If you look at the wishlist you’ll see dozens of wishes from users. Unfortunately, we can only realize a few of them due to our very limited resources. If you really, really, really need a particular feature there might be a solution: pay for it. Docear is open source and anybody can modify the source code an hence add new features. If you know a software developer, ask him to help you. There are also plenty of freelancers platforms like PeoplePerHour or Freelancer.com. On these platforms you can post your requirements, and freelancer will make their offers (usually with pretty reasonable pricing). If you have accepted an offer, please let us know so we do not develop the same feature the freelancer is developing. And you are highly welcome to send us the source code of the new feature. We will check the code and maybe integrate it into the official Docear release which also means that we would maintain the feature, so it works with future versions of Docear.
If you consider to ask an external software developer for help, please consider the following issue:
Docear has a superb add-on system. Add-ons are like little independent programs that extend or change the functionality of Docear. That means, if a new feature is realized as an add-on, it will most likely work with future versions of Docear. So you can use your feature even if we do not integrate it directly into Docear. The downside: It takes at least 10 to 20 hours for an experienced software developer to understand how the add-on system of Docear works. A not so skilled programmer might even need a week or so. Alternatively, the freelancer could just modify the current release of Docear. This will take significantly less time but it has a downside, too: There is no guarantee that the new functions will work with future versions of Docear. Of course you can send us the modifications and we will have a look at them and maybe we will integrate them into the main branch of Docear. But maybe we won’t.
