PosterShop Issue (Specific)
PosterShop Issue (Specific)
- Subject: PosterShop Issue (Specific)
- From: email@hidden (Lee Blevins)
- Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 08:47:27 -0400
- Organization: Digital Graphics, Inc.
Thanks to all who replied to my query on Postershop.
Let me be more specific.
We purchased Postershop 5.5 because it was what the dealer we purchased
our HP 5000 sold. We knew very little about these rips.
Rips are not new to my company, we're the laregest Rampage site in Rhode
Island and have two Scitex front ends as well as 3 Iris printers with
rips. To this we add many smaller rips for desktop printers.
I was very surprised at how difficult it was to learn Postershop because
the documentation was either incorrect or completely lacking. There were
little or no "how-to" procedures in the manual. The manual appeared to
be nothing more than a list of the menus and dialog boxes with no
explanation of how to use these in a workflow.
Bugs abound.
Major bugs, as in show stopper bugs.
For example.
We needed to print 50 large posters at 3 copies each. Our plan was to
put them in the rip and let them run overnight. We put them in the rip,
clicked on them and set the copies to 3.
The next morning we had all the prints at 8 1/2 x 11 size. Apparently,
this undocumented feature is, you have to rip them first before you can
set the copies. Nowhere in the manual does it say this. A call to Onyx
reveals this is a bug and we need version 5.6.
Our customer was angry about not getting their job by deadline and we
lost the account. A very large account.
We called Onyx and requested version 5.6 and were told we were entitled
to it free but we had to order it through their web site, they would not
take the order over the phone.
We ordered it. Waited weeks. No upgrade.
Called the dealer, seems they lost our order, now more weeks go by,
still no upgrade, call dealer again. After two more weeks, we finally
get it.
To our amazement, installing this "upgrade" does no observe any of the
profiles we made with the previous version. We must re-linearize and
recreate all media settings again.
This one floored me and our staff was reluctant to even use it.
I installed the 5.6 version and at first I was hung up on how to set the
location of the que folders. After reading the manual again (which is of
no use on this issue) I went to "The Big Show" in Providence where out
dealer was and ask him. He points (he really didn't know but was
guessing) to a dialog that shows "base folder location."
Being hopeful I run back to the shop and try this.
It works. I put a file in it and it runs. I try to create a new "quick
set and the rip says "unable to open printer, check installation."
After hours and hours of fiddling, I find out this is not the way to set
the que location. It appears that you can't choose a new location. All
this dialog is, is to set the location of the program should you not
want the default.
This is a departure from how 5.5 worked and not how we want it to work.
We want the application on the C drive and our ques on a high speed SCSI
disk attached. Why? Because we don't want to sap CPU when data is being
sent to the que or to interfere with the disk access the program makes
to it's drive while others on the network are spooling. At any rate,
this was how 5.5 worked and now this "upgrade" works differently,
un-documented.
Giving in to the bug, I decide to install it [Postershop] on the scsi
drive and let it be. I install it by selecting the drive during install.
To my surprise the installer doesn't create a directory and deposits all
the the rip parts in the root of the drive.
I went ahead and made some tests to see if it would output and work, all
was well.
I decided to tidy up the install and re-install into a specfic
directory. I created a directory called Postershop 5.6 and installed in
it.
Everything seems ok, I go through the entire process of linearizing but
when I'm ready to run the ps file of our Monaco targets it errors out.
We can't find any place to read the error log and the one screen error
at the bottom right of the display is clipped and not detailed enough.
We can't even find the word "error" or "log" in the index of the manual.
We're at a loss here? What will it take to make this product work?
After a lengthy on hold to their tech support we find that the directory
must be named "ONYX56" for the rip to work.
I ask the tech support person "is this documented in the installation
instructions?" He doesn't know. It is not.
It's another "secret" of Postershop I just found out the hard way.
It's very difficult to run a business and train people on s/w that
relies on what I call a "tribal story-telling culture of documentation."
It appears that to use Postershop one must have been involved with it
for a long time and learned all the "secrets" as they are passed down to
generations of users because there's very little in the manual that will
aid in installing it and making it work.
The man hours my company has wasted in the product finding out these
"secrets" has amounted to thousands and thousands of dollars in lost
productivity, not to mention loss of business due to errors the programs
produces that result in missed deadlines.
I have never seen a software this poorly documented and with this many
bugs in my lengthy history of dealing with computer graphics.
I hope to find an alternative.
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