I'm Pleading with you, Corel!
messina
'bonus' tools or features, seems to indicate that not much has improved in
Painter's decision making department since the time Painter moved from
Fractal Design (via a merger with Metatools) into MetaCreations* and beyond.
It seems that the focus of progress still lies outside that of fixing the
parts that cause problems. My main reason for saying this is because if
stability was of utmost importance, there would have been no 'new features'
in this fix. This disturbs me greatly. I remember certain conversations with
various MC staff in the past about these types of issues, and it appeared to
me that some element (or elements) of the Painter development team had a
preference for 'innovation' over rewriting/optimizing/bug fixing. The former
being more 'Fun' than the latter. While I understand the creative mindset
behind such a product as painter, I plead with Corel to have the will and
resolve to 'communicate' to those involved in the progression of Painter as
an application, the importance and value of improving the Quality of such a
Product. Improvement should be just as exciting a prospect as the
development of new tools, in that it multiplies the success of the product
by strengthening it (the offshoot of this lays the foundation for a much
expanded userbase through wider acceptance) and installing new conduits for
a more powerful future.
I would certainly be far more excited if Painter 7 were a complete rewrite
from the ground up of the interface system, the display subsystems, the
painter 'kernel' and the tools, rather than the 'bolting' on of new tools
.This kind of radical improvement would most likely pave the way for
channeling more advanced 'behind-the-scenes' support services ready for the
creation of much more ground breaking features in Painter 8 (and better
performing as a result). Painter 7 would then become an important new
release, the key selling point being it's solidity, improved slickness, a
fresh interface that would naturally teach new users the ropes by virtue of
the fact that everything an advanced user wants to do is accessible in a
manner that requires the least number of steps to get to or find (almost as
if the program knew what you wanted to do), is written for both Mac and
Windows as separate unique entities (rather than the windows version relying
on a Mac to Windows conversion library or 'layer'). In my 'Ideal' Version 7,
All of Painter's fundamental and basic 'quirks' or 'flaws' would be non
existent (such quirks, by nature, are overcome by those who become long
standing users and become areas of difficulty that cause some to minimize
their use of painter). Such 'quirks' include the Inaccuracies/distortions in
the display of certain zoomed views when dragging objects or 'floaters (in
windows), the archaic grid implementation (probably not used by that many as
it's more a hindrance than help).
Well, that's 2 cents from me for 2001.
messina
*MetaCreations, who's company name and MetaStream product appears to have
changed into 'ViewPoint' after some acquisition/merger, seems to have shown
that the 'dumping of their mainline products was an exercise in futility. If
the MetaCreations and MetaStream brand names meant so little to the 3D
streaming real-time system, the Board should have just sold Metacreations
off, along with all it's staff intact, and held onto the MetaStream product
rather than dump all of their products (apart form certain 3D e-commerce
related elements) and then finally discarding the very asset that logically
would cause the products to become separated from each other and most of
it's staff....The Name MetaCreations!
Ooooh! Sorry for the Groan ;) but it's just some gas that built up, since I
last moaned. Please excuse the negativity in the hope that Corel can make
something positive out of the negative issues I tend to raise.
Michael Dranos
should be the future of Corel's Painter. I pray to the gods that Mr. Burney can
put his eyes in your text. It has to be a really loyal Corel employee who can
make possible that he has access to your opinion... in case he has no time to
spend in this newsgroup.
PETER COOK
I can't help thinking that if a Company sells a product that they know to be
faulty, there should be some recourse to the law - if we all threatened sued
the pants of them then they may sort the thing out!!
Cheers,
Pete.
"messina" <emes...@pacbell.net> wrote in message news:3a613401@cnews...
ghi stecyk
are still the original programers. so in effect you should be cursing them, not
corel. corel is at their mercy. i myself hope later releases of painter will
have more robust layer support and color managment, along the lines of
photoshop.
ghi stecyk
mi...@winternet.com
>
> understand though that the people who are engaged in the development of
> painter
> are still the original programers. so in effect you should be cursing
> them, not
> corel. corel is at their mercy. i myself hope later releases of painter
> will
> have more robust layer support and color managment, along the lines of
> photoshop.
>
Corel is at the mercy of the programmers? For Corel's sake (and ours), I
should hope not. But if the programmers really are allowed to run off
willy-nilly, instead of following the business-driven requirements
(like, make the product properly stable, or improve the existing
features before adding new features), then the product and the company
is in trouble. I've seen more than one project destroyed by cowboy
developers.
Laurie
mi...@winternet.com
http://www.winternet.com/~milo
--
"Being bright does not grant an immunity to doing idiotic
things; more like, it just enlarges the possible scope."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold
Graystar
Resort to the Courts
and you will soon find yourself with no program whatsoever.
Courts never solve things, Pete.
If your so fed up, get on the development team and fix it yourself.
Or hire someone to do it.
Endless whining won't fix it, like everyone's been doing.
I'm not tryin' to pick a fight,
I'm just sayin'....
Graystar
"PETER COOK" <PETER...@cook00198.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
Nathan Marciniak
Programs of this sort are already so loaded with features that what you're getting is 10 kilograms of crap in a 5 kilogram bag. Fine tuning, bug fixing and polishing is what aged software programs need, not "Ooh! Ahh!" features that add another layer of complexity and even more bugs. Newer does not equal better.
I would certainly be far more excited if Painter 7 were a complete
rewrite
from the ground up of the interface system, the display subsystems,
the
painter 'kernel' and the tools, rather than the 'bolting' on of
new tools
This is EXACTLY what Painter needs. Oh sure, it won't happen, but it's fun to dream.
Just reading this message board makes me feel just how far away from art creation this software has caused us to become. It's really quite obscene. It seems to have turned otherwise creative people into amateur tweakers and systems troubleshooters, monkeying around with files and patches and making backups of their data for fear that a catastrophe is just around the corner. Feh!
Nathan Marciniak
Richard Haseltine
axiomatic that no one should buy version 1 of *anything*.
"Nathan Marciniak" <sar...@execpc.com> wrote in message
news:3A6C63C3...@execpc.com...
> I would certainly be far more excited if Painter 7 were a complete rewrite
> from the ground up of the interface system, the display subsystems, the
> painter 'kernel' and the tools, rather than the 'bolting' on of new tools
> Nathan Marciniak
Reed Sprunger
creation this software has
> caused us to become. It's really quite obscene. It seems to have turned
otherwise creative people
> into amateur tweakers and systems troubleshooters, monkeying around with
files and patches and
> making backups of their data for fear that a catastrophe is just around
the corner. Feh!
>
> Nathan Marciniak
So creatives can't spend 100% of their time creating using Painter? Could
you tell me in what media you CAN use 100% of your time creating? When I
used airbrushes, pencils and paints, I would hate to imagine how much time I
spent just keeping a minimum of order on my board. Cleaning airbrushes out,
unclogging the tips, sharpening pencils or hunting for that Bottle Green
stub around here somewhere, mixing and trying to match paints to certain
colors (a fraction of a second now), cutting frisket, peeling frisket pieces
off my sleeve after hunting for them for 20 minutes, covering paints so they
wouldn't dry out, drawing repetitive things 15 times till I was ready to put
a gun to my head. The fact is, I accomplish more with Painter than I ever
could on the board. I can have many projects going at once, only needing
seconds, not 10-30 minutes, to close one and open the other to get busy on
it. Another fact is that I don't spend ANY time maintaining Painter unless I
do brush backups, and it works just fine 99.9% of the time.
Oh, and one more thing. I don't have to waste much time running to the art
supply store to grab another colored pencil, more frisket, paint, or
illustration board. Yeah, what was I thinking, going digital!!!
I hope you can see what I'm talking about. Painter LETS me be more creative,
and allows things that I wouldn't even conceive of doing on the board.
Please reconsider your view and give the program the chance it deserves.
Reed Sprunger
www.rsprunger.com
>
Cricket
First, you have to realize that the people for whom the software runs
perfectly, rarely show up in a newsgroup. The messages are not
representative of the total user base.
Second, the features that exist in a program are features that users
request. Yep, users like you and me.
and Third, you do *not* want the developers to start from scratch. No way.
It is guaranteed that you will end up with a program that not only carries
over existing bugs (because of some copied routines) but also has bugs
you've never heard of before.
Be grateful for patches. Some companies never patch their bugs (like, um,
Adobe. And don't tell me their software is perfect because it aint).
Cricket
C_Tech Volunteer
"Nathan Marciniak" <sar...@execpc.com> wrote in message
news:3A6C63C3...@execpc.com...
ghi stecyk
ghi
L. Gerholz
>
> every software company is at the mercy of the programmers! their the
> ones writing the stuff.
Of course it's the programmers who actually produce the product. But
which product, and with what features? Whose direction are the
programmers following, their own or solid requirements gleaned from the
users? If Corel is going to keep programmers who won't follow business
direction, they are cutting their own throats in the marketplace.
> in the case of corel it has been upper
> management, in the past, that has pressured development teams to put
> out shaky software for the fast cash. i'm sure that currently the
> corel programmers are more than willing to put their real talents to
> work in putting together better software. but only management can give
> the green light.
This is an entirely different problem. Here, the marketing people are
pushing the developers to release poor quality work, and/or the business
analysts are not doing their job and providing correct requirements for
the developers to build from. Equivalently to above, if Corel is
providing poor business direction, they are also cutting their own
throats. Which problem (or maybe both?) do you think is operative here?
> <snip speculations on Corel's other activities> corel can do it, they just
> need to decide to do it.
I absolutely agree. They need commitment for quality work from both the
business and software development sides of the company. The question is
-- do they have it?