Objectives

Now that the introductions are out of the way, here are some of the goals I hope to accomplish with the project:

1) User-friendly layout and intuitive design. This has been accomplished mostly by basing the GUI off MOL 2.0's layout, with the only real changes being more and better search options than that program provided.
Primarily, the ability to search the total number of cards you own, instead of just the normal or foil ones at once. On that note, I plan to store the normal printings and foil version of each card together, so that each entry would have (at least) two numbers under it.

If you happen to also have some foreign-printings of several cards (I own about 4 random booster packs) the feature will exist to track 2 additional versions. If demand exists, I can add more, but I doubt more than 4 would be used.

2) Importing saved collections from MOL 2.0. For people who used MOL 2.0 like I did. I'll try to make it as simple as possible, but at the very least I'll probably need the user to perform a speciffic search in MOL 2.0 and save the resulting list in a CSV (comma separated value) format.
No worries non-techies: when I get the feature done I'll post a step-by-step guide.

3) Profile-saving feature. One of the most annoying things about MOL 2.0 was the need to reset your search settings every time you turned the program on. I hope to have a small profile saving option, so when you open it up it loads the default profile settings.

4) Advanced search options. The search engine for MOL 2.0 was functional, but had some odd quarks. First of all, any search checked every part of the card for a match, sometimes returning very strange results. A search for 'Boros' would often return cards with art by Zoltan Boros.

My plan is to have the basic search engine match color, rarity, card type, set, and some other options as well as searching the type line, card name, and text box for the entered field.

The advanced search feature would feature 'tagging' of cards by function, such as 'Mana Accel' or 'reanimation' or 'mill.' Additionally, I want to allow the user to check what fields to search for, as well as some dynamic options on how to sort the cards. Instead of limiting the user to five or six drop-down options, I'll provide 2-3 sorting fields, and each can be chosen independently.

For example, if you wanted to sort the search by something as unusual as artist name, you could sort by ARTIST > SET > NAME which would group the cards by the name of the artist, sorted by set, and finally sorted by name within the set

Eventually I want to add an uber-search, where I'll let the user enter SQL code directly and search based on that. I'll include a guide for it, but since the first parts of the query will be pre-built I doubt it would be too confusing.

5) Layout and viewing potions. Options to view the card as-printed, but the default will be oracle text. Options on how many cards to view per page (default of 18). Options on the layout of the binder and toolbar (toolbar as left/right/center and preview as top/botom)

6) Alternate Printings. I hope to include every printing of every card, but the last to be added will be special printings (player rewards, prize cards, exc), tokens, and booster packs and things like that.

7) Readable DAT file, and options to print checklists. The dat file for your collection will be readable in a text editor if you want. For example, Lorwyn cards would have the card ID "LOR-XXX" where XXX is the card's collector number.

ID normal foil
LOR-001 2 0
LOR-002 9 1
LOR-003 5 0

That way, if you happen to have your cards in a reasonably logical order OTHER than MOL 2.0 you can, with relative ease, open the dat file and manually enter your cards.

up next: screenshots!