jon said:
Most of the time one doesn't have to author an actual implementation to determine whether it will be hard or not.
i program, jon. i'm not the world's greatest programmer, but there aren't that many things that are hard to program, even for me. you just have to be willing to break the job down into small enough pieces. oh yeah, it also helps to have users who don't care how big and/or slow your application might be... but until you've actually programmed your application, you don't really know what kind of obstacles lie hidden. heck, sometimes you don't find out until end-users tell you.
Most experienced and even inexperienced programmers instinctively know the difficulty of most proposed applications.
most inexperienced programmers can't count on their "instincts". (and someone like you -- a nonprogrammer -- certainly can't.) and experienced programmers know that some projects that look easy on the outside have a lot of those hidden obstacles. but one thing i can tell you for sure, as a programmer, is that if you let a nonprogrammer tell you what you should be doing, you're in for a very rough time, unless you're paid by the hour, and hard-up for the cash. (it also helps if you are a masochist.) another thing i can tell you for sure, as a programmer, is that the fact that a format is "open and universal" doesn't mean diddly-squat in terms of whether it'll be easy to program for it.
Bowerbird's system is clearly a RPGG since I know it will NOT do everything that has been discussed for digital texts.
oh really? you seem to have some kind of super-e.s.p. when it comes to knowing about my stuff, some of which i haven't even programmed, which could provide _useful_info_ to me... heck, i can get a critique of my software _before_i_even_write_it_! that's awesome. so jon, tell me what it won't do... -bowerbird