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[Connie]

Hello Roman.

I'm wondering if you could code a few additions to your very useful Dir2Dat feature.

At present, your dat format supports the use of the additional 'rebuildto' and 'serial' tags but unlike for e.g. 'manufacturer', 'date', you don't have an option to enable these in the Dir2Dat creation window. With the implementation of xml and UTF8, it makes it very good for logging additional cartridge information and later conversion to for example a database or spreadsheet.
My suggestion is to add a check (tick) box with a field area next to them for these 2 additional features. If ticked but the field is left empty, then just double quotes are created e.g. serial "" (it also allows for spaces to be used in the serial). This feature would be great for 'pre-fixing' parts of serial codes used on all cartridges and even optical media e.g. serial "GDL-".
For the rebuildto tag, perhaps a check is needed if the field is left blank to either force data entry, or, rebuilder is coded to ignore double quotes (i.e. data field left empty but rebuildto tag is ticked). This feature would make it easier to create merged dats for e.g. MAME titles and snaps so that rebuilder could create these sub-folders rather than having seperate dats.

If you can find the time to code and implement these features, it would be much appreciated - I'm sure there are many other 'datters' that would utilise these features to a great extent too.

Many thanks,
Connie.

[Roman]

dir2dat was always meant to be a quick'n dirty way to create a dat out of a folder. It was always meant to be a creator which needs some post processing either with a texteditor und run the created xml through some xsl transformation.
Currently I don't think additions are made...simply because I only have a very limited amount of time anyway for cmpro and currently multi-softwarelists and the new chd compressions will most likely take all of this time.

I put it on the todo list, but don't expect it to see it anytime soon.

As mentioned, xslt would be a perfect way to quickly update created dats with your needs...