From ptrourke@mediaone.net Sat Feb 19 06:09:56 2000
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From: "Patrick T. Rourke" <ptrourke@mediaone.net>
To: "Classics List" <classics@u.washington.edu>
Subject: TAN to Pandora - Suggestion: Think about starting work on an open source solution
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2000 09:09:48 -0500
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> One of the advantages of Pandora's being written in creaky old HyperCard
is
> that HyperCard owners have access to, and can quite easily modify, the
code
> itself - apart from the C-written XCMDs and XFCNs, which regrettably turn
> out to encapsulate much of the core functionality. This is useful, for
> example, if you want to raise the limit on the number of lines of text
that
> can be exported in a single operation. Needless to say, any such hacking
> constitutes a breach of licence agreement and I wouldn't wish Maria or
> anyone else with an official stake to comment on it, nor should these
> remarks be taken as an endorsement of anything of the kind.

Of course, one could also try to get a bunch of programmers to start an open
source project to replace Pandora with an open-source solution.  Result:
freeware.  The discussion of patches & the like suggests to me that there
may well be enough programming literacy on the list itself to form the core
of such a project - if anyone had the time (note that I am not, alas,
volunteering - I'm so busy now I'm starting to cut into my sleep, and my
*programming* skills are strictly third-rate, and do not include C).

I've often thought (hell, often said) that classicists could use an
open-source web browser/editor with strong Unicode Greek support & a Greek
keyboard script, packaged with a Unicode Greek / Coptic / Hebrew / Latin /
symbols font package.  The existence of such an open-source solution would
resolve most of the Greek font issues - if everyone had free download access
to the same font package and keyboard scripts, Greek web pages would be very
easy to create and read.

This would be a problem with Macintoshes, though, because there aren't a
whole heck of a lot of open source programmers that use Macs (of the open
source projects I know about, only Mozilla is reasonably Mac-aware.

P. T. Rourke
ptrourke@mediaone.net



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