Flowstone Wishlist

[fixstuff555]

I'd like to start a thread on things I'd like added to Flowstone. I liked the thread on the future hardware, and I would like the same for features.

I have a ton of them so here are a few:

1) Ability to retain Groups when exiting.
2) Ability to import and export Groups. This gives user's a library feature. User's can share there own personal group libraries.
3) Ability to turn "ON" and "OFF" realtime running.
4) Ability to exit out from navigator windows.
5) Top level component panel is alphabetically sorted (only groups are sorted)
6) Scroll bar and mouse scroll for component list (bubble select at top can be slow and cumbersome)
7) Mouse over component lists that pop out from side. This will keep schematic maximized.
8) Lots more primitives! Bit manipulation, word manipulation, etc, etc.
9) Flowstone-sponsored web page on your site that houses user contributed libraries with a feedback mechanism.
10) More active participation from Flowstone! Let user's know what you are working on, add a post or two a day, respond to user posts better (even if you don't have an answer a reply is nice).
11) Bring together your other site from Synthmaker. Encourage interaction between the two.
12) Lower your prices! Your royal wedding special was great - I actually bought the pro from that, even though it still stung quite a bit. More volume rather than price. It will also add to user baser, who contribute more, make your product better, etc.
13) Get exposure in the periodicals out there. Nuts and Volts, Servo, Elektor, Circuit Cellar, Robot, Make magazine, all of those will boost your software tremendously.

By adding items 1 and 2, I dare say #8 could solve itself over time. I would imagine most suggestions that you get are in the form of modules or samples. Adding #1 and #2 would allow your user base to contribute tremendously. Building your user base should be first and foremost in your planning. This leads to everything else, like exposure, hardware sales, software sales, etc. etc.

I've got more, but I think this is a good start.

[fixstuff555]

14) Add a tree navigator on the side so that instead of hunting through a schematic, you can expand the tree and click down immediately into a sub module. This is a pretty common feature nowadays for code IDE's and would be very useful here also.

[fixstuff555]

15) Ability to rotate components, or flip vertically or horizontally.
16) Ability to use straight lines on X and Y.

[fixstuff555]

17) Ability to Unmake a module. (as far as I know, once its made you can only undo)

[senoadiwibowo]

absolutely agree...I hope flowstone will include those you mention on next release ....

[Embedded]

A lot of the new stuff they are working on get's pre-release on the Blog and Twitter!

[fixstuff555]

18) Ability for File - Open file types to be both .fsm and .osm

[senoadiwibowo]

I think support osm and fsm is not so compulsory because this is different software and sure there is a reason behind that.. and I don't have right to tell here.
I am more prefer to have exe to exe link, I think current flowstone still not able to link together or may be I am not deep enough in explore the flowstone.

[fixstuff555]

From what I can determine, there isn't really a "reason" why the software is kept separate, other than Outsim's decision to market to a different segment of users. The .osm files from what I can tell are completely readable in Flowstone. I'm not sure about Synthmaker being able to read .fsm, but I don't care about that. Think of Flowstone as a super-sized version of Synthmaker. There is a literally huge amount of examples on the Synthmaker site that can help Flowstone users, I just don't like having to switch to "all file types" in the drop down, so that I can see the OSM files in the list. It's purely a convenience thing. There is so much more on that site for examples than this one, that anyone playing around with or using Flowstone is doing themselves a big disservice by not at least looking at whats one that site for coding examples.

[senoadiwibowo]

Additional request:
1. Able to track wireless links which have the same name in the project
2. Able to debug and find error occurred in project, this is very useful if we create very complex project