Survex 1.1.1 test version uploaded

Matt Ryan matt-survex at mdryan.net
Wed Oct 13 19:19:00 BST 2004


Another vote in favour of tip boxes.

As another example of good tips, I think MS Visual C++ has some 
wonderful tips - and that's definitely another system not intended for 
idiots.  The first tip if I recall correctly is something like "Try 
leaving these tips turned on for a while - we've got some really good 
tips after this one".  Sure, some tips, (maybe even most of them?) will 
be "yeah, I knew that", but once in a while you see a tip that teaches 
you something new you'd never bother to find out any other way.

Things like "Holding down shift when dragging with the left mouse button 
restrains movement to rotate or tilt exclusively" would surely be of use 
- who wants to find time to wade through this sort of thing in a manual.

For that matter why should you NEED to read a manual to use Aven - is 
there even a manual?!

I think on balance I actually prefer tilt and rotate on one mouse 
button, zoom on another and pan on the third, but am not really that 
bothered whatever.  A small palette to pick viewing mode (a la painting 
and modelling packages) might sit well with touch screens and those who 
prefer a different model view.

Perhaps fractionally more constructively, I also get the corrupted 
screen on start-up (Windows XP) but didn't when I last compiled it from 
cvs a few weeks ago (before the about bitmap change).  Aiming to reduce 
start-up time is appreciated though.

-Matt



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