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

[tim hall]

Last Monday 25 July 2005 22:15, Kevin Cosgrove was like:
> On 25 July 2005 at 15:46, Ben Loftis <ben at glw.com> 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.

cheers,

tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk