Hello ttuuxxx,
Was away longer than I thought as my elderly Mother fell ill and I had to take care of everything.
Just read all the new forum stuff and have the following comments FWIW:
1. installed all the pix viewers that you have gathered. Thanks for the choice but it's a tough one. Again, just did a quick look and review.
Gqview is still my favourite as it has a wealth of features, has exif viewer, slideshow, is fast and just works. I believe the newer incarnation geeqie is even better but is only at beta at the mo.
Ristretto is ok but has no exif viewer, seems slow on large images and I have some difficulties (which are non-consistent) in opening some files if the file is hidden. Which has put me off. However I feel you will keep this one so if you can give it a separate slideshow tab that would be helpful.
viewnior is similar to ristretto but no slideshow
gpicview..an old favourite. simple but no slideshow, exif viewer and not very interesting to look at.
pornview.. as you said, it has a pleasing GUI, the slide show is easy to use, but there are few tools. Big issue.. I think it would be unwise to make it part of the standard install due to the name. I'm certainly no prude but I have put Puppy on several PCs/laptops where I know young children have access and IMO it would be inappropriate. But by all means make it a pet for others to choose.
fotoxx ..I have always liked this one. most things there I want plus lots of useful tools; red -eye for example.
My vote is still gqview (or geeqie) followed by fotoxx then ristretto. But of course I only get one vote!
2. hadn't noticed that the new (good looking) screenshot only saves in png. With no tweaks at all I used both current screenshot apps and they gave me files of 40kB (jpg) and 300kB (png) with the latter from the new screenshot prog. That's a shame because it certainly looks good. I guess it's not possible to change the format it saves into??
3. Thanks for the new Gimp. I already had one installed but the new one installs just fine. But not had time to check it out yet.
4. Our favourite subject again!!! MUT and Pmount.
From your jpg it still looks as if MUT will squash the volume label and file format text together. Please see your jpg where for sdc "vfat" and "NO NAME" merge. Did you manage to explain this to Jesse the developer? Is he willing to help fix this?
Whilst with MUT I note that file sizes are in Mb (which internationally means Megabits, not Megabytes). I think it would be best to have MB here.
5. Pmount: it would be great if you can add tabs for the different drives; but if not then I understand. If you do add them then could they be like MUT ie sda, sdb, sdc and not in reverse order as they are in the third picture.
To be honest I am starting to like the green and grey buttons to show mounted or not, but I guess for consistency you need to go with Mount/Unmount as used for MUT.
6. Can't test the equaliser as the audio is not working on this PC at the moment. As someone who has worked in professional TV for many many years and used to lecture in it for perhaps the World's best known broadcaster I can understand what tempestuous means about equalisation being a subtle art. You won't find any tone controls on my main amp.
But... this is Puppy and I imagine there will be many using 214X who don't have pro kit nor even a good hifi connected to their PC/laptop.
In which case a wide ranging equaliser would come in very useful. Perhaps 31 bands is a bit excessive but if that is all there is to offer at this time then I say so be it.
7. I have never seen the logic of strictly adhering to the 100MB limit. I can understand why Barry made that a barrier and agree with his reasoning but if for the sake of a quality app being added it goes a little over then so be it.
But I agree that size-creep from one generation to another would be wrong and it's good to aim for 100MB even if it gets a tad bigger.
Hoping to see x5 soon ??
HTH
Cheers
Dave