🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan26.024907.1777@midway.uchicago.edu> chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (chris williams) writes:
|In article Robert Reed writes:
|>Weird or different, it's still not as good.  Node selection is not a natural
|>extension of typical point selection techniques, but a completely different
|>and nonintuitive offshoot. 
| 
|   Intuitive in the real sense, or "intuitive" is the Mac-buzzword sense?
|Press the "g" key for group. Press "Return" to un-group all. About two minutes
|to get it, tops.

Well, I only know a little about the "Mac-buzzwords" you refer to, never having
spent much time on macs (mostly UNIX/X and DOS user, with recent experiences in
Windows, which you may argue is an imperfect Mac clone).  But from a strictly
GUI perspective, I know how the PlayMation interface feels w.r.t. other
interfaces I've either used or designed, and it comes up short in terms
of the cognitive steps required to perform simple functions.  And it does also
violate the CUA standards which enhance intuitive transfer of learning skills
between applications, a basic requirement for applications running either under
Windows or on the Macintosh.

|>Spline curvatures are edited by nonintuitive curvature control parameters
|>attached to the nodes, 
| 
|   Complain to Ed Catmull. Catmull-Rom splines behave differently than the
|Bezier splines that you are used to. The advantages of these splines for
|easy objects creation are fairly obvious. Bezier patches are difficult to
|control when you want to create a mesh, while continuity between Catmull
|patches is simple. B-Spline patches have continuity, but require "ghost
|points" outside the object.

No, unless he had something to do with the selection of this splining technique
in PlayMation.  And it may be that Catmull-Rom (AKA Overhauser) splines offer
some computational advantages over Bezier splines, but in this application it is
at the cost of a certain amount of controllability.  But I could even live with
the C-R splines if there was a more intelligent way to add and remove nodes from
a given spline.  But my point was not that C-R splines are uncontrollable, but
that using them infuses a measure of unpredictability into the interface.
Finally, if C-R splines offer some advantage in patch rendering, as B-splines
they can be derived from the Bezier form.
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Robert Reed			Home Animation Ltd.		503-656-8414
robert@slipknot.rain.com	5686 First Court, West Linn, OR 97068

I went to a museum once where all the artwork was by children.
It was all put up on refrigerators.
--Steve Wright
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