Garden Spider © Stephen Pardue
The aim of this page is o give an
indication of what developments are under consideration for the software. This
doesn't necessarily represent a commitment to undertake them, but where
implementation is planned, this will be indicated.
A Recorder 6 export type will be added very soon. This will enable users to
export records in a format that can be imported very eaily into a Recoder 6 database
often used by Local Record Centres).
Add a facility for user to log individual export operations. Intention is that meta-data about the
export can be logged, e.g. the purpose of the export and the intended recipient.
The facility will also record which individual records were included in a given export as
well as their 'last modified' date. By this means it will be possible to see which records
included in a given export have been modified since it was performed.
This facility should also enable the development of more sophisticated export capabilities,
for example creating a new export for a given area, but limiting it to records not included
in a previous export (and/or those that have been modified since that export.
Consider adding a new 'VC number' field to the main records table and automatically updating its value
whenever a grid reference is set/changed for the record. This could be done by using point
in polygon algorithms in conjunction with VC boundaries developed by the NBN and publically
available. Performance testing will be required to see if it is feasible.
Although the GPS data logger will work anywhere in the world - recording locations in
WGS84 Lat/Long - Gilbert 21 converts all locations to Ordnance Survey grid references.
Currently it assumes that all locations can be converted to a meaningful OS grid reference
and therefore will not deal with records made outside the country. I want to fix
this so that Gilbert 21 will deal with records made anywhere in the world.
Realistically this is most likely to happen the next time I plan to holiday
abroad! (That might not be for a while.)
When more GPS data loggers that offer voice tagging come along, I would like
Gilbert 21 to be able to work with them. At the moment the software design and
database structures are quite tightly coupled to the Visiontac VGPS-900 file
format. Changing this would require some effort but may be worth doing
eventually.