linuxaudio.org

2011/8/8 Fons Adriaensen :

quoted text
>

>

> (vi) It's a tool for people who know what they are doing, and you

> have to read the manual or at least some introduction to

> understand how it works. Why didn't you do that ? :-)

>

Would you like to hear that I had been unmotivated ?  ;)
One of the first things I do to discover an application is to run it.

(Sometimes I read a short description and see the screenshot.)
This gives me an impression

- does it work at all, is it stable

- how does the program present itself

- how does it look, how are things arranged

- how does it treat me as user (introduction, interactivity, help, ..)

- am I able to make out how things work

- do I recognize any logical structure

- are things obvious or do I have to spend weeks to get into it
Is the application worth to spend the time to read the manual ?
Are you actually suggesting me to read the manuals of all the programs

I've been trying (hundreds) , before having even used them ?  :)
An application that doesn't attend to the GUI may create

the impression that internals might be equally messed up.
An application that doesn't attend to the user may create

the impression to be written for a hurried or selfish dev. him/herself.
Another example: some years ago, I've been starting Anjuta IDE and Kdevelop :

Anjuta crashed after the splash screen

in Kdevel the menu and config was clean enough to quickly set things up.

Would you guess which one I did continue to use ?

I've been able to decide and use there, without ever reading the manual :)
--

E.R.

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