Quote Originally Posted by dougmsbbs View Post
The more I think about it, the more impractical I think a CD is. It would soon be outdated, and you would still need to take the time to search the forum to find new ones. I would think making a ZIP file online available would be easier to keep up on. All someone would have to do is every week or two add any new patterns to the file. Or ZIP them up by date, say by month, and post that online somewhere. So to keep your collection up to date all you would have to do is download the newest file. I know this does not take care of people on slow dial-up connections, but at least they could download smaller files at one time.
I also think it would be nice to have a thumbnail image of each pattern to go along with them. Much easier to browse a directory looking at images than to load each and every one up in designer...
Just my thoughts....
In my mind, this can all be handled programatically. I havent started the coding yet, but I do not see any show stoppers yet. I can also have it kick out an "update zip" for what ever patterns have been added since the last time I generate. I see the popularity of this idea has been steadily dropping, but I still think it has enought merit to go forward. This probably wont be a high priority for me, but I will probably start coding over the next few weeks. I dont think it should be a big deal.. the hardest part will be seeing what info I can get from the forum postings in an effort to have it autocatigorize and index based on criteria such as add date, author, format, etc.

Does anyone know if there is an API (application program interface) for designer, if so, I can also have it automatically generate screenshots for each pattern. There are other ways to acomplish this, but the API is the most straight forward and easiest to code.