On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 09:16:53PM -0500, Udi Fuchs wrote:
> > To me, "Never again" means the same as "Just this once" because of
> > the "again" word. It would be more clear to name the options "Never",
> > "Always" and "Once".
>
> I don't think that first time users will understand what "Once" means.
> "Just this once" is clearer.
Ok, the main issue is the confusion caused by the "again" in "Never
again". Maybe it's all trivial and not even worthwhile the typing but I
think we actually should deeply care about the interface text. See below.
(BTW, English is not my native language)
>
> > Second, I think it is pointless to keep on saving the current image
> > manipulation parameters as the default. And this even happens to be the
> > default behavior of ufraw itself (see conf_default.saveConfiguration). As
> > a result all new users will be surprised because ufraw and ufraw-batch
> > will use saved conversion parameters from any previous random image and
> > they will have a hard time finding out and getting rid of it.
>
> My impression from user input is that beginners expect UFRaw to
> remember their setting. After a few tries most users would want to
> disable this option, but by then they should have enough "experience"
> to know how to do it.
My story:
I started as a beginner. After experimenting with a number of parameters
in the GUI I decided to start all over again, just to make sure I could
reproduce my own adjustments: need to understand what I'm changing in
order to be able to improve this. After restarting ufraw and using it
for maybe half an hour I discovered that it wasn't a clean start at all.
Next, I "discovered" this .ufrawrc and decided to remove it: maybe I
pressed the wrong button somewhere so lets get rid of it. This worked the
first time, giving me the illusion of having fixed the issue. But at some
point later on the whole story repeated itself :-((
A search for a magic button to fix this once and for all did not turn up
anything. Why? because the text "Never again" and "Just this once" mean
exactly the same to me:
never again: again?? so it is going to save once but not again?
just this once: save this time, don't do it again
But I didn't want the .ufrawrc to be saved at all!
Everytime there's a .ufrawrc I had to check it for non-default parameter
settings. Out of desperation I created a read-only .ufrawrc to make sure
I never _ever_ had to redo my work again because of some silly non-default
setting. The error popup was a mild annoyance compared to how I felt at
that time. Right now I use a modified ufraw for this reason and I'm still
occasionally checking for the existence of $HOME/.ufrawrc, just to be sure
(I track upstream changes too).
This is why I think the current conf_default.saveConfiguration is bad.
Real beginners do not have a clue how to get rid of non-default conversion
parameters and since they are real beginners they need a clean sheet
when they start ufraw. Experienced users have no trouble finding this
feature if they want it.
Let me add another point: saveConfiguration has no effect on subsequent
images within the same invocation (e.g. as in ufraw *.nef). This is why
I tend to believe that almost no one actually uses this feature because
it doesn't work in an obvious use case.
So, I'm in favor of:
- dropping the "again" word in "Never again".
- changing conf_default.saveConfiguration to disabled_state.
The last point will fix two problems: real beginners not knowing how to
start ufraw cleanly and having to check $HOME/.ufrawrc for non-default
parameter settings.
--
Frank
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