Robert Abitbol Many years ago, in the glorious days of the pioneer DOS (we thought then Dos was the end of the world but by jolly! there was much more to come afterwards!), ['We thought' ? CMcC never thought of DOS as pioneering, or the endpoint of anything, merely a second-rate knockoff of a better system] there was an amazing database software called Rapid File programmed in Forth (another amazing programming language).
I suspect it was in fact a comma-delimited database therefore it was occupying close to nothing in terms of space. It was small, fast, elegant, innovative.
It was the kind of stuff RS would write.
See more here: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RapidFile (I wrote most of the text on that page).
I think Tcl/Tk would lend itself very well to such a database.
The beauty with Rapid File was that it had an incorporated editor; it was a word processor and a database. Another amazing feature: the snapshots: you could enter a database and decide to write a snapshot; a snapshot was simply a feature enabling a user to save a few selected fields, to sort them in a particular way at entry etc.
If anyone is interested in writing something similar in Tcl/Tk, let me know. My e-mail address is on my homepage.
This is a good project for an ambitious Tcler who wants to build, to program a great app to show to employers who want to see an example of his/her work.
More often than not, programmers can show bits and pieces of work but not complete apps; but when they can show slick, elegant and complete, excellent apps, employers are impressed and they hire them right away. Therefore whoever will work on this project will invest in his/her future.
This program could also be offered for download or sold.
Please note that I don't have the time to supervise or get involved in this project. I can offer some guidance and advice from time to time but that is about it.
See CSV for code to deal with comma-separated-values data files.
Robert Abitbol Indeed! Thanks RS! The concept is very well explained on that page.
Now, the first step (and the most important one!) in this project would be to simply present the CSV file into a sort of file with columns (alt 179) instead of commas.
The algorithm must take into consideration the longest entry in each field and must set the width of that field accordingly.
Note that the program will do that upon entry everytime. After the user has entered data, he will click on Save and Save will represent the file into a CSV file and will save it that way.
Therefore the file is always CSV but the user sees it always with columns.
The user will be able to modify a field by hitting F2 or by clicking on the field with the mouse.
Since the comma is commonly used for text, we'll use the semi-column, to delimit. We'll then have a semi-column delimited file if you will!
Let's try:
This is the file. Name: My library.txt
Shakespeare, William; Romeo and Juliet; 1767; Theatre Puzo, Mario; The Godfather; 1965; Drama Verne, Jules; Around the world in 80 days; 1862; Adventure Sheldon, Sydney; The other side of midnight; 1967; Mystery Mc Cullough, Colleen; Thornbirds; 1967; Saga