Plans for DFA

What I have done until now

What still is to be done

When will we see the new DFA?

What you can do!

What I will do!

Plans for DFA

Actually, I have been thinking about a new DFA for nearly 2 years. The current version has a few shortcomings that cannnot be easily removed by just an ordinary update! Therefore it has been clear from the very beginning that a new DFA would not be just the current program with several new features, the new DFA has to be a complete new program!

After this had become clear I looked for a tool that should make the GUI creation easier - the current DFA GUI is 100% handcrafted, which has made extensions (new windows etc.) a big pain for me. My decision went for MUI, not least because I asked among the existing DFA users and most of them voted for MUI.

But the new DFA should "not only" be a GUI update. Especially the implemented database engine is not that sophisticated as it could (and should) be. It is not possible to use the newline character within a data field to mention just one of the most obvious things. The new database engine should be much more flexible and powerful, but load and save at least as fast as DFA does (DFA is well known for its speed).

What I have done until now

When I began the rewrite I had hoped to be able to re-use large parts of the original code. This would have made things easier for me and I would have saved a lot of time. Unfortunately, most parts of DFA could not be re-used and I had to rewrite nearly all parts from scratch!

I began with the preferences program and after several changes on the GUI layout it has been the first part of the rewrite that worked! Large parts of the Editor and the Server are done, as are the runtime libraries (yes, more than just one).

What still is to be done

Even if the former section could make you think that the new DFA is up and running, this is not true! There are still a lot of things for which I have not found the time to complete:

• The new database engine is not finished yet. Several basic features do not work up to now.
• Most parts still use the old database engine.
• The interprocess communication between the Editor, Preferences and Server is not working.
• The locale stuff (german texts) is missing.
• The documentation is not existent.
• Nothing needed for a proper distribution is done: No installation script, no support files, etc.

When will we see the new DFA?

I know you would like to read something like "very soon", "next week" or "tomorrow". However, this will not happen for sure. The reason is that currently I am very busy at university (final exams are soon to come) and I do not have as much time as I need to finish my work for the DFA successor very soon.

This does not mean that it will not be finished at all, but not that soon. I will not yet tell you an exact release date here because I can not promise anything. I do not even know myself how much time I will find to continue programming!

What you can do!

It should be obvious that the work for DFA has to be done by myself - so how could you help? Due to the fact that my time is very limited, it becomes quite precious for me. Even if I do enjoy programing for the Amiga, there exist other things in life. The magic word here is motivation. So please show me that you support DFA and my work for it. If you have used the public version for years and have not registered yet - order DFA right now!

If you have any suggestions or ideas for the program or the distribution, feel free to write me an email.

What I will do!

I will spend a good part of my spare time to complete the DFA successor. As I told you above, I have no idea when I can complete it, but I will work on it. I will try to give the MUI based GUI the same excellent usability DFA still is famous for. DFA will be programed to use MUI in an "intelligent" way, e.g. the Server part of the program that runs in the background will not need MUI at all to save memory resources and speed up the boot sequence. Special efforts will be invested into the database part to make future extensions as easy as possible.

Yours,