IDE oddities (was Re: Error Messages Are Evil)

[Devin Asay]

On May 15, 2014, at 9:12 AM, Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com>
 wrote:

> Devin Asay wrote:
>> Thanks for the responses folks. Keep them coming, and I'll post a summary.
> 
> It may be helpful if you'd post your summary to the IDE Contributors Forum:
> <http://forums.runrev.com/viewforum.php?f=67>
> 
> 
>> Here's another one of mine:
>> 
>> Names of blendLevel inks: Whaaa? What do those things even mean?
> 
> Most of those names come from the bit-wise operations they use, or some similar historic origin.
> 
> While it might be nice to try to craft English-like names for them, that's a daunting task - "XOR" is "XOR" in every language, and geeky as it is I can't think of any other way to describe it that isn't nearly a sentence long. :)

Yes, I agree that sometimes concepts are too complex to describe in a short, neat label. But in the interface, perhaps the menu could show the effect of the ink visually, or maybe there could be a help button that would pop up a list explaining the inks in simple language.

Devin


Devin Asay
Office of Digital Humanities
Brigham Young University