Re: filmscanners: Re: Vuescan gripes

[EdHamrick@aol.com]

> no honestly this is nuts. If I had a week to spare I could prototype a GUI
> in RealBasic. There's nothing hard about it.

I agree - there's nothing hard about prototyping a GUI.  The hard
part is making the subtle things work.

For instance, if I had two panes, I'd get dozens of e-mails a
day from people complaining that they're running with a
640x480 display and the image is too small, and asking me
to change it back to the way it is now.

If I used two windows, I'd get dozens of e-mails a day from
people complaining about being unable to find either the
command window or the image window after they drag
it off the screen.

If I reorganized the options to hide the less frequently
used options (like NikonScan), I'd get dozens of
e-mails a day from people asking "where is the xyz option"
or "how do I do xyz".

One of the hard parts of a user interface is making
options appear only when the chosen scanner
supports these options, or if one option is chosen,
making other dependant options appear or disappear.

In summary, making a good user interface is a lot
harder than it looks, with subtle design and usability
tradeoffs.  It's particularly difficult when the users
range from very experienced (most readers of this
mailing list) to not so experienced (most people who
download VueScan).

The thing that's most difficult is simultaneously
releasing a Windows, Mac OS and Linux version
of VueScan.  There are GUI tradeoffs that I need
to make in order to accomplish this, and this
drives some Mac OS GUI purists crazy.

I recommend people keep their eye on the
ball - i.e. the quality of the images that VueScan
produces.  I personally would be quite happy
using an MS-DOS user interface if this
produced better looking images.

Regards,
Ed Hamrick