Hi Juan,
I'm sorry if I created stress by quoting that part of one of Ron's slides. I should hasten to point out the larger picture: The fact that Ron was giving a how-to talk on PI was *huge*! That was extremely positive. I got the impression that, since lots of people know Ron through his book, his endorsement of PI carried a lot of weight. And he really was singing its praises. As I remember it, one of his main messages was that "PI is the real deal. It's got the real, heavyweight math under the hood. It may be complicated, but you need this. This is the best tool out there for astro-processing." I'm happy to stand corrected if I'm mis-representing Ron's talk, but the 'like IRAF with a GUI' was only a small, throwaway line, and it was presented with what I'd characterize as affection.
The best way I can summarize my take on all this is to quote some of my previous posts: I've often said that the PI community needs "the Ron Wodaski of PI" and "the Warren Keller of PI" and suchlike. I've probably also said that it's marvelous to see that these people have turned out to be, in fact, the *actual* Ron Wodaski and Warren Keller. That's huge! I think that bodes well for PI.
I think you've hit the nail on the head with your comment about "PixInsight is much more than an unordered collection of routines with a GUI.". I realize I'm being extremely presumptuous here, and I apologize, but I'd recommend printing that sentence in a very large typeface, and putting it up on the wall of your office. Make that the `iron law' of the PI user interface and workflow development. I am a *huge* PI fan, and I absolutely want to see PI succeed and become the go-to image-processing system for amateurs, and, heck, maybe even for the researchers, too.
(A brief digression to illustrate my point: When Travis Rector was giving his talk, I couldn't help thinking "Sir, I envy you for your knowledge of UNIX and IRAF, but seriously, PI would make your life so much easier...")
However, PI's developers are so good at mathematics and programming that they may have a hard time imagining what it's like to *not* be a programmer or mathematician. That, I think, is far and away the biggest challenge facing PI.
That printout on the office wall might inspire thoughts like this: What would it be like to work in an entirely different field from software? What would it be like never to have gotten a paycheck of any kind from the software business? What would it be like to have never read a single paper or book by Fionn Murtagh or Jean-Luc Starck? And what would it be like if those papers made about as much sense as Middle Egyptian hieroglyphics? Plenty of intelligent, diligent, enthusiastic people are in exactly that position. And for those people, there's a substantial risk that PI could seem like `IRAF with a GUI'. Fortunately, there are now a substantial number of training materials, some from the PTeam, and some from others, to help remedy this. But, presumptuous of a suggestion as it is, I think that printout on the wall might be a positive thing for the development of an already-great program.
Also - we need to have some of the PTeam come over to this side of the pond for conferences! I'd love to meet you or Vicent or Carlos at AIC! That would be really cool!
- Marek
