While it’s true that having a seemingly endless list of feature requests is a happy problem, I would respectfully suggest that there are things you can do to help yourselves out and improve your relationship with your customers. I for one would like to see a little more transparency. Is there a published list of bugs? Which features and/or bugs are you working on now? I have a bug I’ve been waiting to be fixed for some time now (at least since version 6.6. or 7.0). I have no idea if it’s on the active queue and being worked on. I understand that you don’t have unlimited resources, but it would be nice to know what’s going on so I can in turn communicate to my customers.
Secondly, we didn’t know the footnote fix wouldn’t be available by the end of March until the question was specifically asked on this forum. If you just let previously stated estimated dates pass without comment people are more likely to be upset when the dates come and go. Again a little more transparency and forthright communication might have helped in this case.
You might try polling your customers to see which features are most in demand. I can go on, but I won’t My point is that a lot of us do software development and have our respective customers to satisfy. I think Aspose, whose products I like, can do a better job communicating what’s going on with their products and not take such a philosophically indifferent attitude of “it will be ready when it’s ready” (at least that’s the perception I get sometimes).
Just wanted to let you know that the question of making our process more transparent to the customers is a very hot topic for discussions internally at Aspose. We are looking for ways to do most of the things that you suggest, but there always seem to be reasons and difficulties for each. I will not go into much detail, but just want to assure you that are working in that direction.
For example, we do have a polling system. Every request of a feature gets linked to our internat issue database and that increases the vote for that issue.
Thanks a lot for posting the interim build. It is really helps to get more insight into the progress with this issue. I’m very glad that you are working on it and made quite some progress. I downloaded the interim build and found that the footnote is now created, whick is wonderful. I saw that it’s printed right after the text instead of at the bottom of the page. I suppose you are aware of that, or do you want to post a test document?
I’m looking forward to the final version. Please keep me posted on the expected release date. If it is helpful I would be glad to test with some documents with more complex footnotes.
My point is that a lot of us do software development and have our respective customers to satisfy. I think Aspose, whose products I like, can do a better job communicating what’s going on with their products and not take such a philosophically indifferent attitude of “it will be ready when it’s ready” (at least that’s the perception I get sometimes).