Many of the posts to this list request additional features. This makes sense because, while DT is an excellent place to store data, it lacks extensive sets of tools to manipulate the data. Adding enough tools to make it good at everything would create bloat. So one way to ask the question is: which functions should DT expand?
But there’s another way to look at it. Most of us own apps that do a good job at our key editing tasks - what we like about DT is its ease of gathering, organizing and translating data. So, perhaps the best way to increase DT’s functionality without bloating it would be to avoid adding more tools, and instead expand its ability to share data with other applications.
A good model for DT’s future development might be Dreamweaver - which organizes and manages websites, but lets you link to BBEdit and Photoshop for editing. The core feature of DT might be that you store different kinds of data there, sort it, search it, and reorganize it there - but edit it elsewhere, transparently.
To that end:
- DT might adopt Apple’s “Open With” contextual menu item.
- DT files might update themselves whenever they detect changes in the original file.
- DT might try to export to and import from as many formats as possible.
This kind of development would not create much bloat - in fact, the changes would mostly be invisible to the user.
Apps like GraphicConverter have shown that this approach can leverage a program with a few good features into very wide use. The same might be true for DT.