I’ve just released the new version of my image viewer and manga / comic reader, Quivi (only for Windows right now, but it will be ported to Linux and maybe to Mac). I’ve rewritten it from scratch, check my last post for more info.
The new features added were:
- Prefetching of the next image
- Wallpaper dialog
- Start directory option
But that is only the beginning; now it will be much more easy for me to work on Quivi.
There are many comic readers around; like CDisplay (outdated, but very popular), Comical and Comix. They have much more features than Quivi, and I must admit that I often thought on giving up on Quivi. But I just couldn’t.
I wrote it mainly for myself; when I started there was only CDisplay. The first version was written with Visual Basic (go on, laugh). Then I changed to C++. And now I changed to Python, and I hope this is the last language change :) It’s a hobby project that I grew to love. It suits my needs, but I’d really like to suit the needs of other people too!
It is scary when you realize that people are using your software. I feel responsible; wherever I find someone criticizing it, I feel guilty for not attending those people needs. Yes, that’s stupid, but it’s how I am. At the same time, though, it’s awesome to know that there are people who like it and find it useful.
If you have any suggestion, comment, complain about Quivi, please send it to me!
Joel Spolsky, popular software engineering, said in this blog:
(…) They [Netscape] did it by making the single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make:
They decided to rewrite the code from scratch.
I agree, mostly. Many projects market that they’ve been “rewritten from scratch” as if it was something marvelous, and most of time, it’s just a sign that the new version probably has more bugs than the previous. But, wait, I just rewrote Quivi (a image viewer and comic / manga reader) from scratch! Well, why?
Well, I thought I really had to justify this. So here are the reasons:
- It is a small project. Rewriting it certainly isn’t as hard as rewriting a browser!
- I couldn’t stand C++ anymore (the programming language I used before). Of course, this isn’t C++ fault per se. It has its uses — the right tool for the right job, and so on. But to write an desktop application? It’s overkill. If you manage to pull it of, hey, kudos to you. But I had no motivation to work on it anymore.
- I love Python (the programming language I use now), and of course, I’m not the only one. Programming is fun in Python, so much that had the motivation to rewrite Quivi from scratch in the first place! And of course, it will be much more easier for me to keep working on Quivi.
- I could change GUI libraries. SmartWin is a nice library, and uses templates in very interesting ways; when programming Quivi I ended up involved with its development too. But it has its bugs, and because it uses templates extensively, it’s awful slow to compile an application that uses it. I’ve changed to wxPython, which is a very mature GUI library - and cross platform to boot.
Of course, there are some downsides with the change. The whole software package is much bigger due to the dependencies (the installer jumped from 900K to 5MB!). And the program is a little bit slower, mainly when starting up, and uses more memory (9MB to 30MB with no images loaded). But I think it was a good enough trade-off.
Rewriting from scratch must be considered carefully, and in this case, I think it was a good idea. Quivi is a hobby project, and I guess the main point of it is to have fun writing it, and to make users happy. I hope I can do both with this new version (which will be released soon).