filepro CD - map project update

[Fairlight]

>From inside the gravity well of a singularity, Christopher Yerry shouted:
> Confusious (Christopher Yerry) say:
> 
> send them a disk with the data and HTML page - You
> dont need the web for that! 
> 
> Happy new year to all

That's exactly what the project I did for my wife does.  I took data that
was exported to XML (okay, we -wrote- it in XML to start with, but it could
just as easily have been exported from another source), a tree of organised
web pages and their inline images, and a directory of thumbnail images, and
made a GUI for searching via keywords.  Words are automatically logically
AND'ed, it can do "exact word" (as opposed to substring) mode, and it has a
category search as illustrated by the keyword scheme I posted about a week
ago or so with that XML to demonstrate something.  It uses the Internet
Explorer to display the actual web pages.

So yeah, that is perfectly viable, and it works well.  Ours was designed to
run off CD, and it will actually still do so quite merrily.  However, it
also has since been given an InnoSetup installer that installs it to hard
drive if desired.  You can use it either way.

http://www.willtatforthread.com/harvest.shtml and grab the Windows demo
if you want to peek at it in action and look at how it was assembled,
organisation-wise.  Same thing could be done for anything.  And it was
simple enough that the online crochet community (the majority of which are
-not- really hugely computer savvy, from what I understand) not only can
use it, but love it.

<shameless_plug beneficiary="wife"> 
People into Crochet (or related/friends with those who are) might be 
interested in taking a peek.  The full thing is only $9.95 for 800+ 
patterns.  Works on any version of Windows from 95 through 2k3.  (We had
three beta periods where we ironed out some REALLY odd bugs--you should see
the differences in how paths are handled between the 9x and NT engines.)
</shameless_plug>

At any rate, it's an example of how to make something distributable in a
GUI form with a hybrid of a GUI search engine and the methodology
Christopher is advocating.  We do it, and we know it works beautifully.

And yup, the XML files it uses could have been generated from fP quite
trivially.

mark->