Existing users, 
Decadence - I've replied before to clarify things, but you persist with the same misinformation, so I guess I'll just keep replying. (For those of you who are new to this exchange, I'm replying to the complaints of a user named 'decadence', which you can read below).
First, yes, I'll be the first to admit that Default Folder X isn't perfect. It's had bugs, and I've tried to act quickly to fix them, once I've been able to reproduce the problems and isolate the causes. Some problems aren't found during beta testing - especially long-term performance issues or problems that only occur infrequently or with specific applications or configurations - so I have to fix them after a user reports them. I'm not at all happy with this, but given the nature of the way DFX, OS X, and software in general work, it's been unavoidable thus far.
Now as far as specific issues go:
1. I don't know why one of your posts was deleted. I had nothing to do with that, and I don't believe that VersionTracker would delete a post even if I asked them to. I'd appreciate it if you'd stop insisting that I'm somehow out to deceive you or anyone else, or am doing something underhanded. I'm not. I write software for a living, and have been running St. Clair Software and doing that for 20 years - I understand the value of trust and relationships with my customers.
2. I have not "vehemently denied" your or anyone else's bug reports. If you look back at my posts, you'll see that I've never told anyone that what they're reporting isn't happening. What I have said is that I can't reproduce a problem on any of the machines I have here, or haven't seen a particular issue before. I have asked people to report their bugs to me, rather than (or in addition to) posting on VersionTracker, where I may or may not see them and where I have no means of corresponding with them to get additional information. If I can't reproduce a bug, I ask for more info - it's difficult to fix a problem if I've never seen it occur. And it's impossible to confirm that I've fixed it if I can't reproduce the problem or can't send new software to a person that does have the problem.
And I'm not posting this reply because I'm somehow out to get you. I'm trying to clarify what I see as your misperception about what I do and what I care about. I run a small software company. The reason it's small is because I don't farm out tech support - I do it myself. I'm spending time answering questions and paying attention to users' problems instead of hiring a bunch of people that don't know much about my software and don't care as much as I do. That means I write a lot less code, but my customers are generally happy (you being one of the big exceptions, unfortunately) and that if I make mistakes or bugs are uncovered (in my software or in others) I can fix or work around them quickly and keep everyone running smoothly.
And that's my 2 cents. Now back to work...
Default Folder X
Enhance open/save dialogs with improved navigation & preview, spotlight tagging.
Version: 4.3.5
Welcome back...
Feedback Type: Developer Note
Contributed by: Tuesday, April 22 2008 @ 05:48 AM PDT
Product Platform: MacOSX
Used Product For: Over One Year
Recommend Product: YES
Comments
I appreciate the work - St. Clair Software
Thanks for your comments. As I've said before, the instability you've experienced hasn't been the norm - I get a report every now and then about problems with an application crashing, but those are very few and far between.The big issues with making a Lite version are:
1. What features would I include? In the few requests I've gotten for a Lite version, the "required features" have always been different (though Finder-click seems fairly universally liked). And those requests are never about stability - it's always that the person wants a $20 (or less) product instead of a $35 one.
2. Stability wouldn't change drastically. The problems I do see have been with corrupted preferences and with the base loading and signaling mechanisms, which can't go away.
Most of the internal complexity in DFX is dealing with the myriad differences in different revisions of OS X and in the way applications use (and abuse) Open and Save dialogs. Internally, OS X has 3 different Open / Save implementations and it's in juggling those and accounting for all the possible different uses that the complexity arises. Cutting DFX down to one feature won't eliminate the need to handle all of that (though Apple's helping a lot by gradually moving toward a common code base - Leopard makes a whole lot more sense internally than Tiger or previous releases did).
Oh, and the APE stuff. Honestly, there were never bugs with the APE Lite libraries I used. I stopped using them because Unsanity didn't reply to my emails or support Intel and 64-bit in a timely fashion. All the flap on the 'net is about the whole APE mechanism that patches loginwindow, the Dock, and all that. I never adopted any of that because it takes over your system, can be unstable, is hard to remove, and is generally just not something I want to be involved with.
As far as stability goes, with my recent discovery of the memory problem in Carbon apps and the CPU usage issues taken care of, DFX is performing well. If you get rid of your DFX prefs file and install the latest rev, I'm confident you won't have the problems you did before.
Tuesday, April 22 2008 @ 07:20 AM PDT
Oh, by the way.... - St. Clair Software
One thing that struck me just now: I use DFX myself, of course, and use it pretty heavily. I reboot my machine about once every 2 weeks, and then usually just because I need to boot back into Tiger to check on a bug report. Granted, I'm running Leopard instead of Tiger most of the time (I think you're using 10.4, right?) but I push things pretty hard and OS X and Default Folder X have stayed very solid. Of course, I don't use any Haxies or InputManager hacks, so my system is pretty 'clean' in that respect.Tuesday, April 22 2008 @ 07:44 AM PDT
On the developer's machine it works... - decadence
is a common refrain. At this point you should be experienced enough not to be making that argument.It really doesn't solve the users' issues.
Think hard about how you are coding Default Folder X. It's just too aggressive a model, interfering too deeply with the OS.
Try and figure out a liter way to get the core functionality.
When you added APE you were really off the path. It's a pity to lose Default Folder to memory leaks and CPU cycles, not to mention hard system restarts.
And I'm on 10.5 now.
Thursday, April 24 2008 @ 05:20 AM PDT
I appreciate the work - decadence
involved in running a small software company. It's not a joke.I used to be a Default Folder advocate/junkie in the Mac OS 7/8/9 days.
Unfortunately in the OS X world, Default Folder has never been as reliable (not that we didn't have crashes from Default Folder then).
I wish you would stop focusing on expanding Default Folder, but focus on making a lite version which is absolute stability.
What I have against you/Default Folder are the hard system crashes and/or memory leaks which force a restart. If Default Folder just crashed itself that would be no big deal.
But it usually takes down/corrupts a system to the point the system needs to be restarted.
As Default Folder is a workflow tool, forced restarts/freezes makes Default Folder actually an antiproductivity tool.
Until you get these issues under control (the only way in my opinion is going lite rather than feature expansion), Default Folder X is a perpetual beta and a liability rather than an asset on a work computer.
I lost a huge amount of respect for your coding when you put in APE - Haxie code for a couple of versions. APE (in my opinion and in Apple's) is the worst thing to ever happen to OS X stability.
Pardon my impertinence, but you have your eye on the wrong ball Jon.
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Tuesday, April 22 2008 @ 06:12 AM PDT