What's worst is I don't really get what's so broken.

I am broken.

Posted by: The Broken at May 12, 2005 01:21 AM

Well, for one, the correct term is "Neural", not "neuronal". More importantly, though, it's not exactly an intuitive preferences panel, is it? Having worked on Neural Networks myself, I understand what the purpose is of loading a(nother) network for an OCR program, but will the average user? There's absolutely no indication to the user what this thing does.

Posted by: Steven at May 12, 2005 01:38 AM

Neural Networks? do they link up with your brain?

Posted by: Bob at May 12, 2005 06:40 AM

I'd say that the oddest thing about this PREFERENCES panel is that there does not appear to be any preferences to be set.

Posted by: Carlos Gomez at May 12, 2005 08:08 AM

This is bad, but not THAT bad. I really think the main problem is that the words "Neuronal Network" happens to not be a common term. Pretend for a moment instead it said:

"Program Skin:"

THEN the dialog would be fine. You could either type in the name of a preferred interface skin, browse from a list of available ones, confirm your choice with the OK button, return to the program's DEFAULT skin, or just cancel the operation entirely. A perfectly fine dialog.

BUT WAIT!!! What if you don't know what a "skin" is? Then this dialog becomes really strange and unmanagable. Is it not amazing how our familarity with what something does profoundly affects our assessment of it's functionality?

Posted by: Robby Slaughter at May 12, 2005 10:40 AM

But what do you type in? a URL, file path or network name? THAT's where this program fails, non-specific instruction.

Posted by: Andrew Bakke at May 12, 2005 10:43 AM

But wait! The menu is "Preferences" plural, but there's only one preference you can change! Broken!

Posted by: ssssmemyself at May 12, 2005 04:00 PM

Maybe they apply a skin by sticking a finger in your eye and using the optic nerve to connect to your brain (neural) to see which skin you want.

Posted by: Fuzzy at May 12, 2005 04:34 PM

This can't be broken it's a mac. j/k. I figured this would end up launching a long discussion about panels vs. windows etc. I've used OCR before, 4 different versions throughout the years, and I have no idea why I'd want to specify a location for my neural network, what it would do, or how this has to do with preferences. This dialog box hurts my brain.

Posted by: Joshua Wood at May 12, 2005 05:28 PM

what does ocr mean? I guess my neurons aren't networked

Posted by: dhffgj at May 12, 2005 07:09 PM

or my neuronals

Posted by: cgvxcffh at May 12, 2005 07:11 PM

Optical Character Recognition, it's so you can scan documents and convert them back to editable text

Posted by: Joshua Wood at May 12, 2005 09:16 PM

It's French. Nuff said.

Posted by: Robert A. Dugger at May 12, 2005 09:49 PM

This is typical of Apple Mac cos they often put confusion message like this one. Also they are Irish cos Irish cannot spell!!!!

Posted by: jeffy at May 14, 2005 11:21 AM

Oh yeah? Well, at least our damn sentences make sense.

Posted by: Irishman at May 14, 2005 04:48 PM