[openbeos] Re: ShowImage

> We discussed this, some, at the last admin meeting. There is a fine 
> line with 
> features like this that we are trying to walk. 
> 
> Sometimes, very useful and cool things are very trivial to add. I 
> don't think 
> that much more than a few days of coding time has been taken up by 
> this. Some 
> features were part of a better implementation of translation (page 
> selection). 
> 
> Honestly, I was a little hesitant about these changes, too, in that 
> they are 
> feature creep - something that we have to fight against in order to 
> get done 
> quicker. But I think that they are OK; they bump up against "the 
> line", but 
> don't cross it. It is sometimes tough to argue "bug" vs "feature 
> creep".  Yeah, 
> the slideshow stuff is a new feature. But if that is the worst of the 
> bunch, I 
> think we are in pretty good shape.

I wasn't advising against the current things in ShowImage - just when 
François suggest adding things to export non-rectangular selections as 
HTML image maps, then alarm bells started going off.

I do have mixed feelings on the slideshow portion - I think maybe a 
separate app that lets you add a list of files, set captions, have 
animated slide transitions, a little control panel in full screen mode, 
etc would maybe work better. Multi-page TIFF support, and support for 
resizing images are both very useful features that improve how 
ShowImage handles it's primary function - "showing images".

It is amazing how difficult it is to get functionality removed in OSS 
projects, so a bit of careful thought is required before adding new 
functionality in the first place.

Simon 

> On 2003-11-21 at 17:49:44 [-0500], Andrew Bachmann wrote:
> > Hello all,
> > 
> > I would also like to fall in line with Simon's comment.  When I saw 
> > the
> > features in the new ShowImage, my first thought wasn't "wow cool!"
> > it was: "uh oh, what justifies all this?".  In at least a couple 
> > cases I can
> > understand: printing, and page navigation. (for multi-page TIFFs)
> > 
> > But slide-show capability?  Isn't this overboard?  Certainly 
> > showing
> > captions below pictures in full-screen slide show mode is!  :-(  
> > I'd like
> > to offer this as a guideline: if your binary is already larger than 
> > the
> > R5 binary, don't add "extra" features.
> > 
> > Andrew
> > 
> > Simon Taylor <simontaylor1@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > Can I just add a quick feature-creep warning here. The stuff 
> > > that's
> > > been added sounds good (zooming, slideshow, etc) - but lets not 
> > > forget
> > > what the app is: "ShowImage" - a simple BeOS image viewer. Lets 
> > > not go
> > > down the linux road of constant new features that, somebody, 
> > > somewhere,
> > > thought would be cool. The next one will have transitions between
> > > slides, then allowing you to add text on top of images, and then 
> > > the
> > > next version that lets you animate that text, and then something 
> > > to let
> > > you export as Flash, followed by the HTML image splitter....
> > > 
> > > BeOS is all about small, focused apps that work really well for 
> > > the job
> > > they are designed to do.
> > > 
> > > Remember guys, new features can be good... but adding 100 new 
> > > features
> > > doesn't make your app 100 notches better than before.
> > > 
> > > Simon




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