P3D Re: Stereoscope Applet

["Gregory J. Wageman" <gjw@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Larry Berlin writes:

>*****  Well Greg, a little understanding is in order. Andreas, a single
>young individual and talented human, wrote the applet for himself, in his
>own time, with his own energies, and for his own non-commercial purposes.

I guess this makes him unique in some way?  What's your point, Larry?  Are
we supposed to bow down and chant "We're not worthy"?  Sure, I cut freeware
some slack if it has minor bugs.  Screwing up my display so badly it requires
a reboot, however, isn't exactly what I'd qualify as "minor".

>I've relayed your suggestion to him and he felt it is a very good idea. The
>next time he is able to follow through on a programming session he will
>implement a better error checking routine along with one or two other good
>suggestions that others have provided in their feedback. That's the process
>of software development in action at the nitty gritty level. Happy now? 

Oh, please, I don't need a lecture from you about the software development
process.  I've only been in software developement for 20 years.  Here's a
little programming lesson for you, gratis: if a piece of code has known
prerequisites, you test for them BEFORE you turn someone's display into a
flickering, flashing mess.  I personally have had enough of the
"public-as-alpha-tester" mentality, unless the product is ADVERTISED as
"alpha", in which case I can choose to accept the consequences.

Perhaps, though, my frustration *was* misdirected.  It seems that it should
have been directed towards yourself, who promotes this not-quite-ready-for-
primetime applet as the next best stereo thing since Holmes-Bates.

Look at it from the perspective of the general public who doesn't know a
Java VM from a ViewMaster.  It seems that Microsoft doesn't yet ship the
Java 1.1 VM necessary to run this applet, which means that virtually everyone
with Windows will run into the same problem I did.  And unlike me, most
folks will not have access to Photo-3D to find out what's wrong and how to
fix.  Andreas's Web pages lay out all the details of incompatible browsers,
but folks are not always going to get to the applet via Andreas's site,
especially if the applet is put into common use.

And, by the way, there's no simple one-button way to find out what version
of Java you *do* have installed on Windows.  It's spread out over a
relatively large number of .dll and .cab and other files, and requires
checking the version numbers of all of them, assuming you know which files
to check.

Being Java-based, and therefore interpreted, the applet is terribly slow,
even on my 300 MHz Pentium II machine.  Yes, it does work, and being Java
is theoretically platform-independent (theoretically, as long as you have
the right version of Java, and the right browser version and... you get
the picture).  But sadly, I don't see it as anything more than a curiosity
at this point.  A clever feat of Java programming, yes, but not yet
practical.

I've been exchanging e-mail with Andreas and he does indeed seem eager to
rectify the problem.  In fact he's already made a fix which I'll be testing
later.

	-Greg W. (gjw@xxxxxxxxxx)


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