i'm sorry if I upset people with my criticism of RS. I don't mean to be harsh. But when I spend half an hour trying to get things to snap, and can't, its frustrating.
The other teacher I mentioned was not (my) teacher, but a fellow teacher. He taught full time for his whole career. (He's retired now.) I taught part-time for 11 years myself. I learned a lot from him, and in that learning I would have to disagree. Teaching someone how to use a program is not about speed typing. Its about concepts and understanding why you are doing what you are being shown. In the single course we had for 3D graphics and Animation, we used Bryce. I was simple and easy and students quickly got results for little effort. I doubt that any of them went on to use Bryce in a career. But the point was to whet their appetite and give them an idea what it is about. We had one 4-month course that met only twice a week to cover enough material so that the student would know if that was something that they wanted to invest more education in (at another school that taught the subject in more depth.) I myself am dyslexic and have even switched to a Dvorak keyboard layout. It turned out not to help as much with spelling errors, as I had hoped, but since doing that I have never experienced the arm/wrist/hand fatigue as I used to with QWERTY. Many keyboard shortcuts are geared toward QWERTY so some are actually more difficult in Dvorak. But I also write fiction so the avoidance of arm strain is good for me. And back the the teaching. Versions ago in Photoshop some of the tools used to require keyboard finger gymnastics. Then they put those same options as icons up in the option's bar for that tool. That speeded teaching. Before that I had to walk around and help almost half the students to figure out the finder dance. When the options were available as icons, the number of raised-hand interruptions dropped noticeably. Now whenever I try out a program, I aw well aware of how the interface helps or hinders its use. The makers of RS might be brilliant at figuring out the mathematics of making the program do something. But the interface is not quite up to than same standard. And in the market place, that can be a deciding factor. -- -- Henry Tjernlund http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?username=henrytj http://www.modelmayhem.com/HenryTjernlund http://imdb.com/name/nm2519729/ http://www.myspace.com/henrytj http://henrytj.deviantart.com/
