In early March this year a short but fruitful brain storming was performed in Sendai (Japan) to define where the program needs more improvement.

One topic was the search form and the demand for more options. The main problem is, that in order to realise this improvements, the option to use a screen resolution of 600x800 points could not be supported any longer. Only for a certain time span it will be possible to keep both versions of the search window - the old 600x800 and the new 768x1024 one.

Another topic concerned the demand for more data fields in certain tables. There does not exist any technical problems to do so, but if the 600x800 standard will be preserved, new data fields have to be moved to new pages of the edit form, which makes the recording process more complicated. Otherwise they could stay on the first and main page.

It would be helpful to get some comments on this. Are they still users who work with a 600x800 screen ? If you do not report yourself now, we will leave this standard and switch to 768x1024 by version 2.3 on.

This new version 2.3 is under development, but there is no date yet fixed for its release. It should include the Spanish version, improvement of information on items in a title box (e.g. whether a species is type species, a specimen a type specimen, how many new taxa are established in a publication, how many types are reported from a locality and collection etc.), some changes in the selection of items from tables, e.g. a list of recently selected items is added, and improvements of the search/output form.

It was not yet possible to adapt Hdb2Win to Windows Vista and I cannot predicted when this will be possible. Hdb2Win runs well under Windows XP. I am also aware that there is a certain backlog of requests, but I have to be careful in realisation of these requests. With the growing database structure and increasing functionality, problems caused by changes may multiply. PaleoTax is an academic software, not a commercial one: the programming and control-of-quality team consists of only one and the same person. Changes in the program demand more and more time for testing to be sure that there are no negative collateral effects, that the high performance is maintained and data stability guaranteed.

Please note the recent release of a new Hdb2Win built which removes some minor errors. There is no new Service Release. It concerns only the program. Some internal programs have been found to cause errors; please compare to the F.A.Q. page to stay updated.

Do not hesitate to contact me in the case of problems or doubts; only with your help the program can be improved.

© Hannes Löser, Hermosillo, Sonora, México.
Updated : 12-06-2014.