In/Line-bred dogs and litter plans

[dpw]

Hi guys,

Well done on the software! Nice and simple to use and very useful. It's hugely appreciated that a considerable amount of data came with it. I won't be using it extensively until a "merge" function is available to allow me to keep dogs I have added during upgrades. It's still an excellent reference for me though.

I have two things I would like to see in the future. Is it possible to highlight dogs that appear repeatedly in a pedigree? There's a Marker Dog feature in there but it would be nice if all the Marker Dogs are automatically highlighted when a pedigree is renderred, instead of having to click on a dog to make it a Marker Dog. This way users can see at a glance where in/line-breedings have occurred.

The second thing is creating litter plans. It would be nice to be able to save a litter plan, and see what the IC will be, etc. and be able to retrieve it later, or print it out. I guess at the moment I can always add a dog but it would be nice to have it separated.

I have only used the software for a short time so I may have missed these features if they're in there already. Let me know what you think.

Regards,
Dany.

[DavidL]

Thank you for the kind words, Dany.

The software is still under development and we have more features planned to add, including the "merge" feature you mention. 

However, please note that the original concept of the program (the old DOS version back in the 1990's) required it to be an accurate, up-to-date (and protected) database of dogs with known registrations and certifications that can be used as breeding stock.  We made the provision for you to add dogs temporarily to the end of the database to create what we call "Possible Puppies" or "Experimental Dogs" so that you can analyze the results of mating various sires and dams.  We did not originally intend that you would add a lot of dogs, as the whole concept is to have everyone supply their dog details to us, we will add them permanently to the database and make it available for all to use via frequent updates.  Because of this original concept, when you update to the latest database, your Experimental Dogs are overwritten.  As we receive feedback from users like you, we may decide to re-evaluate this original concept.  In the meantime, send your dog information to info@bmdped.com and it will be considered for inclusion in the database (a web form is in the making to allow you to easily submit dog info to us).

As far as your marker idea is concerned, I would welcome your suggestions of how to "highlight" the dogs that appear multiple times without making the screen cluttered or confusing.  If you, for example, were showing a pedigree containing 127 dogs and 10 of them ocurred repeatedly (in maybe 30 locations), how would you suggest we highlight them to tell them all apart?

Thanks for taking the time to write! 
Dave

[dpw]

Thanks for the prompt reply Dave. I now understand the concept of your database and that definitely explains the subscription-based licensing, as opposed to one-off payment. I definitely noticed it's "protected" though - you guys didn't even place the db file in the same folder as the app - not that I could see anyway 

As to the highlighting issue there can be up to 7 generation displayed on the screen, right? Is it feasible to go through the RGB values and increment one or more of the three colour elements as you find more dogs in common? eg. if while walking up the pedigree tree Bob was discovered to appear multiple times then all the Bob instances will have a label background of {100,100,100}. Next Tim may be discovered to appear more than once, and he will have a label background of {100,102,102}, and so on.

This is, of course, a harebrained scheme that just popped into my head - may well be due to lack of caffeine. It will probably look horrible to those who have lower colour-depth display, or it may just look simply horrible in all cases. It may also not be easily discernible between subtle shade differences. Just an idea to toss out there...

The other possibility is to limit this feature to a certain generational depth. Beyond, say, 5 gens, the highlighting will not be available. That may help limit the clutter, and allow for wider shade differences.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Dany.

[DavidL]

We couldn't put the database file in the same folder as the app (\program files\longstreet\bmdped\) or Windows Vista would forbid you to modify it, and so there would be no Experimental Dogs on Vista and no recalc of Inbreed Coefficients, among other things.  We try to go along with Windows rules as much as we can figure them out...  What I meant by protected is that you cannot modify dogs you don't add yourself, the idea being that we take considerable care to make the database accurate and we wouldn't want somebody modifying it then distributing it with errors we did not cause.  We respond quickly when people want errors corrected and/or dogs added.  This is a Labour of Love with the purpose being to provide a tool to improve the breed.

Of course, with the colour thing, I always say, "If you can explain it, we can create it" but there are issues with making sure the coloured fonts work with all the various backgrounds (we give you a choice of colours for the different pedigree fields) and it gets hairy pretty quickly and that would affect the performance when drawing the pedigree and maybe it's not really worth it...  But I'm still open to ideas.

By the way, we currently do not use subscription-based licensing like you indicated (I hope the website is not misleading in this regard).  We sell the program and database for a one-time payment and that includes updates for at least the next year as we finalize the program.  Maybe in the future the database updates will require a small annual fee -- something has to pay for the website hosting and the development equipment. The program charge is nominal; I doubt that we will ever recover our development costs; this was all done for our love of the Bernese breed (and our love of programming!).

Dave   

[dpw]

Yes, you're right - I just noticed the user preferences, including colours, etc. It would get quite complicated when you take that into account.

Another thing I noticed the the window size at opening. It would be nice if BMDPed can remember the window size when it was last closed, or if it can be also customisable in the user preferences. I tend to have mine larger, or even maximised.

Thanks,
Dany.

[DavidL]

I will definitely add "remember window size".  I really don't know why I didn't save that; most everything else gets saved (including multiple windows and multiple tabs).  Good idea.

Dave