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

[Kyle Burton <mortis@voicenet.com>]

http://home.i1.net/~naken/vb2c/

you can get to it from http://freshmeat.net


k

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"Unix *is* Perl's IDE!" 
    -- Tom Christiansen
mortis@voicenet.com                            http://www.voicenet.com/~mortis
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On Thu, 8 Jul 1999, Doug Loss wrote:

> 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
> 
>