+----[ Jon Phillips <jon@...235...> (22.Mar.2005 04:08): | [snipped]
Hi!,
please allow me to chime in here,
| Yes, there are many shortcuts, but after watching my | girlfriend use Inkscape, especially after usign | Illustrator, I notice how much she uses the menu and | buttons and does not use shortcuts. | | Jon | | <snip /> | +----]
I am always a beginner with respect to drawing and graphics, and have used Illustrator for a long time (and I still do on my old Power Macintosh 7200). I also use the menu and buttons _mostly_ but once I had the opportunity to see a professional work in Illustrator, and he was <boldface>constantly</boldface> using shortcuts. And his speed at work was amazing. Not only this made me look for and learn more shortcuts, I also learned that there are some things which you can't do without shortcuts, at least in my version of Illustrator (lots of path editing actions need clicking with one or more key pressed, and these have no button/menu counterpart).
Perhaps you already know this, so bare with me if I write it again, visual/GUI apps should be easy to use for the beginner or casual user (menus, buttons) but should also provide the expert/professional user with speed, flexibility and power (i.e. a flood of shortcuts).
Hey, even vim has a GUI with menus :)
Fernan