[Za-pm] Anyone interested in an OS South African project? (a.k.a. keeping this list alive)

Jan Henkins jan at henkins.za.net
Sat Sep 24 16:42:15 PDT 2005


Hello Pieter,

Pieter le Roux wrote:

>Up to now I have been using database design tools that run on Window$ because 
>I could not find any similar Open Source products - they are either too 
>complicated or too simple.
>
>The tools I have used are:
>
>X-Case (http://www.f1tech.com/xCase/) - dropped that because the upgrades are 
>expensive and the program (or Window$) crashes at least once a day.
>
>At the moment I am using Case Studio (http://www.casestudio.com) and it works 
>fine, but it is the only program I use on a PC (personal computer) - I realy 
>want to upgrade the PC to a BC (business computer) .
>
>I have designed/developed or got from CPAN most of the bits and pieces needed 
>to develop a similar product - I use Xase Studio's xml output to  integrate 
>with DBI and Catalyst but  it  would be nice to have a system with a GUI like 
>Case Studio running in Perl that will generate DBI (or Class::DBI) and 
>Catalyst::Data modules.
>
>The part I really need help with is the GUI.
>
>Anyone interested in helping?
>  
>
OK, in terms of getting a workable prototype going, why do you want to 
bother with a GUI at this early stage? Reason for this question is that 
there are fabulous TUI  (text user interface) libs available on CPAN 
that can help you get going in the meantime, while it will help you to 
concentrate in getting your backend functionality going properly. For 
instance, one of my personal favourites on Linux/Unix is the Dialog 
module, enabling you to build really nice text interfaces including 
mouse-aware buttons.

A quick search on CPAN deeped up these:

http://search.cpan.org/~tsch/Gtk2-1.100/pm/SimpleMenu.pm
Simple GTK2-based menus (cross-platform, since GTK2 is available for 
Win32/Linux/Mac). This could be just the ticket, the framework looks 
nice and simple enough for somebody with no GUI-design experience.

http://search.cpan.org/~marcus/Curses-UI-0.95/lib/Curses/UI/Menubar.pm
Ncurses-based stuff, works wonderfully under Linux, although I'm not too 
sure how well it will work in Win32. AFAIK there isn't a "Curses" 
framework for Win32, although I might be wrong.

Anyway, the above two links could save you some time in getting your app 
in a presentable state. Once you've got a complete usable program 
(primitive or not, doesn't matter), I would suggest you start a project 
somewhere in a place like Sourceforge, Savannah 
(http://savannah.nongnu.org/) or BerliOS (http://www.berlios.de/) so 
that you can build a proper community around your app. At the very least 
you can then make use of the versioning tools and things like mailing 
lists etc, which could prove handy. All three these sites have oodles of 
bandwidth, which makes it handy in case you get Slashdotted or Freshmeated.

-- 
Regards,
Jan Henkins



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