancy DSP (in many cases).

ciao, Iain.


New Message Reply About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Other groups

This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Fri Jul 27 2001 - 16:08:01 EEST