Another New Year's Resolution Down the Tubes

My firm intention to step back from programming lasted about 36 hours. Inspired by ZuluPad and frustrated by what I really want it to do, I re-piled the stacks of neglected mail on my desk and fired up EBasic for a new project -- HyPad (short for HyperPad).

During the 36-hour hiatus, I experimented a bit more with OpenOffice, MS Office, and Google Docs. I also played some minor tricks with KompoZer and Dreamweaver. Everything is overkill as a tool I want to teach people to use for doing the small interactive communication and instructional pieces that I think need to be done. So I am back again to the Recurrent Solution -- build it myself.

This would be a lot easier if I were a trained and/or talented programmer. As it is, I can only take the approach of using the programming development editor and tools to pose a problem and tell a story that might arrive at a solution. "Open a file. It shows in a window. Click on a word or phrase. The window jumps the file to show a section starting with the selected phrase. Call that a page. Now make a new page...." Telling the story is the easy part. Doing all that code stuff to activate the story is crazy-making.

Alpha version of HyPad should be working by Monday. Stay tuned....