This Thanksgiving, I’ve been spending my holiday wrapping up an update and planning the next large MarcEdit update — and as these plans start to take hold, I wanted to start giving folks an idea of where this is going.
MarcEdit 7.5
MarcEdit 7.5 will represent the next big release of the MarcEdit 7.x branch. I expect that this release will happen around Spring (May) 2020. Starting Jan. 2020, I expect that there will be a preview-1 of the software available for users to track development. Very likely, 7.5 will not be an in-place update as it will shift from using the .NET Framework, to targeting .NET Core. This is a significant difference, as .NET Core represents Microsoft’s Standards based, open source version of the .NET framework, with core components developed to work the same across Windows/Linux/Mac versions.
Changes expected:
- .NET Core 3.x introduces an updated UI engine. This is exciting, as MarcEdit has been making use of the traditional Windows presentation layer, which uses GDI+. This shift will move the tool to be able to utilize current GPU processing, which should enable better font scaling, and allow me to make use of OpenType fonts. This is exciting, as most new font development happens in OpenType.
- Easier installation — presently, MarcEdit requires .NET to be installed. .NET Core will allow for single exe. apps. While MarcEdit won’t be compiled as a single exe, I will be able to package all necessary .NET components so I’ll be able to target the most current version of .NET going forward, regardless of what the user has installed.
- Native Z39.50 code — I’m dropping the c++ yaz libraries and am using a C# library. This will give me the ability to have more access to the underlying process.
- Updating MarcEditor — .NET introduces something called a FlowDocument. This will enable the kind of paging marcedit does now, as well as introduce some new reading/output types. This will give me the option to allow users to customize the MarcEditor output so that it renders in a way that supports workflows. I’m excited about this change
- Updated Accessibility Engine — MarcEdit 7.x introduced better accessibility support. 7.5 will allow the tool to tap into the native OS system functions, as well as enhance them to provide more accessibility options. I’ll flesh these out as I get working on this code.
- Updated UI — I continue to look at older windows and forms and look at ways to clean them up. I’ll continue that work
This is a start of what to expect. The first preview version of MarcEdit 7.5 will be the first code running with .NET Core 3.x. There will be very little else different. Porting to a new framework will take me about a month to complete. Once done, I’ll start the teardown and rebuild of various parts of the application.
–tr