[Gegl-developer] Re: DAGs make users' eyes cross

[Ken Bateman]

 <hendrik at ...> writes:

> The spreadsheet user interface is most useful when the data 
> naturally fits into arrays.  
> For many everyday applications, this is the case.
> I don't see it for graphics, unless you are actually talking about a 
> mosaic.
>
> If you ignore the conventional meaning of the word "cell" in the above, 
> though, what you have is very like a programming language.  The traditional 
> UI for a programming language has been ASCII text.

For you and me (I'm assuming we're both programmer-geek-types here) spreadsheets
are just awkward and ugly glorified calcuators that waste a lot of screen space
and spread out the calculation definitions so that you have to click around to
find them all.  

However, I argue that the spreadsheet model is mentally accessible to a much
larger user base, and it does not reduce or limit the sophistication of the
underlying image core DAG.  Spreadsheets provide an easy learning curve and an
obvious data model.  I have met many people who lack technical sophistication
that can still create and use spreadsheets.