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<blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 3252403" data-attributes="member: 11999"><p>I think that's a pretty arrogant and elitist attitude to take. Of course a good design takes into account the needs of its intended users. However, the intended users of a D&D utility program are not necessarily computer experts who are familiar with the ins and outs of the open source community.</p><p></p><p>I can't stand using PC Gen. It has a terribly non-intuitive user interface -- a flaw it shares with the vast majority of open source software -- and it is ridiculously slow because it's a cross-platform Java application. It feels like I'm running a Web-based app it's so laggy. Immediately upon installing PC Gen, you're presented with a massive list of products to install without much explanation as to what each one is (and it's an annoying fixed-width dialog box that you have to horizontally scroll to read the full text of any of the products). </p><p> </p><p>SourceForge is not a friendly place for non-programmers. It presents long lists of filenames that most users don't care about. 5.10.1, 5.8.1, 5.11.5, release candidates, beta versions, etc. It's a lot of stuff that anyone who isn't a programmer doesn't care about and shouldn't have to wade through.</p><p></p><p>There is no doubt that PCGen is powerful. But it is not intuitive and it is more complex than a lot of gamers are going to want to deal with.</p><p></p><p>For the record, I've played D&D in most of its incarnations for over 20 years and I've been programming professionally for over 6 years in C++, C#, ASP, XSLT, Javascript, etc. And I think PC Gen is unintuitive, clunky, and overly complex.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Keldryn, post: 3252403, member: 11999"] I think that's a pretty arrogant and elitist attitude to take. Of course a good design takes into account the needs of its intended users. However, the intended users of a D&D utility program are not necessarily computer experts who are familiar with the ins and outs of the open source community. I can't stand using PC Gen. It has a terribly non-intuitive user interface -- a flaw it shares with the vast majority of open source software -- and it is ridiculously slow because it's a cross-platform Java application. It feels like I'm running a Web-based app it's so laggy. Immediately upon installing PC Gen, you're presented with a massive list of products to install without much explanation as to what each one is (and it's an annoying fixed-width dialog box that you have to horizontally scroll to read the full text of any of the products). SourceForge is not a friendly place for non-programmers. It presents long lists of filenames that most users don't care about. 5.10.1, 5.8.1, 5.11.5, release candidates, beta versions, etc. It's a lot of stuff that anyone who isn't a programmer doesn't care about and shouldn't have to wade through. There is no doubt that PCGen is powerful. But it is not intuitive and it is more complex than a lot of gamers are going to want to deal with. For the record, I've played D&D in most of its incarnations for over 20 years and I've been programming professionally for over 6 years in C++, C#, ASP, XSLT, Javascript, etc. And I think PC Gen is unintuitive, clunky, and overly complex. [/QUOTE]
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