crobi

Your project is certainly interesting, the comments regarding ease of use were just meant as a hint for how you could attract even more users.

Consider a hypothetical web application (no setup) where you write the same Ruby code and get a live preview (no need to explain windows users what a command line is) - this would take lots of work and money, but would probably be more popular.

Look also from the perspective of a person who is looking for a card design tool, is not emotionally attached to your project, and does not prefer Ruby over other languages. For these people, you compete against solutions like Tikz or Processing or some Python script, which are also capable of defining the content and layout of the cards separately. That's why I thought it might be a good idea to mention some amazing advantage of your tool in its short description.

If you want to create a community around your project, how about opening a gallery with examples, like the one the Tikz project has (http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/all/)?

What I like:

- Data driven

- High-quality output

- Raster and vector output

What I don't like:

- Complicated to set up (install Ruby, install multiple dependencies, compile code). This will scare away many potential users.

- Complicated to use (edit text files and run command line scripts). While I like this workflow personally, I feel this will again scare away some people.

- There's already many generic tools where you can write scripts to produce images from input data. Maybe you could explain why your tool is better suited for designing cards, given how complicated it is?