[Papyrus-L] Pap vs. others and where's Dave?

[Raisa Deber]

At 01:42 AM 10/22/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>- Could Papyrus users who are computer programmers, or who have access to
>computer programmers, help in completing the Windows version of Papyrus?
>Perhaps as an open-source project?
>
>I think this would also prove impractical. Version 7.0 is written in
>Fortran, a language known by relatively few programmers these days. More
>importantly, the code shows its 20-year evolution, and would be
>near-impossible for a new programmer to figure out, not to mention extend
>into a Windows application.
>
>The Version 8.0 code, while very clean and modern, is still sufficiently
>extensive and complex that a new programmer would have to work hard to
>understand all of it. More significantly, it is based on the MacApp
>framework -- which will be familiar to only a subset of Mac programmers,
>and quite unfamiliar to Windows (or Linux) programmers.
>- Is there no hope, then?
>
>I have been trying for quite a while to find a path toward the completion
>of Papyrus for Windows. I remain open to suggestions, but at this point I
>don't see a solution to the various obstacles outlined above.
>

Dave, I'm one of those dinosaurs - I started with Fortran 2 (only 
arithmetic ifs).  I suspect there are more of us out there than you 
think.  Anyhow, I've forwarded this to my son, who is a computer science 
student and a Mac person, to see if he has any suggestions.  He is 
remarkably good at what he does, so who knows?  (He tells me that Java is a 
far superior language to C++ - at the risk of sounding totally ignorant, 
might a port to Java work?)
Raisa Deber



>-- Dave Goldman (dave at ResearchSoftwareDesign.com)
>
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Raisa B. Deber, PhD
Professor
Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation
University of Toronto
McMurrich Building, 2nd Floor
12 Queen's Park Crescent West
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A8
telephone: (416) 978-8366
fax:  (416) 978-7350
e-mail:  raisa.deber at utoronto.ca