Re: Leventhal's response...

[Tony Graham <tgraham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10 Jun 1999 01:59 +0300, Michael Leventhal wrote:
 > And not only are we not going to see reasonable transformation
 > scripting tools that for graphic artists but most people would
 > rather you didn't hand them a language for which they must have
 > such tools before they can do anything.

That makes it hard to explain the success of either Adobe Illustrator
or Postscript.  I have programmed in Postscript, and it would take me
a lot longer to program a complex drawing than it would for me to draw
it using Illustrator.  Just because I would need the tool doesn't mean
that I would reject either Postscript or Illustrator.

Even bitmaps need a tool, because few people would or could edit
bitmap files by hand.  Of course the Web would be a whole lot more
dignified and a lot less gaudy if only the people who didn't need a
tool could create GIF images, but the use of tools has given the
ability to everybody.

People will willingly edit things for which they don't comprehend the
data structure (after all, how many people use Word?) provided the UI
takes care of the details.  I suggest that creating either CSS or XSL
by hand is a passing phase for the majority of people, so any
perception about ease of writing or reading will become irrelevant in
time.

Regards,


Tony Graham (who got a new copy of Illustrator this week)
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Tony Graham                            mailto:tgraham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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