It's a rant against software bloat, and a particularly good one. I suppose we've all read enough of those, but I post this one because it mentions, indeed centers upon, Paint Shop Pro, of which Gail is an enthusiastic user. She was worried when Jasc sold out to Corel. I reassured her. Now it seems that I was wrong.
The comments on other applications are equally dark.
Jack
As a long time Paint Shop Pro users ( I used version 3.23 in Windows 3.11, and I own versions 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, multiple copies of some versions ) I recognize what the article is referring to, however, it was long before Corel bought the product line. What I think the article misses on PSP since Corel bought it, is that the changes they have made in the latest version appear to have trimmed out some of the things many users liked so much. It seems to me that these are more likely to kill the products than the 'bloat' that was added in version 8. Also, I think that the addition of the Python scripting was a good thing. It gave an easy way to repeat a complex set of steps, even with conditional checking if I understand it correctly. Even though, I have never had the time to dig in and use it,I still see it as a positive addition to the application. I believe that PSP still loads much more quickly than PhotoShop on the same hardware, and is at least comparable in speed for most operations. For a long time, PSP was the $100US answer to PhotoShop, and for me, it still is my primary graphics application. Gimp, also mentioned in the article, is now becoming more appealing to me, and for those that are PhotoShop trained, there is a small add-on to The Gimp, that is called GimpShop, and aims to make the menus close enough to PhotoShop, that you can follow most PhotoShop tutorials without changes.
ReplyDeleteActually Jack, the last JASC version of Paint Shop Pro was 9, which I own and the article references the 7 to 8 transition. I don't find 9 to be that badly bloated in everyday use, but then again I didn't know it did Python, either. In any case, it is an excellent article and good food for thought among developers. The last line was particularly apt.
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