[ptx] a few bugs/questions: hugin, autopano, enblend

[Pablo d'Angelo]

On Sun, 31 Oct 2004, J. Schneider wrote:

> First of all: Except for some flaws in the windows interface (I know, it 
> is not written for Win) it is a really nice workflow now, including 
> autopano and enblend. The auto estimate feature is just great. Still 
> some things are annoying:
> 
> hugin:
> - When starting a new project after working on another project (i.e. not
>   starting a project right after lauching hugin), hugin usually crashes
>   at some point - sometimes right after adding new images, sometimes
>   later.
>   But anyway I have to save my project every few clicks to prevent
>   data loss. Quite a few assertion faults.

I'll try to find some of these bugs.

> - Does hugin use commas or points as decimal point character? I got
>   quite confused. On my german system (using commas), hugin sometimes
>   uses points, sometimes commas. Really! I ended up making copies of my
>   lens profiles to match both cases. (If I load the wrong version, hugin
>   ommits the digits behind the wrong type of decimal point).

I've changed the code in the current cvs so that it should always
read and write "." in the lens ini files.

> - speaking of lens profiles: Would it be possible to use the lens
>   profile files of PTLens? Once they are present on a system, it makes
>   no sense to duplicate the information into another text file with
>   slightly different format.

Already planned, but I do not have the time to implement that now.
The PTLens file format it a bit more complicated than the simple ini file
I'm currently using.

> - When a second window is opened and in foreground (preview, "apply
>   changes" dialogue), the focus may change back to the main window while
>   moving the mouse towards the new window. Then I have to get it back to
>   foreground e.g. with Alt+Tab to hit the apply or refresh button. Does
>   not occur with control points list window. Pretty annoying bug since
>   first version I tried in spring.

Hmm, had to do this, else the keyboard shortcuts, especially the "f" key
didn't work, I'll try to find another solution.

> - Auto estimate is pretty precise usually. Sometimes it fails
>   completely. I had the impression particularly with image pairs of
>   different orientation (i.e. one landscape format, one portrait)

The old version didn't allow image rotations. This is different
in the newer versions (like the installer snapshots build by Marek).

Different scales in images are also not allowed, so finetuning between
images taken with different focal length won't work.

>   It barely works on finding horizontal or vertical type points.
>   Shouldn't it be disabled automatically in such cases?

Hmm, works well for me, when used on nice vertical buildings in front
of a homogenous background. In other cases I disable it manually. But since
I place most of my vertical points on these features, I use it > 50% of the
time.

> - an option to run enblend in low priority would be nice.

Hmm, I'll take a look at that.

> Hope this feedback helps for further progress. Anyway great work so far!

Thanks. I hope the next version will really be a step forward in stability.

I think I'll also add a paypal donate link somewhere, in case somebody likes
the new release :)

Btw. does anybody have experience with paypal? Everytime I try to find some
comparison or alternative companies, I find these paypal is evil sites. Guess
some are its just competitors trying to grab a market share but I'm not
sure.

ciao
  Pablo