Removing Features From Digestive
Sunday, January 17, 2010 at 1:16PM Introduction
Early in 2008 I wrote a simple AppleScript application to allow people to use multiple data files with FileMaker’s Bento. For a reason that I’ve never resolved it caused some people problems by duplicating data files so a while ago I decided to re-write it as a Cocoa application. I had great plans and aspirations for it and a fairly substantial feature list but over time development has dragged on with little progress. I’ve decided that I have to remedy this and realistically the only way I am going to do this is by scaling back the features and functionality. This article describes what is staying and what is going and, perhaps more importantly, why.
Multiple Bento Versions
Perhaps the biggest cause of headaches during the development of Digestive is that I wanted to support multiple versions of Bento within one application. However, whilst Bento 2 and 3 are very similar in the way that they can support multiple data files, Bento 1 is a totally different animal. Therefore the first decision is to drop support for Bento 1 in the initial release and, if there is significant demand for it, I may either incorporate it into a future version or release a separate Bento 1 version. However since Bento 1 does not work under Snow Leopard I am hoping that most people have moved on to Bento 2 or 3.
If you are a Bento 1 user please do post a comment asking me to support your version. Also note that FileMaker’s upgrade pricing discount for Bento 3 ends on 28 January 2010 so if you want to upgrade the time to do it is now.
Concurrent Bento Versions
An initial aim was to allow people to manage and use data file for different versions of Bento simultaneously. For example, if someone had Bento 1, Bento 2 and Bento 3 installed the application would allow them to select a Bento 1 data file and have it open in Bento 1, a Bento 2 data file in Bento 2 and a Bento 3 data file in Bento 3. This idea was mainly conceived because I have multiple versions of Bento installed for research purposes related to BentoUsers but I realise that I am far from a normal Bento user. Therefore Digestive will now support the primary version of Bento (if more than one is installed it will be the one Finder thinks is the default version) and data files related to previous and later versions will be visible but unusable unless they are upgraded to the correct version.
Library Icons
Something that was frequently requested on the Bento forums was the ability to change the icons associated with a Library. Bento 3 has introduced some support for this but restricts you to using one of their icons whilst I had a plan to allow people to use their own images too. However, this goes back to the problem of supporting multiple Bento versions and each version handles icons slightly differently. Therefore this functionality will be dropped for now too.
If you are using an earlier version of Bento or want to be able to use your own Library icons as well as the built-in ones, please post a comment and mention the version of Bento you are using.
Pricing
I intend to release Digestive for free. If I add more functionality such as the ability to link imported, related data automatically then I would make it a paid-for application where the basic functionality of managing data files remains fully functional in an unregistered version.
Timescales
Without wishing to back myself into a corner again over a release date I am anticipating that Digestive will be available by the start of April 2010.
Reader Comments (5)
I found all the Library icons in Bento.app/contents/resources/icons/
Is it not possible simply to drop your own custom icons into that folder?
I didn't dare to try it, but I ctrl-clicked on an existing icon and all commands were available, like duplcate
Well you could make your own icon bundles but it's far from simple and I'm not 100% sure that they are applied properly even if they do show up as an option (they may need an associated template bundle to go with them). In addition this sort of solution is understandably way beyond what the average user would expect to have to do.
From a technical point of view, this is also not the approach that Digestive would take since it is also possible (and much easier) to store the raw image in the Bento data file and have Bento use that instead. From my testing this is a much more robust and less involved approach.
Interesting,
Great information about Multiple Bento Versions,
Anyway, thanks for the post
I'm looking forward to this potentially very helpful application. I appreciate your hard work best of luck getting it done !! :)
I can't wait! this is going to open up so many possibilities for bento users! thanks for your work.