Here's a project idea for the long weekend. Have you heard of scanner art? The basic idea is this: you scan things and you try to make something something artistic with it. Is it art? Is it really photography? Some say yes, some say no. I say, 'Who cares?'

I have found that I can get some extraordinary results with my trusty scanner (the Epson Perfection 4490). I particularly like how the scanner captures intricate detail in natural objects. Here are a few samples of items I've created (click for a larger view).

Edge.org, where the stunning work of Katinka Matson is often featured. Intrigued, I started experimenting with my scanner. I don't have any sage advice about creating scanned artwork, but I do have a few tips:

• Ensure you clean the scanner bed really well before you scan
• Be prepared to spend several hours cleaning up dust and artifacts from each image you scan with your image editor of choice (even if you DO clean the bed well, you will spend a good deal of time on this task).
• I prefer to scan in the dark with the lid of the scanner open. It produces nice clean lines and a black background, which makes it easier to extract the image.
• This is a great way to experiment with your image editing program (I use Photoshop), particularly for creating interesting backgrounds, arrangements and frames.
• Try scanning anything and everything. For items that might damage your scanner bed glass, some say to try using a transparent film (e.g. a rigid piece of clear plastic of the type used to protect business reports in days past). Haven't tried this myself — I just use the 'be really, really careful when scanning' method.
• Try playing around with arrangement and layering of your scanned items.
• Scan the same item from different angles, then try piecing it together the various images into one montage.
• Scan the same item at different resolutions, then try assembling something interesting from these scans.

If scanning objects appeals to you, check out Scanner Magic and Photo Vinc for more tips and ideas.

So, here’s my latest Dvorak-Qwerty keyboard support rant.

I received a very odd ‘personal’ response from an Adobe customer support representative regarding my request for Dvorak-Qwerty support for Adobe’s Creative Suite applications.

My complaint: Dvorak-Qwerty does not properly work with Adobe products.

(See my previous post for background on DQ if you have no idea what I’m talking about)

Here’s a snippet from what I wrote to Adobe about this annoying problem:

I must toggle to the QWERTY layout to use my shortcuts, then toggle back to Dvorak when I need to type. This is very annoying. Would Adobe consider posting a relatively minor update to address those users who rely on the Dvorak-Qwerty keyboard layout in Mac OS X?

They wrote back to me today (within 24 hours, as promised on their website):

I understand that you would like Adobe to post a minor update for Macintosh users who rely on Dvorak-Qwerty keyboard, as you have to continually toggle between these two keyboards in order to use it to type text and use short cut keys respectively.

I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

We need to inform you that Adobe® Systems continually develops new applications and improves existing products, but cannot comment on unreleased products until a press release is posted. When new releases become available, the details regarding new features and purchasing information will be posted on the Adobe Web site at the following URL: www.adobe.com

Ok. So they seem to grasp the issue, but then again … the response mimicked the phrases from my complaint so closely that it left me with the distinct impression that some sort of AI compiled and regurgitated a customized automated response based on my input. The part that annoys me most is that the automated response tries too hard to appear like it came from a real human. Or perhaps what annoys me is that it doesn’t seem like it came from a real human, but Adobe would like me to feel as if it did.

I can’t say that I expect to see a software update from Adobe that addresses my issue anytime soon. I’m guessing there aren’t too many users out there who suffer from lousy DQ support (and it’s not just Adobe products that lack DQ support), and I’m assuming that the Adobe user base is so massive and the number of suggestions to improve their software are so many that my little complaint may be backlogged until Adobe CS 10.

It’s nice that Adobe has a system in place to so quickly respond to a customer input. I bet a lot of R&D went into this auto-rapid-super-friendly-personalized response system. Still, it raises a larger philosophical question about automated, rapid customer support. Is a quick reply better than a delayed reply (or no reply at all) if it is canned and impersonal? Is it actually worse if it’s canned and impersonal and it attempts to be personalized in a very fake way?

In addition to the mimicry of my original complaint, the ‘personal’ message also included my name at awkward intervals throughout the response. Here’s an example:

Troy, also, please visit the following URL on the Adobe Web site for the latest customer service and technical information: [www.adobe.com](http://www.adobe.com)/support/main.html

And later on in the (relatively short) message:

Troy, the Web Support Portal Representatives are available from Monday to Friday.

I'm convinced that a human would not reference my first name repeatedly in such an awkward manner.

The Adobe response was signed by ‘Victor M.’ of Adobe Customer Service. I’m sure that Victor M. exists, but he surely would not have typed out such a weird response to a customer. I really wouldn’t expect a human to type out a detailed response within 24 hours from such a massive company. It had to be a generated response. So what’s my point? If Adobe is committed to a personalized, rapid customer response, I would rather receive a message that said:

'Hi Troy, we get a bazillion comments and suggestions every week. We got your message. A real human will read it. We will consider your input.'

A week or two later, perhaps I would get a message that said:

'Hey Troy, We read your input. We understand that you've submitted a feature request about our support for Dvorak-Qwerty. It may be part of a future Adobe release, but we can't make any promises. We'll do our best. We're considering it. Really. Please understand that we have a bazillion other feature requests already in the queue, so your input will be addressed in the order it was received since we've determined that it's not a critical application error.'

Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather see a response like that. To be fair, perhaps the response I received wasn't automated. Perhaps Victor M. used creative cut-n-paste to respond to my query. Still, it seemed disingenuous; it seemed like a cookie-cutter response cloaked in a 'personalized' message. It seemed, in other words, automated in the worst way.

If any of you reading this are Dvorak typists who use QWERTY shortcuts (and use Adobe apps), please consider dropping them a note. Maybe all ten of us will get them to consider updating their software…

Dvorak users of the world scored a little victory this week. The TextExpander team at SmileOnMyMac fixed the problem with the Mac OS Dvorak-Qwerty keyboard layout, detailed in an earlier View from the Dock post.

A recap of this bug: when using the Mac OS Dvorak-Qwerty option, TextExpander did not previously work. Now it does. How did this come to pass? Me and at least one other user asked that it be fixed. And it was fixed, very promptly. I’d like to thank SmileOnMyMac for listening. I am a very satisfied customer. And here’s more unsolicited praise for TextExpander — it saves me an amazing amount of time (I just used it to add the previous Em dash). My wife is a devoted user, too. She uses TextExpander to save keystrokes on her website.

Now I am going to try to get Adobe to fix their Creative Suite. Unfortunately, I must still switch to the QWERTY keyboard layout when I’m using PhotoShop and the other Adobe apps, and I shouldn’t have to do this. Maybe it will be fixed if Apple buys Adobe!

If you do your typing on a Mac and you use Dvorak, I want to ensure you know that you can quickly toggle between Qwerty and Dvorak (or Dvorak-Qwerty, or other languages). Once you enable these option in the International Preference Pane (found under Apple’s System Preferences), you can choose to show this input menu in the Apple Menu Bar. You may then quickly toggle between the different keyboard layouts using a keyboard shortcut of your choice (I use option-command-space).

A quick reminder: if you use Windows, check out SkyEnergy’s HotKeyz. This little freeware program allows you to easily remap shortcut keys (paste, save, copy, etc.) to match the QWERTY key positions while using the Dvorak layout. It works quite well.

Finally, I want to point out a new development that is full of potential for those of us who use alternative typing layouts. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to look down at my keyboard and actually see the Dvorak layout. I may be able to do just that in the not-to-distant future. Check out this ArsTechnica report about a recent Apple patent for a dynamically controlled keyboard.

Imagine a keyboard with organic LEDs on each key. If you’re curious about the possibilities, see Art Lebedev’s Optimus Maximus (it’s available now, if you can afford it). I imagine a future Apple keyboard that displays the Dvorak keys, then dynamically displays QWERTY keys when I press a command-key combination. And I envision my keyboard dynamically changing to display game-specific commands or key combinations for shortcut-intensive programs like Photoshop or Final Cut Studio. This is surely the keyboard of the future, and I can’t wait to get one.

I encountered yet another Dvorak bug today. For the benefit of those (ok, probably all of you) who do not know what Dvorak is, it’s an alternative keyboard layout. It’s generally considered faster and more efficient than the standard QWERTY layout.

I can certainly type quite fast and, since the Dvorak keys are not in the same place as the QWERTY keys, I learned to type without ever looking down … it wouldn’t help anyways. Never needing to look down is a plus in my book. Anyhow, it turns out that TextExpander does not support the Dvorak-Qwerty keyboard layout. Dvorak-Qwerty is a Mac OS option (available via the International/Input Menu preference pane) that allows one to type in Dvorak but still access the command shortcut keys in their designated QWERTY positions. That means that I can type in Dvorak, but still use the QWERTY Command-C/V/Q etc. The tech support guy (who responded to my query very quickly, I should add) said that the add this support to the feature request list, although he was not authorized to say if it would or would not be fixed to add this support.

So what’s the bug? When the keyboard setting is DQ (that’s short for Dvorak-Qwerty), TextExpander cannot expand text. You type in the short cut, and your shortcut is replaced by … nothing. You just get an empty string where your expanded text should go. This is frustrating. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only Dvorak user out there, though I’m sure I am not. A great feature of the Mac OS is the built in Dvorak support with QWERTY command keys. While Windows supports Dvorak as an option, it does not (and apparently will never) support the QWERTY command function.

Even though I use this alternate layout, I am a slave to Mac keyboard shortcuts (the QWERTY style shortcuts). The Mac OS has long supported this, recognizing the need amongst mac users to have command-C map to the ‘C’ character printed on the physical keyboard, even though it’s not the ‘C’ character in the Dvorak layout is located where the I character is printed. Make sense? Windows does not have this. I was using a freeware program called Hotkeyz on my Windows (work) machine to remap my keys. This solved the PC problem beautifully. But, alas, my IT staff made me take it off because of my workplace ‘no shareware or freeware policy.’ Blah.

Anyhow, most mac programs work fairly well with Dvorak-Qwerty. Except for TextExpander, and except for Adobe CS3 (actually, I don’t believe Adobe products have ever supported Dvorak-Qwerty … and except for Mac MS Office (which I don’t use - iWork handles Dvorak quite well). What this means for me is that I have to turn Qwerty on when using Photoshop, because Command-C otherwise does not work. I could re-learn the shortcuts for the remapped Dvorak keys, but I don’t want to. I like the shortcut keys mapped to what’s printed on the keyboard. Besides, I’m so conditioned to type the Command key shortcuts that it would take major reconditioning to learn the alternate locations. The bottom line for me is this: I know there aren’t many of us out there, but there are people out there that rely on Dvorak-Qwerty. The combo, exclusive to the mac, is one of those little things that makes my mac experience better than my work-a-day PC experience. I can’t imagine it would take much of a code fix to support this feature … it is built in to the OS, after all. So, Adobe and Smile on My Mac … please support the DQ keyboard layout!!

By the way, I found this nice little freeware app that fixes one annoying DQ layout problem - the inability to use command+shift in DQ