Even though Reader and eLibrary are not yet publicly available, the fact that a small group of people now have access to them is surprisingly stressful to me, as I am constantly wondering if the software is being used, detested, ridiculed, etc… It’s also a bit embarrassing that I feel this way, because I have been programming for so long (well, not as long as some maybe, but 10 years is still quite a while). And yet I am still yet to make available any software more substantial than small utilities.

Of course the whole point of getting people to try out software is so that they can find problems and point them out (or ask more scarey questions like "Why would anyone want this?"). Still, I feel very embarrassed when friend CM pointed out that playtexts from Gutenberg look pretty terrible in Reader, and font sizing goes all spazzy in the process. She proceeded to ask how to use the Find function, and mortified I had to admit that it wasn’t yet implemented. Oops. All of the issues she raised were instantly valid, and my first reaction was to think "Of course, the software is a pile of poo which is not ready for people to try out." But after my panic had subsided I realized that it’s just part of the testing/trial process, and everything is going to be fine. Already some of the issues have been addressed, and soon they will all have been (except that the playtext issue is particularly knotty, because play formatting is generally awkward to begin with).

So what I am trying to say is, although I may be thin-skinned and tend to cringe defensively whenever my work is criticised, it is important that such issues are raised, because otherwise they may go unresolved.

If you are a tech minded [Windows using] nice person who likes to try new things, you might like to apply to be a beta-tester from .

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 8th, 2002 at 4:56 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.