[comp.sys.next] Are Icon and Scene broken?

windemut@lisboa.ks.uiuc.edu (Andreas Windemuth) (06/19/91)

Since we have this new Color NeXTstation, I thought I'd use the
Programs Scene and Icon, which up to then seemed to be a satisfactory
way to manipulate images in a number of ways, to play around with
some nice color pictures.

I spent a whole evening trying to enlarge a 12-bit tiff color
image saved from GifView2. No way.
Scene seems to crash at the merest mentioning of 12-bit color,
and Icon steadfastly crashes on any attempt to save an Image to either
tiff or eps.

Is this only happening to me? Am I missing something?
Are there fixed versions of these programs? 

Help will be much appreciated.

Baffled,

--
		Andreas Windemuth

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grdetil@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Gilles R. Detillieux) (06/21/91)

In <1991Jun19.054506.23071@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> windemut@lisboa.ks.uiuc.edu (Andreas Windemuth) writes:

>I spent a whole evening trying to enlarge a 12-bit tiff color
>image saved from GifView2. No way.
>Scene seems to crash at the merest mentioning of 12-bit color,
>and Icon steadfastly crashes on any attempt to save an Image to either
>tiff or eps.

>Is this only happening to me? Am I missing something?
>Are there fixed versions of these programs? 

I recently tried to use Icon to grab images from the Previewer window,
edit them, and save them as directory icons.  Icon crashed on me at least
four times, at various stages, taking the Workspace Manager down with it
on one occasion.  I gave up and grabbed the old Icon program from my old
1.0a software release disk.  (BTW, I'm running a monochrome 040 cube now.)

I don't know what NeXT did to Icon on 2.0, but it seems hopelessly broken.
-- 
Gilles Detillieux			<Gilles@scrc.UManitoba.CA>
Spinal Cord Research Centre		or <grdetil@ccu.UManitoba.CA>
Dept. of Physiology, U. of Manitoba	Phone:  (204)788-6766
Winnipeg, MB  R3E 0W3  (Canada)		Fax:    (204)786-0932

Salvatore Saieva <SLVQC@CUNYVM.BITNET> (06/21/91)

In article <1991Jun20.205305.1194@ccu.umanitoba.ca>, grdetil@ccu.umanitoba.ca
(Gilles R. Detillieux) says:
>
>In <1991Jun19.054506.23071@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> windemut@lisboa.ks.uiuc.edu
>(Andreas Windemuth) writes:
>
>>I spent a whole evening trying to enlarge a 12-bit tiff color
>>image saved from GifView2. No way.
>>Scene seems to crash at the merest mentioning of 12-bit color,
>>and Icon steadfastly crashes on any attempt to save an Image to either
>>tiff or eps.
>
>>Is this only happening to me? Am I missing something?
>>Are there fixed versions of these programs?
>
[text deleted]
>I don't know what NeXT did to Icon on 2.0, but it seems hopelessly broken.

I have had some really bad experiences with Icon and Scene. Both of these
have the potential of being hall of fame apps, but are seriously unstable.
Listen to this war story: Two days ago we received a NeXTdimen system.
Yesterday I spent the larger part of the day playing with video and color
images. Icon was (as you'd expect) crashing a lot on me all day but at
one point, it crashed, exited the Workspace and immediately logged me into
the root account. I was amazed! Now while logged in as root, I logged out
using the Logout command from the Workspace Manager's menu, and it logged
me in again to the root account. (It was behaving just like the system
would if there weren't a password on the me account.)

I tried to figure out what was going on but nothing seemed wrong; no
unexpected errors in /usr/adm/messages or in the console. I had to reboot
to get things back to normal.

I did try to repeat the problem after the system rebooted but I couldn't.
And I'm not 100% sure that Icon is the culprit here, but it certainly can't
be trusted. Through the course of the day, Icon dumped core no less than
8 times. It's a wonder anyone can have the patience to use it.

Same thing goes for Scene. The (little bit of) help doc in Icon says
finishing the documentation to Icon fell to a lower priority at NeXT.
This is a real shame, Icon and Scene really do some nice things (if you
can accomplish anything before they crash). Then there are those curious
menu choices that entice you to spend hours trying to figure out how
they work or what they do. Ever see the Scan... submenu in Scene, or how
about the Video... submenu in Icon?

[Now that I'm thinking about it] It seems like NeXT loves to tease.
Icon and Scene lack documentation and contain features which I need,
but these features apparently don't work. NeXTdimension has to be
the ultimate tease; there was so much press hype about the JPEG
compression and realtime video capture and the delivered product
offers none of these features. For the price NeXTdimension is a good
system, but it lacks the greatness it was advertised to have just a
few months ago.

NeXT, if you're listening, please fix and document Icon and Scene.
We need these programs to make use of the graphic features of your
great computer system.

Sal.
-------
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