RE: filmscanners: Vuescan Interface, was Polaroid Insight vs

["Mark Otway" <mark@otway.com>]

>> Yes, the interface is quite usable, and I don't want to end 
>> up with another 'pretty' but unfunctional product (not much 
>> of a risk of that from Ed, I suspect!).  But I do think that 
>> Vuescan could use a *bit* of a facelift.

I think people are forgetting that the app is a cross-platform one, for
Mac, Windows and Unix. Having done various cross-platform development
myself (including an app which ran on both the Mac and Windows) I know
precisely how much of a pain it is to write any sort of GUI which will
work on two (or more) different Windowing environments. 

I'm presuming that Ed is using a single set of cross-platform code,
which explains the simplicity of the interface. Pretty and poncy UI
features are totally impractical to code for all three environments.

In actual fact, I like the simplistic interface in VS - there's little
or no clutter and for the function I use it for (large numbers of batch
scans) it's pretty much perfect.

Other than the auto-frame-offset thing I keep whinging about (!) it's
just about right for what I need - tarting up the GUI is more likely to
spoil the app than improve it, particularly as individuals perceptions
of what a good GUI is made up of can be totally subjective, especially
where multiple environments are involved.

Mark

PS: As many of you will have gathered from this post, I'm actually a
software developer myself. Without plugging too blatantly you might be
interested in the software I've written - it's an offline browser which
allows you to download whole websites and save copies of them to your
hard disk - particularly useful for viewing online galleries without
needing an active web connection. The software (Windows-only, I'm
afraid) is FREE, and can be downloaded from www.webreaper.net :-)