[LAF-devel] Re: Design

[Samuel G. S. <ssh...@cs...>]

Hello Everyone,

I had joined this nailing list a LONG time ago and even forgot about the
project until somebody starting email again. :-)

I'm glad that there is interest in working on this project again.

> > I wouldn't mind leading it if people understood that this would be a
> > learning experience for me.
>
> Well, we can "co-lead" it if that sounds more palpable. ;)

It would sort of be a learning experiece for me to. I'm a programmer by
trade myself. I've been out of the industry for a couple of years because
of the economy. I also haven't written anything good in a while. But I've
writtten mostly a few small projects since college (Dec. 1999). Nothing
with a group of people. So I'm looking to gain some experience and get my
feet wet again.

> > > One thing we might want to do is scope out other linux-based
> > > geneology programs out there and make sure there isn't already
> > > something that 1) already does everything we need and we just don't
> > > realize it, or 2) could be forked to be PAF-compatible. I'd rather
> > > not duplicate work unless it's necessary. =3D)
> >
> > I need Paf and GedCom compatability.  I think it would be great if we
> > can fork something to be PAF compatible, however, I'm not overly
> > optimistic about this.

I agree with this. I've already tried a couple and I am not happy. I tried
Genes (genes.sourceforge.net) and Gramps (gramps.sourceforge.net). Genes
is not in a good working stage. Gramps looks very pretty and works pretty
well. But there are too many quirks in it for me to be happy with it.
Frankly, it's a pain. I like PAF. I personally would like to see a clone
of it in Linux. This would also serve to make those moving from Win to
Linux much happier.

> Question: how important is it to you to have PAF file-format=20
> compatibility? GEDCOM is certainly no problem, but the PAF database=20
> files themselves have changed format in every version of PAF and I=20
> don't know if they are documented anywhere... certainly we could=20
> reverse-engineer them if it's worth it to.=20

I think its important to have PAF compatibiilty. PAF is a big program with
a large following. Our program should be able to AT LEAST import those
files.

> GUI: Of course, we need a GUI. This would be layered on top of the core,=20
> and thus we avoid mixing GUI and core logic.

Again....PAF cloning would be nice.