Which language will do?

[drew at drewtaylor.com (Drew Taylor)]

Have you considered Flash? It was originally designed for use on CD-ROM 
based products IIRC. I don't know any of the modern features of Flash, so 
it might not work in any case. But maybe something to check out.

Drew

At 03:36 PM 12/2/02 -0500, Jared Michaels wrote:
>I guess I need to be a little clearer -- I'm looking to create a 
>stand-alone document reader, not a web-based application. Something that 
>could fit on a CD, or installed from a CD, or downloaded as a Zip and 
>installed that way.
>
>Nathan: Yes, PHP would be my preference, but it is, of course, 
>server-based. I've tried a PHP compiler, the only php compiler I've found, 
>but it doesn't want to work on Win2k.
>
>Brian: No, I haven't tried Perl. Does Perl work for stand-alone apps?
>
>Thanks very much.
>Jared
>
>----------
>What I wrote before:
>----------
>Hi Everyone.
>
>I'm new here and I have some specific linux questions, but first I have 
>another that's more important to me.
>
>I'm trying to build a document reader for a friend of mine. He uses the 
>JAWS Reader for the blind, so I've been creating this reader with MS HTML 
>Help for Windows, and generating the documents using PHP on Linux. It 
>seems to be the easiest and most accessible thing that I've found that can 
>handle such large documents.
>
>The problem is that I can't make it interactive -- I want to be able to 
>include things like a search engine (something other than the HTML Help 
>search engine), saving bookmarks, search queries, and user preferences. 
>I've been using VBscript, but when I try to use the FileSystemObject I get 
>a security warning. MS says this can be fixed by using a digital 
>certificate, but that's out of my price range. This is a not-for-profit 
>project and I don't want to spend any money on it.
>
>So, here's what I need help with. I need to find a programming language 
>that is easy for someone like me to understand -- someone who has years of 
>scripting and object-oriented language experience (VBA, Javascript, 
>VBScript, PHP, etc.), and can, with the right documentation and 
>environment, learn quickly; a language that is cross-platform -- 
>compatible with at least Windows, Linux, and Mac OS 9 or 10; something 
>that's free and can be built in a Linux environment (I have Suse Linux 
>7.3, but be gentle, I'm a little green); and something that can be easily 
>deployed without a lot of user intervention.
>
>I've been struggling with this problem for weeks, so I'd appreciate any 
>suggestions.
>
>Thanks much.
>Jared
>_______________________________________________
>Discuss mailing list
>Discuss at blu.org
>http://www.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

--
Drew Taylor                | Web development & consulting
http://www.drewtaylor.com/ | perl/mod_perl/DBI/mysql/postgres
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"If you don't know what your program is supposed to do,
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