Survex

[Olly Betts]

On Wed, Jul 10, 2002 at 04:20:32PM +0100, David Gibson wrote:
> I know the people developing Survex are not really Windows people, but
> the apparent (bearing in mind I havent bothered to look :-) lack of a
> 'standard' Windows Open / Save / Run menu seems a bit of an omission. I
> expect its provision is way down the list of priorities. Viz...

Survex has been traditionally almost entirely command line based.

We recognise that not everyone is happy with this, and have been progressing
towards a more integrated approach, while not losing the benefits of being
able to run things from scripts, for those who prefer that.

Using file associations to drive Survex from the right click menu is a
temporary measure.  For most MS Windows users it's a big improvement over
having to open up a DOS window and type commands, and it didn't require much
developer work.

We plan to adapt Stacho Mudrak and Martin Budaj's xtherion (the therion data
entry editor which understands .svx files) to produce a front-end:

http://www.therion.sk/img/xtherion.gif

This has some very nice features - for example, it understands the *data
commands in survex files and changes the data entry fields and their order
accordingly.

The biggest issue to resolve is probably getting it to install as a single
package with the libraries and tools it needs.  I'm about to head off on a
caving expedition, but it should be done shortly after I return.

> Olly Betts <olly@survex.com> wrote
> >* Experimental support for Chinese (LANG=zh) - only a few messages are
> >  currently translated.

You'd probably be suprised how many Chinese speaking Survex users there are.

I made some small tweaks which I hope will allow a Chinese translation on
MS Windows at least (there's a test for French/German/Italian/etc and I just
added a case for Chinese, and added translations for a handful of messages
gleaned from the web).  Now someone with access to a Chinese version of Windows
can check if these work before I get all the messages translated.

A Chinese version on Unix requires Gtk 2.0 which will need the next release
of wxWindows.  But all the Chinese users I'm aware of are using MS Windows
anyhow.

Cheers,
Olly

P.S. Dave - Thanks for sending back my coat (I got it on Monday).