| The design work has begun on Version 3.0. This is a total rewrite of
the entire program. As such, many new ideas and features can be added.
The rewrite is a major undertaking and quite some time will be
involved in making Hunter 3 the best Collection Manager program
around.
But I do want and need Hunter users' input. What new features would
you like to see? Is there some aspect of Hunter that needs
improvement, besides the complex user interface which will undergo a
massive reworking?
How would you like to see archived collections that are stored on
CDs be maintained?
Would you be willing to give up a bit of speed in favor of loading
only the currently needed data from an Access database? I am thinking
seriously about removing the hnt files and replacing them with an
Access database, but only loading what is immediately needed from it
during processing.
What about having some mechanism to track "official"
collection names or abbreviations?
Some current Csv files pose another problem. Some collections may
have duplicate files in them. Per a csv file, a duplicate file is one
that has the same size and crc values as another file in that
collection. But actually there are two kinds of duplicate files: the
exact byte-by-byte duplicate and two files whose contents are
different but who yet have the same size and crc. This non-duplicate
"duplicate" files problem occurs most frequently when
collections consist of small html files, I've noticed. So would you be
supportive of an extension to the csv file mechanism, one that somehow
contains the necessary information to track exact duplicates and
non-duplicate duplicates? Or should Hunter devise a total replacement
file for the csv, but in a format that other collection manager
programs could input?
Please email me with your suggestions and comments. They will be
greatly appreciated. I will use those that I can implement
effectively.
Finally, considering the vast amount of time and effort it took to
develop Hunter 2.1, I was considering asking a small fee, such as $15,
for Hunter 3.0. Would you support such a fee?
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