Developer's Tools (was Re: Archives and Web Site)

[Doug Loss <dloss@csrlink.net>]

On Thu, 08 Jul 1999 16:04:50 -0700, Robert Hopcroft <hopcroft@uswest.net> wrote:
>
> At the moment I am trying to deal with the
> offer from Vincent Konieczek to see about writting "Developer's Tools" if seul-edu
> would furnish him with a description of what tools they would like. So here I am
> trying to do something I don't know much about.

> Also I just got a note from Wil
> that he will put up the prospective project but he wants me to do the HTML.
> Something else I don't know much about. Basically my thought was to have a simple
> template into which I could just edit the text. I guess Doug said something about
> just putting out the text. At this point I just have the URLs to the discussions
> listed at the above URL. I just thought I would ask again if anyone has any request
> for a developer's tool for educational software (for example a Visual Basic
> workalike).
>
I did a fair amount of research into this in October of last year.  Roman Suzi 
and I looked over most of the IDEs he mentioned a little later.  Here's my take 
on it all.

I think a program to translate Visual Basic programs to something native to 
Linux would be a useful tool.  It would allow VB programs to be brought over 
without having to be re-written, and they could then be maintained and extended 
on Linux.  However, I don't think VB is widely used by educators in designing 
courseware (if I'm wrong, please correct me).  HyperCard used to be the program 
of choice for such things, and now I believe it's HyperStudio.

The closest thing to those currently available on Linux is MetaCard 
<http://www.metacard.com>, a commercial product.  It looks quite useful, and 
they have reasonable educational prices.

Otherwise, I kind of like Visual TCL.  It's interface may still be a bit too 
difficult for the general user, but since it's written entirely in Tcl/Tk it 
should be readily modifiable.  I spoke with Stewart Allen (the leader of Visual 
TCL) last year about making an alternative, more-HyperStudio-like interface for 
vtcl, and he was willing to open the CVS tree for such work so long as it was 
GPLed.

I spoke with Vincent about these sorts of things last month, but I don't know 
if I actually made a request for a specific tool.  Here is such a request.  I'd 
like to see an IDE, either written from scratch or modified from something like 
Visual TCL, that worked generally similarly to HyperStudio.  It wouldn't need 
to slavishly imitate HS feature for feature, but it should allow non-technical 
authors to do similar things with similar ease.

As to the HTML for the prospective project, you can easily generate a template 
by saving the page and editing the text out from between the HTML tags.  You 
could then just put in the appropriate text and you'll then have an HTML 
version of your text.  If Wil is using Doc Welder to generate the page, you 
should be able to have your info smoothly added by putting it in the form 
mentioned in <http://www.seul.org/edu/projectpage.faq.html> and sending it to 
him.  That's assuming he's using the same source file format for the ToDo page 
that he does for the Projects page.

Doug Loss            Democracy substitutes election by the
dloss@csrlink.net    incompetent many for appointment by
(570) 326-3987       the corrupt few.
                        George Bernard Shaw