I'm building a desktop application that is a tool to mount some very domain-specific graphic structures that in the tool's context are called "sequences" (it's not important here I guess).
To help with answering this I must say that the target user of the application is familiar with any visual manipulation tool like Photoshop, Illustrator, Inkscape, Premiere, and mostly any Adobe application. Some of the target users are familiar with other mountage tools and 3D graphic tools.
Each instance of the application allow to edit one unique Project. Each Project contains an unlimited number of Sequences. Once a Project is open, you need to open a Sequence to start editing. You can open several Sequences but only one can be graphically edited at the same time and all the edition views displays informations only for the currently selected Sequence.
This tool is meant to be cross-platform : Windows, MacOS and Linux.
I'm trying to organize the application menu to show the possible actions and I'm having a hard time choosing between a conventional organisation like this one :
File Edit Project Sequence Views
New Copy Properties Properties ...
Projet Cut ... ...
Sequence Paste
... ...
Open
Project
Sequence
Close
Project
Sequence
Preferences
...
Quit
... and this less conventional organization that I feel might be more natural for the task ("Designer" is name of the tool):
Designer Project Sequence Edit Views
New Project New Sequence New Object Copy ...
Open Project Open Sequence .... Cut
Close Project Close Sequence Properties Paste
... ... ...
Preferences
Quit Properties
What do you think? I have doubts because I'm not sure if not using the convention will or will not makes the user lost.