One thing quite annoying IMO = once everything is setup correctly (Bitcoin-Qt running and synced, Armory pointed to correct datadir)
and Armory is started, it will sync with the blockchain - humilliate HDD - even if no wallets are created. Is there some good reason for
such behaviour? From my observations, while scanning blockchain, Armory is building database of all addresses he finds there. If user
attempts to sweep or import some key afterwards, Armory might warn address belonging to key is not associated with any transaction
and than cancel rescan. That is a cool feature, but what if user started Armory just to copy / paste some existing address, generate
a new one or anything other than sweep or import keys, which are activities that happen probably more often than sweep or import?
Why is that annoying? There's no reason to be using Armory if you don't have any wallets, so you might encounter this unnecessary scan once, maybe twice. Ever. And even so, the original scan is still needed and
not redundant if you create a new wallet -- because creating a new wallet does not trigger a "dirty" state. It can piggyback off of the original scan knowing that there's no point in rescanning when you've never seen these addresses before. So it works out nicely if it takes the person 5 min to create a wallet and make a backup. It will be done scanning and ready to be used by the time they're done.
I'm not sure I understand your complaint/recommendation about sweeping or importing... but I can tell you that I don't have a good way to interrupt a scan operation. You pretty much have to wait for it to finish and then start a new rescan (which it will do if you import or sweep). It's mentioned somewhere (but I forgot where), that you can always start Armory in offline mode to import private keys, and
then go into online mode so that it will grab everything in one scan.
I will investigate the sweeping problem, more -- that sounds like a pretty serious problem! I got your two log files from sendspace... does one of those have the errors you encountered while sweeping/importing? Also, I will add an extra code path to catch trying to get to the address book without wallets.
By the way, tools->message signing is still off-limits. It will all be re-vamped when I get the new wallets and synchronize the message signing interface with Bitcoin-Qt.
Thanks again for the diligent testing.