One of the significant reasons I'm using hugin again after first trying to try it years ago is that it now has an installer. This has meant that it has finally been successfully installed without any bugs or irritations, and this success even prompted my obtaining a Samyang 8mm lens for my D50.
One of the primary problems hugin used to have was that the installation phase (which on ordinary software should only take seconds, and involve one action, and maybe a few clickthroughs) suffered from atrocious usability flaws. It took weeks or months to get right, or in many cases, never. This discouraged people (it certainly discouraged me and I'm probably just as representative as any other person) so we'd try it and it would demonstrate negative usability so we'd cut our losses after some hours, days or months, and give up, only returning a few years later to see if the product had been finished yet. There is a fourth option though. Obviously of the ones you mention, the installer is the main option of interest to most people, but increasingly there's the 'app store' mode of obtaining software. This is perceived as far more trustworthy, is usually adjacent to reviews, and as an extension of that, perhaps some user help from the community of users. Of course, the product has to be solid, and finished, and not mess people around with spurious unwanted behaviour or mismatched documentation (or worst still, no documentation), or it'll just get fed to the lions (and rightfully so). I'm very impressed with how much progress Hugin has made over the past several years, from something that was confusing, arbitrary, with a huge time-wasting phase before anything could be made to work; to what it is now - largely usable if still lacking in pure usability concepts and also quite poor in documentation change management (from the user perception). However, it still manages to show the user some form of results and provide instant gratification (which is after all how a person typically experiences whether a product is any good or not - 'did it work first time'?). It is a very impressive project. -- *Ian Tindale* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Hugin and other free panoramic software" group. A list of frequently asked questions is available at: http://wiki.panotools.org/Hugin_FAQ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hugin-ptx
