More Species and Desktop Version in Work

There have been a number of requests to expand LambTracker into handling species other than sheep. I am slowly working through the tablet code to allow for use with cattle, goats, pigs and horses in addition to sheep.

Work is progressing on the desktop addition to LambTracker. After numerous aborted attempts at including the reporting functions within the Android program it’s become clear that LambTracker requires a much more robust desktop addition to read the same database from the tablet and do more complex reporting and updates.

I did several test programs trying out various languages and user interface systems. The goal is to write one program that can run on Macintosh, Linux and Windows operating systems with little to no modifications. The winner, after much gnashing of teeth and hassle is Python 3 with Tkinter for the UI output. That seems to provide the most consistent interface across all 3 major operating systems with the same code. There are a number of problems to be solved with the transport of the database file to and from the handheld. I do it routinely now but I use the command line and for the average user that is difficult. Synchronization is not going to be provided at least initially so it will be a manual replacement of the database from the tablet to the desktop and vice versa.

A detailed functional spec is being worked on now that will describe the operation of the desktop system in excruciating detail including screen designs and detailed UI notes. My best guess right now is that the functional spec won’t be completed until the end of the year and coding will primarily happen this coming winter.

As soon as the spec is in a more stable format I will be posting it up in GitLab for comments and ideas before I start major coding.