StitchSketch/KG-Chart Roadmap - Oct. 2013

Tuesday, October 01, 2013
By keiji
It is almost a year and a half since I released StitchSketch, my first mobile app.
I have been working hard on StitchSketch to make it reasonably complete tool and somewhat it's getting better. However, because of that (spending my time on StitchSketch), I couldn't spend much time on KG-Chart, which I feel bad for all of you using KG-Chart.

(For a reminder, who is new to my software, developing KG-Chart/StitchSketch is my night time job... usually 9pm-midnight, and I'm the sole developer.)

KG-Chart is almost 14 years old now, and I found it a little bit difficult to keep updating it, as the essential part of the code is based on my old library developed in 90s.
I still love my code base for sure - it has very solid feature and very comfortable expanding it, only if you are working on MS-Windows platform.

Now, developing with iOS - and furthermore need of OS/X, Android, Windows 8, etc... it is a time I need to make a decision where and how I'm heading to for my future programs.

So, I made a decision.

I want my application run on all the major platform. So, I have started developing my cross-platform library again to port StitchSketch to other platforms.
I have been researching and trying various libraries/tools: Adobe Air, WxWidgets, etc. but in the end I found it's best creating one again by myself - because there is no library that can handle cross platforms including both desktop and mobile, and handle HTML web view and Open GL (or Direct X), which are graphics engines.

Anyway, the plan is this:
  1. Create a cross-platform library that supports MS-Windws Desktop, MS-Windows Modern UI (tablet), Mac OS/X, iOS, Android.
    This is what I'm working on - 1st round went well. (Very base/core code)
    I'm about to start abstraction layer on top of it.
  2. Migrate StitchSketch's code on that
    All the UI is HTML/CSS/Javascript, so relatively easy. Core logics in Objective-C++ need to convert to pure C++.
  3. Migrate KG-Chart's 1)registration key system 2)file conversion (.sth, .sthbw -> .sthmb)

I have been struggling with the possibility of my architecture, and finally I managed to make it work.
So, hopefully I can keep going with it.

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