In reply to Alexandros and MJ's letter, I thought I would drop a note to show what I am working on now that color support is done, though it is not near finished yet.
It is written in C++ in wxWindows (which I believe is included in Debian). The resources are an XML file (which I was waiting for, and are now available in wxWindows 2.3.1). Since a GUI app, most of the work is widgets and a separation of code from an easily hand-editable resource file is helpful. wxWindows is a cross-platform C++ GUI toolkit. Makes small footprint, fast apps for Linux, Windows, and Mac using widgets for the appropriate OS. Examples of existing programs are Audacity (wav editor), and Mahogany (high-powered email client). wxWindows (www.wxwindows.org) is Free. I finished the initial draft this week. The 10 screenshots are here: http://www.rob.md/projects/plucker/2001_10_13/ (windows widgets shown). All forms were built with box-sizers so sizes across platforms without modification, and translations only have to deal with the actual text; the widgets will scale automatically. Things like correctly dealing with linefeeds, preference saving, and (I believe) drag n' drop are supported across the 3 platforms with the same C++ code. The Plucker Desktop is designed to have the full power of Plucker, but also organized into basic and advanced sections, so that a first-time user can still pick it up and use it. A wizard, context-sensitive help will also be included to help Plucker virgins. On the forms, child options will be disabled when a parent option is disabled, so that more clear how the options work. This is a manager; it uses the existing plucker executables (such as Dirk's excellent Windows programs), passing the arguments from each channel as required. It is designed to be compact enough (~350 KB)to be left running in the background and update the channels on its own when the due time is up. Best wishes, Robert
