Re: filmscanners:Vuescan 'bugs'

[jimhayes <jimhayes@jymis.com>]

"Mark T." wrote:

> Can't help with your problem, but I have to make comment (as president of

I too am appreciative of Ed, since an early version 5 worked much better than
Insight 3.5 on the SS 4000 for B&w about October of 1999.

>
>
>
> >4) I see from the viewscan site, he no longer answers e-mails for tech
> >support!!! Is this really so? Then why is the log file option box still
> >available?
>
> Given Ed is a one man show (or so I understand it) and his product supports
> a multitude of scanners on 3 operating systems, with a variety of
> connection methods...and then given the number of weird configurations we
> all have, is this unreasonable?

I simply want to know when this break occured, as I have long enjoyed e-mail 
tech
support which I have used maybe 10 times in over two years. It's like living in 
a
house for two years, then suddenly walking in to find all the furniture moved
around. As features were added, I was willing to pay more than $40, or even an
annual fee, though I don't have lots of money lying around, for what I get
including the once standard e-mail support. And I feel that my question of why
still having an log option is a valid one.

My other thought on this is that about three times in the evolution of vuescan,
serious bugs were introduced for the SS 4000...once it affected only a small
number of people (scanning b&w say, I don't really remember). Not many other
people would have known how to fix the problem. But when I sent the log file to
Ed, he e-mailed back, not only diagnosing the problem, but telling me how my
computer was configured (how many SCSI cards and devices, etc)! This is more 
help
and more accurate, and certainly more info than I can type in myself to any
newsgroup. So he was able to rev vuescan within a day. Without these logfile
feedbacks, the bugs can't be found, and the program isn't improved for bugs.
Doesn't it make sense to have a valuable feedback loop? It's been happpening for
years with Vuescan. We are all Guina pigs to some extent...

> >What happened between version 7.33 (worked fine) and version 7.35 and why
> >doesn't Ed support the product anymore? In the past he has been eager to fix
> >problems when we reported bugs to him.
>
> And up until yesterday he still was... :-)  I think he is simply asking
> folk not to email him as soon as something goes wrong - just by reading
> this list it is obvious that there all sorts of problems getting a system
> running sweetly, many of which are *not* Ed's responsibility.

Yes, I agree on this with one provisio: If nothing else has changed such as
scanner, settings, OS, hardware, etc, and one has been using Vuescan for
months/years happily and are completely familair with controls, then suddenly
with a new rev, very obvious things suddenly change for the worse, one has a
right to suspect a bug in the software, and simply send a logfile to Ed, so that
if a bug has been introduced as would appear, it can be squashed fast and 
easily.

I also recognise that sometimes a mistake may be made on installation, even by 
an
expericed user, as someone else has suggested; I will check this out, although I
have already rebooted my computer.

>
>
> Ed seems to me to be VERY responsive whenever there is a major issue, or a
> problem that affects more than one user.

This has been the case in the past. So I am simply asking why and when the 
change
and to what extent he no longer accepts e-mails. I can understand a wider base 
of
customers being a problem. I also understand feedback loops being important. And
who gets the logfile now if not Ed? I am not angry. I am confused by having the
furniture re-arranged suddenly after two years.

>
>
> If you are having a problem that is Vuescan's fault, there's a good chance
> others on this list will quickly back you up,

As I said, this has not been the case ALWAYS in the past, as sometimes I am what
is called in statistics a "Corner Case"...I use Vuescan to scan b&w negs at 16
bit with a SS 4000. As an example, most of you worry about color spaces. I 
don't,
at least not much- they get dropped  when it feeds into Pshop 6...and I assign a
custom dotgain curve to the image- I don't even use gammma 2.2 greyscale. At
least one of the times Vuescan had bugs in the past, there were only two or 
three
of us at most that were affected by it- but no workarounds.

> and I'm sure Ed will sort
> it.  In the meantime, drop back to the version you were happy with...

Yes, I have dropped back before and will do this if a new install/ reboot 
doesn't
help.. But you see, in ver 7.3.5, apparently Ed has fixed a problem with 
focusing
on the SS 4000. This is an example of why eventually the latest version must
work- hate to be stuck on version 5.2.whatever.

>
>
> mark t

--
Jim Hayes