Developers tools?

[Roman Suzi <rnd@sampo.karelia.ru>]

hi, all!

Probably, this is wrong list to ask, but I'd really like people
to collect data not only on  ready-made  educational  programs,
but on development tools, suitable to write them.

These tools  must  be  something  visual,  because  educational
programs are multimedia oriented. And I hope you all agree that
multimedia applications can be best written/drawen with  visual
tools.

My OSS finding so far are:

- VisualTcl              (for building Tcl/Tk apps)
- SpecTcl/Perl/Java      almost the same
- Glade                  (for building Gtk apps in C)
- FreeBuilder            (for Java, but I have not tried it)

Non-OSS:

- MetaCard      (proprietary format)


But these programs (except for MetaCard) aren't  very  easy  to
use for fast prototyping visual interface. (I am comparing with
HyperCard)

While VisualTcl is something  very  powerful,  there  are  some
things which bound its usability for the task. eg, I  have  not
found any easy way to define a set of cards based on  the  same
background and so on. (That is, one more abstraction  level  is
missing in these apps: the notions of  cards  and  backgrounds.
Those familiar with {Hyper,Super,Meta}Card will understand  how
important this abstraction is.)

Is there anything else I missed?

Which technology will be the future?

Don't tell me 'true programmers don't use visual tools'! Visual
products/user interfaces, imho, are best made with visual tools
+ powerful scripting language.

I  don't  like  Java  in  this  respect  though.  It   is   too
C-like/universal to  be  good  scripting  language  needed  for
visual abstractions.

Just hear alittle HyperTalk:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
on mysubr
 global score_var
 if the first word of the last line of card field "score" is empty
 then add 1 to score_var

 go next cd in this bg

 sort marked cards of this bg by fld "num"
end mysubr

on mouseUp
  enable the target
end mouseUp

----------------------------------------------------------------------

-- and so on!

If you write these in Java - it will be a total  gibberish!  In
visualTcl I don't even know how to do it! In C I will  have  to
write pages of code.

So, I am in search of an OSS tool like HyperCard, with the same
friendliness  of  creating  projects  and  specialized   script
language.

And I am not satisfied with LISP-like  or  LOGO-like  scripting
languages too: they are too much into unclear  syntax  or  have
too many braces. So it sounds absurd, but COBOL-like  HyperTalk
is nicier ;-)

Any pointers to other dev. tools?

To summarize: lets keep track on could-be-development-tools  of
eduware, OK?


Sincerely yours,
Roman A. Suzi

 -- Petrozavodsk -- Karelia -- Russia --
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