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little red hen needs help
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Posted by jaslar
Feb 2, 2014 at 10:14 PM
Oh, and if no one else has said this yet, “Little Red Hen” would be a terrific name for the program you write. :)
Posted by Franz Grieser
Feb 2, 2014 at 10:59 PM
After reading your lengthy post I agree with Hugh: Take a look at Tinderbox. And at Steven’s articles on TB on http://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/tinderbox (they do not cover the current version of Tinderbox but give you a good overview). Tinderbox could be the database you’re looking for: extensible and extremely versatile.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Feb 3, 2014 at 11:21 AM
Tragically, the program you really, truly need is Blackwell’s legendary Idealist. Alas, now long defunct! It was described as a bibliographic database, but was actually much more than that - a system capable of placing any number of fields in a single record, then searching/sorting on any criterion/combination of criteria in any field(s). So perfectly matching your need for unique records with their own combination of fields.
It was actually a flat-file full-text database (not dissimilar in conception to askSam, but much more reliable - until, alas, the latest versions). But because of its built-in scripting language, you could use it as a kind of relational database. In fact, I built our very first admin database in Idealist, and it served us well for many years (holding records of clients, suppliers, projects, invoices, all inter-related and instantly searchable). The search engine was very, very fast and efficient - literally eye-blink fast.
Somewhere I may have the very last version of Idealist (before the disastrous release 5, which attempted to incorporate rich text and was totally unstable). But it’s not being developed any more, and the last developer to take it on - I forget the name - appears to have vanished without trace. If anybody’s interested, I’ll see if I can dig it out.
Having said all that, there are alternatives. One of them is ListPro by Ilium Software (http://www.iliumsoft.com/listpro/), also available for iPhone and Android. The desktop version could be used as a fairly competent writing tool (the ‘Notes’ field supports rich text and can cope with significant amounts of text), I suppose, but the mobile phone versions are a bit too fiddly for that. And I’m sure there are others, but they don’t immediately spring to mind. You could have a look under http://alternativeto.net, perhaps.
Posted by andyjim
Feb 4, 2014 at 12:27 AM
Hugh, Tinderbox looks incredible. It almost tempts me to get a Mac. Darn things are costly though! You’d think somebody would be working on an open source project to emulate Tinderbox.
Bill, Idealist sounds like one of the old time greats. It’s incomprehensible that such great software drops from the scene. I find, however that there is an ongoing project developing an open source version: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/qercus/index.php?title=Main_Page
MongoDB is a document-oriented database that may allow multiple independent fields. MongoDB works well with Scala. I hold out hope that the project may not be as difficult as it appears, but I will endeavor to use good sense as to whether to attempt it. I will at least make a few steps in that direction before deciding with finality.
I will also work with some of these other suggestions. Thanks to all.
Yeah, Little Red Hen has suggested itself as a name. I’ve had another name in mind; we’ll see.
Still wishing to talk with a programmer/developer about the whole thing. Wrote to Keith Blount (or at least to Scrivener); no word back as yet.
All the Best,
Andy
Posted by Hugh
Feb 4, 2014 at 04:55 PM
andyjim wrote:
Hugh, Tinderbox looks incredible. It almost tempts me to get a Mac. Darn
>things are costly though! You’d think somebody would be working on
>an open source project to emulate Tinderbox.
Andy, the Tinderbox developer Eastgate announced some years ago that a Windows version was in the works. Possibly they were simply trying to head off Windows rivals - I don’t know. Since then there’s been little or no sign of it - but I imagine that a potential emulator would find things difficult, because it’s a very complex programme. My impression is that currently Eastgate have their hands full readying Tinderbox 6 for launch, which has required a complete re-write of the application. So a Windows Tinderbox may still be some distance away.
But in any case Mac hardware needn’t necessarily be as expensive as it sometimes appears. I bought my Mac Mini new not so long ago for somewhere between £300 and £450. It’s a very capable machine, although one does of course also need a keyboard and a monitor. A refurbished Mini would be less expensive still. And as other people will tell you, there are ways of running OS X on a PC.
>Still wishing to talk with a programmer/developer about the whole thing.
>Wrote to Keith Blount (or at least to Scrivener); no word back as yet.
>All the Best,
>Andy
>
Currently, as far as I know, Keith has his hands very full overseeing the launches of new versions of Scrivener for OS X and Windows, and overseeing Scrivener for iOS preparing for the launch of Version 1. But somewhere on the Literature & Latte website, probably in his blog, you may find descriptions of how he decided to create Scrivener and the way he did it. Even so, I think Keith is the exception that proves the rule. And the rule, as far as I can see, is “Buy in if you possibly can”.