In the five years that Segment PRO has been on the market, we have never discussed the best and most used feature of the software:
Mike Fisher
He has answered 10 times as many questions on the forum as I have. He is always there when anyone needs help. He knows the software better than anyone and is willing to share is knowledge no matter how much time it takes him. I have offered on many occasions to compensate him and he has turned me down each time. He likes doing this and I could not be more thankful for his help.
There was a time that I added every request that was made for new features to Woodturner PRO. I thought I was doing the right thing by being responsive. Version 2 of both Woodturner PRO and Lamination PRO became bloated and cancerous because there was so much fluff and user interface that the software was nearly unusable. Version 3 added a lot of new functionality, but it also gave me a chance to remove everything that was added and never used and they both became more user friendly.
Your request for linear measurement column is a perfect example of this. Is it worthwhile information? Yes. Will new users see it and understand what it means. Hell no. Is it necessary? Nope. Does it save time? Nope. Is it more accurate? Nope. Does it add to confusion? Yes. It adds a column to an already crowded printout and almost nobody needs it, wants it or will use it.
But I spent a lot of time figuring out the trigonometry to arrive at the solution, and went to the shop and used it myself to verify that the calculation was accurate. But somebody has to decide if requests become part of the program and that somebody is me.
My approach to making these decisions is pretty simple. I want the software to what customers need it to do but not necessarily what they want it to do. It needs to have as little user interface as is necessary. I won’t write code to duplicate functionality that Windows provides to all users. And the most important thing is that new functionality must be something that a majority of users need. In 23 years, your request for a linear measurement is the first request I’ve ever had.
Mike’s first answer to you was a link to a thread that discussed the Print screen and other screens that are non-printable controls. You obviously didn’t read that post but instead attacked the software.
Here’s what isn’t going to happen. This isn’t Twitter, Facebook, TikTok or any of the sites where that is expected. We’re just not going to do that here. We can have discussions and threads where we help each other with a smile on our face while typing or I’m simply going to shut it down.
I have never had a computer class or a trigonometry class, for that matter. I had to teach myself to program starting at age 50 using youtube and reading books. Programming is difficult for me and gets harder the farther I get from 70. I wrote this software only for me to make segmenting easier for me. It became clear that others need this help, too, so I decided to make it a hobby business and hired a programmer to write Woodturner PRO and 3D Design Pro. When it came to Lamination PRO, though, contract programmers were so expensive that the only way it would happen was to figure out how to write the software myself. Finally, I spend a year designing Segment PRO and then 14 months of head-down work on writing the software. A good programmer could have done it in half that time. Nevertheless, I’ve helped to make segmenting available to anyone and I’ve had a lot of fun doing it.
Now that I’m retired, I have found that I like golf, music, photography and travel more than I like programming. If the right person comes around, the business is for sale and they can take it to a whole new level. Until then, I like getting suggestions but here is the simple truth:
You bought the software on a particular day with the guarantee that you would never be charged for an upgrade and there would never be a subscription model so your purchase was one-and-done. You were given the right to use the software for 30 days without paying for it so you could decide whether it met your needs or not. That you have expectations of additional things being done to the software just because you want them to be done is simply not realistic.
Thanks again to Mike for all of your efforts through the years and please, please, please don’t let one unhappy person let you think you need to apologize for anything.
Lloyd