The problems with the gimp are mind numbingly easy for any semi-talented UI designer to spot and fix. The problem is the development team: there's not enough of it, and there's no leadership strong enough within them to commit to a roadmap. If they only decided to stop coding for a while, decide what their end goals are (this is not a question users should be answering), plan the next few versions in advance and then actively look for new developers to implement whatever they decide on, things would look different.
Well, I *am* a 3D professional, and what you are saying is bull.
3D applications are enormously complex and there is no way in hell anyone could remember all the shortcuts you need. A good 3D app should allow you to work on it without having to commit all of its UI to memory. I work mainly with 3DS max where you have about 30 separate things you can do just with editing vertices, which is just one out of four different ways of editing meshes, which is just one out of 40 something possible mesh object modifiers, and mesh objects are but one of many types of objects, and this is just modeling, there's also animation, rigging, lighting and rendering. Do you think I remember all of it? Hell no. But 3DSmax helps me by being layed out in a logical manner so I know where to search for what I need, and it lets me configure the UI so I can have icons for the most common tasks.
I do use about 15-20 keyboard shortcuts, but being so complex, you can't possibly map even 5% of a 3D app's functionality to the keyboard and expect to remember all of it. And this is where the graphical UI comes in, and believe me, 3DSmax and Maya artists spend a LOT of time just setting up the interface and sometimes even creating their own menus and drawing their own custom icons.
The good news is that the developers of Blender are aware of it and are going to address those issues in version 2.50. Blender has made great strides in its UI recently, and more is to come soon.
I'm afraid this article is just going to cause developer's time and effort to be wasted on other less developed projects, when they should be volunteering to help with Blender's UI coding.
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The problems with the gimp are mind numbingly easy for any semi-talented UI designer to spot and fix.
The problem is the development team: there's not enough of it, and there's no leadership strong enough within them to commit to a roadmap. If they only decided to stop coding for a while, decide what their end goals are (this is not a question users should be answering), plan the next few versions in advance and then actively look for new developers to implement whatever they decide on, things would look different.
I use Indesign (CS1) and I Import .doc files all the time. They are imported along with all associated formatting and character / paragraph styles.
Well, I *am* a 3D professional, and what you are saying is bull. 3D applications are enormously complex and there is no way in hell anyone could remember all the shortcuts you need. A good 3D app should allow you to work on it without having to commit all of its UI to memory. I work mainly with 3DS max where you have about 30 separate things you can do just with editing vertices, which is just one out of four different ways of editing meshes, which is just one out of 40 something possible mesh object modifiers, and mesh objects are but one of many types of objects, and this is just modeling, there's also animation, rigging, lighting and rendering. Do you think I remember all of it? Hell no. But 3DSmax helps me by being layed out in a logical manner so I know where to search for what I need, and it lets me configure the UI so I can have icons for the most common tasks. I do use about 15-20 keyboard shortcuts, but being so complex, you can't possibly map even 5% of a 3D app's functionality to the keyboard and expect to remember all of it. And this is where the graphical UI comes in, and believe me, 3DSmax and Maya artists spend a LOT of time just setting up the interface and sometimes even creating their own menus and drawing their own custom icons. The good news is that the developers of Blender are aware of it and are going to address those issues in version 2.50. Blender has made great strides in its UI recently, and more is to come soon. I'm afraid this article is just going to cause developer's time and effort to be wasted on other less developed projects, when they should be volunteering to help with Blender's UI coding.