Like most carvers of my age, I laid out and drew lettering by hand when I started. I despised manual layout. As soon as computer-aided typography became available, I embraced it. I put the cussed layout tools in a box that I buried in the back of the shop. I never lamented their absence from the bench and reveled in the time savings. Manual layout was a prolonged process for me.
My first type layout program cost me all of twenty-two dollars. It had no bells and whistles, but I loved it. Unfortunately, it went out of production about three years later, and I replaced it with a graphics program that cost about a hundred dollars. It had too many features, but the ones I needed were easy to use. Eventually, it went out of production also.
Since then, I’ve used a sequence of increasingly obtuse programs that have too many features. For example, there are multiple menus stacked, hidden on sliders, and dropdowns. I can’t turn off what I don’t want or need, and every week it seems new features get added.
I have learned that there is a term for this; it’s called feature bloat. It reminds me of an apocryphal quote from some mythic software engineer that “if a program isn’t broken, it doesn’t have enough features.”
And that reminds me of the wood planer that sits in the shed waiting for my gadget-loving friend to come to get it. It, too, was jammed with features. So full of them that it wasn’t a very good planer. I replaced it this winter with a simple, no-nonsense machine that only does one thing – plane wood.
Some people want all those features, and they sell the product. I have a business, and I understand consumer demand. I also understand the frustration with products with buttons that don’t work unless dials are first set, levers pushed, and a valve gear calibrated.
There has been enough frustration that some companies have released new products promising to be basic with no frills. I was inveigled into this and bought a few. Then I noticed the upgrades and the creeping bloat of features as the simple became the more complex.
While I am not planning a reunion with the old layout tools soon, I am trying to remember which storage box I may have placed them in.
My mom used to say “the more buttons, the more things that can go wrong.” She kept the refrigerator, washing machine and stove from her newly-wed days for close to 40 years.
She was a smart woman.