Recently dutchguru mentioned the limited, or “few”, software updates for Killink CSV Editor. He is right. There have been far too few updates recently and I have no one to blame but myself. I started explaining the situation in my reply to dutchguru but decided a blog posting is also in order.
Why hasn’t there been any new updates to Killink CSV Editor in recent months? And what of these new features I keep hearing about coming in Version 2.0? The short answer is, I’ve been stuck on one problem, providing support for very large files. This challenging problem has zapped all the time I have for working on Killink CSV Editor. Hindsight now tells me I should have moved on but I didn’t and as a result I have been slow to push out new updates.
The longer answer not only includes the fact that I have been hung up on trying to solve this one problem but that I haven’t had as much time to work on Killink CSV Editor as I would like. The reason for the lack of time includes a number of factors including adjusting to life as a new father. But the number one factor is the need to make enough income to pay the bills, keep food on the table, keep a roof over the family’s head. You know the story. We’re all basically in the same boat. It’s what responsible adults do.
Where does the time go? After all I work for myself, right? Yep, I do. And as much as I love working solely on my own products each and every day, the sales number just are there…YET. Product sales improve each year which means I get to spend more time working on my own software products. But to help make sure bills are paid, food is on the table, etc, I must do custom software projects for other companies from time to time. This is where a lot of my work time has been going in recent months, and until product sales improve to a point where I no longer need to do custom software work I have to balance my work time between White Peak Software products and custom software for other companies.
The good news is I’m on track to [hopefully] say bye-bye to custom software projects within the next 12 to 18 months. When this happens I’ll be able to devote more time to my products, existing ones as well as new products I have brewing in my head.
That’s the longer answer. Great! So now what? First starters I’m going to stop work on very large file support. This one feature is probably needed by less than 5 percent of the current user base while other features such as Unicode support is needed by a much larger percentage of users. With this one item off my plate I can once again return to adding new features to Killink CSV Editor in a quick, timely manner. I cannot yet provide a time line for the next update but I can tell you progress will finally be made.
Now that I have decided to drop very large file support my next step will be to complete the re-write of Killink CSV Editor. The re-write is needed to support Unicode and to make it easier to include new features and push out more frequent updates. The good news is the re-write is almost complete. It was near completion last fall when I got side tracked by the very large file support problem. Once the re-write is done I will push out a new beta update as soon as I can.