In one of the TXT files that comes with BINedit, there is a "wishlist" of features that presumably OP and/or others wanted/suggested be added, but which never made it. I've just copy-and-pasted that here for your perusal:
<I>
========================================
Not yet implemented (* = high priority):
========================================
* Make all face and face group properties
(i.e. texture, tex coords, face type, ...)
editable in one single dialog
- better support of multiple configurations
- pass BIN name on command line
- Save BINs without reordering faces (optional)
- convert face <-> vertex groups
- show face transparency in BINedit
- take shadows from flat shading (optional)
- a button to toggle 3d view only option
- Set starting viewpoint in VRML
- move selected verts with keys
- UNDO command
>When you select the Black/White texture view, have it so you can change the
>position of the
>sun or something, that black side is hard to work with..
>
>Something like ctrl-x y z to move selected Vortexes (And on the same note,
>can you select
>certain vortexes instead of "Select all vortexes" if so how? if not why?</I>
Note: I think this has already been implemented, in the form of X/Y/Z and Shift+X/Y/Z to move individual verts around, and V to tag vertices (from which you can use Translate to move the group). Mind you, it does say
Vortexes and not
Vertices so it might be talking about something different, although if you (or Mal Jr.) were implementing black hole functionality in the program I'd say you (or Mal Jr.) were going to far.<I>
>
>Normalize Group Faces!
>
>Default VRML directory for saving the wrl files.
>
>Zoom in when fitting to a raw file ( The "T" command and setting Group Face
>Textures)
>
>Undo Command, need i say more?</I>
Oh yeah, I desperately want this one.
Looking at your own list: I'd say a prompt to save your work when you quit the program or open a new model would be handy (the number of times I've lost some hard work by absent-mindedly quitting without saving...) but I think this should be made as an option which you can set to on or off, as BINedit is already set to ask up to three questions whenever you save (centre model vertically, set faces to MTM1 type and Do You Want To Overwrite This File). Come to think of it, does anyone actually want any of those questions retained for whenever you save a model? Speaking as an MTM2 truck maker, being continually interrogated as to whether I want MTM1 faces and the model centred vertically is a bit of a nuisance. Maybe make them ALL options...
Click and drag feature for the vertices... if you can get that functionality working, where you can select a vertex by clicking on it, how about click'n'drag to select a whole group of vertices? Would sure beat Tabbing through the whole lot and hitting V for each one. Just keep the existing numerical system as well (I prefer the precision this offers).
I'd like to offer: implement some kind of dialog in the Help menu that points to help sites such as Phineus' BINedit Manual and my BINedit Resource. In the .ZIP containing the source files you'll also find an incomplete BINedit manual in HTML form, which, if it could be completed and kept up-to-date, would be very handy.
That's about I can think of for now... Just a request, if Rich does start adding some of these cool new features, I'd like to be able to run the updated version of BINedit on my Win95 system, so retaining exisiting Windows platform compatibility should also be a priority.
Good luck... if father and son do take on this project, there's plenty there to keep you out of mischief
PS. I was never able to compile the BINedit source files, so be aware getting it to comile might a battle in itself, never mind debugging and updating.
First time I tried I got a bunch of errors, and had to update the #include lines to find the files (since I unzipped the project to a different location to what OP had it in). Then there was a variable redefinition that my compiler didn't like (looking at the comments in the code, it appears that there should be another header that makes this work for you). To get around this I temporarily changed that bit of code (which would no doubt cause all sort of other problems in the program) in order to just get it to compile (since I can't make changes and test them if it won't compile).
Next it couldn't find the opengl.lib files - they were there, but in another directory, so I just copied them into the main folder.
The current problem is that another library file, nafxcwd.lib, was nowhere to be found. I decided to leave it there while the discussion on this forum was unfolding, and also because I wanted to be able to report to OP that I thought I had an idea how to fix BINedit for NT before I pestered him about how to fix these problems (acutely aware of just how much of a newbie to C++ I am).