Re: [linux-audio-user] Usability vs Intuitability in Ardour

From: Eric Dantan Rzewnicki <rzewnickie@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Tue Jul 26 2005 - 17:57:44 EEST

On Tue, Jul 26, 2005 at 11:03:49AM +0100, Steve Harris wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 26, 2005 at 10:36:10 +0100, tim hall wrote:
> > Last Monday 25 July 2005 22:15, Kevin Cosgrove was like:
> > > On 25 July 2005 at 15:46, Ben Loftis <ben@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
> > > > Most professional audio gear is like a bicycle. A bike is
> > > > certainly not intuitive to a first time user, but once you
> > > > learn how to balance, steer, etc, you can get around faster
> > > > than someone on foot. This has sometimes been described as
> > > > "intuitable" rather than intuitive.
> > > Or, "discoverable" versus "usable".
> > > Word is easy to discover for easy things to do. 'vi' is
> > > *much* faster, if my 'vi' speed versus the 'Word' speed of my
> > > compatriots is any gauge. Pull-down menus are "intuitive", where
> > > as hot-keys are not. But, hot-keys get the work done quickly
> > > once they're known. Pull-down menus which list their hot-key
> > > shortcuts in the menu are quite nice for me. The Opera web
> > > browser is one example of this.
> > Thanks Kevin. All keybindings have to be learned. I can't use vi without
> > constant reference to the manual. I dare say the same would be true of emacs.
> > I dislike them both and use nedit for everything, simply because it works
> > much more like a Windows based editor, so I had to relearn less in order to
> > get typing when I first migrated. It's nothing to do with intuitabilty either
> > - old habits die hard.
> True, you have to decide wether its worth the effort. When I started
> developing on UNIX machines I watched the old hands and relaised that 1)
> they were all much faster than me, and 2) they (almost) all used vi. So I
> took the effort to learn, in the knowledge that I would spend a lot of my
> life typing. It took makes months to be able to fly vi, but now you can
> prise it from my cold dead fingers.
> I experience extreme discomfort when forced to use a non-modal editor,
> and when I have to go through afterwards and remove all the ^[hhhhhhcw
> afterwards :)
> For anyone whos thinking of learning, dont start by trying to digest it
> all, just start with i A yy dd, and go from there, its all pretty
> logical when you get into it.

Yes. I find vi to be very intuitive.

-- 
Eric Dantan Rzewnicki  |  Systems Administrator
Technical Operations Division  |  Radio Free Asia
2025 M Street, NW  |  Washington, DC 20036  |  202-530-4900
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Received on Tue Jul 26 20:15:12 2005

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