The "verifiable data" is personally using Vuescan for a wide variety of
successful, real-world publishing jobs. This means working with
negatives, transparencies, flatwork. Black & white, line art, and color.
For Web and print. Real jobs, real world.
Real *feelings*. People who want your business flatter you? What a
surprise! What does that have to do with *objective* evaluation? Look:
The assertion "personally using Vuescan" is a meaningless subjective
("personal") feeling which means different things to different people
and where nothing is defined.
By contrast, "one of the effects the Vuescan D-max bug will cause" is
an objective fact which means the same thing to everyone, and
everybody can test it.
What you seem to misunderstand is that I'm not questioning your use of
Vuescan. If you're happy with it, by all means, more power to you.
But there's a huge jump from that to making *unsubstantiated* claims
about its alleged "quality" based merely on these subjective feelings
without providing any objective and independently verifiable data.
And then, if that weren't bad enough, you attack Vuescan users for
daring to voice their dissatisfaction based on *documented* and
*verifiable* bugs? Shooting the messenger, indeed!
Is it perfect? Of course, not. No software is.
That's a platitude incompetent (so-called) programmers always bring up
as a feeble attempt to excuse their own failings. It never works.
As that *partial* (!) list clearly illustrates, in case of Vuescan, we
are *not* talking about some minor bug here and there. It's a whole
new level of unreliability when e.g. a program in major version *8*
(that's EIGHT!) suddenly stops working completely!
As hard as you try to minimize all that, you can't talk your way
around such massive incompetence and total absence of quality control.
The only thing that does is bring into question your self-professed
"professionalism" if you're so blissfully oblivious to such massive
bugs. We can excuse that in a hobbyist but not in a "professional".
Having worked in and
around the software industry for much of the past decade, I've got lots
of first-hand experience with software development. Though much of my
work in the software industry has been in documentation (such as with
Quark) and graphics, I've spent a fair amount of time doing development.
I've lead the development team for an award-winning series of multimedia
software, done some routine coding, done some QA, done some usability
testing, done lots of interface design, and provided technical support.
Have I missed anything relevant?
Yes, the only thing that actually counts: Programming! Writing
documentation and scripting multimedia presentations has absolutely
nothing to do with software development. Your focus on subjective
feelings and apparent inability to grasp how they have nothing to do
with objective evaluation shows a total lack of software development.
Based on all that real-world experience, I find it petty and obnoxious,
perhaps even shameful, to see a decent, constantly-evolving program like
Vuescan constantly trashed by a small-minded, loud-mouthed minority.
"Taliban," indeed. If people don't like the program, fine; use something
else. But why do these few people waste so much of their lives moaning
and groaning? Or *is* moaning and groaning their entire life? Sheesh.
Blame the customer, eh? You *are* Ed! ;o)
Trying to change the subject by shooting the messenger is a despicable
tactic only showing desperation of embarrassed people who painted
themselves in a corner. No sensible person falls for such a feeble and
transparent attempt at diversion. The subject is and remains: Vuescan
is notoriously buggy and unreliable, as objective facts clearly show.
Vuescan victims have every right to complain. The only one who is
"trashing" Vuescan is the author by his demonstrated incompetence to
fix those endless bugs, only managing to add ever more. Instead, he
appears to spend all his time sending "you've been blacklisted" emails
to paid-up users for daring to complain. Now, *that's* pathetic!
Again, if you're happy with Vuescan, fine! Enjoy! But don't try to
translate that personal feeling into objective fact. As the *partial*
(!) bug lists has clearly shown, Vuescan is not a serious program.
Does that mean people can't use it for a tiny, highly-compressed, Web
JPG? No, of course they can. And I myself have recommended it for that
very purpose (with caveats!).
But to vaguely claim that Vuescan is "good" only makes your
self-professed "professionalism" very suspect. It's no different to a
self-professed "professional photographer" describing without
qualifications a fixed-focus, plastic lens, disposable camera as good.
Don.
